Muriel Spark

Just read this for a lively book discussion—what a sharp little gem this is!

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New York

"The short dirk in the hands of Muriel Spark has always been a deadly weapon," said The New York Times, and "never more so than in The Abbess of Crewe." An elegant little fable about intrigue, corruption, and electronic surveillance, The Abbess of Crewe is set in an English Benedictine convent. Steely and silky Abbess Alexandra (whose aristocratic tastes run to pâté, fine wine, English poetry, and carpets of "amorous green") has bugged the convent, and rigged her election. But the cat gets out of the bag, and--plunged into scandal--the serene Abbess faces a Vatican inquiry.

The Abbess of Crewe

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Tal Ben-Shahar

It’s mint, save for some page discoloration along the top. 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment

Can You Learn to Be Happy? YES . . . according to the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular and life-changing course. One out of every five Harvard students has lined up to hear Tal Ben-Shahar’s insightful and inspiring lectures on that ever-elusive state: HAPPINESS. HOW? Grounded in the revolutionary “positive psychology” movement, Ben-Shahar ingeniously combines scientific studies, scholarly research, self-help advice, and spiritual enlightenment. He weaves them together into a set of principles that you can apply to your daily life. Once you open your heart and mind to Happier ’s thoughts, you will feel more fulfilled, more connected . . . and, yes, HAPPIER. “Dr. Ben-Shahar, one of the most popular teachers in Harvard’s recent history, has written a personal, informed, and highly enjoyable primer on how to become happier. It would be wise to take his advice.” --Ellen J. Langer, author of Mindfulness and On Becoming an Artist “This fine book shimmers with a rare brand of good sense that is imbedded in scientific knowledge about how to increase happiness. It is easy to see how this is the backbone of the most popular course at Harvard today." --Martin E. P. Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness

Happier

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Joanna Trollope

Closer to very good condition!
Ah, what a wonderful read. Joanna Trollope nails it every time!

A Novel

Lizzie and Frances, identical twins nearing forty, have hardly marked a parallel progress together through life. Lizzie is confident and effusive, the mother of a large, vibrant brood, a successful gallery owner, and a consummate homemaker. Frances, on the other hand, is as elusive as Lizzie is accessible: She lives alone, operates a modestly successful travel agency, and has never had a serious attachment to a man. It seems, to her loving family, as if Frances is destined to move through life anchorless. But all that changes one Christmas when Frances makes an impulsive trip to Spain. There she falls in love—and not with just any man but with a wealthy, handsome Spaniard who is both Catholic and married. As Frances blossoms with newfound independence and relishes her engrossing affair, Lizzie becomes detached from her home life, which ultimately threatens her marriage. Though Lizzie’s was once the enviable life, now Frances has come into her own, and the twins must reexamine their roles—in their individual lives and in the special, shared world of sisterhood. .

A Spanish Lover

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Kaira Jewel Lingo

Mint! Between “excellent” and “like new” condition. 

Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

In ten concise chapters, you'll learn powerful ways to meet life's challenges with wisdom, resilience, and ease. We all go through times when it feels like the ground is being pulled out from under us. What we relied on as steady and solid may change or even appear to vanish. In this era of global disruption, threats to our individual, social, and planetary safety abound, and at times life can feel overwhelming. Not only are loss and separation painful, but even positive changes can cause great stress. Yet life is full of change: birth, death, marriage, divorce; a new relationship; losing or starting a job; beginning a new phase in life or ending one. Change is stressful, even when it is much desired or anticipated—the unknown can feel scary and threatening. In We Were Made for These Times, the extraordinary mindfulness teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo imparts accessible advice on navigating difficult times of transition, drawing on Buddhist teachings on impermanence to help you establish equanimity and resilience. Each chapter in We Were Made for These Times holds an essential teaching and meditation, unfolding a step-by-step process to nurture deeper freedom and stability in daily life. Time-honored teachings will help you develop ease, presence, and self-compassion, supporting you to release the fear and doubt that hold you back.

We Were Made for These Times

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Anita Brookner

Ahhhhh…..Anita Brookner—exquisite, insightful, nuanced… and a master at articulating our deepest thoughts. 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Maud Gonthier finds her usual uneventful vacation at her aunt's country home transformed by the arrival of the charming, wealthy David Tyler, with whom she falls madly in love, until his abrupt disappearance leaves his innocent friend, Edward, to help Maud pick up the pieces of her life. 30,000 first printing.

Incidents in the Rue Laugier

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Kathryn Schulz

Just slightly yellowed from sun. 
Such a profound book. 

Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE * A "profound and beautiful" (Marilynne Robinson) account of joy and sorrow from one of the great writers of our time, The New Yorker's Kathryn Schulz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"I will stake my reputation on you being blown away by Lost & Found."--Anne Lamott, author of Dusk, Night, Dawn and Bird by Bird

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD * LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL * ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, Publishers Weekly

One spring morning, Kathryn Schulz went to lunch with a stranger and fell in love. Having spent years looking for the right relationship, she was dazzled by how swiftly everything changed when she finally met her future wife. But as the two of them began building a life together, Schulz's beloved father--a charming, brilliant, absentminded Jewish refugee--went into the hospital with a minor heart condition and never came out. Newly in love yet also newly bereft, Schulz was left contending simultaneously with wild joy and terrible grief.

Those twin experiences form the heart of Lost & Found, a profound meditation on the families that make us and the families we make. But Schulz's book also explores how disappearance and discovery shape us all. On average, we each lose two hundred thousand objects over our lifetime, and Schulz brilliantly illuminates the relationship between those everyday losses and our most devastating ones. Likewise, she explores the importance of seeking, whether for ancient ruins or new ideas, friends, faith, meaning, or love. The resulting book is part memoir, part guidebook to sustaining wonder and gratitude even in the face of loss and grief. A staff writer at The New Yorker and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Schulz writes with curiosity, tenderness, and humor about the connections between joy and sorrow--and between us all.

Lost and Found

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“A Highly Entertaining Book About a Very Bad Dog, a Very Good Dog, a Parrot, and Their Human Family”

Walking Evil

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Calvin Trillin

What a loving, deeply felt tribute to Alice. Just a little front jacket discoloration—otherwise, pristine. 

In Calvin Trillin’s antic tales of family life, she was portrayed as the wife who had “a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day” and the mother who thought that if you didn’t go to every performance of your child’s school play, “the county would come and take the child.” Now, five years after her death, her husband offers this loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page–his loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page–an educator who was equally at home teaching at a university or a drug treatment center, a gifted writer, a stunningly beautiful and thoroughly engaged woman who, in the words of a friend, “managed to navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in.” Though it deals with devastating loss, About Alice is also a love story, chronicling a romance that began at a Manhattan party when Calvin Trillin desperately tried to impress a young woman who “seemed to glow.” “You have never again been as funny as you were that night,” Alice would say, twenty or thirty years later. “You mean I peaked in December of 1963?” “I’m afraid so.” But he never quit trying to impress her. In his writing, she was sometimes his subject and always his muse. The dedication of the first book he published after her death read, “I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice.” In that spirit, Calvin Trillin has, with About Alice, created a gift to the wife he adored and to his readers.

About Alice

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Except for a small stain in the upper right corner pages, the book is pristine! Read this for a book discussion—a touching Holocaust-period read. 

A Secret Star

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Kent Haruf

It’s in very good shape—better than good! Slightly faded pages and a back cover stain….but it’s a keeper, and Haruf was a sublime writer. 

Former high-school football hero Jack Burdette returns to his hometown eight years after he had left, but his onetime pranks and high-spirited high jinks have turned into crimes--with terrifying consequences for the people of Holt County. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.

Where You Once Belonged

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Ernest Hemingway

A splendid book!! It’s in strong & solid condition—very good shape—with some yellowing of pages along the top, and the inside front & back covers. 

“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.” —Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s remains one of his most beloved works. Filled with tender memories of his first wife Hadley and their son Jack; irreverent portraits of literary luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft, A Moveable Feast brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the youthful spirit, unbridled creativity, and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized. It is an elegy to a remarkable group of expatriates and a testament to the risks and rewards of the writerly life.

A Moveable Feast

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Elizabeth Bowen

Except for a mildly scratched back cover, the book is in A-one shape!

One of Elizabeth Bowen's most artful and psychologically acute novels, The House in Paris is a timeless masterpiece of nuance and atmosphere, and represents the very best of Bowen's celebrated oeuvre. When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers' well-appointed house in Paris, she is prepared to spend her day between trains looked after by an old friend of her grandmother's. Henrietta longs to see a few sights in the foreign city; little does she know what fascinating secrets the Fisher house itself contains.

For Henrietta finds that her visit coincides with that of Leopold, an intense child who has come to Paris to be introduced to the mother he has never known. In the course of a single day, the relations between Leopold, Henrietta's agitated hostess Naomi Fisher, Leopold' s mysterious mother, his dead father, and the dying matriarch in bed upstairs, come to light slowly and tantalizingly. And when Henrietta leaves the house that evening, it is in possession of the kind of grave knowledge usually reserved only for adults.

The House in Paris

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Henri Bosco

Joyce Zonana

This is the August, 2023 NYRB Book Club selection. 

A new translation of an evocative, Huckleberry Finn-esque French bestseller about a young farmboy, the river where he is forbidden to play, and the adventures that ensue when he disobeys his family's wishes.

The story of Henri Bosco's The Child and the River is straightforward yet haunting Pascalet, a boy growing up on a farm in France, is told he can play anywhere he likes-except by the river. Of course he dreams of going to the river, and one day he does.

He falls asleep in a small boat tied to an old dock, then wakes up to find himself drifting . . . Onto an island where some gypsies are camping. There, he sees another young boy, perhaps also a gypsy, tied up and beaten. Stealthily, he frees him, and the two escape in a boat, then spend an idyllic-beautifully described-week living freely on the river.

Eventually, Gatzo, the other child, is somewhat magically reunited with his family. Pascalet returns home, desperately missing his friend and the wild life they shared . . . Some time later, Gatzo, orphaned, appears at Pascalet's doorstep the two "brothers," one light-skinned, the other darker, are reunited. (And that's material for another story, as the narrator, the grown-up Pascalet, tells us.)

A sort of French Huckleberry Finn, The Child and the River is also considered a "crossover" book, appealing as much to adults as to children. It has sold more than three million copies in France.

The Child and the River

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Toinette Lippe

A Plain and Simple Life

Recollecting her simple living ideal, a renowned spiritual editor presents a thought-provoking volume that focuses on the importance of measuring life through experience, not by possessions or accomplishments. Reprint.

Nothing Left Over

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Heather Stang

A Guided Journal for Navigating Loss with Compassion and Mindfulness

A guided journal with writing prompts, meditations and practices to transform the heartache and pain of grief and loss into love and resilience, the mindful way. Grief is a natural reaction to loss and the mourning process can be a difficult and stressful experience. Time alone does not heal our wounds—it is what we do with our time that matters. But in the wake of devastating loss, how and where do you begin? One way is through grief journaling which can help you record and process your experience of grief. With the support of grief and mindfulness expert Heather Stang, From Grief to Peace offers the writing space, guidance, and freedom to express your feelings without judgment. Explore your heart’s story fearlessly, transform grief roadblocks into green lights, and write a thank-you letter to your inner strength and courage. Mindful journaling prompts, tips, and practices allow you to tap into your natural resilience and find the meaning you need to thrive. In turn you will learn and grow through your grief journey.

From Grief to Peace

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Anne Lamott

Sam Lamott

A Journal of My Son's First Son

From the New York Times bestselling author of Dusk, Night, Dawn, Bird by Bird, Hallelujah Anyway, and Almost Everything

"If there is a doyenne of the parenting memoir, it would be Anne Lamott."--Time

In Some Assembly Required, Anne Lamott enters a new and unexpected chapter in her own life: grandmotherhood. Stunned to learn that her son, Sam, is about to become a father at nineteen, Lamott begins a journal about the first year of her grandson Jax's life. In careful and often hilarious detail, Lamott and Sam--about whom she first wrote so movingly in Operating Instructions--struggle to balance their changing roles. By turns poignant and funny, honest and touching, Some Assembly Required is the true story of how the birth of a baby changes a family--as this book will change everyone who reads it.

Some Assembly Required

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Frank Langella

What a delicious book—read it at least a couple of times!

Yellowed along the top, but in solid, firm shape. 

Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them

Rita Hayworth dancing by candlelight; Elizabeth Taylor tenderly wrapping him in her Pashmina scarf; streaking for Sir Laurence Olivier in a drafty English castle; terrifying a dozing Jackie Onassis; carrying an unconscious Montgomery Clift to safety on a dark New York street... Captured forever in a unique memoir, Frank Langella’s myriad encounters with some of the past century’s most famous human beings are profoundly affecting, funny, wicked, sometimes shocking, and utterly irresistible. With sharp wit and a perceptive eye, Mr. Langella takes us with him into the private worlds and privileged lives of movie stars, presidents, royalty, literary lions, the social elite, and the greats of the Broadway stage. We learn something, too, of Mr. Langella’s personal journey from the age of fifteen to the present day. Dropped Names is, like its subjects, riveting and unforgettable.

Dropped Names

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Sherwin B. Nuland

The book is in very good shape. Pages are faded, the book jacket is a little yellowed and slightly wrinkled….but altogether intact and solid!

Reflections on Life's Final Chapter

Offers a portrait of the experience of dying that elucidates the choices that can be made to allow each person his or her own death

How We Die

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Victor Chan

Intimate Conversations and Journeys

The most intimate conversation yet with the world's most famous holy man. When Victor Chan first visited the Dalai Lama in the 1970s, he assumed that, since he is a member of the race responsible for destroying Tibet, the Dalai Lama would treat him with disdain. Instead, they developed a close relationship, out of which Victor was able to pose some of the most personal questions ever asked of or answered by the Dalai Lama. From the conversations in The Wisdom of Forgiveness, we discover under which circumstances the Dalai Lama believes he could be capable of violence; how the experience of profound spiritual insight feels in the body and mind; how he learned to love those who anyone else would consider an enemy; what his personal fears are; what the heart of a holy man looks like in medical tests; and how a highly developed spiritual person experiences pain. The Wisdom of Forgivenesstakes these two friends on journeys from India to Ireland; from the former Czechoslovakia to a pilgrimage to Buddhist holy sites. If you've ever wondered why we love the Dalai Lama so much, this book makes it clear by placing us in the presence of a great being.

The Wisdom of Forgiveness

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At once a classic account of the ravages of mental illness and a major American autobiography, “A Mind That  Found Itself” first
published in 1908, tells the story of a young man who is gradually enveloped by a psychosis. His well-meaning family commits him to a series of mental hospitals, but he is brutalized by the treatment, and his moments of fleeting sanity become fewer and fewer. His ultimate recovery is a triumph of the human spirit. Recovered from his illness, the author began a lifelong crusade, through the National Committee for Mental Hygiene…to revolutionize the care and treatment of the mentally ill. 



A Mind that Found Itself

Andre Dubus

A beloved book; Dubus’ essays are exquisite (IMO!)
Plus, nice intro by Tobias Wolff. 

Essays

Andre Dubus is celebrated for his ability to depict the subtlest of human emotions in his characters, and when he turns to nonfiction, the resulting insights are no less illuminative. Especially moving are his descriptions of his children, his wrenching account of the 1986 automobile accident that cost him his leg, and of the ensuing struggle for his spiritual and physical survival. Broken Vessels is a book that, in its scope and sympathy, its grace and courage, never fails to startle with the sudden impact of quiet truths, passionately felt and powerfully expressed.

Broken Vessels

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Kathryn Harrison

Book jacket is a little creased along the top….pages are a bit faded. Otherwise in strong, fine, intact shape. Better than good—more like very good condition!

An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family

From the bestselling author of The Kiss comes a riveting account of true crime-- the murder of a family in a small Midwestern town-- and the gripping exploration of its haunting aftermath. The Gilley family murders ended a lifetime of physical and mentala

While They Slept

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A follow-up to “Help, Thanks, Wow,” which you can find in my “shop!”

A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

The New York Times bestseller from the author of Dusk, Night, Dawn, Hallelujah Anyway, Bird by Bird, and Almost Everything

"Lamott's ...most insightful book yet, Stitches offers plenty of her characteristic witty wisdom...this slim, readable volume [is] a lens on life, widening and narrowing, encouraging each reader to reflect on what it is, after all, that really matters."--People

What do we do when life lurches out of balance? How can we reconnect to one other and to what's sustaining, when evil and catastrophe seem inescapable?

These questions lie at the heart of Stitches, Lamott's profound follow-up to her New York Times-bestselling Help, Thanks, Wow. In this book Lamott explores how we find meaning and peace in these loud and frantic times; where we start again after personal and public devastation; how we recapture wholeness after loss; and how we locate our true identities in this frazzled age. We begin, Lamott says, by collecting the ripped shreds of our emotional and spiritual fabric and sewing them back together, one stitch at a time.

It's in these stitches that the quilt of life begins, and embedded in them are strength, warmth, humor, and humanity.

Stitches

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Aaron Lansky

Except for yellow-y pages & cover from a long shelf life, this wonderful book is intact, solid, and in very good condition!

The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books

"Incredible . . . Inspiring . . . Important." --Library Journal, starred review



"A marvelous yarn, loaded with near-calamitous adventures and characters as memorable as Singer creations." --The New York Post

    

"What began as a quixotic journey was also a picaresque romp, a detective story, a profound history lesson, and a poignant evocation of a bygone world." --The Boston Globe



"Every now and again a book with near-universal appeal comes along: Outwitting History is just such a book." --The Sunday Oregonian



As a twenty-three-year-old graduate student, Aaron Lansky set out to save the world's abandoned Yiddish books before it was too late. Today, more than a million books later, he has accomplished what has been called "the greatest cultural rescue effort in Jewish history." In Outwitting History, Lansky shares his adventures as well as the poignant and often laugh-out-loud stories he heard as he traveled the country collecting books. Introducing us to a dazzling array of writers, he shows us how an almost-lost culture is the bridge between the old world and the future--and how the written word can unite everyone who believes in the power of great literature.



A Library Journal Best Book

A Massachusetts Book Award Winner in Nonfiction

An ALA Notable Book

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