Emily St. John Mandel

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Pennsylvania

Disgraced and fired from his newspaper job, a young man returns to the Florida town where he grew up and begins to search for a daughter who he has only recently learned may exist and who may be at considerable risk.

Gavin Sasaki is a promising young journalist in New York City, until he's fired in disgrace following a series of unforgivable lapses in his work. It's early 2009, and the world has gone dark very quickly; the economic collapse has turned an era that magazine headlines once heralded as the second gilded age into something that more closely resembles the Great Depression. The last thing Gavin wants to do in return to his hometown of Sebastian, Florida, but he's drifting toward bankruptcy and is no position to refuse when he's offered a job by his sister, Eilo, a real estate broker who deals in foreclosed homes.

Eilo recently paid a visit to a home that had a ten-year-old child in it, a child who looks very much like Gavin and who has the same last name as Gavin's high school girlfriend Anna, whom Gavin last saw a decade ago. Gavin--a former jazz musician, a reluctant broker of foreclosed properties, obsessed with film noir and private detectives--begins his own private investigation in an effort to track down Anna and their apparent daughter who have been on the run all these years from a drug dealer from whom Anna stole $121,000.

In her most ambitious novel yet, Emily Mandel combines her most fully realized characters with perhaps her most fully developed story that examines the difficulty of being the person you'd like to be, loss, the way a small and innocent action (e.g., taking a picture of a girl in a foreclosed house) can have disastrous consequences. The Lola Quartet is a work that pays homage to literary noir, is concerned with jazz, Django Reinhardt, economic collapse, love, Florida's exotic wildlife problem, crushing tropical heat, the leavening of the contemporary world, compulsive gambling, and the unreliability of memory.

This is literary fiction with a strong detective story element.


The Lola Quartet

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Sherman Alexie

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

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Roland Smith

Fourteen-year-old Peak Marcello attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest.

Peak

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Joan Didion

From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean--a gorgeously written, bitterly funny look at the relationship between politics and personal life.

Moving deftly between romance, farce, and tragedy, from 1970s America to Vietnam to Jakarta, Democracy is a tour de force from a writer who can dissect an entire society with a single phrase.

Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam.

As conceived by Joan Didion, these personages and events constitute the terminal fallout of democracy, a fallout that also includes fact-finding junkets, senatorial groupies, the international arms market, and the Orwellian newspeak of the political class. 

Democracy

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Catherine Hyde

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

"A fantastic read which will have people talking about it for many weeks and months to come." -Sarah of Sarah's Book Reviews

By the bestselling author of DON'T LET ME GO, WHEN I FOUND YOU, SECOND HAND HEART, and PAY IT FORWARD, WHEN YOU WERE OLDER is the poignant, uplifting, and thought-provoking story of two very different brothers who try to build a new life together, against the backdrop of an uncertain and uneasy time in our shared history.

Russell Ammiano works on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center. On the morning of September 11, 2001, the phone rings while Rusty is rushing to work. The news is devastating: Rusty's mother has died of a stroke, leaving his brain-damaged older brother Ben alone. This news also saves Rusty's life. He's still at home when two planes hit the World Trade Center--and only one of his friends and colleagues survives. In a single day, the life Rusty built in New York crumbles to the ground.

Rusty returns to his tiny hometown and the brother he was more than happy to leave behind. Ben hasn't changed a bit, but the town has. Tensions are running high in the wake of the terrorist attack, while Rusty struggles to put the the past behind him and care for the exasperating brother he loves. He finds refuge drinking coffee in the early morning with beautiful Egyptian-American Anat in her father's bakery.

Rusty is beginning to get his life back...until one awful night threatens to take it all away again.

"...and the award for the amount of humanity woven into a book goes to Catherine Ryan Hyde." -Ivana of Willing to See Less

When You Were Older

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Andrea Hannah

After the attack that leaves her little sister, Ella, close to death in a snowy cornfield, Claire Graham is sent to live with her aunt in Manhattan to cope. But the guilt of letting Ella walk home alone that night still torments Claire, and she senses the violence that preyed on her sister hiding around every corner. Her shrink calls it a phobia. Claire calls it the truth. When Ella vanishes two years later, Claire has no choice but to return to Amble, Ohio, and face her shattered family. Her one comfort is Ella's diary, left in a place where only Claire could find it. Drawing on a series of cryptic entries, Claire tries to uncover the truth behind Ella's attack and disappearance. But she soon realizes that not all lost things are meant to be found.

Of Scars and Stardust

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Elizabeth Wein

In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage and great courage as she relates what she must do to survive while keeping secret all that she can.

Code Name Verity

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Erika L. Sánchez

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" meets "Jane the Virgin" in this poignant but often laugh-out-loud funny contemporary novel about a teenage girl who loses her sister and finds herself amid the pressures, expectations, and stereotypes of growing up in a Mexican-American home.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

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Natalie D. Richards

Chloe's had the best six months of her entire life. It's too bad she can't remember anything about them... Chloe didn't think about it much when she nodded off in study hall on that sleepy summer day. But when she wakes up, snow is on the ground and she can't remember the last six months of her life. Before, she'd been a mediocre student. Now, she's on track for valedictorian and being recruited by Ivy League schools. Before, she never had a chance with super jock Blake. Now he's her boyfriend. Before, she and Maggie were inseparable. Now her best friend won't speak to her. What happened to her? And why can't she remember?

Six Months Later

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Colson Whitehead

First edition 
First printing 
(See photo of copyright page)

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Novel

In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men." In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy. Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.

The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

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John Berendt

30th Anniversary Edition

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

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Catriona McPherson

Jessie Constable has learned the hard way to always keep herself safe. But meeting Gus King changes everything. Before she knows it, Jessie is sleeping at Gus's house, babysitting his kids, becoming a part of his family. And yet, she can't ignore the unsettling questions. Who does she keep seeing from the corner of her eye? Why are strange men threatening her? Most importantly, what really happened to Gus's wife?

The Day She Died

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When she was twelve years old, Opal Jones escaped her mother’s endless drinking. Now, returning to their small Leeds cottage after her mum’s death, Opal feels like she’s gone back in time. Nosey Mrs. Pickess is still polishing her windows to a sparkle. Fishbo, Opal’s ancient music teacher, still plays trumpet with his band. And much to Opal’s delight, her favorite neighbor, Margaret Reid, still keeps an eye on things from the walk in front of her house. But a tragedy has struck Mote Street. Margaret’s grandson, Craig, disappeared some ten years ago, and every day he’s not found, shame and sorrow settle deeper into the neighborhood’s forgotten corners. As the door she closed on her own dark past begins to open, Opal uncovers more secrets than she can bear about the people who were once her friends.

As She Left It

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Lauren Wolk

Wolf Hollow

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Stephen Chbosky

Charlie struggles to cope with complex world of high school as he deals with the confusions of sex and love, the temptations of drugs, and the pain of losing a close friend and a favorite aunt.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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The Book of Moon

Heather Morris

#1 New York Times Bestseller and #1 International Bestseller This beautiful, illuminating tale of hope and courage is based on interviews that were conducted with Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov—an unforgettable love story in the midst of atrocity. “The Tattooist of Auschwitz is an extraordinary document, a story about the extremes of human behavior existing side by side: calculated brutality alongside impulsive and selfless acts of love. I find it hard to imagine anyone who would not be drawn in, confronted and moved. I would recommend it unreservedly to anyone, whether they’d read a hundred Holocaust stories or none.”—Graeme Simsion, internationally-bestselling author of The Rosie Project In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners. Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive. One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her. A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov's experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

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Vincent Bugliosi

Bruce B. Henderson

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

An account of a double murder on a remote South Pacific island describes how two couples--a wealthy yachtsman and his wife and an ex-con and his girlfriend--set sail in search of a peaceful life and converged on the same island. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

And the Sea Will Tell

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Matthew Anderson

The Pox Party

National Book Award Winner! 
This deeply provocative novel reimagines the past as an eerie place that has startling resonance for readers today.

It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother -- a princess in exile from a faraway land -- are the only persons in their household assigned names. As the boy's regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians' fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments -- and his own chilling role in them. Set against the disquiet of Revolutionary Boston, M. T. Anderson's extraordinary novel takes place at a time when American Patriots rioted and battled to win liberty while African slaves were entreated to risk their lives for a freedom they would never claim. The first of two parts, this deeply provocative novel reimagines the past as an eerie place that has startling resonance for readers today.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I

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Erica Armstrong Dunbar

The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge

Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful story about a daring woman of “extraordinary grit” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. As the President grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t abide: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, she was denied freedom. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property. “A crisp and compulsively readable feat of research and storytelling” (USA TODAY), historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked everything to gain freedom from the famous founding father.

Never Caught

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Jane Yolen

Hannah resents the traditions of her Jewish heritage until time travel places her in the middle of a small Jewish village in Nazi-occupied Poland.

The Devil's Arithmetic (Puffin Modern Classics)

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Hilda Bernstein

An intimate memoir about the 1964 Rivonia Trial in South Africa during Apartheid.

The World That Was Ours

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Annie Proulx

Surprising transformations take place when a newspaperman's elderly aunt and two daughters decide to move back to their family home on the coast of Newfoundland

The Shipping News

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Susan Straight

With a new introduction by the author Finalist for the National Book Award: The story of a young mother deported and separated from her child, and the pair's efforts to locate each other years later Highwire Moon narrates the journeys of a young mother and daughter divided. Serafina is a Mexican-Indian scraping by in Southern California; detained by immigration officials, she tragically lacks the English to tell them that Elvia, her three-year-old, is resting in a nearby car. After her deportation, Serafina tries in vain to return to the States, while Elvia must survive several foster homes, later to be reclaimed by her father. By the time Elvia is fifteen, she's pregnant and surrounded by drugs. She decides to find her mother across the border—at the very same time that Serafina goes in search of her. Highwire Moon is gritty and affecting, a family saga that couldn't be of more relevance today.

Browse by categories

Emily St. John Mandel

The Lola Quartet

Sherman Alexie

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Roland Smith

Peak

Joan Didion

Democracy

Catherine Hyde

When You Were Older

Andrea Hannah

Of Scars and Stardust

Elizabeth Wein

Code Name Verity

Erika L. Sánchez

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

Natalie D. Richards

Six Months Later

Colson Whitehead

The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

John Berendt

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Catriona McPherson

The Day She Died

Catriona McPherson

As She Left It

Lauren Wolk

Wolf Hollow

Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

George Crowder

The Book of Moon

Heather Morris

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Vincent Bugliosi; Bruce B. Henderson

And the Sea Will Tell

Matthew Anderson

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I

Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Never Caught

Jane Yolen

The Devil's Arithmetic (Puffin Modern Classics)

Hilda Bernstein

The World That Was Ours

Annie Proulx

The Shipping News

Susan Straight

Highwire Moon

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