Black Hole

When I'm asked for a favorite Seattle book, I usually choose one of two titles: Mary McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (and its sequel, How I Grew), set in her teen years in the 1920s, and this strange and beautiful graphic novel, the story of a disfiguring "bug" spread among teens in '70s Seattle. Burns's inky-black style has become a trademark in illustrations you may have seen in many places, but this is his masterpiece, a disturbing but tender tribute to the isolation and tenuous camaraderie of teen life (especially in the hands-off '70s). You'll wonder how any of us get through those years alive.