When We Flew Away
Whalesong: The True Story of the Musician Who Talked to Orcas

Remarkably Bright Creatures

Dazzling and unexpected, Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures is set over the course of a summer in a fictional town on Puget Sound. This is a witty and warm tale of a widow’s friendship with a giant Pacific octopus reluctantly residing at the local aquarium—and the truths she finally uncovers about her son’s disappearance thirty years ago.

Tova Sullivan began mopping floors and tidying up on the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium after her husband died. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Finding the sea creatures around her easier to talk to than the humans in her life, Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms an unlikely friendship with Tova. Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. As his affection for Tova grows, Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late.

More Adult Books

  • In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. This is the unforgettable story of how Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die.
  • Nothing in the world soothes the soul better than Gospel music.
  • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author.
  • In Just For The Summer, Justin is cursed to have every woman he dates find their soulmate immediately after their breakup. When he teams up with Emma, a traveling nurse with her own romantic troubles, they devise a plan to date and break up to cancel their curses. However, as they navigate unexpected challenges and real feelings, they begin to wonder if fate has a different plan for them.