Mickey Hess

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Iowa

Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory

1de8c331-c035-4380-bf73-0d04c6c3b55a-0

Don Foster

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Tales of a Literary Detective

From the professor with an extraordinary gift for unmasking the authors of anonymous documents comes the inside story of how he solves his most challenging cases. In Author Unknown, Don Foster reveals a starling fact: since no two people use language in precisely the same way, our identities are encoded in our own language, a kind of literary DNA. Combining traditional scholarship with modern technology, Foster has discovered how to unlock that code and, in the process, has invented an entire field of investigation--literary forensics--by which it becomes possible to catch anonymous authors as they ultimately betray their identities with their own words. Foster's unique skills first came to light when a front-page New York Times article announced his discovery that a previously unattributed poem was written by Shakespeare. A few weeks later, Foster solved the mystery that had obsessed America for months when he identified Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors. Foster also took on the case of an oddball California bag lady who many believed to be the elusive Thomas Pynchon. His contributions to the Unabomber case takes us inside the tangled mind of Ted Kaczynski. And, in the final chapter, Foster makes a surprising-and heartening-discovery about a beloved holiday icon. As entertaining as it is eye opening, Author Unknown shows us how Don Foster uses his unusual methods to search out the hidden identities behind anonymous documents of all kinds. Anyone who reads this remarkable book will find it impossible to read-or write-in the same way as before.

Author Unknown

c6f4b29a-f1cd-401e-be0a-5a3d14e10ea6-0

Richard Ford

Bascombe Trilogy (3)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Best Book of the Year

A sportswriter and a real estate agent, husband and father -Frank Bascombe has been many things to many people. His uncertain youth behind him, we follow him through three days during the autumn of 2000, when his trade as a realtor on the Jersey Shore is thriving. But as a presidential election hangs in the balance, and a postnuclear-family Thanksgiving looms before him, Frank discovers that what he terms "the Permanent Period" is fraught with unforeseen perils. An astonishing meditation on America today and filled with brilliant insights, The Lay of the Land is a magnificent achievement from one of the most celebrated chroniclers of our time.

Also available in the Bascombe Trilogy:  The Sportswriter, and  Independence Day

The Lay of the Land

4cb58c9a-8516-422f-9a9a-d9e2ed89dca3-1

bell hooks

Memories of Girlhood

Stitching together girlhood memories with the finest threads of innocence, feminist intellectual bell hooks presents a powerfully intimate account of growing up in the South. A memoir of ideas and perceptions, Bone Black shows the unfolding of female creativity and one strong-spirited child’s journey toward becoming a writer. She learns early on the roles women and men play in society, as well as the emotional vulnerability of children. She sheds new light on a society that beholds the joys of marriage for men and condemns anything more than silence for women. In this world, too, black is a woman’s color—worn when earned—daughters and daddies are strangers under the same roof, and crying children are often given something to cry about. hooks finds good company in solitude, good company in books. She also discovers, in the motionless body of misunderstanding, that writing is her most vital breath.

Bone Black

ce5f034d-0227-48ed-aecc-e788ad813eb3-1

A Novel

A Child’s Book of True Crime

955c8b03-a04a-46a3-8054-67666bdc7f43-0

Emma Hooper

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

a novel

Embarking on a walking journey from rural Canada to the East coast so that she can see the ocean for the first time in her life, an octogenarian woman has experiences that blur her perspectives between illusion, memory, and reality.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James

20949330-b256-4ef8-9b01-b8e465671434-1

The Salt Roads

c84f51c2-1793-4425-804b-010e13c5233f-1

First edition, third printing. 1969. Vintage, Random House. Octavo, 154 pgs, color, illustrated, photos. Sun fade to spine, minor handling wear, strong binding.

A Talk-Rock Album

Woodstock Nation

Five Hundred Years of Life Behind Bars

Prison

29e2d4cb-a93c-4e5a-9f5c-0ac99c6ea988-0

Jeff Hobbs

A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League

Traces a young man's effort to escape the dangers of the streets and his own nature after graduating from Yale, describing his youth in violent 1980s Newark, efforts to navigate two fiercely insular worlds and life-ending drug deals. 75,000 first printing.

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace

4748c2fe-671d-45af-bd38-ddb1addf3687

Peter Hessler

A Journey Through Time in China

From the acclaimed author of River Town comes a rare portrait, both intimate and epic, of twenty-first-century China as it opens its doors to the outside world.

A century ago, outsiders saw Chinaas a place where nothing ever changes. Today the coun-try has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. That sense of time--the contrast between past and present, and the rhythms that emerge in a vast, ever-evolving country--is brilliantly illuminated by Peter Hessler in Oracle Bones, a book that explores the human side of China's transformation.

Hessler tells the story of modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world as seen through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In addition to the author, an American writer living in Beijing, the narrative follows Polat, a member of a forgotten ethnic minority, who moves to the United States in searchof freedom; William Jefferson Foster, who grew up in an illiterate family and becomes a teacher; Emily,a migrant factory worker in a city without a past; and Chen Mengjia, a scholar of oracle-bone inscriptions, the earliest known writing in East Asia, and a man whosetragic story has been lost since the Cultural Revolution. All are migrants, emigrants, or wanderers who find themselves far from home, their lives dramatically changed by historical forces they are struggling to understand.

Peter Hessler excavates the past and puts a remarkable human face on the history he uncovers. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.

Oracle Bones

502c4dd4-b30b-4c7d-8d74-57b99178138a-1

Two Years on the Yangtze

In the tradition of Iron & Silk comes a powerful memoir about a young American teacher in the Peace Corps living in the small Chinese city of Fuling as it navigates increasing waves of cultural and social upheaval. Maps.

River Town

d1278e2b-d41f-49e5-9abc-c88956cb8de2-1

Volume Two

The Granta Book of the American Short Story

6550bf84-f357-41bb-a28b-785fc799af46-1

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

The Granta Book of the American Long Story

6134533b-5b41-401f-ba24-b9f8b3518530-0

John Fowles

First Back Bay Paperback Edition, January 2001.

The Magus is the story of Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching assignment on a remote Greek island. There his friendship with a local millionaire evolves into a deadly game, one in which reality and fantasy are deliberately manipulated, and Nicholas must fight for his sanity and his very survival.

The Magus

182a1928-d50e-4b73-98f9-69b5459de1e2-1

In this magnificent and compelling novel, bestselling author John Fowles has created a dazzlingly erotic tale of obsession and desire, madness and murder. Four men and one woman, all traveling under assumed names, are crossing the Devonshire countryside on their way toward a mysterious rendezvous in the spring of 1736. But nothing is as it seems. Before their violent and enigmatic journey ends, one will be hanged, one will vanish, and the others will face a murder trial. A haunting book about the very nature of truth and lies and of the conflict between reason and superstition, "A Maggot" is at once a rousing detective story and a glimpse from the eighteenth century into the future.

A Maggot

6f5d1d07-b7ba-4d72-81dc-5cd8e6b3343a-1

Paul Hyland

Travels Amongst Fakirs and Fire Warriors

Indian Balm is the captivating account of a journey Paul Hyland made along the little-known course of the sacred Godavari river in Southern India: a pilgrimage through both his past and India's present. It is the story of the search for his ancestors, missionaries and traders, who settled in the region generations ago and of their Balm--a wonder cure for all sorts of ailments and afflictions. It is also a fascinating and enlightening journey through India today. Wading through the country's contradictions and irritations, its ugliness and its beauty, Hyland encounters both the exotic and the commonplace. He meets snake charmers and sadhus, bogi men and horn dancers, witnesses ancient rituals and observes the most simple aspects of daily life. Indian Balm is an extraordinary and, above all, unique journey--vivid, intimate and revealing--travel writing at its colorful best.

Indian Balm

5443656d-fbe1-41e5-971b-5db0a6cdd4ec-0

M. J. Hyland

M. J. Hyland is the award winning and Man Booker shortlisted author of Carry Me Down. Her third novel, This Is How, is a psychologically probing and deeply moving account of a man at odds with the world. Patrick Oxtoby is a perpetual outsider longing to find his niche. When his fianc#65533; breaks off their engagement, Patrick leaves home and moves to a remote seaside village. In spite of his hopes for a new and better life, Patrick struggles to fit in or make the right impression. He can't shake the feeling that his new friends are con#65533;spiring against him, further fracturing his already fragile personality and prompting him to take a course of action that permanently alters the course of his life.
This Is How is a mesmerizing and meticulously drawn portrait of a man whose unease in the world as it is leads to his tragic undoing. With breathtaking wisdom and astute insight into the human mind, Hyland's latest is a masterpiece that arouses horror and sympathy in equal measure.

This Is How

4cd1f2e2-c548-452d-b0ac-8dfc4cb963d6-1

A twelve-year-old boy in the body of a grown man with the voice of a giant, John Egan is a misfit who diligently keeps track of the lies that are told to him by his family, friends, and even news anchors, but when John's sanity reaches collapse, a frightening family catastrophe threatens to destroy him. Reprint.

Carry Me Down

a9e641c1-9893-497a-a7ac-62d47f07ce0c-1

Tom Franklin

In 1897, an aspiring politician is mysteriously murdered in the rural area of Alabama known as Mitcham Beat. His outraged friends -- —mostly poor cotton farmers -- form a secret society, Hell-at-the-Breech, to punish the townspeople they believe responsible. The hooded members wage a bloody year-long campaign of terror that culminates in a massacre where the innocent suffer alongside the guilty. Caught in the maelstrom of the Mitcham war are four people: the aging sheriff sympathetic to both sides; the widowed midwife who delivered nearly every member of Hell-at-the-Breech; a ruthless detective who wages his own war against the gang; and a young store clerk who harbors a terrible secret. Based on incidents that occurred a few miles from the author's childhood home, Hell at the Breech chronicles the events of dark days that led the people involved to discover their capacity for good, evil, or for both.

Hell at the Breech

6a2d52c2-bb18-4d5c-a010-128fb58c4693-1

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Personal History

The Discomfort Zone

8016f3f2-2674-4f84-a799-9c0970300840-1

Jonathan Franzen

Louis Holland arrives in Boston to strange happenings - in one, an earthquake kills his grandmother. During a feud over the inheritance Louis falls in love with Renee, a seismologist, whose discoveries about the earthquakes complicate everything.

Strong Motion

9e181936-b14b-470b-9952-818dd121c2dd-1

Gina Frangello

The friendship between Mary and Nix had endured since childhood, a seemingly unbreakable bond, until the mid-1980s, when the two young women embarked on a summer vacation in Greece. It was a trip initiated by Nix, who had just learned that Mary had been diagnosed with a disease that would cut her life short and who was determined that it be the vacation of a lifetime. But by the time their visit to Greece was over, Nix had withdrawn from their friendship, and Mary had no idea why.

Three years later, Nix is dead, and Mary returns to Europe to try to understand what went wrong. In the process she meets the first of many men that she will spend time with as she travels throughout the world. Through them she experiences not only a sexual awakening but a spiritual and emotional awakening that allows her to understand how the past and the future are connected and to appreciate the freedom to live life adventurously.

A Life in Men

e30da692-d7d1-48fa-8901-8baac3e4dde5-1

IraqiGirl

I feel that I have been sleeping all my life and I have woken up and opened my eyes to the world. A beautiful world! But impossible to live in.


These are the words of fifteen-year-old Hadiya, blogging from the city of Mosul, Iraq, to let the world know what life is really like as the military occupation of her country unfolds. In many ways, her life is familiar. She worries about exams and enjoys watching Friends during the rare hours that the electricity in her neighborhood is running.

But the horrors of war surround her everywhere--weeklong curfews, relatives killed, and  friends whose families are forced to flee their homes. With black humor and unflinching honesty, Hadiya shares the painful stories of lives changed forever. "Let's go back," she writes, "to my un-normal life."

With her intimate reflections on family, friendship, and community, IraqiGirl also allows us to witness the determination of one girl not only to survive, but to create, amidst the  devastation of war, a future worth living for.

"Hadiya's authentically teenage voice, emotional struggles and concerns make her story all the more resonant." --Publishers Weekly

"Despite all the news coverage about the war in Iraq, very little is reported about how it affects the daily lives of ordinary citizens. A highschooler in the city of Mosul fills in the gap with this compilation of her blog posts about living under U.S. occupation. She writes in English because she wants to reach Americans, and in stark specifics, she records the terrifying dangers of car bombs on her street and American warplanes overhead, as well as her everyday struggles to concentrate on homework when there is no water and electricity at home. Her tone is balanced: she does not hate Americans, and although she never supported Saddam Hussein, she wonders why he was executed... Readers will appreciate the details about family, friends, school, and reading Harry Potter, as well as the  ever-present big issues for which there are no simple answers." --Hazel Rochman, Booklist

"IraqiGirl has poured reflections of her daily life into her blog, reaching all over the  cyber-world from her home in northern Iraq. She writes about the universals of teen life--school, family, TV, food, Harry Potter--but always against the background of sudden explosions, outbursts of gunfire, carbombs, death.... [A]n important addition to multicultural literature." --Elsa Marston, author of Santa Claus in Baghdad and Other Stories About Teens in the Arab World

"A book as relevant to adults as teenagers and children. Hadiya's clear, simple language conveys the feelings of a teenager, offering a glimpse into the daily life of a professional middle-class Iraqi family in an ancient-modern city subjected to a brutal occupation."
--Haifa Zangana, author of City of Widows: An Iraqi Woman's Account of War and Resistance


IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq

61002eab-fc03-434a-81ec-5be384c7c7ac-1

Liontoe

Browse by categories

Mickey Hess

Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory

Don Foster

Author Unknown

Richard Ford

The Lay of the Land

bell hooks

Bone Black

Chloe Hooper

A Child’s Book of True Crime

Emma Hooper

Etta and Otto and Russell and James

Nalo Hopkinson

The Salt Roads

Abbie Hoffman

Woodstock Nation

Edward Marston

Prison

Jeff Hobbs

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace

Peter Hessler

Oracle Bones

Peter Hessler

River Town

Richard Ford, editor

The Granta Book of the American Short Story

Richard Ford, editor

The Granta Book of the American Long Story

John Fowles

The Magus

John Fowles

A Maggot

Paul Hyland

Indian Balm

M. J. Hyland

This Is How

M. J. Hyland

Carry Me Down

Tom Franklin

Hell at the Breech

Jonathan Franzen

The Discomfort Zone

Jonathan Franzen

Strong Motion

Gina Frangello

A Life in Men

IraqiGirl

IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq

Get The App