Ann Brashares

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Illinois

Girls in Pants: the Third Summer of the Sisterhood

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When teenager Carmen and her three friends discover that a pair of worn jeans from a thrift shop provides an uncanny fit for all four of them, they decide to form a sisterhood, with the pants as the symbolic bond of friendship among them, and embark on asweet-sixteen summer.

The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

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During their first summer apart, four teenage girls, best friends since earliest childhood, stay in touch through a shared pair of secondhand jeans that magically adapts to each of their figures and affects their attitudes to their different summer experiences.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

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Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

A Novel

In Riven Rock, his most fully realized and compassionate novel to date, T.C. Boyle transforms two characters straight out of history into rich mythic creations whose tortured love and epic story is intimate enough to break our hearts. These unforgettable characters invite the reader's care as never before in a Boyle novel. With the scope of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Riven Rock uses real American subjects to come to terms with love and loss in the early years of our century. Boyle anchors his tale with the remarkable and courageous Katherine Dexter. Wed to Stanley McCormick - thirty-one-year-old son of the millionaire inventor of the Reaper, and a schizophrenic sexual maniac - Katherine struggles to cure him while he is locked up in his Santa Barbara mansion and forbidden the mere sight of a women - above all, his wife. Throughout her career as a scisntist ad suffragette, her faith never wavers: one day, one of the psychiatrists she finds for her husband will, she insists, return him to her, free of demons, a yearned-for lover. "Still America's most imaginative contemporary novelist" (Newsweek), Boyle weaves his hallmark virtuoso prose onto a recreation of America's age of innocence against a backdrop of wealth and privilege. And at the center of Riven Rock are its people, somehow bound together in thier deep sense of fidelity to each other.

Riven Rock

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"I wonder this: If you take a woman and push her to the edge, how will she behave?" The question is posed by Jean, a photographer, who arrives on Smuttynose Island, off the coast of New Hampshire, to research a century-old crime. As she immerses herself in the details of the case--an outburst of passion that resulted in the deaths of two women--Jean herself enters precarious emotional territory. The suspicion that her husband is having an affair burgeons into jealousy and distrust, and ultimately propels Jean to the verge of actions she had not known herself capable of--actions with horrific consequences. Everywhere hailed for its beauty and power, The Weight of Water takes us on an unforgettable journey through the furthest extremes of emotion.

The Weight of Water

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"A marriage is always two intersecting stories." This realization comes perhaps too late to the husband of Etna Bliss-a man whose obsession with his young wife begins at the moment of their first meeting, as he helps Etna and her companions escape from a fire in a hotel restaurant, and culminates in a marriage doomed by secrets and betrayal. Written with the intelligence and grace that are the hallmarks of Anita Shreve's bestselling novels, this gripping tale of desire, jealousy, and loss is peopled by unforgettable characters as real as the emotions that bring them together.

All He Ever Wanted

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From the last time Linda and Thomas meet, at a charmless hotel in a distant city, to the moment, thirty-five years earlier, when a chance encounter on a rocky beach binds them fatefully together, this hypnotically compelling novel unfolds a tale of intense passion, drama, and suspense. The Last Time They Met is a singularly ambitious and accomplished work by one of today's most widely celebrated novelists.

The Last Time They Met

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A novel set in a small town in Vermont in 1960 offers the story of lonely and vulnerable Marie Fermoyle, her three children, and a dangerous con man

Songs in Ordinary Time

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Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Deftly written and emotionally powerful, Drowning Ruth is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed. A mesmerizing and achingly beautiful debut. Winter, 1919. Amanda Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. Finding herself suddenly overwhelmed, she flees Milwaukee and retreats to her family's farm on Nagawaukee Lake, seeking comfort with her younger sister, Mathilda, and three-year-old niece, Ruth. But very soon, Amanda comes to see that her old home is no refuge--she has carried her troubles with her. On one terrible night almost a year later, Amanda loses nearly everything that is dearest to her when her sister mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice that covers the lake. When Mathilda's husband comes home from the war, wounded and troubled himself, he finds that Amanda has taken charge of Ruth and the farm, assuming her responsibility with a frightening intensity. Wry and guarded, Amanda tells the story of her family in careful doses, as anxious to hide from herself as from us the secrets of her own past and of that night. Ruth, haunted by her own memory of that fateful night, grows up under the watchful eye of her prickly and possessive aunt and gradually becomes aware of the odd events of her childhood. As she tells her own story with increasing clarity, she reveals the mounting toll that her aunt's secrets exact from her family and everyone around her, until the heartrending truth is uncovered. Guiding us through the lives of the Starkey women, Christina Schwarz's first novelshows her compassion and a unique understanding of the American landscape and the people who live on it.

Drowning Ruth

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Having followed her new husband to his native home in rustic Tuscany, Eliana distracts herself from her marital disappointments by caring for her asthmatic son and finds herself reevaluating her life when she meets a fellow art lover, American Ross Story. 450,000 first printing.

The Last Promise

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On some pages there are sentences underlined in pencil. 

Stories

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013

In these eight tales, Munro evokes the devastating power of old love suddenly recollected. She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia. And Munro shows us how one woman's romantic tale of capture and escape in the high Balkans may end up inspiring another woman who is fleeing a husband and lover in present-day Canada.

"Open Secrets is a book that dazzles with its faith in language and in life."--New York Times Book Review

Open Secrets

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A book club discuss the works of Jane Austen and experience their own affairs of the heart in this charming “tribute to Austen that manages to capture her spirit” (The Boston Globe). In California’s central valley, five women and one man join to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships. Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, despite two centuries of separation, unite two great writers of brilliant social comedy.

The Jane Austen Book Club

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Winner if the Pen/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award. 

Ruth, a young woman living in a rural Illinois town, looks back on the people who have shaped her life, including her runaway father, shrewish mother, and crazy husband

The Book of Ruth

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Annie’s People 2

"Annie Zook, the preacher's daughter, struggles to keep her promise to her father--to abandon her art for a full six months. Will Annie's intention to join the Amish church be derailed by the attention of a handsome Englisher?"--Provided by publisher.

The Englisher

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"The most convincing portrait I know of contemporary America . . . a great American novel."-- James Atlas, The Atlantic Monthly

A reissue of Russell Banks' classic novel about love and sex, racism and poverty, and the failures of the American dream, now with P.S. and as a Harper Perennial Modern Classic.

Russell Bank's searing tale of uprootedness, migration, and exploitation in contemporary America brings together two of the dominant realms of his fiction--New England and the Caribbean--skillfully braided into one taut narrative. Continental Drift is the story of a young blue-collar worker and family man who abandons his broken dreams in New Hampshire and the story of a young Haitian woman who, with her nephew and baby, flees the brutal injustice and poverty of her homeland.

Continental Drift

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There is a small sticker on the front cover.  

When a former colonel of the Iranian Air Force and his family purchase a small California home at auction, they are faced with a great conflict as the former owner and her police officer boyfriend fight to get it back at any cost.

House of Sand and Fog

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“In this unsentimental yet affecting novel, intertwined tales of Irish ans German immigrants to the U. S. vividly capture…the experience of immigrants-and our conflicted promise to them-even today.”-People Magazine

"Carter's warm and beautiful prose brings us love, tragedy, mystery and hope in a moving celebration of America and the people who have come to it."--Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of Lucky Us and Away For fans of The Nightingale and Brooklyn comes an exquisite and unforgettable novel about friendship, love, and redemption in a circle of immigrants who flee Europe for 1930s-era New York City. On the eve of World War II Egon Schneider--a gallant and successful Jewish doctor, son of two world-famous naturalists--escapes Germany to an uncertain future across the sea. Settling into the unfamiliar rhythms of upper Manhattan, he finds solace among a tight-knit group of fellow immigrants, tenacious men and women drawn together as much by their differences as by their memories of the world they left behind. They each suffer degradations and triumphs large and small: Egon's terminally acerbic lifelong friend, bestselling author Meyer Leavitt, now wears a sandwich board on a New York street corner; Catrina Harty, the headstrong daughter of a dirt-poor Irish trolley driver, survives heartbreak and loss to forge an unlikely alliance; and Egon himself is forced to abandon his thriving medical practice to become the "Cheese Man" at a Washington Heights grocery. But their spirits remain unbroken, and when their little community is faced with an existential threat, these strangers rise up together in hopes of creating a permanent home. With her uncanny ability to create indelible characters in unforgettable circumstances, bestselling author Betsy Carter has crafted a gorgeous novel that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt adrift and longed for home.

We Were Strangers Once

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“A trip to Mitford is good for the soul.”

The Fourth Novel in the Beloved Mitford Series

Get to know the lovable cast of characters that populate the small town of Mitford in this inspirational novel in Jan Karon's #1 New York Times bestselling series. Millions of readers have come home to Mitford, the little town with the big heart, whose endearing and eccentric residents have become like family members. But now change is coming to the hamlet. Father Tim, the Episcopal rector, and his wife, Cynthia, are pondering retirement; a brash new mayoral candidate is calling for aggressive development; a suspicious realtor with plans for a health spa is eyeing the beloved house on the hill; and, worst of all, the Sweet Stuff Bakery may be closing. Meanwhile, ordinary people are leading the extraordinary lives that hundreds of thousands of readers have found so inviting and inspiring.

Out to Canaan

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Each chaper is written by a different Irish author. 

Ah go on...tell us.
New York Times bestselling authors Maeve Binchy and Marian Keyes top an impressive roster of the Emerald Isle's most popular women writers and prove that when it comes to spinning a good yarn, the Irish are the best in the business. Showcasing dazzling wit and remarkable insight in short stories that run the gamut from provocative to poignant, these Irish women will tug at your heartstrings and have you crying with laughter in no time.

She did what?!
In Maeve Binchy's "Carissima," a longtime ex-pat and free spirit returns to Ireland from Sicily and shakes things up for her family, who finds her life utterly scandalous. In "Soulmates," by Marian Keyes, one woman's relationship is so bleedin' perfect in every way that it's driving her friends up the wall. In Cathy Kelly's "Thelma, Louise and the Lurve Gods," two women on a madcap, Stateside road trip have completely opposite reactions to a pair of insanely good-looking men. In these stories, and throughout this fabulous collection, Ireland's finest women authors celebrate the joys and perils of love, the adventure and constancy of female friendships, and their own irresistible brand of Irish charm.

Irish Girls about Town

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Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu work to solve the murder of an elderly curator of the Louvre, a case which leads to clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci and a centuries-old secret society.

The Da Vinci Code

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#hardcover #ghoststory #suspense #Romance #1896 #firstedition2000

A beautifully told, captivating novel of 19th century love and intrigue

Maisie Thomas spends every summer with her parents at Grange House, a hotel on an island off the coast of Maine ruled by the elegant but distant Miss Grange. In 1898, when Maisie turns 17, her visit marks a turning point. On the morning after her arrival, local fishermen make a gruesome discovery: two drowned lovers, found clasped in each other's arms. It's only the first in a series of events that cast a shadow over Maisie's summer. As she considers the attentions of two very different young men, one an adventurous writer, the other an ambitious businessman from her father's company, Maisie also falls under the gaze of Miss Grange, who begins to tell her stories of her past. But which are truth and which are fiction? Another death, a cache of diaries, an exchange of letters--and a ghostly apparition--all play a part in changing Maisie's life forever.

Rich with the details, customs, and language of the era, GRANGE HOUSE is part family saga, part ghost-story, part love story; a wonderfully atmospheric, page-turning novel of literary suspense and romance.


Grange House

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#hardcover #Published1986 #bookclubedition

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Novel 

The Good Mother

Julia, pregnant at age forty-one, travels through fear, longing, and love on a journey back to childhood when she returns home to the father she has not seen in twenty-three years to learn why her family came apart. 30,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Salt Dancers

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#hardcover #Published1966 #illustratedbyNaiadEinsel 

Browse by categories

Ann Brashares

Girls in Pants: the Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Ann Brashares

The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Ann Brashares

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

T. C. Boyle

Riven Rock

Anita Shreve

The Weight of Water

Anita Shreve

All He Ever Wanted

Anita Shreve

The Last Time They Met

Mary McGarry Morris

Songs in Ordinary Time

Christina Schwarz

Drowning Ruth

Richard Evans

The Last Promise

Alice Munro

Open Secrets

Karen Joy Fowler

The Jane Austen Book Club

Jane Hamilton

The Book of Ruth

Beverly Lewis

The Englisher

Russell Banks

Continental Drift

Andre Dubus

House of Sand and Fog

Betsy Carter

We Were Strangers Once

Jan Karon

Out to Canaan

Maeve Binchy; Marian Keyes; Cathy Kelly

Irish Girls about Town

Dan Brown

The Da Vinci Code

Sarah Blake

Grange House

Sue Miller

The Good Mother

Ursula Hegi

Salt Dancers

C. Collodi

The Adventures of Pinocchio

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