Maureen Johnson

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Minnesota

Truly Devious, Vanishing Stair, and Hand on the Wall

Bestselling author Maureen Johnson's Truly Devious trilogy is a hilarious and inspiring whodunit that weaves together the story of a cold case from 1936 and the story of teen sleuth Stevie Bell in the present. The Truly Devious box set includes all three paperbacks in the series and is perfect for gift-giving and binge reading. The Truly Devious case--an unsolved kidnapping and triple murder that rocked Ellingham Academy in 1936--has consumed Stevie for years. It's the very reason she came to the Academy. But after she arrives, more students turn up dead. Teen detective Stevie is on the case until she solves every mysterious death--from the past and the present. Praise for Truly Devious: "Parallel mysteries unfold with cleverly written dialogue, pate-turning brilliance, and a young sleuth as captivating as Hercule Poirot." --USA Today "The Agatha Christie-like ecosystem pairs with lacerating contemporary wit. A multilayered, modern detective story." --The New York Times Book Review Praise for The Vanishing Stair: "Take it from the world's most impatient reader: If the Truly Devious series is basically one long mystery book, The Vanishing Stair is middle part so enjoyable you won't even want to skip to the end." --Entertainment Weekly Praise for The Hand on the Wall: "A richly satisfying, Poirot-like ending for Johnson's inspired and inspiring teen sleuth." --Kirkus Reviews --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Truly Devious 3-Book Box Set

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Madelaine Lucas

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Thirst for Salt

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Juliet Grames

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

A Novel

One unidentified skeleton. Three missing men. A village full of secrets. The best-selling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna brings us a sparkling—by turns funny and moving—novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy. Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either. Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When the local priest's housekeeper begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival. Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.

The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia

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Alison Gaylin

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

We Are Watching

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Priscilla Morris

Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents - whether Muslim, Croat or Serb - push the makeshift barriers aside. When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind while the city falls under siege. As the assault deepens and everything they love is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. Theirs is a breathtaking story of disintegration, resilience and hope.

Black Butterflies

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Trent Dalton

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

"Unpredictable, fantastic. . . . It takes a charged narrative, like Dickens achieves, and as Dalton does too, to reach the heart and the brain. . . . To tell you more would spoil this complicated and surprising story. You should read it."--Sydney Morning Herald Bighearted, gritty, magical and moving, an irresistible novel from the #1 internationally bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmering Skies. A girl and her mother have been on the run for sixteen years, from the monster they left in their kitchen with a knife in his throat and the police who want to make them pay for his death. Home is now a van with four flat tires in a junkyard by the edge of the Brisbane River. The girl has no name, because names are dangerous when you're on the run. But she has a dream. A vision of a life as an artist. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld. A life of love with the boy who's waiting for her on the bridge above the deadly river. And once her mother can no longer protect her, there's only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person is Lola. But she has to find her first. Internationally bestselling author Trent Dalton delivers a big, moving, darkly funny, violent, heartbreaking and beautiful novel of love and fate, life and death, and all the things we see when we look in the mirror: all our past, all our present, and all our possible futures. Lola in the Mirror is illustrated with black-and-white line art throughout.

Lola in the Mirror

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Tea Cooper

Two fearless women--living a century apart--find themselves entangled in the mystery surrounding the biggest scientific controversy of the nineteenth century: the classification of the platypus. 1808 Agnes Banks, NSW Rose Winton wants nothing more than to work with her father, eminent naturalist Charles Winton, on his groundbreaking study of the platypus. Not only does she love him with all her heart but the discoveries they have made could turn the scientific world on its head. When Charles is unable to make the long sea journey to present his findings to the prestigious Royal Society in England, Rose must venture forth in his stead. What she discovers will forever alter the course of scientific history. 1908 Sydney, NSW Tamsin Alleyn has been given a mission: travel to the Hunter Valley and retrieve an old sketchbook of debatable value, gifted to the Public Library by a recluse. But when she gets there, she finds there is more to the book than meets the eye, and more than one interested party. Shaw Everdene, a young antiquarian bookseller and lawyer, seems to have his own agenda when it comes to the book. Determined to uncover the book's true origin, Tamsin agrees to join forces with him. The deeper they delve, the more intricate the mystery of the book's authorship becomes. As the lives of two women a century apart converge, discoveries emerge from the past with far-reaching consequences in this riveting tale of courage and discovery.

The Naturalist's Daughter

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Hernán Diaz

Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth, all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1938 novel that all of New York seems to have read. But there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit. Hernan Diaz’s Trust elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with each other, and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction.

Trust

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Mona Susan Power

The long-awaited, profoundly moving, and unforgettable new novel from PEN Award-winning Native American author Mona Susan Power, spanning three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women from the 19th century to the present day.

From the mid-century metropolis of Chicago to the windswept ancestral lands of the Dakota people, to the bleak and brutal Indian boarding schools, A Council of Dolls is the story of three women, told in part through the stories of the dolls they carried....

Sissy, born 1961: Sissy's relationship with her beautiful and volatile mother is difficult, even dangerous, but her life is also filled with beautiful things, including a new Christmas present, a doll called Ethel. Ethel whispers advice and kindness in Sissy's ear, and in one especially terrifying moment, maybe even saves Sissy's life.

Lillian, born 1925: Born in her ancestral lands in a time of terrible change, Lillian clings to her sister, Blanche, and her doll, Mae. When the sisters are forced to attend an "Indian school" far from their home, Blanche refuses to be cowed by the school's abusive nuns. But when tragedy strikes the sisters, the doll Mae finds her way to defend the girls.  

Cora, born 1888: Though she was born into the brutal legacy of the "Indian Wars," Cora isn't afraid of the white men who remove her to a school across the country to be "civilized." When teachers burn her beloved buckskin and beaded doll Winona, Cora discovers that the spirit of Winona may not be entirely lost...

A modern masterpiece, A Council of Dolls is gorgeous, quietly devastating, and ultimately hopeful, shining a light on the echoing damage wrought by Indian boarding schools, and the historical massacres of Indigenous people. With stunning prose, Mona Susan Power weaves a spell of love and healing that comes alive on the page.



A Council of Dolls

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Anika Scott

A Novel of the Cold War

From bestselling author of The German Heiress, a gripping new historical novel filled with secrets, lies, and betrayals, following two spy sisters during the Cold War.

"Anika Scott pens a fascinating tale of secrets, surveillance, and sisterhood.... The Soviet Sisters will suck you in to the very last page!" --Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye

"Electrifying, meticulously researched, and expertly plotted, The Soviet Sisters is at once a Cold War thriller, a gripping spy story, a page-turning mystery, and a familial drama." --Lara Prescott, New York Times bestselling author

Sisters Vera and Marya were brought up as good Soviets: obedient despite hardships of poverty and tragedy, committed to communist ideals, and loyal to Stalin. Several years after fighting on the Eastern front, both women find themselves deep in the mire of conflicts shaping a new world order in 1947 Berlin. When Marya, an interpreter, gets entangled in Vera's cryptic web of deceit and betrayal, she must make desperate choices to survive--and protect those she loves.

Nine years later, Marya is a prisoner in a Siberian work camp when Vera, a doyenne of the KGB, has cause to reopen her case file and investigate the facts behind her sister's conviction all those years ago in Berlin. As Vera retraces the steps that brought them both to that pivotal moment in 1947, she unravels unexpected truths and discoveries that call into question the very history the Soviets were working hard to cover up.

Epic and intimate, layered and complex, The Soviet Sisters is a gripping story of spies, blackmail, and double, triple bluff. With her dexterous plotting and talent for teasing out moral ambiguity, Anika Scott expertly portrays a story about love, conflicting world views, and loyalty and betrayal between sisters. 

The Soviet Sisters

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Anne Tyler

From the beloved and best-selling Anne Tyler, a sparkling new novel about misperception, second chances, and the sometimes elusive power of human connection. Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a "girlfriend") tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever. An intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who finds those around him just out of reach, and a funny, joyful, deeply compassionate story about seeing the world through new eyes, Redhead by the Side of the Road is a triumph, filled with Anne Tyler's signature wit and gimlet-eyed observation.

Redhead by the Side of the Road

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Jhumpa Lahiri

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A marvelous new novel from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Lowland and Interpreter of Maladies--her first in nearly a decade. Exuberance and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri stretches her themes to the limit. The woman at the center wavers between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties. The city she calls home, an engaging backdrop to her days, acts as a confidant: the sidewalks around her house, parks, bridges, piazzas, streets, stores, coffee bars. We follow her to the pool she frequents and to the train station that sometimes leads her to her mother, mired in a desperate solitude after her father's untimely death. In addition to colleagues at work, where she never quite feels at ease, she has girl friends, guy friends, and "him," a shadow who both consoles and unsettles her. But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transformation awaits. One day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun's vital heat, her perspective will change. This is the first novel she has written in Italian and translated into English. It brims with the impulse to cross barriers. By grafting herself onto a new literary language, Lahiri has pushed herself to a new level of artistic achievement.

Whereabouts

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Haruki Murakami

Selected and Introduced by Haruki Murakami

What will you get for your birthday this year? A chance to see into the future? Or a reminder of the imperfect past?

In this enviable gathering, Haruki Murakami has chosen for his party some of the very best short story writers of recent years, each with their own birthday experiences, each story a snapshot of life on a single day. Including stories by Russell Banks, Ethan Canin, Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace, Denis Johnson, Claire Keegan, Andrea Lee, Daniel Lyons, Lewis Robinson, Lynda Sexson, Paul Theroux, William Trevor and Haruki Murakami, this anthology captures a range of emotions evoked by advancing age and the passing of time, from events fondly recalled to the impact of appalling tragedy.

Previously published in a Japanese translation by Haruki Murakami, this English edition contains a specially written introduction.

Birthday Stories

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Becky Dean

Becky Dean

@bookwormbecks

Books Listed

Following

Followers

Maureen Johnson

Truly Devious 3-Book Box Set

Madelaine Lucas

Thirst for Salt

Juliet Grames

The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia

Alison Gaylin

We Are Watching

Priscilla Morris

Black Butterflies

Trent Dalton

Lola in the Mirror

Tea Cooper

The Naturalist's Daughter

Hernán Diaz

Trust

Mona Susan Power

A Council of Dolls

Anika Scott

The Soviet Sisters

Anne Tyler

Redhead by the Side of the Road

Jhumpa Lahiri

Whereabouts

Haruki Murakami

Birthday Stories

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Browse by categories

Maureen Johnson

Truly Devious 3-Book Box Set

Madelaine Lucas

Thirst for Salt

Juliet Grames

The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia

Alison Gaylin

We Are Watching

Priscilla Morris

Black Butterflies

Trent Dalton

Lola in the Mirror

Tea Cooper

The Naturalist's Daughter

Hernán Diaz

Trust

Mona Susan Power

A Council of Dolls

Anika Scott

The Soviet Sisters

Anne Tyler

Redhead by the Side of the Road

Jhumpa Lahiri

Whereabouts

Haruki Murakami

Birthday Stories

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