John M. Barry

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

#1 New York Times bestseller “Barry will teach you almost everything you need to know about one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.”—Bill Gates "Monumental... an authoritative and disturbing morality tale."—Chicago Tribune The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Flu Epidemic. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research, The Great Influenza provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. As Barry concludes, "The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart." At the height of World War I, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.

The Great Influenza

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Zora Neale Hurston

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Stories from the Harlem Renaissance

From "one of the greatest writers of our time" (Toni Morrison)--the author of Barracoon and Their Eyes Were Watching God--a collection of remarkable stories, including eight "lost" Harlem Renaissance tales now available to a wide audience for the first time. In May 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston--the sole black student at the college--was living in New York, "desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world." During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period. Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston's "lost" Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston's world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer's voice and her contributions to America's literary traditions.

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

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Ken Follett

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Book One of the Century Trilogy

Follows the fates of five interrelated families--American, German, Russian, English and Welsh--as they move through the world-shaking dramas of World War I, the Russian Revolution and the struggle for women's suffrage. By the best-selling author of The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End. Reprint. A #1 best-seller.

Fall of Giants

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Book Two of the Century Trilogy

"This book is truly epic. . . . The reader will probably wish there was a thousand more pages." —The Huffington Post Picking up where Fall of Giants, the first novel in the extraordinary Century Trilogy, left off, Winter of the World follows its five interrelated families—American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh—through a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil, beginning with the rise of the Third Reich, through the great dramas of World War II, and into the beginning of the long Cold War. Carla von Ulrich, born of German and English parents, finds her life engulfed by the Nazi tide until daring to commit a deed of great courage and heartbreak . . . . American brothers Woody and Chuck Dewar, each with a secret, take separate paths to momentous events, one in Washington, the other in the bloody jungles of the Pacific . . . . English student Lloyd Williams discovers in the crucible of the Spanish Civil War that he must fight Communism just as hard as Fascism . . . . Daisy Peshkov, a driven social climber, cares only for popularity and the fast set until war transforms her life, while her cousin Volodya carves out a position in Soviet intelligence that will affect not only this war but also the war to come.

Winter of the World

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Caroline Finkel

The History of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and most influential empires in world history. Its reach extended to three continents and it survived for more than six centuries, but its history is too often colored by the memory of its bloody final throes on the battlefields of World War I. In this magisterial work-the first definitive account written for the general reader-renowned scholar and journalist Caroline Finkel lucidly recounts the epic story of the Ottoman Empire from its origins in the thirteenth century through its destruction in the twentieth.

Osman's Dream

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Andy Warhol

Pat Hackett

In celebration of its 25th anniversary, the bestselling classic is introduced to a new generation-with an added preface by Warhol's diarist and long-time friend, Pat Hackett, contemplating Warhol's lasting cultural impact. This international literary sensation turns the spotlight on one of the most influential and controversial figures in American culture. Filled with shocking observations about the lives, loves, and careers of the rich, famous, and fabulous, Warhol's journal is endlessly fun and fascinating. Spanning the mid-1970s until just a few days before his death in 1987, THE ANDY WARHOL DIARIES is a compendium of the more than twenty thousand pages of the artist's diary that he dictated daily to Pat Hackett. In it, Warhol gives us the ultimate backstage pass to practically everything that went on in the world-both high and low. He hangs out with "everybody": Jackie O ("thinks she's so grand she doesn't even owe it to the public to have another great marriage to somebody big"), Yoko Ono ("We dialed F-U-C-K-Y-O-U and L-O-V-E-Y-O-U to see what happened, we had so much fun"), and "Princess Marina of, I guess, Greece," along with art-world rock stars Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Salvador Dali, and Keith Haring. Warhol had something to say about everyone who crossed his path, whether it was Lou Reed or Liberace, Patti Smith or Diana Ross, Frank Sinatra or Michael Jackson. A true cultural artifact, THE ANDY WARHOL DIARIES amounts to a portrait of an artist-and an era-unlike any other.

The Andy Warhol Diaries

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Stephen King

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

A Novel

After decades as an itinerant alcoholic, middle-aged Dan Torrance uses his remnant powers to assist the dying before coming to the aid of a twelve-year-old girl being tortured by a tribe of murderous paranormals.

Doctor Sleep

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Mark Nepo

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Offers the author's insights into friendship, love, and survival in this guide to awakening to the joy of life.

The Book of Awakening

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The Discoverers

Thomas C. Danisi

Robert J. Moore

Recently discovered documents shed light onto the life of Meriwether Lewis, covering the proceedings of his court-martial, circumstances surrounding his death, and the role of Major James Neelly in his final days.

Uncoring the Truth about Meriwether Lewis

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Maria Semple

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

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Baby Halder

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Memoir

Autobiographical reminiscences of a poor woman from West Bengal, India, who served as a domestic help.

A Life Less Ordinary

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Steven Pinker

Why Violence Has Declined

Presents a controversial history of violence which argues that today's world is the most peaceful time in human existence, drawing on psychological insights into intrinsic values that are causing people to condemn violence as an acceptable measure.

The Better Angels of Our Nature

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Mary Pipher

Describes the psychological pitfalls faced by teenage girls growing up in a dangerous world in which violence, sexual harassment, eating disorders, promiscuity, and drug use have become the norm

Reviving Ophelia

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Gary Krist

A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans

From bestselling author Gary Krist, a vibrant and immersive account of New Orleans' other civil war, at a time when commercialized vice, jazz culture, and endemic crime defined the battlegrounds of the Crescent City
nbsp;
nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Empire of Sinnbsp;re-creates the remarkable story of New Orleans' thirty-years war against itself, pitting the city's elite "better half" against its powerful and long-entrenched underworld of vice, perversity, and crime. This early-20th-century battle centers on one man: Tom Anderson, the undisputed czar of the city's Storyville vice district, who fights desperately to keep his empire intact as it faces onslaughts from all sides. Surrounding him are the stories of flamboyant prostitutes, crusading moral reformers, dissolute jazzmen, ruthless Mafiosi, venal politicians, and one extremely violent serial killer, all battling for primacy in a wild and wicked city unlike any other in the world.

Empire of Sin

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Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Reeve Lindbergh

50th-Anniversary Edition

A woman's reflections on life, its stages, and its states, comparing them with the natural treasures of life in the sea

Gift from the Sea

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Robert Hicks

A story based on the true experiences of a Civil War heroine finds Carrie McGavock witnessing the bloodshed of the Battle of Franklin, falling in love with a wounded man, and dedicating her home as a burial site for fallen soldiers.

The Widow of the South

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Taylor Branch

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.  America in the King years 1954-1963.

Oversized Paperback (4 to 6 lbs)

America in the King Years 1954-63

Book one in a 3-volume history of America during the civil rights movement (1954-1968).

Parting the Waters

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Kathryn Stockett

The #1 New York Times bestselling novel and basis for the Academy Award-winning film—a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who’s always taken orders quietly, but lately she’s unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college. She’s full of ambition, but without a husband, she’s considered a failure. Together, these seemingly different women join together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town...

The Help

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Ernest Hemingway

Patrick Hemingway

Sean Hemingway

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, remains one of his most beloved works. Since Hemingway’s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined and debated the changes made to the text before publication. Now this new special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author intended it to be published. This volume features a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest’s sole surviving son, and an introduction by the editor and grandson of the author, Seán Hemingway. Also included are a number of unfinished, never-before-published sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son Jack; his first wife, Hadley; F. Scott Fitzgerald; and Ford Madox Ford, as well as insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft. This restored edition brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the unbridled creativity and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

A Moveable Feast: the Restored Edition

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Now an HBO limited series starring Ben Mendelsohn!

Evil has many faces...maybe even yours in this #1 New York Times bestseller from master storyteller Stephen King.

An eleven-year-old boy's violated corpse is discovered in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City's most popular citizens--Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon have DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

As the investigation expands and horrifying details begin to emerge, King's story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.

The Outsider

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Bill Bryson

Everything about our homes. From the very beginning.

A Short History of Private Life

From one of the most beloved authors of our time—more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone—a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. “Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.” Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture. Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposition imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.

At Home

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Susan Orlean

A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK A WASHINGTON POST TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR * A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER and NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 “A constant pleasure to read…Everybody who loves books should check out The Library Book.” —The Washington Post “CAPTIVATING…DELIGHTFUL.” —Christian Science Monitor * “EXQUISITELY WRITTEN, CONSISTENTLY ENTERTAINING.” —The New York Times * “MESMERIZING…RIVETING.” —Booklist (starred review) A dazzling love letter to a beloved institution—and an investigation into one of its greatest mysteries—from the bestselling author hailed as a “national treasure” by The Washington Post. On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago. Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present—from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as “The Human Encyclopedia” who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves. Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist’s reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever.

The Library Book

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Susan Tucker

The book that inspired The Help.  Very artful oral history about domestic workers and their employers in the South.

Domestic Workers and Their Employers in the Segregated South

In Telling Memories Among Southern Women, Susan Tucker presents a revealing collection of oral-history narratives that explore the complex, sometimes enigmatic bond between black female domestic workers and their white employers from the turn of the twentieth century to the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. Based on interviews with forty-two women of both races from the Deep South, these narratives express the full range of human emotions and successfully convey the ties that united—and the tensions and conflicts that separated—these two mutually dependent groups of women.

Browse by categories

John M. Barry

The Great Influenza

Zora Neale Hurston

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

Ken Follett

Fall of Giants

Ken Follett

Winter of the World

Caroline Finkel

Osman's Dream

Andy Warhol; Pat Hackett

The Andy Warhol Diaries

Stephen King

Doctor Sleep

Mark Nepo

The Book of Awakening

Boorstin, Daniel J.

The Discoverers

Thomas C. Danisi; Robert J. Moore

Uncoring the Truth about Meriwether Lewis

Maria Semple

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Baby Halder

A Life Less Ordinary

Steven Pinker

The Better Angels of Our Nature

Mary Pipher

Reviving Ophelia

Gary Krist

Empire of Sin

Anne Morrow Lindbergh; Reeve Lindbergh

Gift from the Sea

Robert Hicks

The Widow of the South

Taylor Branch

Parting the Waters

Kathryn Stockett

The Help

Ernest Hemingway; Patrick Hemingway; Sean Hemingway

A Moveable Feast: the Restored Edition

Stephen King

The Outsider

Bill Bryson

At Home

Susan Orlean

The Library Book

Susan Tucker

Telling Memories among Southern Women

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