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A poet’s public reading shines a spotlight on her isolation. Robbers look to their former teacher for a chance at redemption. A painter of railroads stubbornly documents decline and abandonment. A Halloween festival is rooted in matters of life and death. Set in a fictional Pacific Northwest town, told through the gossip and grievances of its residents, Spearwood, OR examines the impacts of place, inherited narratives, and generational traumas on a community in seventy-two very short stories. John Carr Walker’s vision of the new American west is funny and furious, desperate and demure, familiar on the surface, yet deeply strange.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Series: Propeller Longform Original Fiction
ISBN: 9781955593151
Publication Date: September 2026
Paperback, 5 x 7 in.

Donald Geary, a freelance copywriter on a failed business trip, pockets a flash drive left in a hotel bar by a talkative stranger. Compelled by the drive’s mysterious contents and a sense his own career is at a dead end, Geary changes his travel plans to return the item personally. What begins as curiosity, however, leads to a case of mistaken identity, and Geary finds himself forced to continue playing a new role—against his will. He is soon caught in an escalating game of cat and mouse that ensnares family and friends as it moves from Washington to Oregon, through misted city streets and lonely forest roads.

“It has always been important to you to do good work. Is that what you’re doing?”

This question hangs over many of the novel’s characters, and is faced most acutely by Leah, Geary’s longtime partner. Sympathetic to the man she loves, she feels the same desire to find a dynamic next chapter in her life, while still deeply committed to being a responsible parent. She also knows that men discouraged by the repetitions of work and family life are “far from the only people who think life overpromised and underdelivered.”

Traversing the Pacific Northwest, from the cold height of Seattle’s Space Needle to the rocky surf of the Oregon coast, Double Standard weaves a fast-paced thriller into a novel of treachery and surveillance, the limits of identity, and the maddening fact that though we only live once, we do so while imagining innumerable other lives.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Series: Propeller Books Fiction
ISBN: 9781955593144
Pages: 218
Publication date: January 27, 2026
Hardcover, 5.5 x 8.5 in.

An invaluable entry in the history of Pacific Northwest literature, Hart’s novel explores the realities of life in a small logging town on the Oregon coast in the early twentieth century, where Robert Mallory, an optimistic young doctor, attempts to maintain his ideals and integrity in the face of challenges both social and personal. With a lived understanding of life in Oregon as well as the realities of the medical profession, Hart—in this debut novel that became a bestseller for W.W. Norton in 1935—reveals the beauty and cruelty of characters forging lives at the northwestern edge of the country. Out of print for decades, Doctor Mallory fascinates now not only for its depiction of coastal Oregon during World War I and the Great Depression, but also for Hart’s compassion for men and women whose struggles were often endured amid social condemnation and shattering solitude.

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Series: Northwest Collection (#6)
ISBN: 9781955593120
Publication Date: September 16, 2025
Paperback, 5 x 8 in.

Don Geary, a single father and freelance graphic designer, barely manages to make ends meet as he works the margins of the churning creative economy in Portland, Oregon, during the Obama administration. Talented but solitary, sensitive but critical, Geary tries to make it through a season in which he monitors the rise of social media and local “thought leaders” from an increasingly desperate position.

When two venture capitalists hire him to be their “Gielgud”—a sober-minded employee they can trust to translate their flights of capital-fueled whimsy into a refined, market-ready product—it seems his career and financial troubles may be over. As he realizes the opportunity might not be what it seems, though, he also finds it increasingly difficult to ignore the messages that appear on his phone from a woman who may be a chance for something more substantial. In scenes of humor, anxiety, tenderness, and desire, Gielgud chronicles men and women who, in a world suddenly flooded with streaming video and nonstop commentary, quietly struggle through personal crises almost entirely unobserved.

Additional Information
Series: Propeller Books Fiction
ISBN: 9781955593137
Pages: 305
Original publication Date: December 2017
Second edition: January 2026
Paperback, 5.25 x 8 in.

In 1974, the great Iñupiaq writer and historian Ticasuk (also known by the English name Emily Ivanoff Brown) completed a master's degree program at the University of Alaska by researching and writing the history of the Iñupiaq, who lived at Unalakleet, on the Norton Sound of the Bering Sea. The result is a fascinating account of culture, nature, and survival that spans generations and leads, inexorably, to the birth of the author herself. The Roots of Ticasuk is not only a deftly-written series of adventures, but also a family story crucial to understanding the rich culture of the Iñupiaq people and their role in the history of present-day Alaska.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Series: Northwest Collection (#5)
ISBN: 9781955593113
Publication Date: November 5, 2024
Paperback, 5 x 8 in.

Criminals follows the lives of a sister and brother, Ruth and Hank Tanazaki, as they struggle to free themselves from the weight of their parents’ generation in a small Japanese American community in Los Angeles in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This poignant story of the double-edged nature of community—a force that supports the group, at cost to the individual—explores the possibilities and limits of seeking personal freedom through creativity. Masaoka’s dazzling, deeply-moving debut is also an eloquent addition to the canon of Asian American literature.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Series: Propeller Contemporary Fiction
ISBN: 9781955593106
Publication Date: October 8, 2024
Paperback, 5.25 x 8 in.

Survival Tips: Stories follows characters through their friendships, their jobs, their marriages, and their grief as they stumble toward connection and meaning. A wife begins communicating to her husband only in rebus puzzles. A new teacher confronts her strongest foes, the parents of a disruptive student. A group of conference-goers join their guru in a jerry-rigged sweat lodge. A woman shows up to her blind date in a "Don't Leave Me" t-shirt. With wit and candor, these ten stories examine the ways we live, the mistakes we make, and the paths we take in hopes of delivering us to ourselves and each other.

The collection features twenty years of stories that have appeared in The Georgia Review, Quarterly West, Pithead Chapel, Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, and other top publications.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Series: Propeller Contemporary Fiction
ISBN: 9781955593083
Publication Date: March 19, 2024
Paperback, 5.25 x 8 in.

When her troubled husband dies unexpectedly, mercurial Therese gets tangled in competing desires and demands--her own and those of her friends and family on Long Island. Ambitious in scope yet carefully observed, Marrying Friends deftly illuminates multiple characters as grief forces them to reimagine their lives and relationships. A frank and often wry look at the bewildering bonds between women, men, siblings, parents, and children, this novel-in-stories confirms Rechner's talent for capturing how we find meaning not only in our dreams, but also in our desperations.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Series: Propeller Contemporary Fiction
ISBN: 9781955593069
Publication Date: October 2023
Paperback, 5.25 x 8 in.

Over the course of these nine stories, Mary Rechner brings frank, humorous, and illuminating narrative voice to the subjects of sex, marriage, family, and work. A grieving woman considers pursuing her dead lover's twin. A master gardener envies the freedom of her widowed friend. A poet considers which of her pieces reads best in a strip club. Resisting expected behaviors and received opinions, the protagonists of Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women fight to maintain their sense of self amid mounting personal and social pressure. Nominated for awards and the recipient of fellowships from organizations on both sides of the country, Rechner captures the journey of women who came of age at the end of the twentieth century and then tumbled headlong—in families, careers, and friendship—into a bewildering new era.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Series: Northwest Collection (#4)
ISBN: 9781955593052
Publication Date: May 16, 2023
Paperback, 5 x 8 in.

Nicholas Allander, thirty-one, carless, and careerless, is trying to pay off debt, impress his girlfriend, keep his job, cast off his introversion, and accept the world’s imperfections without abandoning his heart. He considers growing his beard, taking up alcoholism, abandoning scrounging, and owning an automobile. All the while he clings to his bicycle, a simple machine whose purpose and workings he grasps. Written in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial meltdown, this subtle, charming novel about the attempt to maintain one’s humanity in the face of constant affronts to it is as timely now as when first released.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Series: Northwest Collection (#3)
ISBN: 9781955593045
Publication Date: November 1, 2022
Paperback, 5 x 8 in.

In 1936, Alan Hart published The Undaunted, his second bestseller. The novel, which follows young doctor Richard Cameron’s attempts to find an effective treatment for anemia, begins in the west coast city of Seaforth, a stand-in for 1920s Seattle. Within the medical-research plot, Hart also weaves the story of men—Cameron and radiologist Sandy Farquhar—whose personalities and bodies do not fit neatly within the norms of the social and medical establish-ment. Dedicated to medicine and the understanding that scientific knowledge can decrease human pain and suffering, Cameron and Farquhar must nevertheless pursue their careers at personal cost. Lauded in its time for its insights into the inner workings of the medical field, The Undaunted is also an important document of the struggle of the human heart.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Series: Northwest Collection (#2)
ISBN: 9781955593038
Publication Date: November 1, 2022
Paperback, 5 x 8 in.

Sheila Evans’ The Northport Stories offers a clear-eyed glimpse into the lives of characters drawn to, and shaped by, the rugged weather, geography, and social life of the coastal Pacific Northwest. The stories follow women and men as they encounter turning points in their marriages, relationships with adult children, and hopes for the future in the fictional coast town of Northport, Oregon. Past relationships haunt current crises, new identities are built in defiance of old patterns, and at all times, the larger world encroaches—or entices—in the form of tourists, development, and new ways of living. In skilled, wry sketches of adult life in the final decades of the twentieth century, Evans captures not only a way of living at a particular edge of the American map, but also deeper political and cultural conflicts that are a part of the history of America itself.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Series: Northwest Collection (#1)
ISBN: 9781955593014
Publication Date: November 1, 2022
Paperback, 5 x 8 in.

In this hybrid poem about militarized drones and militant angels, Elizabeth abandons her career as a physicist to become a museum administrator, finds god in the basement below the galleries, and dies there. But that is not the end.

A masterful blend of form and genre, ELIZABETH/THE STORY OF DRONE takes readers on a journey through terrain in which the personal and the political collide.

Additional Information
Series: Propeller Books Contemporary Poetry Series
ISBN: 9781955593021
Pages: 134
Publication Date: September 27, 2022
Paperback, 6 x 9 in.

Janice “Pegs” Pegula, a mechanic and test driver at a driverless car company in 2030 Pittsburgh, does not steal from her employer. Not necessarily. She skims—a tire here, a battery there, reselling parts from the supply room to save for a higher, drier apartment. Surge season is about to hit, bringing with it hurricane-like winds, public protests for better surge pay, and desperate modifications to driverless prototypes by companies who see the climate emergency as a final chance to prove their social purpose. Dodging delivery drones on her test drives and tech bros on her maintenance shifts, Pegs struggles to keep everyone happy—bosses and family, the mechanic buying her parts, and her expanding crew of fellow skimmers. When the group decides to acquire and strip a full driverless prototype, driving—and life—gets even more risky in this first fictional work to dramatize the existential crises faced by individuals working in the driverless car sector.

Additional Information
Series: Propeller Books Contemporary Fiction
ISBN: 9781955593007
Pages: 198
Publication Date: May 24, 2022
Paperback, 5.25 x 8 in.

In 2011, Laura Moulton founded Street Books, a mobile library serving people living outside in Portland, Oregon. That summer, Ben Hodgson became one of her most dedicated regulars, setting the still-unbroken single-season record for borrowing. Then Ben’s routine’s changed, and he didn’t cross paths again with Laura for almost two years. Loaners is the story they began to tell when they reconnected, offering a street-level perspective of a community whose stories are seldom told, alternating between their two unforgettable points of view in this addictively readable, occasionally sublime memoir.

Loaners is a co-release with Street Books.

Paperback: 276 pages
ISBN: 9780983632795
Publication date: October 5, 2021
Dimensions: 5 x 0.83 x 7.75 inches
Cover design: Aaron Robert Miller
Photo: Eli Haan

Dear Weirdo is a wayward romp that offers prismatic insight into the nature of love, loss, and home along the way. With a spellbinding immediacy, Abraham Smith rides a prophetic cadence through town, into the sky, and down the “gut’s lonely road.” The deeply familiar reappears—neither dust-covered nor bathed in golden light—but as a continuous explosion in this book-length poem, drawing the reader into a personal history refracted through a lyricism utterly Smith’s own.

Additional Information
Series: Propeller Books Contemporary Poetry Series
ISBN: 9780982770481
Pages: 88
Publication Date: February 1, 2022
Paperback, 6 x 9 in.