Walter Isaacson

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

California

An American Life

Presents a portrait of Benjamin Franklin as a scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, business strategist, and statesman while tracing his life as one of America's Founding Fathers.

Benjamin Franklin

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Kerri Arsenault

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Reckoning with What Remains

A galvanizing and powerful debut, Mill Town is an American story, a human predicament, and a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival? Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, moral, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname “Cancer Valley.” In Mill Town, Arsenault undertakes an excavation of a collective past, sifting through historical archives and scientific reports, talking to family and neighbors, and examining her own childhood to present a portrait of a community that illuminates not only the ruin of her hometown and the collapse of the working-class of America, but also the hazards of both living in and leaving home, and the silences we are all afraid to violate. In exquisite prose, Arsenault explores the corruption of bodies: the human body, bodies of water, and governmental bodies, and what it’s like to come from a place you love but doesn’t always love you back.

Mill Town

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Kal Penn

In this refreshingly candid memoir, Kal Penn recounts why he rejected the advice of his aunties and guidance counselors and, instead of becoming a doctor or "something practical," embarked on a surprising journey that has included acting, writing, working as a farmhand, teaching Ivy League University courses, and smoking fake weed with a fake President of the United States, before serving the country and advising a real one. You Can't Be Serious is a series of funny, consequential, awkward, and ridiculous stories from Kal's idiosyncratic life. It's about being the grandson of Gandhian freedom fighters, and the son of immigrant parents: people who came to this country with very little and went very far--and whose vision of the American dream probably never included their son sliding off an oiled-up naked woman in a raunchy Ryan Reynolds movie...or getting a phone call from Air Force One as Kal flew with the country's first Black president. With intelligence, humor, and charm on every page, Kal reflects on the most exasperating and rewarding moments from his journey so far. He pulls back the curtain on the nuances of opportunity and racism in the entertainment industry and recounts how he built allies, found encouragement, and dealt with early reminders that he might never fit in. And of course, he reveals how, after a decade and a half of fighting for and enjoying successes in Hollywood, he made the terrifying but rewarding decision to take a sabbatical from a fulfilling acting career for an opportunity to serve his country as a White House aide. Above all, You Can't Be Serious shows that everyone can have more than one life story. Kal demonstrates by example that no matter who you are and where you come from, you have many more choices than those presented to you. It's a story about struggle, triumph, and learning how to keep your head up. And okay, yes, it's also about how he accidentally (and very stupidly) accepted an invitation to take the entire White House Office of Public Engagement to a strip club--because, let's be honest, that's the kind of stuff you really want to hear about.

You Can't Be Serious

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Stephen King

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

"Stephen King's HOLLY marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly's gradual transformation from a shy and reclusive (but also brave and ethical) homebody in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges's partner in Finders Keepers and End of Watch to a full-fledged, smart and occasionally tough private detective on her own in The Outsider and If It Bleeds. In this new novel, Holly once again claims the spotlight, and must face some of her most depraved adversaries yet. When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her own mother has just died, and Holly is supposed to be taking time off. But something in Penny Dahl's desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down. Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie's disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are smart, they are patient, and they are ruthless. Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outhink and outmaneuver this brilliant and twisted pair in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King"--

Holly

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Patrick deWitt

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Undermajordomo Minor

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Leila Slimani

Sam Taylor

A Novel

One of the 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR of The New York Times Book Review The national bestseller by the author of Adèle, Sex and Lies, and In the Country of Others “A great novel . . . Incredibly engaging and disturbing . . . You read the entire novel knowing something terrible is coming. In that, Slimani has us in her thrall.” —Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger “A book . . . that I’ve thought about pretty much every day . . . [It] felt less like an entertainment, or even a work of art, than like a compulsion. I found it extraordinary.” —Lauren Collins, The New Yorker “One of the most important books of the year. You can’t unread it.” —Barrie Hardymon, NPR’s Weekend Edition She has the keys to their apartment. She knows everything. She has embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to remove her. When Myriam decides to return to work as a lawyer after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their son and daughter. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family’s chic Paris apartment, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a compulsive, riveting, bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, motherhood, and madness—and the American debut of an immensely talented writer.

The Perfect Nanny

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Adrian Mole The Cappuccino Years

Nell Freudenberger

"Told from the perspective of a female physicist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a story that explores the nature of friendship, romantic love, and motherhood"--

Lost and Wanted

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Matthew Polly

Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch - An Odyssey in the New China

American Shaolin

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Shiva Naipaul

Hot Country

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Ann Rule

Oversized Paperback (4 to 6 lbs)

Ann Rule's Crime Files Volume 16

Reopening closed cases with too many unanswered questions, this chilling collection of true-crime stories features doomed relationships and speaks for the vulnerable victims who trusted the wrong people. Original. 550,000 first printing.

Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors

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The Night Ship

Geraldine Brooks

People of the Book

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Rachel Harrison

A New York Times Best Horror Book of the Year A cynical twentysomething must confront her unconventional family’s dark secrets in this fiery, irreverent horror novel from the author of Such Sharp Teeth and Cackle. Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly...something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community she grew up in meant she couldn’t return. But then an envelope arrives on her doorstep. Inside is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper’s beloved cousin Rosie. It’s to be hosted at the family farm. Have they made an exception to the rule? It wouldn’t be the first time Vesper’s been given special treatment. Is the invite a sweet gesture? An olive branch? A trap? Doesn’t matter. Something inside her insists she go to the wedding. Even if it means returning to the toxic environment she escaped. Even if it means reuniting with her mother, Constance, a former horror film star and forever ice queen. When Vesper’s homecoming exhumes a terrifying secret, she’s forced to reckon with her family’s beliefs and her own crisis of faith in this deliciously sinister novel that explores the way family ties can bind us as we struggle to find our place in the world.

Black Sheep

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Laura Sims

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR The New York Times Book Review • Publishers Weekly • CrimeReads • Book Riot A LibraryReads Pick The lives of two librarians become dangerously intertwined in this razor-sharp exploration of human nature and the lure of artistic obsession. No one knows Margo’s real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library know only her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges. That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo’s subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a tragic incident in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo’s mysterious past, Patricia can’t resist digging deeper—even as her new fixation becomes all-consuming and sends both women hurtling toward disaster. Chilling, incisive, and darkly humorous, How Can I Help You is a propulsive work of psychological suspense that asks how far we might go to justify our most monstrous desires.

How Can I Help You

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Julia Stuart

Chaos reigns over Beefeater Balthazar Jones's life at the Tower of London as he watches his marriage fall apart, loses his beloved pet tortoise, and is assigned the task of housing the queen's assortment of animals.

The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise

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Christopher Sorrentino

A Son's Memoir

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A wrenching debut memoir of familial grief by a National Book Award finalist—and a defining account of what it means to love and lose a difficult parent, for readers of Joan Didion and Dani Shapiro. When Christopher Sorrentino's mother died in 2017, it marked the end of a journey that had begun eighty years earlier in the South Bronx. Victoria's life took her to the heart of New York's vibrant mid-century downtown artistic scene, to the sedate campus of Stanford, and finally back to Brooklyn—a journey witnessed by a son who watched, helpless, as she grew more and more isolated, distancing herself from everyone and everything she'd ever loved. In examining the mystery of his mother's life, from her dysfunctional marriage to his heedless father, the writer Gilbert Sorrentino, to her ultimate withdrawal from the world, Christopher excavates his own memories and family folklore in an effort to discover her dreams, understand her disappointments, and peel back the ways in which she seemed forever trapped between two identities: the Puerto Rican girl identified on her birth certificate as Black, and the white woman she had seemingly decided to become. Meanwhile Christopher experiences his own transformation, emerging from under his father's shadow and his mother's thumb to establish his identity as a writer and individual—one who would soon make his own missteps and mistakes. Unfolding against the captivating backdrop of a vanished New York, a city of cheap bohemian enclaves and a thriving avant-garde—a dangerous, decaying, but liberated and potentially liberating place—Now Beacon, Now Sea is a matchless portrait of the beautiful, painful messiness of life, and the transformative power of even conflicted grief. "Acute, intimate and exceedingly fair, Sorrentino’s memoir is a post-mortem that examines not the causes of his parents’ deaths but the endurance and effects of their confounding marriage . . . This is the story of a son who is trying to dissect and understand the love that remains—and sometimes emerges—after death. We may have a greater cultural appetite for eulogies, but an autopsy, in looking directly at the cold corpse of a family in all its gruesomeness and mystery, can be just as profound, and in the hands of a writer as restrained and humane as Sorrentino, just as beautiful." —Eleanor Henderson, The New York Times Book Review

Now Beacon, Now Sea

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Attica Locke

In this "captivating" crime novel (People), Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is on the hunt for a missing boy -- but it's the boy's family of white supremacists who are his real target. 9-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes dark. Darren Mathews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of re-building, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage. An unlikely possibility of rescue arrives in the form of a case down Highway 59, in a small lakeside town where the local economy thrives on nostalgia for ante-bellum Texas - and some of the era's racial attitudes still thrive as well. Levi's disappearance has links to Darren's last case, and to a wealthy businesswoman, the boy's grandmother, who seems more concerned about the fate of her business than that of her grandson. Darren has to battle centuries-old suspicions and prejudices, as well as threats that have been reignited in the current political climate, as he races to find the boy, and to save himself. A Best Book of the Year New York Times * Houston Chronicle * NPR * Wall Street Journal * Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel * Book Page * Financial Times * Kirkus * SheReads * Sunday Times * LitHub * Guardian * Book Riot * South Florida Sun Sentinel

Heaven, My Home

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Alan Jackson

JoAnn Cianciulli

Southern California Comfort Food from L. A. 's Favorite Modern Cafeteria

Capturing the very essence of the southern California lifestyle, this cookbook from the popular cafe offers 120 recipes for sophisticated highly-urban comfort food, including skirt steak with grilled onions and piquillo peppers, banana mascarpone layer cake, and 10 variations of lemonade. 25,000 first printing.

The Lemonade Cookbook

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Henry James

Please note this is a v large but thin book, like a comic book size.

The Beast in the Jungle is one of James' finest short novels touching upon such universal themes as loneliness, fate, love and death. The story can be interpreted as a confession or parable about James' own life. He never married and possibly never experienced a consummated sexual relationship. Although he did enjoy a thorough experience of aesthetic creativity, it is possible that he still regretted what he called the essential loneliness of his life. The parable of the protagonist, John Marcher and his peculiar destiny speaks about the worth and meaning of human life.

The Beast in the Jungle

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Christian Moore

Brad Anderson

Kristin McQuivey

27 Tools for Turning Adversity into Action

"In The Resilience Breakthrough, Moore delivers a practical primer on how you can become more resilient in a world of instability and narrowing opportunity, whether you're facing financial troubles, health setbacks, challenges on the job, or any other problem. We can all have our own resilience breakthrough, Moore argues, and can each learn how to use adverse circumstances as potent fuel for overcoming life's hardships."--Page 4 of cover.

The Resilience Breakthrough

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Primo Levi

The author describes his twenty month ordeal in the Nazi death camp.

Survival in Auschwitz

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Stephen Pollan

Mark Levine

A Radical Four-Part Financial Plan

From America's most trusted financial advisor comes a comprehensive guide to a new and utterly sane financial choice. In Die Broke, you'll learn that life is a game where the loser gives his money to Uncle Sam at the end. There are four steps to the process: Quit Today No, don't tell your boss to shove it...at least not out loud. But in your head accept that from this day on you're a free agent whose number one workplace priority is your personal bottom line. Pay Cash You should be as conscious of spending as you are of saving. Credit should be a rarely used tool for those few times (buying homes and cars) when paying cash is impossible. Don't Retire Your work life should be a journey up and down hills, rather than a climb up a sheer cliff that ends with a jump into the abyss. Die Broke It sounds terrifying, the one intolerable outcome to your financial life. And yet, in truth, dying broke might be your best option for a life without fear: fear of failure and privation now, fear of impoverishment in the long run.

Die Broke

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Edwidge Danticat

In a personal memoir, the author describes her relationships with the two men closest to her--her father and his brother, Joseph, a charismatic pastor with whom she lived after her parents emigrated from Haiti to the United States.

Brother, I'm Dying

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