Ali Smith

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Michigan

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, a lively story about the versatility of art is presented as a genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and tales from the perspectives of a renaissance artist, the offspring of a 1960s parent and others.

How to Be Both

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A Novel

Autumn

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Nadja Spiegelman

A Memoir

A Vogue Best Book of the Year

"What Ferrante did for female friends--exploring the tumult and complexity their relationships could hold--Spiegelman sets out to do for mothers and daughters. She's essentially written My Brilliant Mom." --Slate 

A memoir of mothers and daughters--and mothers as daughters--traced through four generations, from Paris to New York and back again.  

For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers--French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly--exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand," their relationship grew tense. Unwittingly, they were replaying a drama from her mother's past, a drama Nadja sensed but had never been told. Then, after college, her mother suddenly opened up to her. Françoise recounted her turbulent adolescence caught between a volatile mother and a playboy father, one of the first plastic surgeons in France. The weight of the difficult stories she told her daughter shifted the balance between them. 
                It had taken an ocean to allow Françoise the distance to become her own person. At about the same age, Nadja made the journey in reverse, moving to Paris determined to get to know the woman her mother had fled.  Her grandmother's memories contradicted her mother's at nearly every turn, but beneath them lay a difficult history of her own. Nadja emerged with a deeper understanding of how each generation reshapes the past in order to forge ahead, their narratives both weapon and defense, eternally in conflict. Every reader will recognize herself and her family in I'm Supposed to Protect You From All This, a gorgeous and heartbreaking memoir that helps us to see why sometimes those who love us best hurt us most. 





I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This

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Hope Jahren

A Story of Trees, Science and Love

An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime collaboration, in work and in life; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see and think about the natural world Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she's studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book might have been a revelatory treatise on plant life. Lab Girl is that, but it is also so much more. Because in it, Jahren also shares with us her inspiring life story, in prose that takes your breath away. Lab Girl is a book about work, about love, and about the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren's remarkable stories: about the things she's discovered in her lab, as well as how she got there; about her childhood--hours of unfettered play in her father's laboratory; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work "with both the heart and the hands"; about a brilliant and wounded man named Bill, who became her loyal colleague and best friend; about their adventurous, sometimes rogue research trips, which take them from the Midwest all across the United States and over the Atlantic, from the ever-light skies of the North Pole to tropical Hawaii; and about her constant striving to do and be the best she could, never allowing personal or professional obstacles to cloud her dedication to her work. Jahren's probing look at plants, her astonishing tenacity of spirit, and her insights on nature enliven every page of this book. Lab Girl allows us to see with clear eyes the beautiful, sophisticated mechanisms within every leaf, blade of grass, and flower petal, and also the power within ourselves to face--with bravery and conviction--life's ultimate challenge: discovering who you are.

Lab Girl

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J. Courtney Sullivan

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

"A ... novel about two sisters--one the matriarch of a boisterous Irish Catholic family, the other a cloistered nun, hidden from the world--and the secret that drove them apart"--

Saints for All Occasions

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Claire Messud

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship. Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships? Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way. "Messud's prose grabs the reader by the collar."--New York Times Book Review "Adept at evoking complex psychological territory."--The New Yorker "Messud writes about happiness, and about infatuation--about love--more convincingly than any author I've encountered in years."--NPR

The Burning Girl

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Colson Whitehead

good condition hard cover with minor water damage (see picture). 

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEE * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. 

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. 

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either. 

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa--the "Waldorf of Harlem"--and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes. 

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs? 

Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. 

But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

Harlem Shuffle

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Witold Gombrowicz

These versions are a translated translation from the French and German. Which means much is lost!! They are inferior to the Danuta Borchardt translations which come directly from Polish. If this is your first Gombrowicz I recommend starting there. But if you’re a completionist by all means. 

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Here are two major works by the famed Polish novelist and dramatist Witold Gombrowicz. The first, Cosmos, a metaphysical thriller, revolves around an absurd investigation. It is set in provincial Poland and narrated by a seedy, pathetic, and witty student, who is charming and appalling by turns, and whose voice is dense with the richly palpable description that characterizes Gombrowicz's writing. The second, Pornografia, explores the sinister effect the young can have on the old. To serve their own secret eroticism, two aging intellectuals encourage a young couple to commit murder. Although the adolescents are the weapons used to commit the crime, the four become conspirators before the deed is done.

Cosmos and Pornografia

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Marina Krcmar

Ascan Koerner

David R. Ewoldsen

An Advanced Introduction

This volume provides a graduate-level introduction to communication science, including theory and scholarship for masters and PhD students as well as practicing scholars. As an overview of communication science that will serve as a reference work for scholars as well as a text for the introduction to communication graduate studies course, this volume is an essential resource for understanding and conducting scholarship in the communication discipline.

Communication Science Theory and Research

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George Saunders

good condition ex library copy with library stickers and plastic and stamps see pictures 

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE The “devastatingly moving” (People) first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented Named One of Paste’s Best Novels of the Decade • Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Maureen Corrigan, NPR • One of Time’s Ten Best Novels of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book • One of O: The Oprah Magazine’s Best Books of the Year February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body. From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul. Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end? “A luminous feat of generosity and humanism.”—Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review “A masterpiece.”—Zadie Smith

Lincoln in the Bardo

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Anne Rice

Brought up in Renaissance Florence, Vittorio finds his world shattered when his entire family is destroyed in an act of unholy violence and embarks on a desperate quest for revenge, tormented by his love for the mysterious Vampire Ursula and confronted by demonic enemies. 500,000 first printing. $500,000 ad/promo.

Vittorio the Vampire

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M. J. Carter

While tracking down a missing writer who has exposed the true nature of Calcutta society in 1937 India, a young soldier with few prospects, a secret political agent and a master of disguise are drawn into the mysterious Thuggee cult and its even more ominous suppression.

The Strangler Vine

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Lauren Oliver

ex library copy front cover binding is loose see picture 

From Lauren Oliver, New York Times bestselling author of Before I Fall and the Delirium trilogy, comes an epic, masterful novel that explores issues of individuality, identity, and humanity.

Lyra's story begins in the Haven Institute, a clandestine research facility off the coast of Florida, where thousands of replicas, or human models, are born, raised, and observed. When a surprise attack is launched on Haven, two of its young experimental subjects--Lyra and the boy known only as 72--manage to escape.

Gemma has been in and out of hospitals for as long as she can remember. After she is nearly abducted by a stranger claiming to know her, Gemma starts to investigate her family's past--and discovers her father's connection to the mysterious Haven research facility. Hungry for answers, she travels to Florida, only to stumble upon two replicas and a completely new set of questions.

While the stories of Lyra and Gemma mirror each other, each contains breathtaking revelations critically important to the other story. Turn the book one way and read Lyra's story; turn the book over and upside down and read Gemma's story. The two distinct parts of this novel combine to produce an unforgettable experience for its two young heroines--and its reader.

Replica

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Like its ambitious companion novel, Replica, this far-reaching novel by the powerhouse author of Before I Fall and the Delirium trilogy digs deep into questions of how to be a human being in a world where humanity cannot be taken for granted. In the world outside of the Haven Institute, Lyra and Caelum are finding it hard to be human—and Lyra, infected at Haven with a terrible disease, finds her symptoms are growing worse. When Caelum leaves without warning, Lyra follows him, seeking a pioneering organization in Philadelphia that might have a cure. But what they uncover there is a shocking connection to their past, even as their future seems in danger of collapsing. Though Gemma just wants to go back to her normal life after Haven, she soon learns that her powerful father has other plans for the replicas—unless she and her boyfriend Pete can stop him. But they soon learn that they aren’t safe either. The Haven Institute wasn’t destroyed after all, and now Gemma is the one behind the walls. Bestselling author Lauren Oliver brings the Replica duology to a shocking close in Ringer, but like both Gemma and Lyra, you won’t be able to leave the world of Haven behind after you’ve turned the last page.

Ringer

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Alice Hoffman

The daughter of a curiosities museum's front man pursues an impassioned love affair with a Russian immigrant photographer who after fleeing his Lower East Side Orthodox community has captured poignant images of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. By the best-selling author of Here on Earth.

The Museum of Extraordinary Things

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Naomi Novik

ex library copy. good condition but front binding is damaged (see picture) 

A fresh and imaginative retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale from the bestselling author of Uprooted, called "a very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic" by The New York Times Book Review. Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father is not a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has left his family on the edge of poverty--until Miryem intercedes. Hardening her heart, she sets out to retrieve what is owed, and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. But when an ill-advised boast brings her to the attention of the cold creatures who haunt the wood, nothing will be the same again. For words have power, and the fate of a kingdom will be forever altered by the challenge she is issued. Channeling the heart of the classic fairy tale, Novik deftly interweaves six distinct narrative voices--each learning valuable lessons about sacrifice, power and love--into a rich, multilayered fantasy that readers will want to return to again and again.

Spinning Silver

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Eimear McBride

Driven to despair by the intimate traumas of family, a nameless woman uses her sexuality as a weapon and shield.

A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing

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Ilyasah Shabazz

Kekla Magoon

Winner of the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Youth/Teens A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book Cowritten by Malcolm X's daughter, this riveting and revealing novel follows the formative years of the man whose words and actions shook the world. Malcolm Little's parents have always told him that he can achieve anything, but from what he can tell, that's a pack of lies--after all, his father's been murdered, his mother's been taken away, and his dreams of becoming a lawyer have gotten him laughed out of school. There's no point in trying, he figures, and lured by the nightlife of Boston and New York, he escapes into a world of fancy suits, jazz, girls, and reefer. But Malcolm's efforts to leave the past behind lead him into increasingly dangerous territory. Deep down, he knows that the freedom he's found is only an illusion--and that he can't run forever. X follows Malcolm from his childhood to his imprisonment for theft at age twenty, when he found the faith that would lead him to forge a new path and command a voice that still resonates today. From the Hardcover edition.

X: a Novel

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Diana G. Gallagher

Alex discovers that Paradise Valley Chemical is dumping barrels of toxic waste into a nearby lake. For the Native American reservation that borders the lake, the waste is an ecological time bomb. Something has to be done. It will probably require the use of Alex's powers--and the risk of exposure. Alex is stumped. Then a new friend from the reservation gives her an idea.

Poison in Paradise!

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Cathy East Dubowski

small tear on back corner and name stamp in cover 

Alex is off on a weekend camping trip with the Junior High School Science and Nature Club but when they get lost and fall into Vince and Dave's trap Alex has to find a way out of the woods and out of danger.

Take a Hike!

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Rose MacAulay

Jan Morris

Serio-comic novel about English eccentrics who travel in Turkey.

The Towers of Trebizond

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Geoffrey Household

Victoria Nelson

As a professional hunter passes through a Central European country, he decides to sneak into the dictator's private compound and finds himself thrown in prison, enduring a harrowing escape, and fleeing through enemy territory to find safety in his native England.

Rogue Male

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Sarah Masters Buckey

Marie-Grace Gardner has just moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, and when she meets Mademoiselle Océane, a talented opera singer, she longs to take singing lessons from her and become better acquainted with one of her students--Cécile Rey. Simultaneous.

Meet Marie-Grace

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Teresa E. Harris

Gabriela's second novel picks up where her first left off. Her BFF may be going to another school, but Gabby is determined to make sixth grade the best year ever She's even ready to stand up to confident and intimidating Aaliyah Reade-Johnson if she makes fun of Gabby for her stutter. What she isn't ready for is Sixth Grade Initiation--a series of pranks the older kids play on the sixth graders. Gabby could stop the tradition if she wins the school election . . . but Aaliyah is running, too, which means Gabby's chances for victory are slim. Can Gabby find the courage to stand on her own, speak out for change, and do what seems impossible?

Browse by categories

Ali Smith

How to Be Both

Ali Smith

Autumn

Nadja Spiegelman

I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This

Hope Jahren

Lab Girl

J. Courtney Sullivan

Saints for All Occasions

Claire Messud

The Burning Girl

Colson Whitehead

Harlem Shuffle

Witold Gombrowicz

Cosmos and Pornografia

Marina Krcmar; Ascan Koerner; David R. Ewoldsen

Communication Science Theory and Research

George Saunders

Lincoln in the Bardo

Anne Rice

Vittorio the Vampire

M. J. Carter

The Strangler Vine

Lauren Oliver

Replica

Lauren Oliver

Ringer

Alice Hoffman

The Museum of Extraordinary Things

Naomi Novik

Spinning Silver

Eimear McBride

A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing

Ilyasah Shabazz; Kekla Magoon

X: a Novel

Diana G. Gallagher

Poison in Paradise!

Cathy East Dubowski

Take a Hike!

Rose MacAulay; Jan Morris

The Towers of Trebizond

Geoffrey Household; Victoria Nelson

Rogue Male

Sarah Masters Buckey

Meet Marie-Grace

Teresa E. Harris

Gabriela

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