Yael van der Wouden

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Oregon

An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past. A house is a precious thing... It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season. Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem. Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.

The Safekeep

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Julia Phillips

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

A mesmerizing novel of two sisters whose lives are upended by an unexpected visitor—a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods, by the celebrated, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth An Oprah Daily, CNN, Publishers Weekly, and Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year “Thrilling and propulsive, glorious and terrifying. Julia Phillips is a brilliant writer.”—Ann Patchett They were sisters and they would last past the end of time. Sam and Elena dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can’t earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence. Then one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want? When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it’s time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the desire to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger. A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us—and within us—Bear is a propulsive, mythical, richly imagined novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.

Bear

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K J Dell'Antonia

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK "A charming, hilarious, feel-good story about the kind of bonds & rivalries only sisters can share. Also, a great present for your sister for the holidays!!"--Reese Witherspoon Three generations. Two chicken shacks. One recipe for disaster. In tiny Merinac, Kansas, Chicken Mimi's and Chicken Frannie's have spent a century vying to serve up the best fried chicken in the state--and the legendary feud between their respective owners, the Moores and the Pogociellos, has lasted just as long. No one feels the impact more than thirty-five-year-old widow Amanda Moore, who grew up working for her mom at Mimi's before scandalously marrying Frank Pogociello and changing sides to work at Frannie's. Tired of being caught in the middle, Amanda sends an SOS to Food Wars, the reality TV restaurant competition that promises $100,000 to the winner. But in doing so, she launches both families out of the frying pan and directly into the fire. . . The last thing Brooklyn-based organizational guru Mae Moore, Amanda's sister, wants is to go home to Kansas. But when her career implodes, helping the fading Mimi's look good on Food Wars becomes Mae's best chance to reclaim the limelight--even if doing so pits her against Amanda and Frannie's. Yet when family secrets become public knowledge, the sisters must choose: Will they fight with each other, or for their heritage?

The Chicken Sisters

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Colin. Barrett

The riotous, raucous and deeply resonant debut novel from "one of the best story writers in the English language today" (Financial Times) Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry With his acclaimed and award-winning collections Young Skins and Homesickness Colin Barrett cemented his reputation as one of contemporary Irish literature's most daring stylists. Praised by the Oprah Daily as "a doyen of the sentence," and by the Los Angeles Times as a writer of "unique genius," Barrett now expands his canvas with a debut novel that contains as much grit, plot, and linguistic energy as any of his celebrated short stories. As Ballina prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, introspective loner Dev answers his door on Friday night to find Doll English-- younger brother of small-time local dealer Cillian English--bruised and in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, County Mayo's fraternal enforcers and Dev's cousins. Dev's quiet homelife is upturned as he is quickly and unwillingly drawn headlong into the Ferdias' frenetic revenge plot against Cillian. Meanwhile, Doll's girlfriend, seventeen-year-old Nicky, reeling from a fractious Friday and plagued by ghosts and tragedy of her own, sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina. Set against Barrett's trademark depictions of small town Irish life, Wild Houses is thrillingly-told story of two outsiders striving to find themselves as their worlds collapse in chaos and violence.

Wild Houses

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Natalie Eve Garrett

22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys and Struggles of Being Alone

A collection of essays about the joys and struggles of being alone by 22 literary writers including: Lev Grossman, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lena Dunham, Jesmyn Ward, Yiyun Li, and Anthony Doerr. If you’re feeling lonely or if you’ve ever felt unseen, if you’re emboldened by solitude or secretly longing for it: Welcome to The Lonely Stories. This cathartic collection of personal essays illuminates what the experience of being alone is like for all of us. Some of these stories are heartbreaking, such as Jesmyn Ward’s reckoning with the loss of her husband, Imani Perry’s confrontation with chronic illness, and Dina Nayeri’s reflection on immigrating to a foreign country. Others are witty, such as Lev Grossman’s rueful tale of heading to the woods alone or Anthony Doerr’s struggles with internet addiction. Still others celebrate solitude and the kind of clarity it can bring about, such as Claire Dederer’s journey toward sobriety and Lidia Yuknavitch’s sensual look at women and desire. Thoughtful and ultimately affirming, The Lonely Stories explores emotions that so often go undiscussed, and lets us all know that we’re not alone. Contributors include: • Megan Giddings • Claire Dederer • Imani Perry • Jeffery Renard Allen • Maggie Shipstead • Emily Raboteau • Lev Grossman • Lena Dunham • Yiyun Li • Anthony Doerr • Helena Fitzgerald • Maile Meloy • Aja Gabel • Jean Kwok • Amy Shearn • Peter Ho Davies • Maya Shanbhag Lang • Jhumpa Lahiri • Jesmyn Ward • Lidia Yuknavitch • Dina Nayeri • Melissa Febos

The Lonely Stories

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Melissa Michal

Stories

Both on and off the rez, interlinked characters contend with history and identity as contemporary members of the Seneca Nation.

Living on the Borderlines

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Matthew Binder

PURE COSMOS CLUB is a biting art-world satire in which Matthew Binder - whose work Seth Meyers has compared with Kurt Vonnegut and Aldous Huxley - takes surreal aim at the poses and pretensions of high art and high fashion. With ruthless wit, Binder chronicles the struggles of Paul, an eccentric, artist and his companion dog, a disabled, quiche-obsessed terrier-mix named Blanche. Together they negotiate hilarious scenes of bad parties, insane couture, unstable friends, shady deals, weird sex, sabotage, and inscrutable art. But, there may be a way out when Paul is introduced to James, a New Age guru and leader of a secretive cult: the Pure Cosmos Club. Yet, every time Paul believes he's ready for the "Ultimate Level," James raises the price of entry. Just how far will Paul go for love, for great art, and to attain cosmic oneness?

Pure Cosmos Club

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Kim Fu

A dazzling and daring debut story collection by PEN/Hemingway finalist, Kim Fu.

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

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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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Steve Coll

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invas Ion to September 10 2001

Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize “The CIA itself would be hard put to beat his grasp of global events . . . Deeply satisfying.” —The New York Review of Books From the award-winning and bestselling author of Directorate S, the explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan. To what extent did America’s best intelligence analysts grasp the rising thread of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail? Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll recounts the history of the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks. Based on scrupulous research and firsthand accounts by key government, intelligence, and military personnel both foreign and American, Ghost Wars details the secret history of the CIA’s role in Afghanistan (including its covert operations against Soviet troops from 1979 to 1989), the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of bin Laden, and the failed efforts by U.S. forces to find and assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Ghost Wars

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Sam Riviere

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

For readers of Roberto Bolaño's Savage Detectives and Muriel Spark's Loitering with Intent, this "sublime" and "delightfully unhinged" metaphysical mystery disguised as a picaresque romp follows one poet's spectacular fall from grace to ask a vital question: Is everyone a plagiarist? (Nicolette Polek, author of Imaginary Museums). A scandal has shaken the literary world. As the unnamed narrator of Dead Souls discovers at a cultural festival in central London, the offender is Solomon Wiese, a poet accused of plagiarism. Later that same evening, at a bar near Waterloo Bridge, our narrator encounters the poet in person, and listens to the story of Wiese's rise and fall, a story that takes the entire night--and the remainder of the novel--to tell. Wiese reveals his unconventional views on poetry, childhood encounters with "nothingness," a conspiracy involving the manipulation of documents in the public domain, an identity crisis, a retreat to the country, a meeting with an ex-serviceman with an unexpected offer, the death of an old poet, a love affair with a woman carrying a signpost, an entanglement with a secretive poetry cult, and plans for a triumphant return to the capital, through the theft of poems, illegal war profits, and faked social media accounts--plans in which our narrator discovers he is obscurely implicated. Dead Souls is a metaphysical mystery brilliantly encased in a picaresque romp, a novel that asks a vital question for anyone who makes or engages with art: Is everyone a plagiarist?

Dead Souls

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Paul Mendez

"An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative following nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah's Witness upbringing"--

Rainbow Milk

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An indelible novel of teenage alienation and adult complacency in an unraveling world.

A Children's Bible

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"I read everything Ivy Pochoda writes. Her capture of the complexities, diversities, and insanities of today's life and culture is next to none. I loved Sing Her Down. The world will too." --Michael Connelly, author of Desert Star

No Country for Old Men meets Killing Eve in this gritty, feminist Western thriller from the award-winning author of These Women.

Florence "Florida" Baum is not the hapless innocent she claims to be when she arrives at the Arizona women's prison--or so her ex-cellmate, Diosmary Sandoval, keeps insinuating.

Dios knows the truth about Florida's crimes, understands the truth that Florence hides even from herself: that she wasn't a victim of circumstance, an unlucky bystander misled by a bad man. Dios knows that darkness lives in women too, despite the world's refusal to see it. And she is determined to open Florida's eyes and unleash her true self.

When an unexpected reprieve gives both women their freedom, Dios's fixation on Florida turns into a dangerous obsession, and a deadly cat-and-mouse chase ensues from Arizona to the desolate streets of Los Angeles.

With blistering, incisive prose, the award-winning author Ivy Pochoda delivers a razor-sharp Western. Gripping and immersive, Sing Her Down is a spellbinding thriller setting two indelible women on a path to certain destruction and an epic, stunning showdown.

Sing Her Down

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The first in an epic trilogy, Sea of Poppies is "a remarkably rich saga . . . which has plenty of action and adventure à la Dumas, but moments also of Tolstoyan penetration--and a drop or two of Dickensian sentiment" (The Observer [London]). At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners on board, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of Canton. With a panorama of characters whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, Sea of Poppies is "a storm-tossed adventure worthy of Sir Walter Scott" (Vogue).

Sea of Poppies

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"From New York Times best-selling author Jami Attenberg comes a sharp, funny, and emotionally powerful novel about a family reuniting at the deathbed of its patriarch. In reckoning with his secret past, can they rebuild and begin anew?"--

All This Could Be Yours

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Fiction

A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America. Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, “My Monticello,” tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation. In “Control Negro,” hailed by Roxane Gay as “one hell of story,” a university professor devotes himself to the study of racism and the development of ACMs (average American Caucasian males) by clinically observing his own son from birth in order to “painstakingly mark the route of this Black child too, one whom I could prove was so strikingly decent and true that America could not find fault in him unless we as a nation had projected it there.” Johnson’s characters all seek out home as a place and an internal state, whether in the form of a Nigerian widower who immigrates to a meager existence in the city of Alexandria, finding himself adrift; a young mixed-race woman who adopts a new tongue and name to escape the landscapes of rural Virginia and her family; or a single mother who seeks salvation through “Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse.” United by these characters’ relentless struggles against reality and fate, My Monticello is a formidable book that bears witness to this country’s legacies and announces the arrival of a wildly original new voice in American fiction.

My Monticello

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#hardcover #highasthewatersrise #climatefiction

This "gorgeously written" National Book Award finalist is a dazzling, heart-rending story of an oil rig worker whose closest friend goes missing, plunging him into isolation and forcing him to confront his past (NPR, One of the Best Books of the Year). One night aboard an oil drilling platform in the Atlantic, Waclaw returns to his cabin to find that his bunkmate and companion, Mátyás, has gone missing. A search of the rig confirms his fear that Mátyás has fallen into the sea. Grief-stricken, he embarks on an epic emotional and physical journey that takes him to Morocco, to Budapest and Mátyás's hometown in Hungary, to Malta, Italy, and finally to the mining town of his childhood in Germany. Waclaw's encounters along the way with other lost and yearning souls—Mátyás's angry, grieving half-sister; lonely rig workers on shore leave; a truck driver who watches the world change from his driver's seat—bring us closer to his origins while also revealing the problems of a globalized economy dependent on waning natural resources. High as the Waters Rise is a stirring exploration of male intimacy, the nature of memory and grief, and the cost of freedom—the story of a man who stands at the margins of a society from which he has profited little, though its functioning depends on his labor.

High As the Waters Rise

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#hardcover #fiction #family #damnationspring #suspensethrillers 

A mother and midwife inadvertently threatens the fortunes and livelihoods of her family and their neighbors after noticing an increase in local miscarriages and believes it's caused by the pesticides used by the Sanderson Timber Company, her husband's employer.

Damnation Spring

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An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2016 BY: Chicago Tribune, Refinery 29, Forbes, Bust, CEO Reads Part manual, part manifesto, Feminist Fight Club is a hilarious yet incisive guide to navigating subtle sexism at work, providing real-life career advice and humorous reinforcement for a new generation of professional women. It was a fight club—but without the fighting and without the men. Every month, the women would huddle in a friend’s apartment to share sexist job frustrations and trade tips for how best to tackle them. Once upon a time, you might have called them a consciousness-raising group. But the problems of today’s working world are more subtle, less pronounced, harder to identify—and harder to prove—than those of their foremothers. These women weren’t just there to vent. They needed battle tactics. And so the fight club was born. Hard-hitting and entertaining, Feminist Fight Club blends personal stories with research, statistics, and no-bullsh*t expert advice. Bennett offers a new vocabulary for the sexist workplace archetypes women encounter everyday—such as the Manterrupter who talks over female colleagues in meetings or the Himitator who appropriates their ideas—and provides practical hacks for navigating other gender landmines in today’s working world. With original illustrations, Feminist Mad Libs, a Negotiation Cheat Sheet, and fascinating historical research, Feminist Fight Club tackles both the external (sexist) and internal (self-sabotaging) behaviors that plague women in the workplace—as well as the system that perpetuates them.

Feminist Fight Club

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#hardcover #fiction #suspensethrillers #lisagardner 

#1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner unites three of her most beloved characters—Detective D D Warren, Flora Dane, and Kimberly Quincy—in a twisty new thriller, as they investigate a mysterious murder from the past . . . which points to a dangerous and chilling present-day crime. FBI Special Agent Kimberly Quincy and Sergeant Detective D D Warren have built a task force to follow the digital bread crumbs left behind by deceased serial kidnapper Jacob Ness. When a disturbing piece of evidence is discovered in the hills of Georgia, they bring Flora Dane and true-crime savant Keith Edgar to a small town where something seems to be deeply wrong. What at first looks like a Gothic eeriness soon hardens into something much more sinister . . . and they discover that for all the evil Jacob committed while alive, his worst secret is still to be revealed. Quincy and DD must summon their considerable skills and experience to crack the most disturbing case of their careers—and Flora must face her own past directly in the hope of saving others.

When You See Me

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Memoir of a Midlife Crisis

You know her. You’ve seen her. You may even see yourself in her. A dying rock star. A tail-less cat. A psychic who said the spirit world wasn’t interested in her. Mix in an ex-monk, an eighteen-pound tumor, raging teenage children, cancer, and a whole lot of self-pity and you’ll find yourself in the middle of this midlife crisis. This memoir follows a successful middle-aged woman who sometimes drinks too much, has unfulfilling sex, pities herself for being divorced and alone, loses her business along with her self-esteem, and lacks the gratitude to be thankful for the many good things in her life—all in the face of a cancer diagnosis. It’s funny because it’s true. It’s sad because it’s true. But in the end, there will be lobster for brunch, so bring your bib because middle age gets really messy.

Browse by categories

Yael van der Wouden

The Safekeep

Julia Phillips

Bear

K J Dell'Antonia

The Chicken Sisters

Colin. Barrett

Wild Houses

Natalie Eve Garrett

The Lonely Stories

Melissa Michal

Living on the Borderlines

Matthew Binder

Pure Cosmos Club

Kim Fu

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

Kimberly King Parsons

We Were the Universe

Steve Coll

Ghost Wars

Sam Riviere

Dead Souls

Paul Mendez

Rainbow Milk

Lydia Millet

A Children's Bible

Ivy Pochoda

Sing Her Down

Amitav Ghosh

Sea of Poppies

Jami Attenberg

All This Could Be Yours

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

My Monticello

Anja Kampmann; Anne Posten (Translator)

High As the Waters Rise

Ash Davidson

Damnation Spring

Jessica Bennett

Feminist Fight Club

Lisa Gardner

When You See Me

Sara Arnell

There Will Be Lobster

Jonathan Safran Foer

Here I Am

Haben Girma

Haben

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