A unique blend of natural history and crime drama, Shell Games by Craig Welch is a riveting tale of rogues, scoundrels, and the hunt for nature’s bounty in the tradition of The Orchid Thief. A stranger-than-fiction true story centered around a larger-than-life character who pursued a larger-than-life clam—the Geoduck—and then led wildlife police on a two-year-long chase, Shell Games is enthralling and remarkable from page one on.

Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature's Bounty

History

Welch, Craig

Historical Study & Educational Resources

William Morrow

In Shell Games, journalist Craig Welch delves into our nation's waters and wildlands in search of America's most unusual criminals. The resulting detective story is filled with butterfly thieves, bear poachers, shark-trafficking pastorsand a rogues' gallery of double-crossing crooks who get rich smuggling bizarre marine creatures. Puget Sound is home to the geoduck (pronounced "gooey duck"), the world's largest burrowing clama seafood delicacy worth millions on the international black market. Outlaw scuba divers pursue this prize while dodging cops, committing arson, and hiring hit men to eliminate their rivals. Detective Ed Volz has spent decades chasing fish and wildlife smugglers. Now, he and a team of federal agents are desperate to take down the most remarkable thief they've ever hunted: a darkly charming con man who works both sides of the law and calls himself the "Geoduck Gotti."

Shell Games: A True Story of Cops, Con Men, and the Smuggling of America's Strangest Wildlife

Business & Money

Economics

Harper-perennial

Thirty-six of the most interesting writers in the Pacific Northwest came together for a week-long marathon of writing live on stage. The result? Hotel Angeline, a truly inventive novel that surprises at every turn of the page. Something is amiss at the Hotel Angeline, a rickety former mortuary perched atop Capitol Hill in rain-soaked Seattle. Fourteen-year-old Alexis Austin is fixing the plumbing, the tea, and all the problems of the world, it seems, in her landlady mother’s absence.The quirky tenants—a hilarious mix of misfits and rabble-rousers from days gone by—rely on Alexis all the more when they discover a plot to sell the Hotel. Can Alexis save their home? Find her real father? Deal with her surrogate dad’s dicey past? Find true love? Perhaps only their feisty pet crow, Habib, truly knows. Provoking interesting questions about the creative process, this novel is by turns funny, scary, witty, suspenseful, beautiful, thrilling, and unexpected.

Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voices

Literature & Fiction

WIGGS, SUSAN

Bauermeister, Erica

Alcalá, Kathleen

Emerson, Kevin

Kallos, Stephanie

Dugoni, Robert

QUINN, JULIA

Shortridge, Jennie

Amster-Burton, Matthew

Ford, Clyde W.

Headley, Maria Dahvana

Stein, Garth

Caletti, Deb

Ford, Jamie

McCue, Frances

SUNDARESAN, INDU

Cassella, Carol

Rawles, Nancy

O'Brien, Kevin

Dietrich, William

Boling, Dave

Stump, Greg

Guterson, Mary

Beaudoin, Sean

Middleton, Jarret

Finneyfrock, Karen

Mountford, Peter

Levine, Stacey

Skoog, Ed

Bakke, Kit

Lasky, David

Hein, Teri

Selfors,Suzanne

George,Elizabeth

Larson, Erik.

Literary

Open Road Media

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