Grady Hendrix

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Georgia

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

VOTED GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD BEST HORROR NOVEL OF 2021

A Good Morning America Buzz Pick

"The horror master...puts his unique spin on slasher movie tropes."-USA Today

A can't-miss summer read, selected by The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Time, USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, CNN, LitHub, BookRiot, Bustle, Popsugar and the New York Public Library

In horror movies, the final girls are the ones left standing when the credits roll. They made it through the worst night of their lives...but what happens after?

Like his bestselling novel The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix's latest is a fast-paced, frightening, and wickedly humorous thriller. From chain saws to summer camp slayers, The Final Girl Support Group pays tribute to and slyly subverts our most popular horror films--movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream.

Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she's been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized--someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece.
 
But the thing about final girls is that no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.

The Final Girl Support Group

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R. H. Herron

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Novel

Named an exciting new release by CrimeReads, BookRiot, Fresh Fiction, and The Tempest From the author of Stolen Things comes a twisty thriller that asks how tightly we are bound to our pasts, how much we can trust those around us, and how far a mother will go to protect her child. Jillian Marsh is a survivor. She escaped her toxic upbringing at the hands of her religious zealot mother as a teenager, and after hitting rock bottom due to alcoholism in her twenties, she not only got sober, she built a successful marriage and medical career, even if she wasn’t able to make amends for all the mistakes she made during her drinking days. But nearly a decade later, things are once again going downhill for Jillian. Her wife, Rochelle, has left her while Jillian is pregnant with Rochelle’s biological child, and she feels constantly unsettled in her now-empty house—items missing from their usual place, burning candles she can’t remember lighting, the screen from her bedroom window removed. Even her mommies-to-be group isn’t the solace it once was. Bree, Camille, Maggie, and Jillian vowed to not only support one another in motherhood but in their sobriety, careers, and maintaining their independence after their babies are born . . . a sisterhood that begins to unravel when the secrets between the women come unwillingly to light. As things in Jillian’s home begin to escalate, she’s forced to ask herself: Is one of her supposed friends not as trustworthy as she seems? Could Rochelle be gaslighting her in order to claim full custody of their daughter? Or, worst of all—is Jillian turning into her own mother, and imagining all of it in some sort of subconscious sabotage against her unborn child? When the missing items turn into unambiguous threats, and as the circle of those she can trust continues to dwindle, Jillian knows only one thing for sure: she will do anything to protect her baby.

Hush Little Baby

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Clay Chapman

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Lauren’s Loved Books

“What Kind of Mother mixes Southern Gothic, a missing child story, and body horror into an entertaining brew sure to inform your nightmares.”—Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts After striking out on her own as a teen mom, Madi Price is forced to return to her hometown of Brandywine, Virginia, with her seventeen-year-old daughter. With nothing to her name, she scrapes together a living as a palm reader at the local farmers market. It’s there that she connects with old high school flame Henry McCabe, now a reclusive local fisherman whose infant son, Skyler, went missing five years ago. Everyone in town is sure Skyler is dead, but when Madi reads Henry’s palm, she’s haunted by strange and disturbing visions that suggest otherwise. As she follows the thread of these visions, Madi discovers a terrifying nightmare waiting at the center of the labyrinth—and it’s coming for everyone she holds dear. Combining supernatural horror with domestic suspense into a visceral exploration of parental grief, What Kind of Mother cements Clay McLeod Chapman's reputation as a “star” (Vulture) and “the twenty-first century’s Richard Matheson” (Richard Chizmar, Chasing the Boogeyman.)

What Kind of Mother

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Jeffrey Siger

Welcome to the island where people never die

When Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis's longtime assistant, Maggie, returns to her ancestral home on Ikaria for her 104-year-old grandmother's funeral, she quickly realizes not only was Yiayia likely murdered, but that a series of other long-lived Ikariots had recently died under the same suspicious circumstances. Back in Athens, Andreas and his chief detective Yianni pursue a smuggling and protection ring embedded in the Greek DEA, and its possible involvement in the assassination of an undercover cop.

But then Maggie and Yianni uncover a connection between their respective leads in the elder-killings on Ikaria and the DEA corruption case, and they realize that there are international intrigues far more dangerous at play than anyone had imagined.

One Last Chance

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Jennifer Egan

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction The daring and magnificent novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Esquire, Vogue, The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA TODAY, and Time Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men. ‎Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished. “A magnificent achievement, at once a suspenseful noir intrigue and a transporting work of lyrical beauty and emotional heft” (The Boston Globe), “Egan’s first foray into historical fiction makes you forget you’re reading historical fiction at all” (Elle). Manhattan Beach takes us into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men in a dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.

Manhattan Beach

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Erika Krouse

The Story of a Private Investigation

Part memoir and part literary true crime, the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female private investigator who helped crack it open. Erika Krouse has one of those faces. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she’s doing. Then a lawyer named Grayson assigns her to investigate a sexual assault, a college student who was attacked by football players and recruits at a party a year earlier. Erika knows she should turn the assignment down. Her own history with sexual violence makes it all too personal. But she takes the job anyway, inspired by Grayson’s conviction that he could help change things forever. And maybe she could, too. Over the next five years, Erika learns everything she can about P. I. technique, tracking down witnesses and investigating a culture of sexual assault and harassment ingrained in the university’s football program. But as the investigation grows into a national scandal and a historic civil rights case, Erika finds herself increasingly consumed. When the case and her life both implode at the same time, Erika must figure out how to help win the case without losing herself.

Tell Me Everything

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Alex Marwood

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

"A stunning, genre-defying novel, poetic, immersive, and as dazzling as the Mediterranean sun even as it pulls the reader through the darkest corridors of human behavior. I was totally mesmerized. . . . Alex Marwood is in a class of her own."--Lisa Jewell "A stiletto of a novel: heart stopping and devastating."--Jenny Colgan Sun-drenched glamour and obscene wealth hide evil secrets in this ripped-from-the-headlines thriller about money, corruption, power and lost innocence from "one of crime fiction's brightest stars" (Megan Abbott), the Edgar and Macavity Award-winning author of The Wicked Girls and The Killer Next Door. It's paradise for the super-rich, but hell for the girls whose lives they've stolen 1985 To twelve-year-old Mercedes, La Kastellana is home, an island with deep-rooted traditions untouched by the modern world. But this secluded paradise is upended with the arrival of multimillionaire Matthew Meade and his pampered young daughter, Tatiana. While the Meades lavishly spread unimaginable wealth around La Kastellana, the price Mercedes and the rest of the islanders will pay is more than they could ever have imagined. 2016 Robin has been desperately searching for her seventeen-year-old daughter Gemma, who's been missing for more than a year. Finding herself on La Kastellana, an island playground for the international jet set, Robin quickly realizes she's out of her depth. No one is willing to help and Robin fears she's running out of time to find her child. But someone has been watching, silently waiting for the moment to expose the dark truth of what really happens on the island of lost girls.

The Island of Lost Girls

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Colleen Cambridge

As head of household for none other than Agatha Christie, Phyllida Bright finds her position includes polishing silver, serving luncheons...and drawing inspiration from the crime author's fictional detectives when mysterious deaths at Mallowan Hall baffle her famous employer...

Tucked away among Devon's rolling green hills, Mallowan Hall combines the best of English tradition with the modern conveniences of 1930. Housekeeper Phyllida Bright manages the large household with an iron fist in her very elegant glove. In one respect, however, Mallowan Hall stands far apart from other picturesque country houses. For the manor is home to archaeologist Max Mallowan and his famous wife-Agatha Christie...

Phyllida is both loyal to and protective of the crime writer, who is as much friend as employer. An aficionado of detective fiction, Phyllida has yet to find a gentleman in real life half as fascinating as Mrs. Agatha's Belgian hero, Hercule Poirot. But though accustomed to murder and its methods as frequent topics of conversation, Phyllida is unprepared for the sight of a very real, very dead body on the library floor...

It soon becomes clear that the victim arrived at Mallowan Hall under false pretenses during a weekend party. And when another dead body is discovered-this time, one of her housemaids-Phyllida decides to follow in M. Poirot's footsteps to determine which of the Mallowans' guests is the killer. Now only Phyllida's wits will prevent her own story from coming to an abrupt end...

Murder at Mallowan Hall

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Genevieve Wheeler

"Adelaide is a beautifully-written, deeply-felt exploration of what it means to love and be loved... A remarkable debut."-- Jill Santopolo, New York Times bestselling author of The Light We Lost

A modern, yet timeless love story from a fresh new voice in fiction.

Adelaide Williams is a 20-something American, living in dreamy London. With wonderful friends and fierce ambitions, Adelaide has little interest in finding "The One" right now, but when she meets Rory Hughes on a dating app--a charming Englishman who's been placed there by fate, she swears--that all changes. All of a sudden, Adelaide finds herself completely in love.

Does he respond to texts? Honor his commitments? Make advanced plans? Sometimes, rarely, and no, not at all. But Adelaide is convinced that if she just tries and fights and loves a little harder, he'll fall for her as deeply as she's fallen for him. (He has to... right?) Because it's clear to Adelaide that their fate was written in the stars. Why else would they have attended that same play last fall, or that Yankees game in 2016? Their paths never crossing until just the right moment.

Their relationship is made all the more complicated when Rory is thrust into a season of unexpected mourning, and soon Adelaide--the ever-supportive Adelaide--begins to fall apart herself, while striving to hold him together.

A millennial love story, Genevieve Wheeler's Adelaide explores the complexities of grief, the power of friendship, and the nuance of mental health. With unflinching honesty, and zany warmth, this raw, vulnerable novel captures the timeless nature of what it's like to be young and in love--with your friends, with your city, and with a person who cannot, will not, love you back.

Adelaide

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Julia Navarro

An illustrious sociopath recounts a lifetime of depravity in internationally bestselling author Julia Navarro's provocative, playful take on the most timeless and ruthless game of all- the game of power.

I'm scum. Yes, I always have been.... I know what I did, and what I should have done.

Thomas Spencer is a man who knows how to get what he wants, though his poor health and aging looks are the price he's had to pay. He wears these features proudly, like scars from the battles that propelled him to the top in his glamorous career as a publicist and media maven. But lately, after several cardiac episodes, he senses that his time in the sun is dwindling. In the solitude of his luxurious Brooklyn apartment, he begins to look back on the convoluted trajectory his life has taken. What follows is a spellbinding psychological narrative that takes us through the world of international media and politics from the 1990s to the present, brilliantly probing the workings of a complex, destructive personality whose greatest satisfaction is to shatter the happiness of others. As shameless as it is electrifying, Story of a Scoundrel illuminates the true nature of power through the mind of a master psychological manipulator.

Story of a Sociopath

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Queen of Thieves

Celeste Ng

The Reese's Book Club October Pick!

From the #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, comes one of the most highly anticipated books of the year - the inspiring new novel about a mother's unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.
 
"It's impossible not to be moved." --Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review
 
"Riveting, tender, and timely." --People, Book of the Week

"Thought-provoking, heart-wrenching...I was so invested in the future of this mother and son, and I can't wait to hear what you think of this deeply suspenseful story!" - Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club October '22 Pick)

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve "American culture" in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic--including the work of Bird's mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.
 
Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn't know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn't wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
 
Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It's a story about the power--and limitations--of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.

Our Missing Hearts

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Emma Törzs

"Follow where this novel leads and you will be lost in a bewitching spell, a book of magic about books of magic . . . extraordinary." - MARLON JAMES

"If, like me, you're a fan of Holly Black and Leigh Bardugo, pick up this book at once." -- KELLY LINK 

In this spellbinding debut novel, two estranged half-sisters tasked with guarding their family's library of magical books must work together to unravel a deadly secret at the heart of their collection--a tale of familial loyalty and betrayal, and the pursuit of magic and power.

For generations, the Kalotay family has guarded a collection of ancient and rare books. Books that let a person walk through walls or manipulate the elements--books of magic that half-sisters Joanna and Esther have been raised to revere and protect.

All magic comes with a price, though, and for years the sisters have been separated. Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica to escape the fate that killed her own mother, and Joanna's isolated herself in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to the study of these cherished volumes. But after their father dies suddenly while reading a book Joanna has never seen before, the sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy. In the process, they'll uncover a world of magic far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined, and all the secrets their parents kept hidden; secrets that span centuries, continents, and even other libraries . . .

In the great tradition of Ninth House, The Magicians, and Practical Magic, this is a suspenseful and richly atmospheric novel that draws readers into a vast world filled with mystery and magic, romance, and intrigue--and marks the debut of an extraordinary new voice in speculative fiction.

"Ink Blood Sister Scribe is so many things at once: an adventure, a puzzle, a twisty thriller, and a tender romance. . . . I adored it." - ALIX E. HARROW

Ink Blood Sister Scribe

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Mary Kay Andrews

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

The New York Times bestselling author and Queen of the Beach Reads delivers her next page-turner for the summer. Letty Carnahan is in trouble. She’s on the run from New York City; she has her four-year-old niece, Maya in tow, and her sister was found dead in the entry hall of her glamorous townhome. Letty believes she knows who did it: her sister’s awful, money-grubbing ex-husband, Eli Wingfield. Letty can't forget her sister Tara's insistence: "if anything bad ever happens to me--It's Eli. Promise me you'll take Maya and run. Promise me." But run where? The only clue Tara has left behind is a faded magazine story about a sleepy mom-and-pop motel on Florida's Gulf Coast. Certain that the police and Tara's ex are hot on her trail, Letty leaves her own life behind without a backwards glance, knowing she will somehow get justice for Tara, and sets out for her destination--The Murmuring Surf. The Surf, as regulars call it, is the winter home of a close-knit but quarrelsome group of retirees and snowbirds who regard this newcomer and her adorable niece with suspicion and more than a little curiosity. There's a No Vacancy sign swinging from the neon motel marquee, but the motel's longtime owner Ava DeCurtis takes Letty in, offers her a room and eventually a job, much to the disapproval of Ava's cynical son Joe, a local police detective whose every instinct tells him that Letty is a dangerous fugitive, possibly even a kidnapper and murderer. As Letty tries to settle into her new life and help heal Maya's trauma, she's preoccupied as her late sister's troubled past and connection to the motel are revealed, all while trying to deal with the attractive detective's unwelcome advances. Is Joe a would-be suitor? Or a cop determined to betray her confidence and put her behind bars?

The Newcomer

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Jillian Medoff

"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

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Anthony Horowitz

In New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz's ingenious fourth literary whodunit following The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death, and A Line to Kill, Horowitz becomes the prime suspect in a murder investigation--and only one man can prove his innocence: his newly estranged partner in solving crime, Detective Hawthorne.

"I'm sorry but the answer's no." Reluctant author, Anthony Horowitz, has had enough. He tells ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne that after three books he's splitting and their deal is over.

The truth is that Anthony has other things on his mind.

His new play, a thriller called Mindgame, is about to open at the Vaudeville Theater in London's West End. Not surprisingly, Hawthorne declines a ticket to the opening night.

The play is panned by the critics. In particular, Sunday Times critic Margaret Throsby gives it a savage review, focusing particularly on the writing. The next day, Throsby is stabbed in the heart with an ornamental dagger which turns out to belong to Anthony, and has his fingerprints all over it.

Anthony is arrested by an old enemy . . . Detective Inspector Cara Grunshaw. She still carries a grudge from her failure to solve the case described in the second Hawthorne adventure, The Sentence is Death, and blames Anthony. Now she's out for revenge.

Thrown into prison and fearing for both his personal future and his writing career, Anthony is the prime suspect in Throsby's murder and when a second theatre critic is found to have died in mysterious circumstances, the net closes in. Ever more desperate, he realizes that only one man can help him.

But will Hawthorne take the call?

The Twist of a Knife

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Omar El Akkad

-Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place---

American War

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Leigh McMullan Abramson

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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Emily Austin

A fast-paced, hilarious, and ultimately hopeful novel for anyone who has ever worried they might be a terrible person—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead. Enid is obsessed with space. She can tell you all about black holes and their ability to spaghettify you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps. When she’s not listening to her favorite true crime podcasts on a loop, she’s serially dating a rotation of women from dating apps. At the same time, she’s trying to forge a new relationship with her estranged half-sisters after the death of her absent father. When she unwittingly plunges into her first serious romantic entanglement, Enid starts to believe that someone is following her. As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her. Because at the end of the day there’s only one person she can’t outrun—herself. Brimming with quirky humor, charm, and heart, Interesting Facts about Space effortlessly shows us the power of revealing our secret shames, the most beautifully human parts of us all.

Interesting Facts about Space

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R. L. Stine

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Lost Girl; Can You Keep a Secret?

"Party Games "and "Don't Stay Up Late, "the first new Fear Street books in R.L. Stine's mega-bestselling series, together in one trade paperback edition.

Fear Street Super Thriller: Secrets

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Colson Whitehead

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEE * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. 

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. 

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either. 

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa--the "Waldorf of Harlem"--and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes. 

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs? 

Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. 

But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

Harlem Shuffle

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Susannah Cahalan

The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness

In 2009, 24-year-old Susannah Cahalan hovered on the precipice between life and death. Even as her doctors informed her family that she had incurable schizophrenia and would spend the rest of her short life in an institution, another doctor down the hall performed one final, informal test that, miraculously, delivered a lifesaving diagnosis: her disease was brought on by a physical problem and therefore treatable -- more "real," in other words, than the intangible problem of a purely mental illness. Susannah is the rare patient who has experienced both sides of this divide: the compassionate response to a treatable, physical diagnosis and the frightening realities of the label of insanity. Obsessed with that same dichotomy, psychiatrist David Rosenhan published a study in 1974 in the prestigious journal Science titled "On Being Sane in Insane Places." Eight people -- sane, normal, well-adjusted members of society -- checked themselves into mental institutions with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia forced to remain until they'd "proven" themselves sane. Rosenhan's watershed report, built on the data they collected, broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever. But the story doesn't end there: as Cahalan's explosive new research shows, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. The more we learn about the study, the more questions emerge about what really happened behind those closed doors. How far have we come in answering the question that David Rosenhan posed all those years ago: "If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them"?

The Great Pretender

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Elizabeth L. Silver

Inspired by history, a riveting novel of love and friendship, motherhood and ambition, and one woman’s fight to be a Supreme Court justice. Half of the United States is waiting for Justice Sylvia Olin Bernstein to die. The other half is praying for her to hold on. At 83, “the contemptuous S.O.B.” doesn’t have much time left. What she has is a story, one she has wrested from the grip of history to tell herself—of how she rose to her historic position on the Supreme Court, and the barriers she broke along the way. Told over fifty years, from losing her mother at a young age, to falling in love, to navigating an unplanned pregnancy and motherhood, to learning how to spar with a sexist mentor, Sylvia’s personal story reveals the intimate truth about who she was as she ascended to her modern throne: not just a brilliant mind, but a daughter, a best friend, a wife, mother, and advocate. While caught in a dramatic tug of war between the competing desires of success and family, truth and convenience, progress and patience, she will be given a chance to change the course of American history – and give voice, at last, to the majority. Set against the vibrant sweep of the 20th century, THE MAJORITY brings us into the sacrifices, heartaches, and complex emotional life of a powerful woman ahead of her time, whose life and work turn out to have supreme stakes.

The Majority

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Richard North Patterson

Trial confirms Richard North Patterson’s place as “our most important author of popular fiction.” “It is no overstatement to say that To Kill a Mockingbird for the 21st century has arrived. Trial grapples with the biggest issues of race and justice and does so in a meaningful and engrossing way, page after page. You cannot help being moved by this story and it illuminates the biggest issues we face in our nation today.” –James Stavridis, former supreme Allied Commander of NATO and New York Times bestselling novelist “For all its timely discussion, Trial is first and foremost a novel of irresistible suspense. This is a barnburner of a book whose huge drama, large characters, and elemental conflicts grab you from page one.” –Scott Turow, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent and Suspect “This is a portrait of the America I know. It is compelling, contemporary and thoughtfully researched truth telling. Trial might be fictional but it is real. Allie, Chase, Malcolm, Jabari and Janie are real people. I know them. Their experiences are real. I’ve lived them.” –Bruce Gordon, former CEO of the NAACP “For many years, my law practice representing Black men and women struggling for justice in a Jim Crow environment took me into the courthouse and among the people of the area depicted in this novel. As a Black native of Southwest Georgia and based on my professional experience, Richard North Patterson has done a commendable job of capturing the spirit of the place and its people.” –Judge Herbert E Phipps, retired, Georgia Court of Appeals “Richard North Patterson has written another excellent novel which rings with authenticity. He captures virtually all the racial subtleties I would expect from a Black author, and knocks the politics out of the park.” –Thelton Henderson, Judge, US District Court (Ret.), Former attorney US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Voting Section

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