Spokane author's book named best of the year |

If you're looking for the perfect book for the reader in your family, why not buy the best book of the year? Even better, what if you could carry it around with you, in case you run into that book's author at the grocery store - or maybe your favorite local tavern?

Here's your chance to own that very book. Spokane author Jess Walter's latest book Beautiful Ruins has been named Book of the Year for 2012 by Esquire magazine.

"Beautiful Ruins is a very funny book about a distinctly American relationship to destiny," touts the mag. "It's a book that could be written only by a highly attuned spectator of compromised men."

Beautiful Ruins is hard to explain, but it examines the lives of an American actress, an Italian hotel owner and even American icon Richard Burton. How they come together - and, break apart - is what makes this book so wonderful to read. It's sweeping, beautiful, hilarious and perfectly Jess Walter. I loved it and I missed the characters when it was over.

You can read the review in the December issue of Esquire (with the adorable Bradley Cooper on the cover.) You can pick up the magazine and the book at Aunties in downtown Spokane.

Other accolades for Beautiful Ruins:

Best audiobook narration of 2012

NY Times 100 Notable Books of 2012 (along with other Eastern WA product Sherman Alexie)