This Book Could Be Highly Rewarding For Industrious Readers

Author W.C. Jameson spends his time writing about, if not searching for, buried treasure around the United States.

His latest book, “Buried Treasure of the Pacific Northwest” (August House Publishers, 224 pages, $11.95 paperback), tells of 32 different sites where untold riches might be found. Sites such as the “Buried Treasure of the Wynoochee River Wildman” or the “Lost Gold of Devil’s Sink.”

The nearest treasure to Spokane would be the five bags of gold that, originally stolen from a Northport smelter, were last seen on a farm near Colville. The ore, said to be worth about $20,000 in the 1930s, is thought to be buried somewhere on a Colville golf course.

Meanwhile, author Margaret Read MacDonald spends her time writing about, if not searching for, ghost stories. A King County children’s librarian, MacDonald has written “Ghost Stories of the Pacific Northwest” (August House Publishers, 256 pages, $24.95, $12.95 paperback).

MacDonald talks of two Spokane ghosts. One is a mad organist who haunts Gonzaga University’s Monaghan Hall. The other is the late wife of band-leader Russ Andrew, who says he experienced his wife’s spirit on Valentine’s Day 1989 - the 10th anniversary of her death.

Our favorites: the spirits who are said to haunt Seattle’s famed Pike Street Market. Looking distinctly J. Crew, they like to order single shorts at the Starbuck’s outlet.

(Just kidding.)

Desert refrain

Terry Tempest Williams, whose book “Refuge” is a poignant statement that encompasses feminism, Mormonism and environmentalism, will read from her newest book, “Desert Quartet,” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington.

The naturalist-in-residence at the Utah Museum of Natural History, Williams again studies the relationships between the world we know - especially as composed by the elements of earth, water, fire and air - and the human body.

A Seattle landmark

Few people had more influence on the development of modern Seattle than did the founder of KING Broadcasting, the Northwest’s first commercial television station.

But Dorothy Stimson Bullitt was more than just a media executive.

She counted among her friends such powerful celebrities as Eleanor Roosevelt, Sen. Warren Magnuson and several Washington governors. She’d grown up among such noted families as the Weyerhausers, Boeings and Spaldings.

And in her life, which spanned the years 1892-1989, she held board memberships for such organizations as the Children’s Orthopedic Hospital, Seattle Symphony, University of Washington Board of Regents, Seattle Library and the commission charged with building Grand Coulee Dam.

In “Dorothy Stimson Bullitt: An Unusual Life” (Sasquatch Books, 344 pages, $26.95), author Delphine Haley has reconstructed the life story of an important Northwest power broker who never let her sex stand in the way of what she wanted to accomplish.

“At core, Dorothy Bullitt had such a clear sense of self that when she fixed her full energy on what she wanted, it was automatically hers,” wrote Haley in the book’s introduction. “She used this power to overcome deep personal loss and to compete out in the world when few women of her social background did. In her dealings as a well-bred matron in a good old boys’ world, she perfected techniques of psychological jujitsu that threw men off-balance simply from the sheer weight of their own egos.”

The reader board

Poet Thomas Reiter, author of “Crossovers” (Eastern Washington University Press), will read from his book at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington. Reiter, poetry editor of Cimarron Review, teaches humanities at Monmouth College in New Jersey.

Terry Tempest Williams will read from her book “Desert Quartet” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Auntie’s Bookstore.

Phillis Silver will tell stories about Chicken Little and other literary characters at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Children’s Corner Bookshop, on the skywalk between Nordstrom and the Bon. The story session is free and open to the public.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe, author of “Sweat: Stories and a Novella” (Seal Press), will read from her book at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Auntie’s Bookstore.

, DataTimes