Sarah Kendzior

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New York

How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent

FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE “Every sentence delivered. The pathos of truth-seeking left me thinking of Herman Melville." —Timothy Snyder, #1 New York Times bestselling author of On Tyranny NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING author Sarah Kendzior delves into the difference between conspiracy and conspiracy theory, "deftly separat[ing] fact from fiction in a conspiracy-addled nation" (VANITY FAIR). Conspiracy theories are on the rise because officials refuse to enforce accountability for real conspiracies. Uncritical faith in broken institutions is as dangerous as false narratives peddled by propagandists. The truth may hurt—but the lies will kill us. They Knew discusses conspiracy culture in a rapidly declining United States struggling with corruption, climate change, and other crises. As the actions of the powerful remain shrouded in mystery—“From Norman Baker to Jeffrey Epstein, Iran-Contra to January 6" (VF)—it is unsurprising that people turn to conspiracy theories to fill the informational void. They Knew exposes the tactics these powerful actors use to placate an inquisitive public. Here, for the first time, Kendzior blends her signature whip-smart prose and eviscerating arguments with lyrical and intimate examinations of the times and places that haunt American history. "America is a ghost story," writes Kendzior, as she unearths decades of buried history, providing an essential and critical look at how to rebuild our democracy by confronting the political lies and crimes that have shaped us.

They Knew

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Sinclair Lewis

Michael Meyer

Gary Scharnhorst

Written as a response to the rise of European fascism, this book depicts a fascist future for the United States.

It Can't Happen Here

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Susan Quinn

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out of Desperate Times

A vivid portrait of the turbulent 1930s and the Roosevelt administration as seen through the WPA's Federal Theater Project.
Under the direction of a five-foot redheaded firecracker, Hallie Flanagan, the Federal Theater Project managed to turn a WPA relief program into a platform for some of the most inventive and cutting-edge theater of its time. This daring experiment by the U.S. government in support of the arts electrified audiences with exciting, controversial productions. Plays like Voodoo Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock stirred up politicians by defying segregation and putting the spotlight on social injustice, and the FT P starred some of the greatest figures in twentieth-century American arts--including Orson Welles, John Houseman, and Sinclair Lewis. Susan Quinn brings to life the politics of this desperate era when FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the chain-smoking idealist Harry Hopkins furiously improvised programs to get millions of hungry, unemployed people back to work. Quinn's compelling story of politics and idealism reaches a dramatic climax with the rise of Martin Dies and the House Un-American Activities Committee, which turned the FTP into the first victim of a Red scare that would roil the nation for the next twenty years.

Furious Improvisation

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Alice McDermott

A Novel

An ordinary life-its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion-lived by an ordinary, but unforgettable woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott's extraordinary seventh novel. We first glimpse Marie Commeford as a child: a girl in thick glasses observing her pre-Depression world from a Brooklyn stoop. Through her first heartbreak and eventual marriage; her delicate brother's brief stint as a Catholic priest and his emotional breakdown; her career as a funeral director's "consoling angel"; the deaths of her parents and the births of her children-we follow Marie through the changing world of the twentieth century and her Irish-American enclave. Rendered with remarkable empathy and insight, Someone is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived, with passion and heartbreak, a crowning achievement of one of the finest American writers at work today.

Someone

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Lisa Jewell

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK “Utterly gripping with richly drawn, hugely compelling characters, this is a first-class thriller with heart.” —Lucy Foley, New York Times bestselling author “Insane suspense.” —Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author “Her best thriller yet.” —Harlan Coben, New York Times bestselling author From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone comes another riveting work of psychological suspense about a beautiful young couple’s disappearance on a gorgeous summer night, and the mother who will never give up trying to find them... On a beautiful summer night in a charming English suburb, a young woman and her boyfriend disappear after partying at the massive country estate of a new college friend. One year later, a writer moves into a cottage on the edge of the woods that border the same estate. Known locally as the Dark Place, the dense forest is the writer’s favorite area for long walks and it’s on one such walk that she stumbles upon a mysterious note that simply reads, “DIG HERE.” Could this be a clue towards what has happened to the missing young couple? And what exactly is buried in this haunted ground? With her signature “rich, dark, and intricately twisted” (Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author) prose, Lisa Jewell has crafted a dazzling work of suspense that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the final page.

The Night She Disappeared

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Anne Sebba

The Remarkable Life of Lady Randolph Churchill

Brooklyn-born Jennie Jerome married into the British aristocracy in 1874, after a three-day romance. She became Lady Randolph Churchill, wife of a maverick politician and mother of the most famous British statesman of the century. Jennie Churchill was not merely the most talked about and controversial American woman in London society, she was a dynamic behind-the-scenes political force and a woman of sexual fearlessness at a time when women were not supposed to be sexually liberated. A concert pianist, magazine founder and editor, and playwright, she was also, above all, a devoted mother to Winston. In American Jennie, Anne Sebba draws on newly discovered personal correspondences and archives to examine the unusually powerful mutual infatuation between Jennie and her son and to relate the passionate and ultimately tragic career of the woman whom Winston described as having "the wine of life in her veins."

American Jennie

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Garrison Keillor

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

During the summer of 1956, fourteen-year-old geek Gary struggles with the hormonal pains and obsessions of puberty as he experiences a passionate devotion to his rebellious cousin Kate and pursues his dream of becoming a writer, but when Kate gets into trouble with the local basketball star, Gary is forced to deal with the first pangs of a broken heart. 250,000 first printing.

Lake Wobegon Summer 1956

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Amy Tan

Struggling to regain her voice and express her true feelings to her husband, ghostwriter Ruth Young discovers that her inability to speak closely parallels the story of her mother LuLing's early life in China, where Ruth finds the famous bonesetter, a woman whose mouth was sealed shut during a suicide attempt.

The Bonesetter's Daughter

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Walter Isaacson

An American Life

Presents a portrait of Benjamin Franklin as a scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, business strategist, and statesman while tracing his life as one of America's Founding Fathers.

Benjamin Franklin

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Jon Meacham

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The most complete portrait ever drawn of the complex emotional connection between two of history’s towering leaders Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of “the Greatest Generation.” In Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one—a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together (113 days during the war) and exchanging nearly two thousand messages. Amid cocktails, cigarettes, and cigars, they met, often secretly, in places as far-flung as Washington, Hyde Park, Casablanca, and Teheran, talking to each other of war, politics, the burden of command, their health, their wives, and their children. Born in the nineteenth century and molders of the twentieth and twenty-first, Roosevelt and Churchill had much in common. Sons of the elite, students of history, politicians of the first rank, they savored power. In their own time both men were underestimated, dismissed as arrogant, and faced skeptics and haters in their own nations—yet both magnificently rose to the central challenges of the twentieth century. Theirs was a kind of love story, with an emotional Churchill courting an elusive Roosevelt. The British prime minister, who rallied his nation in its darkest hour, standing alone against Adolf Hitler, was always somewhat insecure about his place in FDR’s affections—which was the way Roosevelt wanted it. A man of secrets, FDR liked to keep people off balance, including his wife, Eleanor, his White House aides—and Winston Churchill. Confronting tyranny and terror, Roosevelt and Churchill built a victorious alliance amid cataclysmic events and occasionally conflicting interests. Franklin and Winston is also the story of their marriages and their families, two clans caught up in the most sweeping global conflict in history. Meacham’s new sources—including unpublished letters of FDR’ s great secret love, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the papers of Pamela Churchill Harriman, and interviews with the few surviving people who were in FDR and Churchill’s joint company—shed fresh light on the characters of both men as he engagingly chronicles the hours in which they decided the course of the struggle. Hitler brought them together; later in the war, they drifted apart, but even in the autumn of their alliance, the pull of affection was always there. Charting the personal drama behind the discussions of strategy and statecraft, Meacham has written the definitive account of the most remarkable friendship of the modern age.

Franklin and Winston

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Melanie Benjamin

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator’s Wife comes a story of courage on the prairie, inspired by the devastating storm that struck the Great Plains in 1888, threatening the lives of hundreds of immigrant homesteaders, especially schoolchildren. “A nail-biter . . . poignant, powerful, perfect.” —Kate Quinn, author of The Alice Network The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats—leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm? Based on actual oral histories of survivors, this gripping novel follows the stories of Raina and Gerda Olsen, two sisters, both schoolteachers—one becomes a hero of the storm and the other finds herself ostracized in the aftermath. It’s also the story of Anette Pedersen, a servant girl whose miraculous survival serves as a turning point in her life and touches the heart of Gavin Woodson, a newspaperman seeking redemption. It was Woodson and others like him who wrote the embellished news stories that lured northern European immigrants across the sea to settle a pitiless land. Boosters needed them to settle territories into states, and they didn’t care what lies they told these families to get them there—or whose land it originally was. At its heart, this is a story of courage, of children forced to grow up too soon, tied to the land because of their parents’ choices. It is a story of love taking root in the hard prairie ground, and of families being torn asunder by a ferocious storm that is little remembered today—because so many of its victims were immigrants to this country.

The Children's Blizzard

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Kurt Vonnegut

“A funny, savage appraisal of a totally automated American society of the future.”—San Francisco Chronicle Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul’s rebellion is vintage Vonnegut—wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality. Praise for Player Piano “An exuberant, crackling style . . . Vonnegut is a black humorist, fantasist and satirist, a man disposed to deep and comic reflection on the human dilemma.”—Life “His black logic . . . gives us something to laugh about and much to fear.”—The New York Times Book Review

Player Piano

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Margaret Atwood

Name and date on first page after cover. See photo.

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The story of three women living in Toronto explores the paradox of woman as villain

The Robber Bride

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Charles De Lint

From one of the fantasy genre's greatest trailblazers, Waifs and Strays is a must-read. 

Charles de Lint's remarkable novels and shorter fiction are, in a very real sense, coming of age stories. Here, for the first time, is a collection of his stories for teen and adult readers alike. From the streets of his famed Newford to the alleys of Bordertown to the realms of Faerie, this is storytelling that will transfix and delight, with characters who will linger in the mind, many of them from his novels. Featuring an illuminating preface by acclaimed author, anthologist, and critic Terri Windling, Waifs and Strays is a must-own for de Lint fans, and an ideal introduction to his work for newcomers.

Waifs and Strays

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Azar Nafisi

A Memoir in Books

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense. Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice. Praise for Reading Lolita in Tehran “Anyone who has ever belonged to a book group must read this book. Azar Nafisi takes us into the vivid lives of eight women who must meet in secret to explore the forbidden fiction of the West. It is at once a celebration of the power of the novel and a cry of outrage at the reality in which these women are trapped. The ayatollahs don’ t know it, but Nafisi is one of the heroes of the Islamic Republic.”—Geraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts of Desire

Reading Lolita in Tehran

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Charles. Dickens

First published serially in 1840-41 in Dickens' own magazine, Master Humphrey's Clock, and in book form in 1841, The Old Curiosity Shop was an immediate popular success. The heart-wrenching story of Little Nell and her doting grandfather offered a rich amalgam of misery and malice, goodness and generosity, love and loyalty -- all with a pervading veneer of sentimentality that greatly appealed to Victorian readers.
As the story opens up, Nell and her grandfather are living behind his curiosity shop, which brings in barely a pittance. To improve Nell's prospects, her grandfather gambles at night and is soon in debt to the evil dwarf Quilp. When Quilp takes over the shop, Nell and her aged guardian abandon their home and roam the countryside, where they meet up with a diverse and vivid collection of wandering entertainers and traveling shows, jovial innkeepers, clerics, schoolmasters, and sharp-eyed con men. Relentlessly pursued by the avaricious Quilp, the two struggle to survive in a hostile world that often turns a cold shoulder, but nevertheless also includes people who treat them with kindness and compassion.
The book has much to recommend it--it features a wonderfully picturesque cast of characters drawn with typical Dickensian flair, while the mean streets of Victorian London and the rustic charms of the English countryside are recreated in loving detail. Above all, the book offers a rich human drama of courage and perseverance in the face of adversity. Generations of readers have applauded Nell and the other plucky underdogs of the story as they oppose the vile and miserable actions of the evil and uncaring.

The Old Curiosity Shop

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Rachel Cohn

David Levithan

Although they have been friends and neighbors all their lives, straight Naomi and gay Ely find their relationship severely strained during their freshman year at New York University when Naomi starts dating Bruce. Reprint.

Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

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John Green

One month before graduating from his Central Florida high school, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, Q's neighbor and classmate, takes him on a midnight adventure and then mysteriously disappears. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Reprint.

Paper Towns

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A chilling look at the near future presents the story of Offred, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, once the United States, an oppressive world where women are no longer allowed to read and are valued only as long as they are viable for reproduction. Reissue.

The Handmaid's Tale

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Gabriel García Márquez

Tells the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town

One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Walt. Whitman

Harold Bloom

The First (1855) Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

A deluxe edition of Whitman's crowning achievement, with an introductory essay by Harold Bloom

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.


When Walt Whitman self-published his Leaves of Grass in July 1855, he altered the course of literary history. One of the greatest masterpieces of American literature, it redefined the rules of poetry while describing the soul of the American character. Throughout his great career, Whitman continuously revised, expanded, and republished Leaves of Grass, but as Harold Bloom reminds us, the book that matters most is the 1855 original. In celebration of the poem's 150th anniversary, Penguin Classics proudly presents the 1855 text in its original and complete form, with a specially commissioned introductory essay by Harold Bloom. 

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 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.



Leaves of Grass

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Cheryl Strayed

From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

A powerful, blazingly honest, inspiring memoir: the story of a 1,100 mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe--and built her back up again.

Wild

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G. K. Chesterton

A sense of impending evil hovers over a cathedral town, where one man, an outwardly respectable opium addict, is consumed with jealousy over the engagement of his nephew, Edwin Drood, to a lovely young lady. So enraged is he, that he even plots the younger man's murder. But Drood's sudden disappearance halts further scheming and leaves only one big mystery. What happened to Edwin Drood? And what became of his body?
Unfinished at the time of his death, Charles Dickens's intriguing story has become all the more tantalizing for its lack of an ending, leaving a grim puzzle that avid readers, over the years, have tried to solve. A gem for lovers of murder mysteries and the legions of Dickens fans, The Mystery of Edwin Drood remains a gripping and haunting masterpiece.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

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Gillen D'Arcy Wood

Barnes and Noble Classic. Introduction and noes by Gillen D'Arcy Wood. 

"A tale of two cities was published both serially and in volume form in 1859. The present text is the first volume edition"--T.p. verso.

Browse by categories

Sarah Kendzior

They Knew

Sinclair Lewis; Michael Meyer; Gary Scharnhorst

It Can't Happen Here

Susan Quinn

Furious Improvisation

Alice McDermott

Someone

Lisa Jewell

The Night She Disappeared

Anne Sebba

American Jennie

Garrison Keillor

Lake Wobegon Summer 1956

Amy Tan

The Bonesetter's Daughter

Walter Isaacson

Benjamin Franklin

Jon Meacham

Franklin and Winston

Melanie Benjamin

The Children's Blizzard

Kurt Vonnegut

Player Piano

Margaret Atwood

The Robber Bride

Charles De Lint

Waifs and Strays

Azar Nafisi

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Charles. Dickens

The Old Curiosity Shop

Rachel Cohn; David Levithan

Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

John Green

Paper Towns

Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale

Gabriel García Márquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Walt. Whitman; Harold Bloom

Leaves of Grass

Cheryl Strayed

Wild

Charles. Dickens; G. K. Chesterton

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Charles. Dickens; Gillen D'Arcy Wood

A Tale of Two Cities

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