826 826 National

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

California

An eclectic collection of fiction, essays, poetry, and graphic work selected by high school students with the help of New York Times best-selling author Edan Lepucki. 



Over the past year, a group of high school students have held weekly discussions in the basement conference room of a publishing house in San Francisco. Tasked with finding the best, most revealing, honest, and astonishing writing of the last twelve months, they pored over hundreds of published poems, stories, comics, and essays. With the help of guest editor Edan Lepucki, they selected the contents of this anthology, a collection of work they feel looks a lot like 2019. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 features comics about war and butts and stories about pizza-delivery women, family, dolls giving birth, anthropomorphic lakes, and more. It was a successful year. Read on to see for yourself.

 

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 includes Viet Thanh Nguyen, Charles Johnson, Robin Coste Lewis, Garth Greenwell, Nathaniel Russell, Britteney Black Rose Kapri, Andrea Long Chu, Deborah Taffa, Renée Branum, and others.

 

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019

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Karen Russell

The Bigtree children struggle to protect their Florida Everglades alligator-wrestling theme park from a sophisticated competitor after losing their parents.

Swamplandia!

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Jesmyn Ward

Heidi Pitlor

A collection of the year's best stories selected by celebrated two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward In her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2021, guest editor JesmynWard says that the best fiction offers the reader a "sense of repair."The stories in this year's collection accomplish just that, immersing the reader in powerfully imagined worlds and allowing them to bring some of that power into their own lives. From a stirring portrait of Rodney King's final days to a surreal video game set in the Middle East, with real consequences, to an indigenous boy's gripping escape from his captors, this collection renders profoundly empathetic depictions of the variety of human experience. These stories are poignant reminders of the possibilities of fiction: as you sink into world after world, become character after character, as Ward writes, you"forget yourself, and then, upon surfacing, know yourself and others anew. The Best American Short Stories 2021 includes GABRIEL BUMP - BRANDON HOBSON - DAVID MEANS- JANE PEK - TRACEY ROSE PEYTON - GEORGE SAUNDERS - BRYAN WASHINGTON - KEVIN WILSON - C PAM ZHANG and others

The Best American Short Stories 2021

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Jillian Medoff

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

"When We Were Bright and Beautiful blew me away. Jillian Medoff's gripping exploration of wealth, consent, and complicity tells the story of a loving family's unraveling with the propulsive pace of the best thrillers. A masterful achievement."--Aimee Molloy, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Mother and Goodnight Beautiful

The acclaimed, bestselling author of This Could Hurt returns with her biggest, boldest novel yet--an electrifying, twisty, and deeply emotional family drama, set on Manhattan's glittering Upper East Side, that explores the dark side of love, the limits of loyalty, and the high cost of truth.

You can have everything, and still not have enough. 

Cassie Quinn may only be twenty-three, but she knows a few things. One: money can't buy happiness, but it's certainly better to have it. Two: family matters most. Three: her younger brother Billy is not a rapist.

When Billy, a junior at Princeton, is arrested for assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Cassie races home to Manhattan to join forces with her big brother Nate and their parents, Lawrence and Eleanor. The Quinns scramble to hire the best legal minds money can buy, but Billy fits the all-too-familiar sex-offender profile--white, athletic, and privileged--that makes headlines and sways juries.

Meanwhile, Cassie struggles to understand why Billy's ex Diana would go this far, even if the breakup was painful. And she knows how the end of first love can destroy someone: Her own years-long affair with a powerful, charismatic man left her shattered, and she's only recently regained her footing.   

As reporters converge outside their Upper East Side landmark building, the Quinns gird themselves for a media-saturated trial, and Cassie vows she'll do whatever it takes to save Billy. But what if that means exposing her own darkest secrets to the world?

Lightning-paced and psychologically astute as it rockets toward an explosive ending, When We Were Bright and Beautiful is a dazzling novel that asks: who will pay the price when the truth is revealed? 

When We Were Bright and Beautiful

b3711e70-fd5d-44b8-8939-5f425ae87838-1

Mo Willems

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

When the bus driver decides to take a break from driving, a wild and wacky pigeon pleads and begs to take his place, capturing the antics of a preschooler's temper tantrum.

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

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Daniel Black

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

"Don't Cry for Me is a perfect song."--Jesmyn Ward A Black father makes amends with his gay son through letters written on his deathbed in this wise and penetrating novel of empathy and forgiveness, for fans of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robert Jones Jr. and Alice Walker As Jacob lies dying, he begins to write a letter to his only son, Isaac. They have not met or spoken in many years, and there are things that Isaac must know. Stories about his ancestral legacy in rural Arkansas that extend back to slavery. Secrets from Jacob's tumultuous relationship with Isaac's mother and the shame he carries from the dissolution of their family. Tragedies that informed Jacob's role as a father and his reaction to Isaac's being gay. But most of all, Jacob must share with Isaac the unspoken truths that reside in his heart. He must give voice to the trauma that Isaac has inherited. And he must create a space for the two to find peace. With piercing insight and profound empathy, acclaimed author Daniel Black illuminates the lived experiences of Black fathers and queer sons, offering an authentic and ultimately hopeful portrait of reckoning and reconciliation. Spare as it is sweeping, poetic as it is compulsively readable, Don't Cry for Me is a monumental novel about one family grappling with love's hard edges and the unexpected places where hope and healing take flight.

Don't Cry for Me

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Emily X. R. Pan

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

"Emily X.R. Pan's brilliantly crafted, harrowing first novel portrays the vast spectrum of love and grief with heart-wrenching beauty and candor. This is a very special book."--John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down A stunning, heartbreaking debut novel about grief, love, and family, perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and Celeste Ng. Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird. Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life. Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a stunning and heartbreaking novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.

The Astonishing Color of After

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Amy Jo Burns

Slight warping/wrinkling on dust cover. See photos. 

A roofing family’s bonds of loyalty are tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their blue-collar town—from Amy Jo Burns, author of the critically acclaimed novel Shiner It’s 1990 and 17-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone’s table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town are three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun. The Joseph brothers become Marley’s whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and adopted mother to them all. As their own mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego, Marley steps in to shepherd these unruly men. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface and suddenly the family’s survival hangs in the balance. With Marley as their light, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known—or whether together they can build something stronger in its place.

Mercury

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Jamel Brinkley

Stories

From a National Book Award finalist, Witness is an elegant, insistent narrative of actions taken and not taken. What does it mean to take action? To bear witness? What does it cost? In these ten stories, each set in the changing landscapes of contemporary New York City, a range of characters—from children to grandmothers to ghosts—live through the responsibility of perceiving and the moral challenge of speaking up or taking action. Though they strive to connect, to remember, to stand up for, and to really see each other, they often fall short, and the structures they build around these ambitions and failures shape not only their own futures but the legacies and prospects of their families and their city. In its portraits of families and friendships lost and found, the paradox of intimacy, the long shadow of grief, the meaning of home, Witness enacts its own testimony. Here is a world where fortunes can be made and stolen in just a few generations, where strangers might sometimes show kindness while those we trust—doctors, employers, siblings—too often turn away, where joy comes in snatches: flowers on a windowsill, dancing in the street, glimpsing your purpose, change on the horizon. With prose as upendingly beautiful as it is artfully, seamlessly crafted, Jamel Brinkley offers nothing less than the full scope of life and death and change in the great, unending drama of the city.

Witness

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Leigh McMullan Abramson

Aardvark edition. Like new except for a small party of back dust cover that got wrinkled. 

The only child of an iconic American novelist discovers a shocking tangle of family secrets that upends everything she thought she knew about her parents, her gilded childhood, and her own stalled writing career in this brilliantly observed standout debut.

Growing up in the nineties in New York City as the only child of famous parents was both a blessing and a curse for Isabelle Manning. Her beautiful society hostess mother, Claire, and New York Times bestselling author father, Ward, were the city's intellectual It couple. Ward's glamorous obligations often took him away from Isabelle, but Claire made sure her childhood was always filled with magic and love.

Now an adult, all Isabelle wants is to be a successful writer like her father but after many false starts and the unexpected death of her mother, she faces her upcoming thirty-fifth birthday alone and on the verge of a breakdown. Her anxiety only skyrockets when she uncovers some shocking truths about her parents and begins wondering if everything she knew about her family was all based on an elaborate lie.

Wry, wise, and propulsive, A Likely Story is punctuated with fragments of a compulsively readable book-within-a-book about a woman determined to steal back the spotlight from a man who has cheated his way to the top. The characters seem eerily familiar but is the plot based on fact? And more importantly, who is the author?

A Likely Story

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Salman Rushdie

The life of a man born at the moment of India's independence becomes inextricably linked to that of his nation and is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror modern India's course, in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the Booker Prize-winning novel. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

Midnight's Children

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Nicole Krauss

National Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 Named Best Book of 2017 by Esquire, Times Literary Supplement, Elle Magazine, LitHub, Publishers Weekly, Financial Times, Guardian, Refinery29, Popsugar, and Globe and Mail "A brilliant novel. I am full of admiration." —Philip Roth "One of America’s most important novelists" (New York Times), the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The History of Love, conjures an achingly beautiful and breathtakingly original novel about personal transformation that interweaves the stories of two disparate individuals—an older lawyer and a young novelist—whose transcendental search leads them to the same Israeli desert. Jules Epstein, a man whose drive, avidity, and outsized personality have, for sixty-eight years, been a force to be reckoned with, is undergoing a metamorphosis. In the wake of his parents’ deaths, his divorce from his wife of more than thirty years, and his retirement from the New York legal firm where he was a partner, he’s felt an irresistible need to give away his possessions, alarming his children and perplexing the executor of his estate. With the last of his wealth, he travels to Israel, with a nebulous plan to do something to honor his parents. In Tel Aviv, he is sidetracked by a charismatic American rabbi planning a reunion for the descendants of King David who insists that Epstein is part of that storied dynastic line. He also meets the rabbi’s beautiful daughter who convinces Epstein to become involved in her own project—a film about the life of David being shot in the desert—with life-changing consequences. But Epstein isn’t the only seeker embarking on a metaphysical journey that dissolves his sense of self, place, and history. Leaving her family in Brooklyn, a young, well-known novelist arrives at the Tel Aviv Hilton where she has stayed every year since birth. Troubled by writer’s block and a failing marriage, she hopes that the hotel can unlock a dimension of reality—and her own perception of life—that has been closed off to her. But when she meets a retired literature professor who proposes a project she can’t turn down, she’s drawn into a mystery that alters her life in ways she could never have imagined. Bursting with life and humor, Forest Dark is a profound, mesmerizing novel of metamorphosis and self-realization—of looking beyond all that is visible towards the infinite.

Forest Dark

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Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Fountainhead

This is a bundle of 4 baby touch and feel books. I tried to capture any damage to the books inflicted by my kids over the years. 

An interactive touch and feel book for babies that inspires hands-on learning. Tactile elements and delightful imagery will encourage the development of motor skills and early learning.

Baby Touch and Feel: Truck is an interactive and fun way to help your child discover shapes, textures, and brand new words - as well as enjoy their favorite trucks!. Bold, bright pictures and colorful illustrations will be more than enough to keep your baby's attention. This adorable picture book is a perfect first book for preschoolers and makes for an ideal baby gift.

Not too big and not too small, this sturdy, padded sensory book is just the right size for little hands to hold. No need for Mom and Dad to turn the pages! Babies and toddlers can turn the tough board book pages themselves, which helps to develop their fine motor skills while building an early language foundation.

This charming board book for babies includes:

   * An amazing range of different textures to explore
   * Clearly labeled pictures and a simple, easy to follow design
   * Easy to read text to encourage early vocabulary building
   * A texture or eye-catching area on every page
   * Rounded edges and chunky pages, protecting babies and their growing teeth

Learning to read should always be this fun. Kids will get hours of play from this sturdy board book for babies and toddlers, from making the noises and reading the names to feeling the different textures. Packed full of shiny objects and some bumps and grooves, this educational book will engage small children and stimulate early childhood development in different ways. This touchy feely  book, with its strong, baby-safe jacket, makes for an ideal baby gift.

Complete the Series

This delightful book is part of the Baby Touch and Feel range of board books for babies and toddlers from DK Books and includes titles like Baby Touch and Feel Animals, Baby Touch and Feel Bedtime, Baby Touch and Feel Colors and Shapes, and more for your little one to enjoy!

BlearyEyed

@blearyeyed10

Books Listed

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826 826 National

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019

Karen Russell

Swamplandia!

Jesmyn Ward; Heidi Pitlor

The Best American Short Stories 2021

Jillian Medoff

When We Were Bright and Beautiful

Mo Willems

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Daniel Black

Don't Cry for Me

Emily X. R. Pan

The Astonishing Color of After

Amy Jo Burns

Mercury

Jamel Brinkley

Witness

Leigh McMullan Abramson

A Likely Story

Salman Rushdie

Midnight's Children

Nicole Krauss

Forest Dark

Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead

DK

Baby Touch and Feel: Trucks

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826 826 National

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019

Karen Russell

Swamplandia!

Jesmyn Ward; Heidi Pitlor

The Best American Short Stories 2021

Jillian Medoff

When We Were Bright and Beautiful

Mo Willems

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Daniel Black

Don't Cry for Me

Emily X. R. Pan

The Astonishing Color of After

Amy Jo Burns

Mercury

Jamel Brinkley

Witness

Leigh McMullan Abramson

A Likely Story

Salman Rushdie

Midnight's Children

Nicole Krauss

Forest Dark

Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead

DK

Baby Touch and Feel: Trucks

Get The App