Richard Cohen

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Texas

A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions; 10th Anniversary Edition

“Like swordplay itself, By the Sword is elegant, accurate, romantic, and full of brio—the definitive study, hugely readable, of man’s most deadly art.”—Simon Winchester With a new Preface by the author Napoleon fenced. So did Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Grace Kelly, and President Truman, who as a schoolboy would practice fencing with Bess—his future wife— when the two of them returned home from school. Lincoln was a canny dueler. Ignatius Loyola challenged a man to a duel for denying Christ’s divinity (and won). Less successful, but no less enthusiastic, was Mussolini, who would tell his wife he was “off to get spaghetti,” their code to avoid alarming the children. By the Sword is an epic history of sword fighting—a science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword. Praise for By the Sword “Touché! While scrupulous and informed about its subject, Richard Cohen’s book is about more than swordplay. It reads at times like an alternative social history of the West.”—Sebastian Faulks “In writing By the Sword, [Cohen] has shown that he is as skilled with the pen as he is with the sword.”—The New York Times “Irresistible . . . extraordinary . . . vivid and hugely enjoyable.”—The Economist “A virtual encyclopedia on the subject of sword fighting.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Literate, learned, and, beg pardon, razor-sharp . . . a pleasure for practitioners, and a rewarding entertainment for the armchair swashbuckler.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

By the Sword

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Maureen Ryan

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER In this spectacular, newsmaking exposé that has the entertainment industry abuzz and on its heels, Vanity Fair's Maureen Ryan blows the lid on patterns of harassment and bias in Hollywood, the grassroots reforms under way, and the labor and activist revolutions that recent scandals have ignited. It is never just One Bad Man. Abuse and exploitation of workers is baked into the very foundations of the entertainment industry. To break the cycle and make change that sticks, it's important to stop looking at headline-making stories as individual events. Instead, one must look closely at the bigger picture, to see how abusers are created, fed, rewarded, allowed to persist, and, with the right tools, how they can be excised. In Burn It Down, veteran reporter Maureen Ryan does just that. She draws on decades of experience to connect the dots and illuminate the deeper forces sustaining Hollywood's corrosive culture. Fresh reporting sheds light on problematic situations at companies like Lucasfilm and shows like Lost, Saturday Night Live, The Goldbergs, Sleepy Hollow, Curb Your Enthusiasm and more. Interviews with actors and famous creatives like Evan Rachel Wood, Harold Perrineau, Damon Lindelof, and Orlando Jones abound. Ryan dismantles, one by one, the myths that the entertainment industry promotes about itself, which have allowed abusers to thrive and the industry to avoid accountability--myths about Hollywood as a meritocracy, what it takes to be creative, the value of human dignity, and more. Weaving together insights from industry insiders, historical context, and pop-culture analysis, Burn It Down paints a groundbreaking and urgently necessary portrait of what's gone wrong in the entertainment world--and how we can fix it.

Burn It Down

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Pamela Dean

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

The first book in the magical, wonderfully interwoven Secret Country trilogy. They thought it was a game, but it was its own world... 

Each vacation for the past nine years, cousins Patrick, Ruth, Ellen, Ted, and Laura have played a game they call the "Secret"--an invented, scripted world full of witches, unicorns, a magic ring, court intrigue, and the Dragon King. In the Secret, they can imagine anything into reality, and shape destiny. Then the unbelievable happens: by trick or by chance, they actually find themselves in the Secret Country, their made-up identities now real. The five have arrived at the start of their games, with the Country on the edge of war. What was once exciting and wonderful now looms threateningly before them, and no one is sure how to stop it... or if they will ever get back home.
 
"An intricate sparkling web of intrigue and magic. One of my very favorites."--Patricia C. Wrede, author of Dealing with Dragons

The Secret Country

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Margaret Atwood

A Novel

Iris describes the 1945 death of her sister, who drives her car off a bridge, followed, two years later, by the death of her husband, in a story that features a novel-within-a-novel about two unnamed lovers who meet in a dark backstreet room.

The Blind Assassin

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Clive Barker

Yellowed pages. Beaten cover. Otherwise ok.

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

A Novel of the Fantastic

"A spellbinding treat. . . . Galilee leaps through time and space to reveal an impressively majestic vision told in beautiful prose." —People A classic early work from master storyteller and New York Times bestselling author Clive Barker Rich and powerful, the Geary dynasty has reigned over American society for decades. But it is a family with dark, terrible secrets. For the Gearys are a family at war. Their adversaries are the Barbarossas, a clan whose timeless origins lie in myth, whose mystical influence is felt in intense, sensual exchanges of flesh and soul. Now their battle is about to escalate. When Galilee, prodigal prince of the Barbarossa clan, meets Rachel, the young bride of the Gearys' own scion Mitchell, they fall in love, consumed by a passion that unleashes long-simmering hatred. Old insanities arise, old adulteries are uncovered, and a seemingly invincible family will begin to wither, exposing its unholy roots. . . .

Galilee

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Franz Xaver von Schonwerth

Maria Tatar

A rare discovery in the world of fairy tales--now for the first time in English

Move over, Cinderella: Make way for the Turnip Princess! And for the "Cinderfellas" in these stories, which turn our understanding of gender in fairy tales on its head.

With this volume, the holy trinity of fairy tales--the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen--becomes a quartet. In the 1850s, Franz Xaver von Schönwerth traversed the forests, lowlands, and mountains of northern Bavaria to record fairy tales, gaining the admiration of even the Brothers Grimm. Most of Schönwerth's work was lost--until a few years ago, when thirty boxes of manu­scripts were uncovered in a German municipal archive. Now, for the first time, Schönwerth's lost fairy tales are available in English. Violent, dark, and full of action, and upending the relationship between damsels in distress and their dragon-slaying heroes, these more than seventy stories bring us closer than ever to the unadorned oral tradition in which fairy tales are rooted, revolutionizing our understanding of a hallowed genre.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales

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Mohsin Hamid

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

FINALIST FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2017, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW WINNER OF THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR FICTION and THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE “A breathtaking novel…[that] arrives at an urgent time.” —NPR “It was as if Hamid knew what was going to happen to America and the world, and gave us a road map to our future… At once terrifying and … oddly hopeful.” —Ayelet Waldman, The New York Times Book Review “Moving, audacious, and indelibly human.” —Entertainment Weekly, “A” rating A New York Times bestseller, the astonishingly visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands. In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. . . . Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.

Exit West

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Sarah Monette

Felix Harrowgate, a handsome, well-respected wizard among his aristocratic peers, finds his dark past as an abused slave coming back to haunt him and joins forces with Mildmay the Fox, a thief and assassin, to stop the demons of darkness.

Mélusine

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Kiersten White

Huge Hardcover (6 to 8 lbs)

In this first book in a trilogy, a girl child is born to Vlad Dracula, in Transylvania, in 1435--at first rejected by her father and always ignored by her mother, she will grow up to be Lada Dragwlya, a vicious and brutal princess, destined to rule and destroy her enemies.

And I Darken

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Jamie Delano

The very first Hellblazer collection is back in a new edition that includes John Constantine's early appearances in SWAMP THING #76-77 along with HELLBLAZER #1-9. This is the first of a series of new HELLBLAZER collections that put all his adventures in reading order, capturing Constantine at his youthful, anarchic best.

John Constantine, Hellblazer Vol. 1: Original Sins

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An Estate of Memory 

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Mary Gentle

In a nameless city situated somewhere between the past and the future, the wicked Rat Lords rule over their human slaves, and only Prince Lucas of Candover and Zari have what it takes to battle them.

Rats and Gargoyles

79260b56-f8d2-4355-9a06-14f87b303daa-0

Mia Couto

David Brookshaw

Southern Mozambique, 1894. Sergeant Germano de Melo is posted to the village of Nkokolani to oversee the Portuguese conquest of territory claimed by Ngungunyane, the last of the leaders of the state of Gaza, the second-largest empire led by an African. Ngungunyane has raised an army to resist colonial rule and with his warriors is slowly approaching the border village. Desperate for help, Germano enlists Imani, a fifteen-year-old girl, to act as his interpreter. She belongs to the VaChopi tribe, one of the few who dared side with the Portuguese. But while one of her brothers fights for the Crown of Portugal, the other has chosen the African emperor. Standing astride two kingdoms, Imani is drawn to Germano, just as he is drawn to her. But she knows that in a country haunted by violence, the only way out for a woman is to go unnoticed, as if made of shadows or ashes. Alternating between the voices of Imani and Germano, Mia Couto's Woman of the Ashes combines vivid folkloric prose with extensive historical research to give a spellbinding and unsettling account of war-torn Mozambique at the end of the nineteenth century.

Woman of the Ashes

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Shahrnush Parsipur

Havva Houshmand

Kamran Talattof

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

An Iranian woman forges her own path through life in this "stylishly original contribution to modern feminist literature" (Publishers Weekly).

After her father's death, fourteen-year-old Touba takes her family's financial security into her own hands by proposing to a fifty-two-year-old relative. But, intimidated by her outspoken nature, Touba's husband soon divorces her. When she marries again, it is to a prince with whom she experiences tenderness and physical passion and bears four children--but their relationship sours when he proves unfaithful. Touba is granted a divorce, and as her unconventional life continues, she becomes the matriarch of an ever-changing household of family members and refugees . . .

Hailed as "one of the unsurpassed masterpieces of modern Persian literature" (Iranian.com), Touba and the Meaning of Night explores the ongoing tensions between rationalism and mysticism, tradition and modernity, male dominance and female will--all from a distinctly Iranian viewpoint. Defying both Western stereotypes of Iranian women and expectations of literary form, this beautiful novel reflects the unique voice of its author as well as an important tradition in Persian women's writing.

Born in Iran in 1946,Shahrnush Parsipur began her career as a fiction writer and producer at Iranian National Television and Radio. She was imprisoned for nearly five years by the Islamist government without being formally charged. Shortly after her release, she publishedWomen Without Men and was arrested and jailed again, this time for her frank and defiant portrayal of women's sexuality. While still banned in Iran, the novel became an underground bestseller there, and has been translated into many languages around the world. She now lives in exile in Northern California.

Touba and the Meaning of Night

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Lisa Ko

FINALIST FOR THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed, Bustle, and Electric Literature “There was a time I would have called Lisa Ko’s novel beautifully written, ambitious, and moving, and all of that is true, but it’s more than that now: if you want to understand a forgotten and essential part of the world we live in, The Leavers is required reading.” —Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth Lisa Ko’s powerful debut, The Leavers, is the winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver for a novel that addresses issues of social justice. One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon—and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left mystified and bereft. Eventually adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors, Deming is moved from the Bronx to a small town upstate and renamed Daniel Wilkinson. But far from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his adoptive parents’ desire that he assimilate with his memories of his mother and the community he left behind. Told from the perspective of both Daniel—as he grows into a directionless young man—and Polly, Ko’s novel gives us one of fiction’s most singular mothers. Loving and selfish, determined and frightened, Polly is forced to make one heartwrenching choice after another. Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. It’s a moving story of how a boy comes into his own when everything he loves is taken away, and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of the past.

The Leavers (National Book Award Finalist)

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Janet McNally

Everyone in Phoebe Ferris’s life tells a different version of the truth. Her mother, Meg, ex-rock star and professional question evader, shares only the end of the story—the post-fame calm that Phoebe’s always known. Her sister Luna, indie rock darling of Brooklyn, preaches a stormy truth of her own making, selectively ignoring the facts she doesn’t like. And her father, Kieran, the co-founder of Meg’s beloved band, hasn’t said anything at all since he stopped calling three years ago. But Phoebe, a budding poet in search of an identity to call her own, is tired of half-truths and vague explanations. When she visits Luna in New York, she’s determined to find out how she fits in to this family of storytellers, and maybe even to continue her own tale—the one with the musician boy she’s been secretly writing for months. This soul-searching, authentic debut weaves together Phoebe’s story with scenes from the romance between Meg and Kieran that started it all—leaving behind a heartfelt reflection on family, fame, and finding your own way.

Girls in the Moon

09f93634-a9d7-4521-bfef-d5efccbaff53-1

Ellen Dugan

Natural Magick for Hearth and Home

A down-to-earth approach to creating an enchanted home using common household and outdoor items--such as herbs, spices, dried flowers, plants, stones, and candles--teaches readers how to bring nature's magical energies indoors. Original.

Cottage Witchery

48e32ecb-7dd2-409a-a1de-f52cd8c76b8b-1

T. J. Alexander

A fake dating arrangement turns to real love in this deliciously delightful queer rom-com from the author of the sweetly satisfying Chef's Kiss.

When Luna O'Shea is unceremoniously fired from her frustrating office job, she tries to count her blessings: she's a proud trans woman who has plenty of friends, a wonderful roommate, and a good life in New York City. But blessings don't pay the bills.

Enter Jean-Pierre, a laissez-faire trans man and the heir to a huge culinary empire--which he'll only inherit if he can jump through all the hoops his celebrity chef grandfather has placed in his path. First hoop: he needs a girlfriend, a role that Luna is happy to play...for the right price. She's got rent to pay, after all! Second hoop: they both need to learn how to cook a series of elaborate, world-renowned family recipes to prove that Jean-Pierre is a worthy heir. Admittedly, Luna doesn't even know how to crack an egg, but she's not going to let that--or any pesky feelings for Jean-Pierre--stop her.

Another swoon-worthy and heartwarming queer love story from a charming new voice in romance.

Chef's Choice

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Doree Shafrir

The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer

A "memoir about what happens when your coming-of-age comes later than expected, from the co-host of the ... podcast Forever35"--Publisher's description.

Thanks for Waiting

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Jo Walton

Winner of the 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novel

Winner of the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel

Startling, unusual, and yet irresistably readable,Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and SF, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.

Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins. But her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. Then her mother tried to bend the spirits to dark ends, and Mori was forced to confront her in a magical battle that left her crippled--and her twin sister dead.
Fleeing to her father whom she barely knew, Mori was sent to boarding school in England-a place all but devoid of true magic. There, outcast and alone, she tempted fate by doing magic herself, in an attempt to find a circle of like-minded friends. But her magic also drew the attention of her mother, bringing about a reckoning that could no longer be put off...
Combining elements of autobiography with flights of imagination in the manner of novels like Jonathan Lethem'sThe Fortress of Solitude, this is potentially a breakout book for an author whose genius has already been hailed by peers like Kelly Link, Sarah Weinman, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
One ofSchool Library Journal's Best Adult Books 4 Teens titles of 2011
One of io9's best Science Fiction & Fantasy books of the year 2011

Among Others

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Evan Robertson

Collected Works and Poems, Illustrated by Evan Robertson

Women Writers

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Emma Donoghue

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer. Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating--a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.

Room

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Maggie Smith

A Memoir

"[Smith]...reminds you that you can...survive deep loss, sink into life's deep beauty, and constantly, constantly make yourself new." --Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author

The bestselling poet and author of the "powerful" (People) and "luminous" (Newsweek) Keep Moving offers a lush and heartrending memoir exploring coming of age in your middle age.

"Life, like a poem, is a series of choices."

In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman's personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she's known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother's fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman's love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet's attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful

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Geraldine Brooks

A Novel of the Plague

Eighteen-year-old Anna Frith tells the story of her remote English village, Eyam, which was infected by the plague in 1666 and where, persuaded by their vicar, the townspeople decided to quarantine themselves.

Year of Wonders

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Alison

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