Nora Ephron

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Minnesota

And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

A collection of essays offers a humorous look at the ups and downs of being a woman of a certain age, discussing the tribulations of maintenance and trying to stop the clock, menopause, and empty nests.

I Feel Bad about My Neck

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First edition. Knopf / Borzoi Books, 2010. 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

And Other Reflections

In a hilarious collection of personal essays, the best-selling author of I Feel Bad About My Neck discusses her career in journalism, divorce, a long-anticipated inheritance with unanticipated results, the evolution of her relationship with her e-mail in-box and more. 500,000 first printing.

FIRST EDITION I Remember Nothing

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Lucy Jackson

Minor curling to front cover. See photos for details. 

Kathryn "Lazy" Hoffman is the headmistress of the Griffin School, in the midst of an affair she almost can't remember why she started - her marriage, after all, is a good one. Lazy ministers to students, but her cross to bear is the parents: from the imperious head of the board of trustees to the more average thorns who just can't understand why their little darlings aren't fast-tracked to Harvard.There is one student who is clearly on his way to Cambridge: Michael Avery, smart and driven, but so troubled it's hard for him to get through life as a senior in high school. That drill includes his girlfriend Julianne Coopersmith, a sweetly compassionate child of divorce who happily wears hand-me-down designer clothes from her best friend, and adores Michael even in the face of his neediness and meltdowns. After all, she's all he has - he certainly doesn't have his mother, Susan, who finds it easier to love her Chinese Crested Hairless than her own brilliant and tortured son.Fast-paced, gently satirical, yet deeply felt, Posh is a surprisingly poignant and knowing novel distinguished by its spare and elegant prose.

Posh

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Leslie T. Chang

From Village to City in a Changing China

An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China.

China has 130 million migrant workers--the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China's Pearl River Delta.

As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life--a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family's migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation.

A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America's shores remade our own country a century ago.

Factory Girls

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Laurie Colwin

When Sam Bax, that charming daredevil of a Boston lawyer, sails his boat into a storm off the coast of Maine, Elizabeth "Olly" Bax, his wife and ardent sidekick, becomes a widow at the edge of seventy-seven. With no pretense of "courage", Olly grieves, coping with the warmth and awkwardness of family ties and trying to rethink her own life. Realizing that her risks are as daring as any of Sam's -- while he chanced life and limb, Olly risks her heart -- she finds that love can take some surprising turns. Laurie Colwin depics Olly's recovery with humor, compassion, and a decided lack of sentimentally, creating a real heroine who remains true to her heart and still manages to keep her head.

Shine on, Bright and Dangerous Object

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Stories

"Laurie Colwin was the best kind of master: human and humorous, full of wisdom and love." --Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of All Adults Here

In these fourteen tales, Laurie Colwin explores love and marriage, friendship and loyalty, and obligation and desire with the compassion and wit that earned her the devotion of legions of readers. 

When Passion and Affect was first published in 1974, Colwin was anointed as a young writer to watch. Now, a new generation has the opportunity to encounter some of the most charmingly complicated and beautifully drawn characters in modern fiction: a music critic whose orderly life is threatened by her flirtation with a married cartographer; an ornithologist perplexed by human mating rituals despite his expertise in the natural world; and two young men, best friends and cousins, whose relationship is disrupted by the sudden arrival of Misty Berkowitz in their lives.

Passion and Affect is a dazzling must-have collection from "a wise, big hearted writer. A deft and funny one, too." (Washington Post)

Passion and Affect

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Yaa Gyasi

First edition, first printing. Knopf, 2016. Minor shelf wear to dust jacket edges. See photos for details. 

A Novel

"Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle's women's dungeon, and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, where she will be sold into slavery. Stretching from the tribal wars of Ghana to slavery and Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the north to the Great Migration to the streets of 20th century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi's has written a modern masterpiece, a novel that moves through histories and geographies and--with outstanding economy and force--captures the troubled spirit of our own nation"--

FIRST EDITION Homegoing

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Maureen Howard

Vintage. Penguin Books, 1987. (Original publication 1986.) Good vintage condition. Color fading to page edges and minor shelf wear. See photos for details. 

Expensive Habits

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Bethany C. Morrow

First edition, first printing. Dutton, 2022. 

Named A Most Aniticipated Book of 2022 by *Medium* CrimeReads* Tor Nightfire* Bookshop* Book Talk* BiblioLifestyle* and more! From bestselling author Bethany C. Morrow comes a new adult social horror novel in the vein of Get Out meets My Sister, the Serial Killer, about Farrah, a young, calculating Black girl who manipulates her way into the lives of her Black best friend’s white, wealthy, adoptive family but soon suspects she may not be the only one with ulterior motives. . . . Seventeen-year-old Farrah Turner is one of two Black girls in her country club community, and the only one with Black parents. Her best friend, Cherish Whitman, adopted by a white, wealthy family, is something Farrah likes to call WGS—White Girl Spoiled. With Brianne and Jerry Whitman as parents, Cherish is given the kind of adoration and coddling that even upper-class Black parents can’t seem to afford—and it creates a dissonance in her best friend that Farrah can exploit. When her own family is unexpectedly confronted with foreclosure, the calculating Farrah is determined to reassert the control she’s convinced she’s always had over her life by staying with Cherish, the only person she loves—even when she hates her. As troubled Farrah manipulates her way further into the Whitman family, the longer she stays, the more her own parents suggest that something is wrong in the Whitman house. She might trust them—if they didn’t think something was wrong with Farrah, too. When strange things start happening at the Whitman household—debilitating illnesses, upsetting fever dreams, an inexplicable tension with Cherish’s hotheaded boyfriend, and a mysterious journal that seems to keep track of what is happening to Farrah—it’s nothing she can’t handle. But soon everything begins to unravel when the Whitmans invite Farrah closer, and it’s anyone’s guess who is really in control. Told in Farrah’s chilling, unforgettable voice and weaving in searing commentary on race and class, this slow-burn social horror will keep you on the edge of your seat until the last page.

Cherish Farrah

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Nuala O'Connor

A Love Story of Nora and James Joyce

Acclaimed Irish novelist Nuala O'Connor's bold reimagining of the life of James Joyce's wife, muse, and the model for Molly Bloom in Ulysses is a "lively and loving paean to the indomitable Nora Barnacle" (Edna O'Brien). Dublin, 1904. Nora Joseph Barnacle is a twenty-year-old from Galway who left school at twelve, is a chambermaid at Finn's Hotel, and has all but given up on a happy ending. But on June 16--Bloomsday--her life is changed when she meets James Joyce, a fateful encounter that turns into a lifelong love. Despite his hesitation to marry, Nora follows him in pursuit of a life beyond Ireland, and they surround themselves with a buoyant group of friends that grows to include Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim, and Sylvia Beach. But as their life unfolds, Nora finds herself in conflict between their intense desire for each other and the constant anxiety of living in poverty throughout Europe. She desperately wants literary success for Jim, believing in his singular gift and knowing that he thrives on being the toast of the town, and it eventually provides her with a security long lacking in her life and his work. So even when Jim writes, drinks, and gambles his way to literary acclaim, Nora provides unflinching support and inspiration, but at a cost to her own happiness and that of their children. With gorgeous and emotionally resonant prose, Nora is a heartfelt portrayal of love, ambition, and the quiet power of an ordinary woman who was, in fact, extraordinary.

Nora

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Francesca Segal

First edition, first printing. Riverhead Books, 2017. 

A wry, tender novel about an ordinary family facing extraordinary choices. Julia Alden has fallen deeply, unexpectedly in love. American obstetrician James is everything she didn't know she wanted--if only her teenage daughter, Gwen, didn't hate him so much. Uniting two households is never easy, but when Gwen turns for comfort to James's seventeen-year-old son, Nathan, the consequences will test her mother's loyalty and threaten all their fragile new happiness. This is a moving and powerful novel about the modern family: about starting over; about love, guilt, and generosity; about building something beautiful amid the mess and complexity of what came before. It is a story about standing by the ones we love, even while they make mistakes. We would give anything to make our children happy. But how much should they ask?

FIRST EDITION The Awkward Age

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J. Courtney Sullivan

As three generations of Kelleher women descend on their family's Maine beach property one summer, each brings her own hopes and fears. By turns wickedly funny and achingly sad, this novel unveils sibling rivalry, alcoholism, social climbing, and Catholic guilt at the center of one family.

Maine

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Judy Blume

Two high school seniors believe their love to be so strong that it will last forever.

Forever ...

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Mary Gaitskill

Signed. First edition, Poseidon Press, 1991. Dust jacket wrapped in protective vellum (removable). Excellent vintage copy. See photos for details. 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Reissued to coincide with the paperback publication of "Because They Wanted To", this captivating novel shimmers with dark intensity and wicked wit. In a stunning synthesis of eroticism, rage, pathos, and humor, Gaitskill's "fine storyteller's pace and brilliant metaphors" ("The New York Times Book Review") create a haunting and unforgettable journey into the dark side of contemporary life and the deepest recesses of the soul. 336 pp. National print ads & publicity. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

SIGNED FIRST EDITION Two Girls, Fat and Thin

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Zoe Whittall

First edition, first printing. Ballantine Books, 2021. 

Three generations of women strive for real freedom in this startling, provocative novel exploring sexuality, gender, and maternal ambivalence, from the acclaimed author of The Best Kind of People. "Whittall addresses motherhood and autonomy in ways I've never seen done before. A fascinating stunner of a novel, The Spectacular is exactly that: spectacular!"--Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth It's 1997 and Missy is a cellist in an indie rock band on tour across America. At twentytwo years old, she gets on stage every night and plays the song about her absent mother that made the band famous. As the only girl in the band, she's determined to party just as hard as everyone else, loving and leaving a guy in every town. But then she meets a tomboy drummer who is hard to forget, and a forgotten flap of cocaine strands her at the border. Fortysomething Carola is just surfacing from a sex scandal at the yoga center where she has been living when she sees her daughter, Missy, for the first time in ten years--on the cover of a music magazine. Ruth is eighty-three and planning her return to the Turkish seaside village where she spent her childhood. But when her granddaughter, Missy, winds up crashing at her house, she decides it's time that the strong and stubborn women in her family find a way to understand one another again. In this sharply observed novel, Zoe Whittall captures three very different women who each struggle to build an authentic life. Definitions of family, romance, gender, and love will radically change as they seek out lives that are nothing less than spectacular.

The Spectacular

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Siri Hustvedt

First edition, first printing. Henry Holt, 1996. Protective vellum on dust jacket (removable). 

The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

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Samantha Irby

Essays

"A Vintage Books original"--Copyright page.

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life

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Darcey Bell

A single mother's life is turned upside down when her best friend vanishes in this chilling debut thriller in the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train—now a major motion picture from Lionsgate starring Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, and Henry Golding, and directed by Paul Feig “Debut-novelist Darcey Bell ramps up suspense with authority in this domestic thriller, in which actions seem as inevitable as they are chilling. The audience that made Gone Girl a publishing sensation is likely to take to this one, too.”—Booklist (starred review) It starts with a simple favor—an ordinary kindness mothers do for one another. When glamorous Emily asks Stephanie to pick up her son after school, Stephanie happily says yes. Emily has a life that would make any woman jealous. She is the perfect mother with a dazzling career working for a famous fashion designer in Manhattan. Stephanie, a widow with a son in kindergarten, lonely in their Connecticut suburb, turns to her daily blog for connection and validation. Stephanie imagines Emily to be her new confidante and is shocked when Emily suddenly disappears without a trace, leaving her son and husband with no warning. Stephanie knows something is terribly wrong. Unable to keep away from the grieving family, she soon finds herself entangled with Sean, Emily’s handsome, reticent British husband. But she can’t ignore the nagging feeling that he’s not being honest with her about Emily’s disappearance. Is Stephanie imagining things? How well did she really know her “best” friend? Stephanie begins to see that nothing—not friendship, love, or even an ordinary favor—is as simple as it seems. A Simple Favor exposes the dark underbelly of female friendship in this taut, unsettling, and completely absorbing story that holds you in its grip until the final page.

A Simple Favor 

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Avon edition, 1972. Vintage wear including chips to cover edges and sun fading to page edges. Tight binding and clean pages. 

The Awakening

Edan Lepucki

Signed. Hardcover, first edition, third printing. 

"In her arresting debut novel, Edan Lepucki conjures a lush, intricate, deeply disturbing vision of the future, then masterfully exploits its dramatic possibilities." ---Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. Mourning a past they can't reclaim, they seek solace in each other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant. Terrified of the unknown and unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses dangers of its own. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust. A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent, California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind's dark nature and deep-seated resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.

SIGNED First Edition California

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Selma Blair

First edition. Bumping to dust jacket (see photos). 

A Memoir of Growing Up

Selma Blair has played many roles: Ingenue in Cruel Intentions. Preppy ice queen in Legally Blonde. Muse to Karl Lagerfeld. Advocate for the multiple sclerosis community. But before all of that, Selma was known best as ... a mean baby. In a memoir that is as wildly funny as it is emotionally shattering, Blair tells the captivating story of growing up and finding her truth.             
 
"Blair is a rebel, an artist, and it turns out: a writer." --Glennon Doyle, Author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller Untamed and Founder of Together Rising

The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. With her mouth pulled in a perpetual snarl and a head so furry it had to be rubbed to make way for her forehead, Selma spent years living up to her terrible reputation: biting her sisters, lying spontaneously, getting drunk from Passover wine at the age of seven, and behaving dramatically so that she would be the center of attention.
 
Although Selma went on to become a celebrated Hollywood actress and model, she could never quite shake the periods of darkness that overtook her, the certainty that there was a great mystery at the heart of her life. She often felt like her arms might be on fire, a sensation not unlike electric shocks, and she secretly drank to escape.
 
Over the course of this beautiful and, at times, devasting memoir, Selma lays bare her addiction to alcohol, her devotion to her brilliant and complicated mother, and the moments she flirted with death. There is brutal violence, passionate love, true friendship, the gift of motherhood, and, finally, the surprising salvation of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis.
 
In a voice that is powerfully original, fiercely intelligent, and full of hard-won wisdom, Selma Blair's Mean Baby is a deeply human memoir and a true literary achievement. 

Mean Baby

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N. K. Jemisin

"Five New Yorkers must come together in order to save their city from destruction in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six. When a young man crosses the bridge into New York City, something changes. He doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can feel the pulse of the city, can see its history, can access its magic. And he's not the only one. All across the boroughs, strange things are happening. Something is threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars unless they can come together and stop it once and for all"--

The City We Became

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Stephanie McNeal

Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers

An unfiltered, colorful romp through the IRL world of influencers that spills the tea on the multibillion-dollar industry of content creation. If you’re anything like journalist Stephanie McNeal—aka, a millennial woman—you spend hours every day indulging in Instagram’s infinite scroll. The influencers on the platform aren’t just providing eye candy; these tastemakers impact how we cook, consume, parent, decorate, think, and live. But what exactly is going on behind the curtain of the perfectly curated Instagram grids we obsess over the most? Through intimate, funny, and vulnerable reporting, McNeal takes us through the looking glass and into the secretive real world of three major influencers: fashion and lifestyle juggernaut Caitlin Covington of Southern Curls & Pearls, runner and advocate Mirna Valerio, and OG “mommy blogger” Shannon Bird. Swipe Up For More! is based on three years of unprecedented, fly-on-the-wall access that offers a rare glimpse into how these influencers build their empires, struggle with the haters and snarkers, fight for creative control from the tech platforms that enable their businesses, parent in public, and try to look good while doing it. Along the way, McNeal answers burning questions, like: Why are there so many Mormon mommy influencers? What is it like to work for a popular influencer? What do they do with all the free swag? How do brand partnerships work? And how much money do they really make? Irresistible, juicy, and voyeuristic, Swipe Up For More! reveals all about the women some love to hate (and many actually, secretly, genuinely love).

Swipe up for More!

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Elissa R. Sloan

In vein of Daisy Jones & The Six and Everything I Never Told You, this debut novel probes the dark side of fame after a former pop star ends her own life. Cassidy Holmes isn't just a celebrity. She is "Sassy Gloss," the fourth member of the hottest pop group America has ever seen. Before Britney stunned everyone with "Toxic," before Christina went dirrty, Gloss was the pop act that everyone idolized. Fans couldn't get enough of them, their music, and the drama that followed them like moths to a flame--until the group's sudden implosion in 2002. And at the center of it all was Sassy Cassy, the Texan with a signature smirk that had everyone falling for her. But now she's dead. Suicide. The world is reeling from this unexpected news, but no one is more shocked than the three remaining bandmates. Fifteen years ago, Rose, Merry, and Yumi had been the closest to Cassidy, and this loss is hitting them hard. Before the group split, they each had a special bond with Cassidy--truths they told, secrets they shared. After years apart, each is wondering: what could they have done? Told in multiple perspectives--including Cassidy herself--and different timelines, this is a behind-the-scenes look into the rise and fall of a pop icon, and a penetrating examination of the dark side of celebrity and the industry that profits from it.

Browse by categories

Nora Ephron

I Feel Bad about My Neck

Nora Ephron

FIRST EDITION I Remember Nothing

Lucy Jackson

Posh

Leslie T. Chang

Factory Girls

Laurie Colwin

Shine on, Bright and Dangerous Object

Laurie Colwin

Passion and Affect

Yaa Gyasi

FIRST EDITION Homegoing

Maureen Howard

Expensive Habits

Bethany C. Morrow

Cherish Farrah

Nuala O'Connor

Nora

Francesca Segal

FIRST EDITION The Awkward Age

J. Courtney Sullivan

Maine

Judy Blume

Forever ...

Mary Gaitskill

SIGNED FIRST EDITION Two Girls, Fat and Thin

Zoe Whittall

The Spectacular

Siri Hustvedt

The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

Samantha Irby

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life

Darcey Bell

A Simple Favor

Kate Chopin

The Awakening

Edan Lepucki

SIGNED First Edition California

Selma Blair

Mean Baby

N. K. Jemisin

The City We Became

Stephanie McNeal

Swipe up for More!

Elissa R. Sloan

The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes

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