White Rabbit Book Co.

White Rabbit Book Co. is pleased to announce Debbie Macomber as keynote speaker for the 2027 Inkhorn Writers' Conference in Bremerton, February 20-21. "An Evening with Debbie Macomber" is included with conference registration. Limited VIP meet-and-greet signings are available as an upgrade. General admission seating to the keynote may be available separately to the public if space allows after the writers' conference early-bird period.

A #1 New York Times-bestselling author with more than 200 million copies of her books in print worldwide, Debbie Macomber is a leading voice in women's fiction today. Macomber's ability to write stories of everyday hope, love, and forgiveness is unparalleled and her uplifting lectures draw fans from all across the country.

Debbie Macomber is one of today’s most prolific and popular authors of contemporary women’s fiction. She is the author of numerous bestsellers, including Any Dream Will Do, Sweet Tomorrows, A Girl’s Guide to Moving On, Last One Home, Blossom Street Brides, and Rose Harbor in Bloom. Her novels have spent over 1,000 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, 13 of which were at #1.

Best known for her beloved Cedar Cove and Rose Harbor series, Macomber has also published bestselling cookbooks, several works of nonfiction—such as the popular One Perfect World—an adult coloring book, and two acclaimed children’s books. Every year Macomber delights her readers with a Christmas novel celebrating the best of the season. Five of these novels have been made into original Hallmark Channel movies. The Cedar Cove series was made into Hallmark Channel’s first scripted dramatic series, and ran for three seasons.

Macomber and her husband serve on the Guideposts National Advisory Cabinet and she is World Vision’s international spokesperson for their Knit for Kids charity initiative, which includes Macomber’s own Knit One, Bless Two. She is also a Pearl S. Buck International Honorary Board Member and the recipient of a lifetime achievement award by the Romance Writers of America.

Early-bird registration is available now, at https://whiterabbitgo.com/events/inkhorn

Call for faculty proposals is open, at https://forms.gle/QMpSt8scGQStudNP6

Literary Agents may apply to hear author pitches, at https://forms.gle/aBo38wWtzGxXATwc9

Reader, I. Inkhorn Writers' Conference

Owl-Light Book-Lovers' Night Market — Part of BookFolk ~ A Regional Literary Festival — July 25, 2026 — 6-9PM — Quincy Square, Downtown Bremerton. Come earlier for New York Times Bestselling author, J.A. Jance during Sleuths, an afternoon with your favorite detectives — your favorite-detective costumes encouraged!

Mark your calendar now to see Sheila Roberts at Reader, I.— A celebration of PNW romance lit, on July 18 in the Polaris Theater Backstage Alley, Port Orchard. Susan Wiggs, Jennifer Bardsley, and Julie Farley join the lineup, starting at Noon. Bring a favorite romance book to swap. Pre-order the books you'll want signed now and get free VIP reserved seating! Go to WhiteRabbitGo.com

Come to the Community Book Swap during BookFolk ~ A Regional Literary Festival on July 25 in Quincy Square, Downtown Bremerton. Bring a book, take a book. But first, don't miss our featured author presentations, including multi N.Y. Times bestseller J.A. Jance, Alie Dumas-Heidt, and Elena Taylor. And stay afterward for the Owl-Light — Book-Lovers' Night Market.

A letter to the readers who knew us as Sinclair Inlet Book Co.

Friends,

If you're reading this, you probably have a memory of us tucked away somewhere — a book somebody put in your hands when you didn't know you needed it, a shelf you lingered at longer than you meant to, the particular hush of a bookshop on a gray Tuesday when the rest of the peninsula was off being busy. I've sold books on this stretch of the Puget Sound over three stints in the last thirty years (with college English teaching between), and if you asked me what the job actually is, I'd tell you it's those small moments. The rest is just inventory and a good roof.

I want to assert this next part clearly: the shop you knew as Sinclair Inlet Book Co. has closed its doors. The four walls, the lease, the front table I used to hover over rearranging stacks nobody asked me to rearrange — that part is finished, but I don't want this to read like a brave face stretched over a loss. It isn't. We weren't pushed out. We made a decision our eyes open, and I'd make it again. After a lot of years watching what a bookstore does and doesn't need in order to do its real work, I came to a conclusion: the store was never the building.

The best thing that ever happened between you and a bookshop never required an address. It required a person who reads, a book worth talking about, and a few feet of shared attention. We can carry all three of those anywhere.

Which brings me to the rabbit.

A bookstore where you are

The bookselling you knew continues — same hands, same opinions about what ought to be read — under a new name: White Rabbit Book Co. The idea behind it is simple, and a little bit mischievous. Instead of asking you to come to the bookstore, the bookstore comes to you.

We're a pop-up. We set up where people already are — at festivals and markets, at author nights and partner events, in the squares and side rooms and prized good weather of Kitsap. You'll round a corner at something you came to for an entirely different reason, and there we'll be: a table of books, and something to share about each of them.

If you grew up on a certain story, you already know that following a white rabbit is how the interesting afternoons begin. That's the spirit of the thing. Follow the Rabbit isn't really a slogan. It's closer to an instruction. Keep an eye out, and we'll keep turning up.

I know what some of you are thinking, because I've thought it too: I liked having a place to go. A bookstore is one of the last rooms a person can stand in without being sold something every thirty seconds, and losing one of those rooms is a real loss, not a small one. I won't pretend otherwise. But here's what I've come to believe — a third place doesn't have to have a fixed address. It can be a recurring gathering, a table you know how to find, a familiar face at a festival. We're not trading a community for a calendar. We're trading a lease for the freedom to show up in more of your life than one storefront ever could.

What this means for you, practically: you don't lose the bookseller. You lose the commute. The handpicked tables, the recommendations, the chance to put a book in a kid's hands and watch their face — all of it is coming along. It just won't sit still anymore.

What carries forward

The larger work — the part that was always bigger than any single shop — continues too, and possibly it's the part I care most about. Bringing readers and writers into the same room. Standing up for the freedom to read. Making this peninsula a place where books matter out loud. That's the mission we carry through our nonprofit 501c3 work with the also newly renamed Kitsap Reads, and stepping out from behind the counter hasn't slowed it down. If anything, it's freed us to do more of it.

Here's some of what that looks like in the months ahead. I'd be a poor bookseller if I buried the good news much farther down.

BookFolk 2026 — a festival, and it's free

This July, we're throwing a party for books, and you're invited — at no charge, because some things should simply be a gift to a community. BookFolk 2026 is a free literary festival spread across two Saturdays and two of our favorite downtowns.

On Saturday, July 18, we gather at Polaris Theater Backstage Alley in Port Orchard. The following Saturday, July 25, we move to Quincy Square in Downtown Bremerton. Two days of authors and readings and conversation and books, and the particular joy of being surrounded by people who love all of it as much as you do.

The lineup is genuinely something. We'll be hosting Pacific Northwest writers whose names are likely already on your shelves — Susan Wiggs, Sheila Roberts, Marie Bostwick, J.A. Jance, and more — across the two weekends, alongside poets, novelists, and storytellers from closer to home. There's something for the romance readers and something for the mystery lovers, something for the poetry crowd and something for the kids who are still deciding whether reading is for them. (It is. We'll prove it.)

Bring a tote bag you don't mind filling or buy one of ours. Bring the friend who keeps announcing they want to read more. Bring yourself, and a folding chair if you're wise about it. Or pre-order any featured speakers' book from our website (https://bookfolk.org is a short path) to get VIP reserved seating!

The Books Remain — October 10

Then, on Friday, October 10, we'll gather in downtown Bremerton again for an evening of a different temperature: The Books Remain, a night devoted to the freedom to read.

We're living through a stretch of history in which books are being pulled from shelves at a pace that ought to trouble anyone who values a free mind. We think the right answer isn't to despair — it's to gather, to read out loud, and to remember exactly why these quiet paper objects make certain people so nervous. Hugo award winner G. Willow Wilson joins us for the evening. It will be a conversation worth having, in a room worth being in. More details to come, but mark the date now.

One more thing, and then I'll let you go

I've spent parts of the last three decades learning that a bookstore is really just a promise — that somebody is paying close attention to what's worth reading, and that they'd very much like to tell you about it. That promise is fully intact. It's only the shape that's changed: looser now, more portable, a little harder to pin to a map. I've decided to count that as a feature.

Thank you for the time you spent in our aisles. Thank you for the books you let us choose for you, and for the ones you came back in to tell us about — those return visits were one of the rewards. None of what comes next would be possible without the chapter you were part of, and you are invited into every page of the one ahead.

So keep your eyes open this summer. Watch for the rabbit.

With gratitude and a very full calendar,

Terry Heath
White Rabbit Book Co.
Follow the Rabbit

Here's what we have so far for BookFolk 2026 . . . and the lineup is still growing! Order your books now at BookFolk.org to get VIP reserved seating at the author events.

BookFolk ~ A Regional Literary Festival ~ Day One — Saturday, July 18 | Polaris Theater Backstage Alley, Port Orchard Waterfront

Silent Reader Book Club — 10am
Bring a book, find a seat, read together in silence. The simplest book club there is.

Reader, I. — 12–4pm
A celebration of PNW romance lit featuring Susan Wiggs, Sheila Roberts, Marie Bostwick, Rachel Linden, Jennifer Bardsley, and more.

Cadences — 4-6pm
Literary fiction, poetry. Featuring Bainbridge Island Poet Laureate Emeritus Michele Bombardier.

Community Book Swap — All afternoon at the Mad Hatter's Tea Table - Bring a book, take a book. No money, no complicated rules, just good books finding new homes.

BookFolk ~ A Regional Literary Festival ~ Day Two — Saturday, July 25 | Quincy Square, Downtown Bremerton

Silent Reader Book Club — 10am
Bring a book, find a seat, read together in silence. The simplest book club there is.

Sleuths — 12–4pm
An afternoon with the great detectives. Featuring J.A. Jance, Alie Dumas-Heidt, and Elena Taylor. Come as your favorite detective!

Otherwise — 4–6pm
Speculative fiction — sci-fi, fantasy, and the weird. Costumes welcome.

Community Book Swap — All afternoon at the Mad Hatter's Tea Table - Bring a book, take a book. No money, no complicated rules, just good books finding new homes.

Book-Lover's Night Market — 6–9pm
Bookstores, vendors, lanterns, and late voices. Browse, shop, linger.

Attention: Writers, writer's groups, small presses, bookish-Item Creators, and more! Spaces available for Owl-Light — the Book-Lover's Night Market at BookFolk, July 25 at Quincy Square, Bremerton. Application at https://forms.gle/koPne6Rd1feUPr268

And how about our lineup for Reader, I.? It's at the Polaris Theater Backstage Alley in Downtown Port Orchard -- July 18.

Pre-order your books now and get VIP reserved seating! Follow the Rabbit @ BookFolk.org

Susan Wiggs

Susan Wiggs is the author of more than fifty novels, including the beloved Lakeshore Chronicles series and the recent New York Times bestsellers The Lost and Found Bookshop, The Oysterville Sewing Circle, and Family Tree. Her award-winning books have been translated into two dozen languages. She lives with her husband on an island in Washington State’s Puget Sound.

Sheila Roberts

USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly best-selling author and fan favorite, Sheila Roberts has almost fifty books to her credit. Under different names she’s written Regency romance novels as well as devotionals and personal development books. She did lots of things before settling in to her writing career, including owning a singing telegram company and playing in a band. Her band days are over, but she still enjoys writing songs. Her novel “On Strike for Christmas” was a Lifetime Network movie and her novel “The Nine Lives of Christmas” was made into a movie for the Hallmark channel. When she’s not speaking to women’s groups or hanging out with her husband or her girlfriends she can be found writing about those things near and dear to women’s hearts: family, friends, and chocolate. Sheila divides her time between Washington State and California.

Marie Bostwick

Marie Bostwick is a New York Times and USA Today Bestseller of more than twenty works of contemporary and historical fiction.
Published in 2005 by Kensington Books, Fields of Gold, her first novel, was a finalist for the prestigious Oklahoma Book Award. Her second novel, River’s Edge was an alternate selection of the Literary Guild.
Marie’s novellas, A High-Kicking Christmas and The Presents of Angels, were included, respectively, in the holiday anthologies Comfort and Joy and Snow Angels, and appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. Her novels The Second Sister, Between Heaven and Texas, and The Book Club for Troublesome Women were USA Today bestsellers. A film adaptation of her book The Second Sister, “Christmas Everlasting,” debuted on the Hallmark Channel as a Hallmark Hall of Fame feature in November 2018, starring Patti LaBelle.
Marie’s latest novel, The Book Club for Troublesome Women, published by Harper Muse on April 22, 2025, was a USA Today and Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) bestseller. It was a monthly pick for large national book clubs including the AARP Girlfriends Book Club, Gloss Book Club, and Brenda Novak’s Book Club, and has been includes on numerous “most anticipated” lists, including BookBub’s “Best Historical Fiction of 2025”.
In addition to books, Marie writes a popular lifestyle blog, Fiercely Marie, that encourages readers to “live every minute and love every moment”.
Marie lives in Washington state with her Brad, and their moderately spoiled Cavalier King Charles spaniel. When not writing, she enjoys reading, cooking, every fiber craft imaginable, and spending time with family and friends. Marie travels extensively, speaking at libraries, bookstores, clubs, and community events.

Rachel Linden

Rachel Linden is a novelist and international aid worker whose adventures in more than fifty countries around the world provide excellent grist for her writing. She is the author of Recipe for a Charmed Life, The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie, Ascension of Larks, Becoming the Talbot Sisters, and The Enlightenment of Bees. Currently, Rachel lives with her family on a sweet little island in the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys creating stories about hope, courage, and connection with a hint of romance and a touch of whimsy.

Jennifer Bardsley

Jennifer Bardsley believes in friendship, true love, and the everlasting power of books. A graduate of Stanford University, she lives in Edmonds, Washington, with her husband and two children. Bardsley’s column I Brake for Moms has appeared in the Everett Herald every week since 2012. She also writes young adult paranormal romance under the pen name Louise Cypress. When Bardsley is not writing books or camping with her Girl Scout troop, you can find her walking from her house to the beach every chance she gets.

Michele Bombardier

Author of two poetry collections, Michele’s poetry and reviews can be found in hundreds of literary journals such as JAMA, New Ohio Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Atlanta Review, Parabola, Bellevue Literary Review, and others. She holds an MFA in poetry from Pacific University and has received fellowships from Centrum, Hedgebrook, Mineral School, Edith Wharton Residency, Tyrone Guthrie Centre and a grant from Humanities Washington. Michele is the founder of Fishplate Poetry, which offers workshops, editing and retreats while raising funds for humanitarian relief.

Reader, I. BookFolk ~ A Regional Literary Festival