Kawai Strong Washburn

A little sticker residue on the dist jacket but it's new 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

North Carolina

A Novel

Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a groundbreaking debut novel that folds the legends of Hawai’ian gods into an engrossing family saga; a story of exile and the pursuit of salvation from Kawai Strong Washburn. “Old myths clash with new realities, love is in a ride or die with grief, faith rubs hard against magic, and comic flips with tragic so much they meld into something new. All told with daredevil lyricism to burn. A ferocious debut.” —Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf “So good it hurts and hurts to where it heals. It is revelatory and unputdownable. Washburn is an extraordinarily brilliant new talent.” —Tommy Orange, author of There There In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends. Nainoa’s family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods—a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities; further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame; while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family’s legacy. When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawai’i—with tragic consequences—they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival.

Sharks in the Time of Saviors

36350ce2-e433-44f9-893e-a9512c7426db-1

Simon Doonan

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Story of Glitter, Glam Rock, and Loving Lou Reed

In this funny and poignant memoir and cultural history, the television personality, columnist, and author of Drag pays homage to Lou Reed's groundbreaking album Transformer on its fiftieth anniversary and recalls its influence on his coming of age and coming out through glam rock. In November 1972, Lou Reed released his album, Transformer because he thought it was "dreary for gay people to have to listen to straight people's love songs." That groundbreaking idea echoed with the times. That same year, Sweden was the first country to legalize transgender surgery, and San Francisco struck down employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Sometimes an artistic creation perfectly aligns with a broader social and political history, and Transformer--with the songs "Walk on the Wild Side," "Perfect Day," and "Vicious"--perfectly captured its time. "Walk on the Wild Side" was banned on radio across the country but became a massive hit when young people threatened to boycott stations that would not play it. The album's cover featured a high-contrast image of Lou, flaunting a new mascara'd glamrock incarnation, shot by legend Mick Rock, thereby underscoring his intention to create "a gay album." In Transformer, Doonan tells the story of how Lou Reed came to make the album with the help of David Bowie, and places its creation within the course of Reed's life. Doonan offers first-hand testimony of the album's impact on the LGBTQIA+ community, recalling how it transformed his own life as a 20-year-old working class kid from Reading, England, who had just discovered the joys of London Glam Rock and was sparked by the artistic freedom of Warhol's The Factory. Transformer was a revelation--hearing Reed's songs, Doonan understood how the world was changing for him and his friends. A poignant, personal addition to modern music and LGBTQIA+ history, Transformer captures a pivotal moment when those long silenced were finally given a voice. As transgender icon Candy Darling, highlighted in his lyrics, told Reed, "It's so nice to hear ourselves." Transformer includes approximatively 16 pages of black-and-white and color photos.

Transformer

81790bde-a116-4dd6-a435-db0374af2f0e-0

Clare Pollard

Lauren Groff’s Matrix meets Ophelia Field’s The Favourite in this wry, sexy, and sharp historical novel—inspired by true events—featuring an elite group of Paris intellectuals who perform fairy tales that will change the course of literature—and put both the storytellers and their closely kept secrets in grave danger. Why don’t they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story? At a safe distance from the intrigues of courtly life at Louis XIV’s Versailles, an intellectual crowd of mostly women have been gathering in a Parisian home to share what hostess Marie D’Aulnoy herself has christened contes de fées: fairy tales. Recently ousted from court and still raw from the death of his beloved wife, Charles Perrault finds companionship and creative camaraderie at the salon, where he eagerly joins the storytellers. Their hostess is impressive, fiercely intelligent, but somehow unreadable. She is harboring secrets of her own: sold off as a child in marriage to a brutal baron, imprisonment, scandal. Despite the vicious Versailles gossip, Marie has mysteriously been allowed to return to polite society and establish her salon in the heart of Paris. A devastating winter soon sweeps in, bringing with it all kinds of rumors and fears. A spate of poisonings at Versailles has led to several arrests, and no matter how high born the suspect, it seems no one is safe. Paranoia stokes the King’s insecurities, and there is a wolf among the salon’s members—someone more dangerous than any force they could conjure in their own tales, watching and waiting, reporting on the secret goings-on, and threatening to destroy them one by one. Brilliant and bawdy, witty and wise, Modern Fairies is a dazzling novel of stories within stories, familiar tales spun with fresh and provocative meaning, perfect for fans of Jenny Offill, Deborah Levy, and Angela Carter.

The Modern Fairies

284a029d-5416-40cb-a3e4-68551147af72-0

Celia Bell

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

This radiant and thrilling debut follows a passionate love affair between two noblewomen who wish to free themselves from their repressive society, whatever the cost. In 17th century Paris, everyone has something to hide. The noblemen and women and writers consort with fortune tellers in the confines of their homes, servants practice witchcraft and black magic, and the titled poison family members to obtain inheritance. But for the Baroness Marie Catherine, the only thing she wishes to hide is how unhappy she is in her marriage, and the pleasures she seeks outside of it. When her husband is present, the Baroness spends her days tending to her children and telling them elaborate fairy tales, but when he’s gone, Marie Catherine indulges in a more liberated existence, one of forward-thinking discussions with female scholars in the salons of grand houses, and at the center of her freedom: Victoire Rose de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Conti, the androgynous, self-assured countess who steals Marie Catherine’s heart and becomes her lover. Victoire possesses everything Marie Catherine does not—confidence in her love, and a brazen fearlessness in all that she’s willing to do for it. But when a shocking and unexpected murder occurs, Marie Catherine must escape. And what she discovers is the dark underbelly of a city full of people who have secrets they would kill to keep. The Disenchantment is a stunning debut that conjures an unexpected world of passion, crime, intrigue, and black magic.

The Disenchantment

cfb9473b-0b86-4bcd-b98f-54fd0ac9c618-0

Hyeseung Song

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl

For readers of Crying in H Mart and Minor Feelings as well as lovers of the film Minari comes a searing coming-of-age memoir about the daughter of ambitious Asian American immigrants and her search for self-worth. A daughter of Korean immigrants, Hyeseung Song spends her earliest years in the cane fields of Texas where her loyalties are divided between a restless father in search of Big Money, and a beautiful yet domineering mother whose resentments about her own life compromises her relationship with her daughter. With her parents at constant odds, Song learns more words in Korean for hatred than for love. When the family’s fake Gucci business lands them in bankruptcy, Song moves to a new elementary school. On her first day, a girl asks the teacher: “Can she speak English?” Neither rich nor white, Song does what is necessary to be visible: she internalizes the model minority myth as well as her beloved mother’s dreams to see her on a secure path. Song meets these expectations by attending the best Ivy League universities in the country. But when she wavers, in search of an artistic life on her own terms, her mother warns, “Happiness is what unexceptional people tell themselves when they don’t have the talent and drive to go after real success.” Years of self-erasure take a toll and Song experiences recurring episodes of depression and mania. A thought repeats: I want to die. I want to die. Song enters a psychiatric hospital where she meets patients with similar struggles. So begins her sweeping journey to heal herself by losing everything. Unflinching and lyrical, Docile is one woman’s story of subverting the model minority myth, contending with mental illness, and finding her self-worth by looking within.

Docile

5981a151-2df9-43ec-a6b3-de9b26f15d35-0

Abi Maxwell

A Mother's Story

A fiery, heartbreaking, riveting memoir that follows one New Hampshire family over the course of three years, unspooling a story of gender identity, class, trans youth, and a child caught in the riptide of America’s culture wars Abi Maxwell grew up in rural New Hampshire, one of eight kids in a poor town abutting a wealthier lakeside village. As a young couple, Maxwell and her husband planned not to have kids, but when Maxwell became pregnant, she knew she wanted to raise her child near the mountains and lake of her youth. When her six-year-old asks to wear pink sneakers, asks to be a witch for Halloween, asks to wear a girl’s dance costume, Abi worries about how their small community will react. But when that child changes her name, grows her hair long, and announces that she is a girl, a firestorm engulfs the family. Weaving together the story of her own youth, marked by long afternoons skiing the mountains, a cottage on the lake, and a proud gay brother, but also by neglect and bullying that pushed her brother to the brink, Abi Maxwell contends with the rural America where she was raised and, years later, where she is now raising her daughter, as lawmakers nationwide push to erase the very existence of trans youth. Intimate and stirring, this book is essential reading for this moment in our history.

One Day I'll Grow up and Be a Beautiful Woman

e626bc11-8c50-492f-aa58-39bff9e5ebea-0

Chuck Palahniuk

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15.0px} A father's decades-long search for a missing daughter. A young woman about to perfect the darkest art. The most dangerous secret Hollywood has ever kept. Gates Foster lost his daughter, Lucy, seventeen years ago. He's never stopped searching. Suddenly, a shocking new development provides Foster with his first major lead in over a decade, and he may finally be on the verge of discovering the awful truth. Meanwhile, Mitzi Ives has carved out a space among the Foley artists creating the immersive sounds giving Hollywood films their authenticity. Using the same secret techniques as her father before her, she's become an industry-leading expert in the sound of violence and horror, creating screams so bone-chilling, they may as well be real. Soon Foster and Mitzi find themselves on a collision course that threatens to expose the violence hidden beneath Hollywood's glamorous façade. A grim and disturbing reflection on the commodification of suffering and the dangerous power of art, THE INVENTION OF SOUND is Chuck Palahniuk at the peak of his literary powers--his most suspenseful, most daring, and most genre-defying work yet.

The Invention of Sound

4e662ded-954d-4a7d-82b0-78e3d5abb15b-1

Djuna

Anton Hur

A WIRED "BOOK YOU NEED TO READ" • For fans of the worlds of Philip K. Dick, Squid Game, and Severance: An absorbing tale of corporate intrigue, political unrest, unsolved mysteries, and the havoc wreaked by one company’s monomaniacal endeavor to build the world’s first space elevator An “antic, madcap noir with flair" (Wired) and “fast-paced cyberpunk story” (The New York Times Book Review) from one of South Korea's most revered science fiction writers, whose identity remains unknown. *** On the fictional island of Patusan—and much to the ire of the Patusan natives—the Korean conglomerate LK is constructing an elevator into Earth’s orbit, gradually turning this one-time tropical resort town into a teeming travel hub: a gateway to and from our planet. Up in space, holding the elevator’s “spider cable” taut, is a mass of space junk known as the counterweight. And stashed within that junk is a trove of crucial data: a memory fragment left by LK’s former CEO, the control of which will determine the company’s—and humanity’s—future. Racing up the elevator to retrieve the data is a host of rival forces: Mac, the novel’s narrator and LK’s chief of External Affairs, increasingly disillusioned with his employer; the everyman Choi Gangwu, unwittingly at the center of Mac’s investigations; the former CEO’s brilliant niece and power-hungry son; and Rex Tamaki, a violent officer in LK’s Security Division. They’re all caught in a labyrinth of fake identities, neuro-implants called Worms, and old political grievances held by the Patusan Liberation Front, the army of island natives determined to protect Patusan’s sovereignty. Originally conceived by Djuna as a low-budget science fiction film, with literary references as wide-ranging as Joseph Conrad and the Marquis de Sade, Counterweight is part cyberpunk, part hard-boiled detective fiction, and part parable of South Korea’s neocolonial ambition and its rippling effects.

Counterweight

f497bbdb-39db-4c07-8bb6-3ecb7d34ab76-1

Jessi Hempel

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Memoir

"Fascinating, funny, and wise, The Family Outing is an affirmation to all of us who know the pain and shame of hiding our truest self, and a stirring invitation into the courage, freedom, and joy of living our whole truth."--Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed, founder of Together Rising A striking and remarkable literary memoir about one family's transformation, with almost all of them embracing their queer identities. Jessi Hempel was raised in a seemingly picture-perfect, middle-class American family. But the truth was far from perfect. Her father was constantly away from home, traveling for work, while her stay-at-home mother became increasingly lonely and erratic. Growing up, Jessi and her two siblings struggled to make sense of their family, their world, their changing bodies, and the emotional turmoil each was experiencing. And each, in their own way, was hiding their true self from the world. By the time Jessi reached adulthood, everyone in her family had come out: Jessi as gay, her sister as bisexual, her father as gay, her brother as transgender, and her mother as a survivor of a traumatic experience with an alleged serial killer. Yet coming out was just the beginning, starting a chain reaction of other personal revelations and reckonings that caused each of them to question their place in the world in new and ultimately liberating ways.

The Family Outing

13383ac1-004b-4d9e-8a30-caaaa29f0996-1

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

A little sticker residue on the dust jacket but it's brand new.

Five friends are blackmailed into returning to the cult where they were raised to face their shared monstrous secret, by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, the New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet It's time to come Home. All five of you. Or else." Saskia was a damaged, lonely teenager when she arrived at the lakeside commune called Home. She was entranced by the tang of sourdough starter; the midnight call of the loons; the triumph of foraging wild mushrooms from the forest floor - and Abraham, Home's charismatic leader, the North Star to Saskia and the four other teenagers who lived there, her best and only friends. Two decades later, Saskia is shuttered in her Connecticut estate. She's not scared of the world; it's her own capacity for ruthlessness that's made her lock herself away. In the shadow of Home's stately pines all those years ago, Abraham weaponized this trait, singling her out to do his bidding. The results haunt her daily. Then her worst nightmare comes true: she and her estranged friends receive threatening letters. Unless they return to the land in rural Maine, the terrible thing they did as teenagers - their last ditch attempt to save Home - will be revealed. Returning to Home from vastly different lives to confront their blackmailer, the five must not only face their dark past, but reckon with what they are capable of now that they've been reunited. How far will they go to bury their secret forever? "

Fierce Little Thing

d59fd35c-8f7e-4fd9-ab2e-6c09cfd39a86-1

Susan Choi

Little sticker residue on the dust jacket but it's brand new

WINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION “Electrifying” (People) • “Masterly” (The Guardian) • “Dramatic and memorable” (The New Yorker) • “Magic” (TIME) • “Ingenious” (The Financial Times) • "A gonzo literary performance” (Entertainment Weekly) • “Rare and splendid” (The Boston Globe) • “Remarkable” (USA Today) • “Delicious” (The New York Times) • “Book groups, meet your next selection" (NPR) In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley. The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence. As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi's Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

Trust Exercise

fa6a9f4d-ae1f-48fa-ac09-a976c6a8280c-1

Tess Little

"A glamorous birthday dinner in Los Angeles ends with the famous host dead and every guest under suspicion in this dark, cinematic suspense debut reminiscent of an Agatha Christie page-turner crossed with and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. There's more than one way to capture a life. When actress Elspeth Bell attends the fiftieth birthday party of her ex-husband Richard Bryant, the famous Hollywood director who launched her career, all she wants is to pass unnoticed through the glamorous crowd in his sprawling Los Angeles mansion. Instead, there are just seven other guests and Richard's pet octopus, Persephone, watching over them from her tank as the intimate party grows more surreal (and rowdy) by the hour. Come morning, Richard is dead--and all of the guests are suspects. In the weeks that follow, each of the guests come under suspicion: the school friend, the studio producer, the actress, the actor, the new partner, the manager, the cinematographer, and even Elspeth herself. What starts out as a locked-room mystery soon reveals itself to be much more complicated, as dark stories from Richard's past surface, colliding with memories of their marriage that Elspeth vowed never to revisit. Elspeth begins to wonder not just who killed Richard, but why these eight guests were invited, and what sort of man would desire to possess a creature as mysterious and unsettling as Persephone. From the Hollywood Hills to the marshes of Norfolk, The Last Guest is a stylish exploration of power--the power of memory, the power of perception, the power of one person over another--that will leave you questioning every truth you tell yourself"--

The Last Guest

2c94f78b-a9ad-44a0-b9f7-2feca246ad64-1

Larry Tye

How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America

From the New York Times bestselling author of Satchel and Bobby Kennedy, a sweeping and spellbinding portrait of the longtime kings of jazz--Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie--who, born within a few years of one another, overcame racist exclusion and violence to become the most popular entertainers on the planet. This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians, the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of twentieth-century America. Duke Ellington, the grandson of slaves who was christened Edward Kennedy Ellington, was a man whose story is as layered and nuanced as his name suggests and whose music transcended category. Louis Daniel Armstrong was born in a New Orleans slum so tough it was called The Battlefield and, at age seven, got his first musical instrument, a ten-cent tin horn that drew buyers to his rag-peddling wagon and set him on the road to elevating jazz into a pulsating force for spontaneity and freedom. William James Basie, too, grew up in a world unfamiliar to white fans--the son of a coachman and laundress who dreamed of escaping every time the traveling carnival swept into town, and who finally engineered his getaway with help from Fats Waller. What is far less known about these groundbreakers is that they were bound not just by their music or even the discrimination that they, like nearly all Black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries by opening America's eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music. In the process they wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights movement. Based on more than 250 interviews, this exhaustively researched book brings alive the history of Black America in the early-to-mid 1900s through the singular lens of the country's most gifted, engaging, and enduring African-American musicians.

The Jazzmen

3bc12759-0bf2-40b1-9023-5ebf6caba9a7-0

J. R. Dawson

If you knew how dark tomorrow would be, what would you do with today? "This is the magic circus book that I have been looking for all my life."—Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of Every Heart A Doorway Ringmaster — Rin, to those who know her best — can jump to different moments in time as easily as her wife, Odette, soars from bar to bar on the trapeze. And the circus they lead is a rare home and safe haven for magical misfits and outcasts, known as Sparks. With the world still reeling from World War I, Rin and her troupe — the Circus of the Fantasticals — travel the midwest, offering a single night of enchantment and respite to all who step into their Big Top. But threats come at Rin from all sides. The future holds an impending war that the Sparks can see barrelling toward their show and everyone in it. And Rin's past creeps closer every day, a malevolent shadow she can’t fully escape. It takes the form of another circus, with tents as black as midnight and a ringmaster who rules over his troupe with a dangerous power. Rin's circus has something he wants, and he won't stop until it's his.

Leslie Shaip

@emyrabooks

Books Listed

Following

Followers

Kawai Strong Washburn

Sharks in the Time of Saviors

Simon Doonan

Transformer

Clare Pollard

The Modern Fairies

Celia Bell

The Disenchantment

Hyeseung Song

Docile

Abi Maxwell

One Day I'll Grow up and Be a Beautiful Woman

Chuck Palahniuk

The Invention of Sound

Djuna; Anton Hur

Counterweight

Jessi Hempel

The Family Outing

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

Fierce Little Thing

Susan Choi

Trust Exercise

Tess Little

The Last Guest

Larry Tye

The Jazzmen

J. R. Dawson

The First Bright Thing

Get The App

Browse by categories

Kawai Strong Washburn

Sharks in the Time of Saviors

Simon Doonan

Transformer

Clare Pollard

The Modern Fairies

Celia Bell

The Disenchantment

Hyeseung Song

Docile

Abi Maxwell

One Day I'll Grow up and Be a Beautiful Woman

Chuck Palahniuk

The Invention of Sound

Djuna; Anton Hur

Counterweight

Jessi Hempel

The Family Outing

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

Fierce Little Thing

Susan Choi

Trust Exercise

Tess Little

The Last Guest

Larry Tye

The Jazzmen

J. R. Dawson

The First Bright Thing

Get The App