Kingston’s Saltwater Bookshop appeals to tourists and locals alike

Neighborhood Reads

Here’s one of the easiest and most affordable ways to get far away from Seattle on a sweltering summer day: Head down to the waterfront and then hop on the Fast Ferry to Kingston. For just $12 round trip, the 40-minute boat journey drops you right in the heart of downtown Kingston, where the rhythms are slower, the breeze is cooler and the frantic noise and bustle of summertime Seattle immediately melts away.

Through the end of September, the Fast Ferry runs Saturday service from 10 a.m. to nearly midnight. Within steps of the ferry, you’ll find a wide variety of restaurants and shops. I can personally attest to the deliciousness of the falafel gyro at Iggy’s Alive & Cultured food truck and the cinnamon ice cream on a cookie cone at Island Cool, but there are also intriguing Italian, Mexican and even British cuisine options available.

Wherever you choose to satisfy your hunger, there’s one destination that no traveler to Kingston can afford to miss: a cheerful independent bookstore less than a ten-minute walk from the ferry called Saltwater Bookshop. It’s a bright space that welcomes locals and tourists alike with a wide selection of beach reads, local-interest titles and an incredibly inviting room for children’s books tucked away in the back.

Much like Bremerton’s Ballast Book Company, Saltwater Bookshop is owned and operated by veterans of Poulsbo’s storied Liberty Bay Books. Saltwater’s co-owner Lacey Anders left Liberty Bay in 2009 to open Borrowed Kitchen Bakery in Kingston, and she recommended her friend Madison Duckworth to take her old position at the bookstore.

After a decade of bookselling, Duckworth left Liberty Bay in 2021. Just a few months later, though, “I found myself missing bookselling,” she says. Anders felt the itch as well, so the two friends “started selling cookbooks in the bakery, just to kind of dip our toes back in.” Then they added a few more shelves of books, and a few more, and eventually, in April of 2023, Anders and Duckworth opened Saltwater Bookshop next to Borrowed Kitchen Bakery.

Just this year, they finally installed an interior doorway between the two businesses so customers can buy a latte and a scone and wander over to the bookshop for some browsing.

“We try to keep the walkway bookshelf in between the bakery and the bookstore focused on local field guides and history books,” Duckworth explains. “Just because we do get a lot of tourists and we’ve noticed they tend to draw them in.”

As soon as children walk into the store, they inexorably grab their parents’ hands and drift, as if hypnotized, toward the large, light blue ocean-themed children’s book room at the back of the shop.

“Lacey and I have six kids between us, ranging in ages from three up to 13, so we really wanted to make it fun for all ages,” Duckworth says.

The two longtime booksellers love the challenge of building a bookstore that “serves the community of people that live here, but also offers fun things for people to pick up when they’re on the road,” including puzzles and games, guides to local birds, plants and ocean life, and ferry-themed mugs and T-shirts.

“We also try to keep a very large Indigenous section, because we have two very prominent Indigenous tribes on both sides of us,” Duckworth explains, citing the Port Gamble S’Klallam and Suquamish tribes. “So it’s really important to us that they’re well-represented.”

Duckworth says the store’s staff recommendations section at the front of the store has proved surprisingly popular with customers. “People love to talk to us about what we’re reading and what we’re loving,” she says. Surprisingly, though, “the cookbooks were selling really well over in the bakery, but when we moved them to the bookstore, they kind of dropped a little bit.” Now that the doorway to the bakery is open and “the smells [of baked goods] can come in, cookbook sales are picking up again,” Duckworth says.

Though Saltwater Bookshop is Kingston’s first and only new independent bookstore, the store is just a few doors down from a used bookstore that has been operating for nearly three decades: Kingston Bookery, whose aisles are teeming with stacks and stacks of previously owned volumes.

“We don’t sell used books at all, so I think we complement each other nicely,” Duckworth says. “If somebody’s looking for a book that we can’t get, we can always call down there and ask if they have it in stock.”

The bookstore is already a destination for travelers passing through from the ferries, but a much longer-term project is building community with people who live in and around Kingston. In addition to author readings, Saltwater Bookshop offers a wide array of book clubs and events to ensure that every local is represented.

“We work with our local schools and other organizations to do book fairs in the store,” Duckworth says. “And we’ve got a Play Dates Book Club that meets at our local playground. It’s mostly moms, and the kids play while we talk about our books.”

In addition to the Fiction Addiction book club that discusses novels and the Queer Your Shelf book club that discusses LGBTQ+ titles, Saltwater Bookshop also hosts an ingenious twist on the book club idea: the Have You Heard About …? book club, “where you just bring whatever you’re reading and tell everybody about it,” Duckworth explains. Saltwater customers show up and rave about their favorite recent reads, and the event often involves book club members running around the store to pick up favorite titles that are mentioned in the freewheeling discussion. 

Balancing a bookstore between strong tourist traffic and loyal community support can be complicated, but Duckworth and Anders are up to the challenge. “We’re two very experienced booksellers,” Duckworth says, “and we have loved bringing our own store to life.”

What are Saltwater Bookshop customers reading?

Madison Duckworth, co-owner of Saltwater Bookshop, says that her customer base is enthusiastic about supporting local authors. Thriller writer D.D. Black, she says, “has been on our bestseller list every month.” His novels, including “The Silence at Mystery Bay,” are set in and around the Kingston area, and Saltwater customers love to spot the local landmarks that are sprinkled throughout the stories.

Novelist Julie Farley’s romantic comedy “Love Songs and Ferry Tales” is set on the fictional Greensea Island located somewhere in Puget Sound, but Kingston audiences are embracing the book as their own, and Saltwater Bookshop is having trouble keeping copies in stock.

Two other Pacific Northwest writers are supplying Saltwater Bookshop with autographed copies of their latest titles. Megan Chance, author of novels like “A Dangerous Education,” drops by often. And “’The Women’ by Kristin Hannah has been selling like crazy,” Duckworth says. “It helps that she signed a whole case of them for me.”

“And then we have a beach read section that has been going really well the last month or so,” Duckworth says. Books from that shelf that have particularly attracted customers include Carley Fortune’s novels and “Hotel Laguna” by Nicola Harrison. Duckworth recommends the latter to customers who read and loved “The Women” because “it’s another historical fiction and not a lot of people have heard of it.”

Duckworth says the store’s staff recommendation section has been getting a lot of customer interest. Her most enthusiastic recommendation? “I’m obsessed with ‘James’ by Perceval Everett. That’s been my favorite book of the year.“