An effort is under way on San Juan Island to build a small, $30 million hospital in Friday Harbor in conjunction with PeaceHealth, the non-profit owner of St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Bellingham.

The City Council gave the go ahead for an 18-unit condominium project in a Commercial Marine zone on Fidalgo Bay at their Monday night meeting.

Dozens of Anacortes children carried a paper chain around a new playground, built in five days by more than 1,000 volunteers, then the kids rushed onto the playground they designed before it was officially opened Sunday evening.  

A weekly roundup prepared by the Anacortes Police Department.

There’s adventure in the movies this weekend. These three films are at the Anacortes Cinema. The most adventurous is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Couldn’t they have found a longer name? Anyway, the film is a kick to watch. Its good to see Harrison Ford back as Indiana Jones. The film’s script wandered a bit. A couple chase scenes grew too long. One chase, however, on a college campus, was really fun, though.

Another bank is moving to town. Banner Bank, headquartered in Walla Walla, says it has purchased property here and expects to open a branch late this year or early next year. There are nine banks in Anacortes now.

Palahniuk's audacious ninth novel tells the story of Cassie Wright, an aging porn queen who intends to put an exclamation point on her career by having sex with 600 men in one day on film.

From the master of literary mayhem and provocation, a full-frontal Triple X novel that goes where no American work of fiction has gone before.

Cassie Wright, porn priestess, intends to cap her legendary career by breaking the world record for serial fornication. On camera. With six hundred men. Snuff unfolds from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600, who await their turn on camera in a very crowded green room. This wild, lethally funny, and thoroughly researched novel brings the huge yet underacknowledged presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction at last. Who else but Chuck Palahniuk would dare do such a thing? Who else could do it so well, so unflinchingly, and with such an incendiary (you might say) climax?

Chuck Palahniuk’s eight previous novels are the bestselling Rant, Haunted, Lullaby, Diary, Choke—which was made into a 2008 film by director Clark Gregg, starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston—Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher. He is also the author of the nonfiction profile of Portland, Oregon, Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journeys series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the the Portland, Ore. area.

Shop locally: Find Snuff at Watermark Books in Anacortes or order online from Anacortes-based northwest-books.com . 

Four Northwest authors are on this week's bestsellers list. Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain and Jo Dereske's Index to Murder are both recent releases. Also on the list are: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and Chuck Palahniuk's Snuff. Week ending May 25, 2008.

Anacortes-based Alaska Ocean Seafood, which owns and operates the largest and most sophisticated pollock catcher/processor in the United States, has been sold to Seattle-based Glacier Fish Company.

A Guemes Island resident found the nude body of an unidentified woman floating near the northeast tip of Guemes Island on Friday evening.