Sherman Alexie

The salmon swim so thick in this river that Grandmother walks across the water on the bridge of their spines. From "One Stick Song" by Sherman Alexie (Hanging Loose Press: 92 pp., $15)

Bestselling author James Patterson wants to support independent bookstores, and he's putting his money where his heart is. On Monday he pledged to give $1 million to independent bookstores in the next year. "We're making this transition to e-books, and that's fine and good and terrific and wonderful, but we're not doing it in an organized, sane, civilized way. So what's happening right now is a lot of bookstores are disappearing," Patterson told CBS' "This Morning . " Patterson says he hopes the funds will support everything from raises for staff who haven't gotten them in years to larger projects.

Blasphemy New and Selected Stories Sherman Alexie Grove Press: 480 pp, $27 Sherman Alexie's characters live in a kind of dreamscape, a limbo between Native American and white culture, between city life and the reservation. All sorts of fantastic, improbable things happen in this in-between space. Students channel famous Indian warriors in their high school classes. Donkeys are taught to excel at basketball, the national sport of every Indian tribe. Against all odds the Native American characters in "Blasphemy," Alexie's new anthology of short stories, wander, stumble and blunder their way into moments of clarity and redemption.

Filmmakers Alex and Andrew Smith were thrilled but stressed Thursday afternoon as the debut of their passion project, "Winter in the Blood," about life on an Indian reservation, rapidly approached. The Montana natives were close family friends with James Welch, the author of the novel on which the book was based, and sought to bring Welch's words to life in the best way they knew how. After filming on the Montana Hi-Line on a budget that they raised themselves by all manner of grass-roots fundraising -- from readings and concerts to T-shirt sales and a Kickstarter campaign -- the product of their toils, a tribute to Welch's work, came to life.

SHERMAN ALEXIE never allows readers to wade timidly into the turbulent waters of his novels or stories. Instead, he simply hurls folks into the deep and seems to say, swim if you can -- or dare.

Race and poverty aren't subjects Americans like to talk about. They're too loaded, too uncomfortable. But they are also too important to brush under the rug at a time when immigration issues loom large and there is greater disparity than ever between rich and poor. Unless we're willing to talk about these touchy subjects -- to walk into the fire, so to speak -- it's difficult to understand opposing viewpoints and harder still to combat racism or impoverishment.

Sherman Alexie is ready to play cards with Satan. The 30-year-old author is hunkered down at the Beverly Prescott, in town to discuss the film rights to his latest novel, "Indian Killer" (Atlantic Monthly Press), a slyly subversive potboiler about a serial murderer whose actions spark a modern battle of cowboys and Indians in Seattle. It may seem like perfect big-screen fodder, but Alexie, a Spokane Coeur d'Alene, harbors no illusions and is prepared for the inevitable raw deal from Hollywood.

When the Department of Justice and state officials announced their lawsuits against Apple and five major publishers Wednesday, it sent a ripple of anxiety through the talent at the industry's heart. "I'm in a bit of an awkward position because this has pitted my publisher against the retailer that far and away sells more of my books than any other," says Michael Connelly, the bestselling mystery novelist. "I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me, and both of these hands feed me. " Connelly is published by Little, Brown, which is owned by Hachette, one of the publishers named in the suits that has since agreed to settle.

Leaning against a black couch in his office, Sherman Alexie is laughing. He laughs often and easily -- at others' jokes and his own, at sarcasm and silliness -- and his laughter is contagious. Last year, he cracked up Stephen Colbert when he appeared on "The Colbert Report." Fans are known to walk away from Alexie's book signings gasping for air, wiping their eyes. But the photographer sent to take his photo wasn't laughing. For the umpteenth time, he gently asked Alexie to be serious for a moment.

Blasphemy New and Selected Stories Sherman Alexie Grove Press: 480 pp, $27 Sherman Alexie's characters live in a kind of dreamscape, a limbo between Native American and white culture, between city life and the reservation. All sorts of fantastic, improbable things happen in this in-between space. Students channel famous Indian warriors in their high school classes. Donkeys are taught to excel at basketball, the national sport of every Indian tribe. Against all odds the Native American characters in "Blasphemy," Alexie's new anthology of short stories, wander, stumble and blunder their way into moments of clarity and redemption.

When the Department of Justice and state officials announced their lawsuits against Apple and five major publishers Wednesday, it sent a ripple of anxiety through the talent at the industry's heart. "I'm in a bit of an awkward position because this has pitted my publisher against the retailer that far and away sells more of my books than any other," says Michael Connelly, the bestselling mystery novelist. "I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me, and both of these hands feed me. " Connelly is published by Little, Brown, which is owned by Hachette, one of the publishers named in the suits that has since agreed to settle.

Leaning against a black couch in his office, Sherman Alexie is laughing. He laughs often and easily -- at others' jokes and his own, at sarcasm and silliness -- and his laughter is contagious. Last year, he cracked up Stephen Colbert when he appeared on "The Colbert Report." Fans are known to walk away from Alexie's book signings gasping for air, wiping their eyes. But the photographer sent to take his photo wasn't laughing. For the umpteenth time, he gently asked Alexie to be serious for a moment.

Race and poverty aren't subjects Americans like to talk about. They're too loaded, too uncomfortable. But they are also too important to brush under the rug at a time when immigration issues loom large and there is greater disparity than ever between rich and poor. Unless we're willing to talk about these touchy subjects -- to walk into the fire, so to speak -- it's difficult to understand opposing viewpoints and harder still to combat racism or impoverishment.

SHERMAN ALEXIE never allows readers to wade timidly into the turbulent waters of his novels or stories. Instead, he simply hurls folks into the deep and seems to say, swim if you can -- or dare.

ELLEN FORNEY'S comic strip art is a non-nostalgic blast from the indie arts scene of the 1990s -- that time after Kurt Cobain's death, before Courtney Love became a corporate commodity, when the world seemed a more hopeful place. Forney, a longtime contributor to Seattle's alternative weekly the Stranger, produces work that is sexually explicit and occasionally gross.

THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN by Sherman Alexie (Atlantic Monthly Press: $21; 240 pp.) The imagination soars, unconquerable; the spirits inhabit every cloud, every blade of grass, every dream and story; but in real time, life on the Spokane Reservation is dismal. "At the halfway point of every drunken night," writes Sherman Alexie, "there is a moment when an Indian realizes he cannot turn back toward tradition and that he has no map to guide him toward the future."

Bestselling author James Patterson wants to support independent bookstores, and he's putting his money where his heart is. On Monday he pledged to give $1 million to independent bookstores in the next year. "We're making this transition to e-books, and that's fine and good and terrific and wonderful, but we're not doing it in an organized, sane, civilized way. So what's happening right now is a lot of bookstores are disappearing," Patterson told CBS' "This Morning . " Patterson says he hopes the funds will support everything from raises for staff who haven't gotten them in years to larger projects.

Sherman ALEXIE has a confession: He wants to be Philip Roth. Not as a stylist -- although both authors do use humor to get at uncomfortable subjects. Nor as a personality: He's much too open, too, well, friendly, someone who laughs and rhapsodizes and engages, who won't leave a reading until every book is signed. No, what Alexie has in mind is more Roth's impact, the way the older writer's novels reach out of an insular and often denigrated culture to demand attention from the larger world.

It's becoming clearer now that "Indian Killer" was an anomaly in Sherman Alexie's career. In that novel, he expressed Native American rage in a raw, direct form. Abandoning much of the humor of his earlier works, such as "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" and "Reservation Blues," he envisioned a Seattle of literary poseurs, shock-talk radio and vigilante injustice, inflamed by a serial killer of white men who scalps his victims.