Aria Aber

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

A Novel

An electric debut novel about the daughter of Afghan refugees and her year of self-discovery—“a stunning coming-of-age story” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a portrait of the artist as a young woman set in a Berlin that can’t escape its history A girl can get in almost anywhere, even if she can’t get out. “A no-bullsh*t, must-read debut.”—Kaveh Akbar “Kaleidoscopic, full of style and soul.”—Raven Leilani “I loved this book.”—Leslie Jamison One of Autostraddle’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025 In Berlin’s artistic underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila at last finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, raised in public housing graffitied with swastikas, drawn to philosophy, photography, and sex, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist. Then in the haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer whose fading literary celebrity opens her eyes to a life of personal and artistic freedom. But as Nila finds herself pulled further into Marlowe’s controlling orbit, ugly, barely submerged racial tensions begin to roil Germany—and Nila’s family and community. After a year of running from her future, Nila stops to ask herself the most important question: Who does she want to be? A story of love and family, raves and Kafka, staying up all night and surviving the mistakes of youth, Good Girl is the virtuosic debut novel by a celebrated young poet and, now, a major new voice in fiction.

Good Girl

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Rumaan Alam

"A ... novel about two families--strangers to each other--who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong"--

Leave the World Behind

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Claire Vaye Watkins

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST Named a Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2021 by The New York Times, USA Today, Vulture, The Week, and more! “There’s some kind of genius sorcery in this novel. It’s startlingly original, hilarious and harrowing by turns, finally transcendent. Watkins writes like an avenging angel. It's thrilling and terrifying to stand in her wake.” —Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather A darkly funny, soul-rending novel of love in an epoch of collapse—one woman’s furious revisiting of family, marriage, work, sex, and motherhood. Since my baby was born, I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. a) As much as I ever did. b) Not quite as much now. c) Not so much now. d) Not at all. Leaving behind her husband and their baby daughter, a writer gets on a flight for a speaking engagement in Reno, not carrying much besides a breast pump and a spiraling case of postpartum depression. Her temporary escape from domestic duties and an opportunity to reconnect with old friends mutates into an extended romp away from the confines of marriage and motherhood, and a seemingly bottomless descent into the past. Deep in the Mojave Desert where she grew up, she meets her ghosts at every turn: the first love whose self-destruction still haunts her; her father, a member of the most famous cult in American history; her mother, whose native spark gutters with every passing year. She can’t go back in time to make any of it right, but what exactly is her way forward? Alone in the wilderness, at last she begins to make herself at home in the world. Bold, tender, and often hilarious, I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness reaffirms Watkins as one of the signal writers of our time.

I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness

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Mina Seckin

This wry and visceral debut novel follows a young Turkish-American woman who, rather than grieving her father's untimely death, seeks treatment for a stubborn headache and grows obsessed with a centuries-old theory of medicine. Twenty-year-old Sibel thought she had concrete plans for the summer. She would care for her grandmother in Istanbul, visit her father’s grave, and study for the MCAT. Instead, she finds herself watching Turkish soap operas and self-diagnosing her own possible chronic illness with the four humors theory of ancient medicine. Also on Sibel’s mind: her blond American boyfriend who accompanies her to Turkey; her energetic but distraught younger sister; and her devoted grandmother, who, Sibel comes to learn, carries a harrowing secret. Delving into her family’s history, the narrative weaves through periods of political unrest in Turkey, from military coups to the Gezi Park protests. Told with pathos and humor, Sibel’s search for strange and unusual cures is disrupted as she begins to see how she might heal herself through the care of others, including her own family and its long-fractured relationships.

The Four Humors

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Lucie Britsch

"This dark-comedic novel is about a woman, Janet, who wears a cloak of gloomy realism, until one summer when she learns of a new pill that offers even confirmed cynics a short-term taste of happiness. Her family stages an intervention, her boyfriend leaves her, and she decides to take the pill to get through the Christmas holiday. What follows is life-changing for all concerned, in ways no one expected"--

Sad Janet

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Stuart Turton

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

"Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day...quite unlike anything I've ever read, and altogether triumphant." -- A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Woman in the Window Shortlisted for the Costa Award One of Stylist Magazine's 20 Must-Read Books of 2018 One of Harper's Bazaar's 10 Must-Read Books of 2018 One of Guardian's Best Books of 2018 The Rules of Blackheath Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11:00 p.m. There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit. We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer. Understood? Then let's begin... *** Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others... The most inventive debut of the year twists together a mystery of such unexpected creativity it will leave readers guessing until the very last page.

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

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Ella Baxter

A thrilling and eccentric novel about what it means to make art as a woman, and about the powerful forces of voyeurism, power, obsession, and online performance Woo Woo follows Sabine, a conceptual artist on the verge of a photo exhibition she hopes will be pivotal, as she plunges deeper into her neuroses and seeks validation in relationships—with her frustratingly rational chef husband, her horde of devoted Gen Z TikTok followers, and even a mysterious, potentially violent stalker. Accompanying her throughout are Sabine’s strange alter egos, from hyperrealistic puppets of her as a baby to the ghost of conceptual artist Carolee Schneemann, who shows up with inscrutable yet sage life advice. Ella Baxter approaches the desire to see and be seen that defines both the creative and romantic act with humor, empathy, and a good dose of wildness, driving Sabine to an surreal and compelling climax that forces her—and us—to reconsider what it means to be an artist and a partner.

Woo Woo

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Jonathan Safran Foer

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center attacks, searches the five boroughs of New York City for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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David James Poissant

From the award-winning author of the acclaimed story collection The Heaven of Animals, called "a wise debut...beautiful [stories] with a rogue touch" (The New York Times Book Review), comes a sweeping, domestic novel about a family that reunites at their North Carolina lake house for one last vacation before the home is sold--and the long-buried secrets that are finally revealed.

The Starling family is scattered across the country. Parents Richard and Lisa live in Ithaca, New York, and work at Cornell University. Their son Michael, a salesperson, lives in Dallas with his elementary school teacher wife, Diane. Michael's brother, Thad, an aspiring poet, makes his home in New York City with his famous painter boyfriend, Jake. For years they've traveled to North Carolina to share a summer vacation at the family lake house.

That tradition is coming to an end, as Richard and Lisa have decided to sell the treasured summer home and retire to Florida. Before they do, the family will spend one last weekend at the lake. But what should to be a joyous farewell takes a nightmarish turn when the family witnesses a tragedy that triggers a series of dramatic revelations among the Starlings--alcoholism, infidelity, pregnancy, and a secret the parents have kept from their sons for over thirty years. As the weekend unfolds, relationships fray, bonds are tested, and the Starlings are forced to reckon with who they are and what they want from this life.

Set in today's America, Lake Life is a beautifully rendered, emotionally compelling novel in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, and Ann Patchett's Commonwealth.

Lake Life

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Matt Starr

Mouthful

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Kathryn Scanlan

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A heartrending reassemblage of a life in its waning moments Fifteen years ago, Kathryn Scanlan found a stranger’s diary at an estate auction in a small town in Illinois. The owner of the diary was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her life in the small book, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. The diary was falling apart—water-stained and illegible in places—but magnetic to Scanlan nonetheless. She became obsessed with the object. After reading and rereading the diary, studying and dissecting it, for the next fifteen years she played with the sentences that caught her attention, cutting, editing, arranging, and rearranging them into the composition that became Aug 9—Fog (she chose the title from a note that was tucked into the diary). “Sure grand out,” the diarist writes. “That puzzle a humdinger.” Followed by, “A letter from Lloyd saying John died the 16th.” A whole state of mourning reveals itself in “2 canned hams.” The result of Scanlan’s collaging is an utterly compelling, deeply moving meditation on life and death. In Aug 9—Fog, Scanlan’s spare, minimalist approach has a maximal emotional effect, haunting the reader long after the book ends. It is an unclassifiable work from a visionary young writer and artist—a singular portrait of a life that so easily could have been forgotten.

Aug 9 - Fog

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Craig Wright

A Play

The difference between belief and knowledge and the con­sequences of mistaking one for the other are at the heart of Craig Wright's play Grace. As their stories converge, Wright's characters find themselves face-to-face with the most eternally vexing questions--the nature of faith, the meaning of suffering, and the possibil­ity of redemption. Acidly funny and relentlessly search­ing, Grace is a trenchant work from an immensely gifted playwright.

Grace

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Annie Baker

It's "Body Awareness Week" on a Vermont college campus and Phyllis, the organizer, and her partner, Joyce, are hosting one of the guest artists in their home, Frank, a photographer famous for his female nude portraits. Both his presence in the home and his chosen subject instigate tension from the start. Phyllis is furious at his depictions, but Joyce is rather intrigued by the whole thing, even going so far as to contemplate posing for him. As Joyce and Phyllis bicker, Joyce's adult son, who may or may not have Asperger's Syndrome, struggles to express himself physically with heartbreaking results.

Body Awareness

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Michael Chernus

Patch Darragh

Erin Gann

THE STORY: Two angry young men sit behind a Vermont coffee shop and discuss music and Bukowski. When a lonely high-school student arrives on the scene, they decide to teach him everything they know. A play with music about friendship, art, love and

The Aliens

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THE STORY: When four lost New Englanders who enroll in Marty's six-week-long community-center drama class begin to experiment with harmless games, hearts are quietly torn apart, and tiny wars of epic proportions are waged and won. A beautifully cra

Circle Mirror Transformation

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Kimberly King Parsons

A young mother, in denial after the death of her sister, navigates the dizzying landscapes of desire, guilt, and grief in this darkly comic, highly anticipated debut novel from Kimberly King Parsons, author of the story collection, Black Light (longlisted for the National Book Award). The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit’s best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They’ll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she’s lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and—most heartbreaking of all—her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago. When she returns to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle into her routine—long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother’s phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit’s mind, she’s reminiscing about the band she used to be in—and how they’d go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She’s imagining an impossible threesome with her kid’s pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone? Neon bright in its insight, both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny, We Were the Universe is an ambitious, inventive novel from a revelatory new voice in American fiction—a fearless exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, marriage, psychedelics, and the many strange, transcendent shapes love can take.

We Were the Universe

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Minor wear and tear to back jacket (see second photo)

The Life of the Mind

John Boyne

Some markings on the book back cover (see photo)

A seductive, unputdownable psychodrama following one brilliant, ruthless man who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of success Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn't have is talent - but he's not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don't need to be his own. Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful - but desperately lonely - older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice's first novel. Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall... Sweeping across the late twentieth century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso.

A Ladder to the Sky

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Nicole Chung

Front corner (bottom right in photo) has slight wear.

A Memoir

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER This beloved memoir "is an extraordinary, honest, nuanced and compassionate look at adoption, race in America and families in general" (Jasmine Guillory, Code Switch, NPR) What does it means to lose your roots—within your culture, within your family—and what happens when you find them? Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up—facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and as a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from—she wondered if the story she’d been told was the whole truth. With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Nicole Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets—vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.

All You Can Ever Know

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Edgar Gomez

This witty memoir traces a touching and often hilarious spiralic path to embracing a gay, Latinx identity against a culture of machismo-from a cockfighting ring in Nicaragua to cities across the U.S.-and the bath houses, night clubs, and drag queens who help redefine pride

I've always found the definition of machismo to be ironic, considering that pride is a word almost unanimously associated with queer people, the enemy of machistas . . . In a world desperate to erase us, queer Latinx men must find ways to hold on to pride for survival, but excessive male pride is often what we are battling, both in ourselves and in others.

A debut memoir about coming of age as a gay, Latinx man, High-Risk Homosexual opens in the ultimate anti-gay space- Edgar Gomez's uncle's cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, where he was sent at thirteen years old to become a man. Readers follow Gomez through the queer spaces where he learned to love being gay and Latinx, including Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a drag queen convention in Los Angeles, and the doctor's office where he was diagnosed a "high-risk homosexual."

With vulnerability, humor, and quick-witted insights into racial, sexual, familial, and professional power dynamics, Gomez shares a hard-won path to taking pride in the parts of himself he was taught to keep hidden. His story is a scintillating, beautiful reminder of the importance of leaving space for joy.

High-Risk Homosexual

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Gregory Pardlo

A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America

Air Traffic

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Ariel Schrag

Cover and spine have some wear. Book is signed “To Colin” — perfect for someone named Colin in your life.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE. A sweet and subversive coming-of-age novel by award-winning memoirist and screenwriter Ariel Schrag.



When Adam Freedman--a skinny, awkward, inexperienced teenager from Piedmont, California--goes to stay with his older sister Casey in New York City, he is hopeful that his life is about to change. And it sure does.



It is the summer of 2006. Gay marriage and transgender rights are in the air, and Casey has thrust herself into a wild lesbian subculture. Soon Adam is tagging along to underground clubs, where there are hot older women everywhere he turns. It takes some time for him to realize that many in this new crowd assume he is trans--a boy who was born a girl. Why else would this baby-faced guy always be around



Then Adam meets Gillian, the girl of his dreams--but she couldn't possibly be interested in him. Unless passing as a trans guy might actually work in his favor . . .



Ariel Schrag's scathingly funny and poignant debut novel puts a fresh spin on questions of love, attraction, self-definition, and what it takes to be at home in your own skin.



"An insightful, funny, and unexpected love story."--Aimee Mann



"[An] audacious coming-of-age novel."--Miami Herald



"Compulsively readable."--Bookforum



"Hilarious...Schrag's riotous, poignant debut novel will leave you reeling."--SF Weekly

Adam

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Jana Casale

We first meet Leda in a coffee shop on an average afternoon, notable only for the fact that it's the single occasion in her life when she will eat two scones in one day. And for the cute boy reading American Power and the New Mandarins. Leda hopes that, by engaging him, their banter will lead to romance. Their fleeting, awkward exchange stalls before flirtation blooms. But Leda's left with one imperative thought- she decides she wants to read Noam Chomsky. So she promptly buys a book and never-ever-reads it.
As the days, years, and decades of the rest of her life unfold, we see all of the things Leda does instead, from eating leftover spaghetti in her college apartment, to fumbling through the first days home with her newborn daughter, to attempting (and nearly failing) to garden in her old age. In a collage of these small moments, we see the work-both visible and invisible-of a woman trying to carve out a life of meaning. Over the course of her experiences Leda comes to the universal revelation that the best-laid-plans are not always the path to utter fulfillment and contentment, and in reality there might be no such thing. Lively and disarmingly honest, The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky is a remarkable literary feat-bracingly funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and truly feminist in its insistence that the story it tells is an essential one.

The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky

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Kathleen Alcott

Ecuador, 1969: An American expatriate, Fay Fern, sits in the corner of a restaurant, she and her young son Wright turned away from the television where Vincent Kahn becomes the first man to walk on the moon. Years earlier, Fay and Vincent meet at a pilots’ bar in the Mojave Desert. Both seemed poised for reinvention—the married test pilot, Vincent, as an astronaut; the spurned child of privilege, Fay, as an activist. Their casual affair ends quickly, but its consequences linger. Though their lives split, their senses of purpose deepen in tandem, each becoming heroes to different sides of the political spectrum of the 1960s and 70s: Vincent an icon with no plan beyond the mission for which he has single-mindedly trained, Fay a leader of a violent leftist group whose anti-Vietnam actions make her one of the FBI’s most wanted. With her last public appearance, a demonstration that frames the Apollo program as a vehicle for distracting the American public from its country’s atrocities, Fay leaves Wright to contend with her legacy, his own growing apathy, and the misdeeds of both his mother and his country. An immense, vivid reimagining of the Cold War era, America Was Hard to Find traces the fallout of the cultural revolution that divided the country and explores the meaning of individual lives in times of upheaval. It also confirms Kathleen Alcott’s reputation as a fearless and vital voice in fiction.

Browse by categories

Aria Aber

Good Girl

Rumaan Alam

Leave the World Behind

Claire Vaye Watkins

I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness

Mina Seckin

The Four Humors

Lucie Britsch

Sad Janet

Stuart Turton

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Ella Baxter

Woo Woo

Jonathan Safran Foer

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

David James Poissant

Lake Life

Matt Starr

Mouthful

Kathryn Scanlan

Aug 9 - Fog

Craig Wright

Grace

Annie Baker

Body Awareness

Annie Baker

The Aliens

Annie Baker

Circle Mirror Transformation

Kimberly King Parsons

We Were the Universe

Christine Smallwood

The Life of the Mind

John Boyne

A Ladder to the Sky

Nicole Chung

All You Can Ever Know

Edgar Gomez

High-Risk Homosexual

Gregory Pardlo

Air Traffic

Ariel Schrag

Adam

Jana Casale

The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky

Kathleen Alcott

America Was Hard to Find

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