Denise Mina

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Washington

A Novel

From the award-winning master of crime fiction, Denise Mina re-imagines the "Bonfire of the Vanities,” a series of fires lit throughout Florence at the end of the fifteenth century—inspired by the fanatical Girolamo Savonarola. Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican friar living in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century. An anti-corruption campaigner, his hellfire preaching increasingly spilled over into tirades against all luxuries that tempted his followers toward sin. These sermons led to the infamous "Bonfire of the Vanities”—a series of fires lit throughout Florence for the incineration of everything from books, extravagant clothing, playing cards, musical instruments, make-up, and mirrors to paintings, tapestries, and sculptures. Railing against the vice and avarice of the ruling Medici family, he was instrumental in their removal from power—and for a short time became the puritanical leader of the city. After turning his attention to corruption within the Catholic Church, he was first excommunicated and then executed by a combination of hanging and being burned at the stake. Just as in Rizzio—her latest novel with Pegasus Crime—Denise Mina brings a modern take to this fascinating historical story, drawing parallels between the febrile atmosphere of medieval Florence and the culture wars of the present day. In dramatizing the life and last days of Savonarola, she explores the downfall of the original architect of cancel culture and, in the process, explores the never-ending tensions between wealth, inequality, and freedom of speech that so dominate our modern world.

Three Fires

0016f36b-dff8-4275-8b6f-85e84d3a2bb4-0

Edward Carey

"The wry, macabre, unforgettable tale of an ambitious orphan in Revolutionary Paris, befriended by royalty and radicals, who transforms herself into the legendary Madame Tussaud" --

Little

8b82f100-ce5d-4a4d-bed9-caf5fd1c3934-1

Louise Penny

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

When the choir director of a monastery in Quâebec is murdered, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Sãuretâe du Quâebec are challenged to find the killer in a cloistered community that has taken a vow of silence.

The Beautiful Mystery

ed02e9c5-dc27-4ae0-b69d-d9ceb96a6724-1

Shellie Rushing Tomlinson

The Belle of All Things Southern Dishes on Men, Money, and Not Losing Your Midli Fe Mind

The bestselling author of Suck Your Stomach In & Put Some Color On! returns with more helpful how-to's and keen observations from Dixie.

Guided by principles from the ancient Belle Doctrine, the host of radio and television's All Things Southern offers down-home advice on everything from health and fitness-managing thy caloric calculations without going Straight Running Crazy and surviving the Raging Inferno Syndrome (aka hot flashes)-to the Southern art of handling your man (Bubba Whispering). Whether giving business tips or debunking the Big Boned Theory, making political observations or celebrating the inevitable resurgence of big hair, Shellie is an adviser women can relate to and laugh with regardless of their age or which side of the Mason-Dixon they call home.

Sue Ellen's Girl Ain't Fat, She Just Weighs Heavy

455e6f2a-219a-4b22-9464-54c965e2dc63-1

DK Eyewitness

Bryan Pirolli

Yuki Higashinakano

Discover the hidden secrets of Paris, the city of lights, with this fantastic city guide that will have you vacationing like a local in no time at all

Whether you're a first time to the city of love, or a returnee to Paris, this is the perfect guide to an authentic experience from a local's perspective. No matter how often you've been to Paris, this stylist guide will help you discover even more authentic experiences in this magical city

This one-of-a-kind travel guide to Paris includes:

   * Two-color, bold modern design with contemporary illustrations throughout
   * Narrative style throughout, making the local, personal voice central to every entry
   * Structured by six themes and subsequent sub-themes, rather than areas, to echo how people are traveling, rather than where. Themes include Eat, Drink, Shop, and more!
   * Each entry includes its unique address so readers can pinpoint precisely where they are heading 
   * Each theme ends with a tour spread, dedicated to a specific interest or experience. For example, "An Atypical Arty Afternoon" and "A Night Out Along the Seine" 
   * Created keeping in mind readers traveling in a post-Covid world

Experience France's capital like a true Parisian

Home to cutting-edge haute cuisine, vibrant little cafes, elegant river-side gardens, and a shopping scene like no other, this charming city is bathed in style and romance! Go beyond the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and unearth the secret side of the city. Who better to guide you to it than locals? 

From the best pâtisseries and wine bars to dreamy viewpoints and modern art spaces, this Paris guidebook will help you find all the local's favorite hangout spots and hidden haunts. Dine alfresco at a cute café in the Marais, cycle along the tree-lined Canal Saint-Martin, and bargain for vintage treasures at the city's beloved flea markets. 

More in the series

From New York and London to San Francisco and Tokyo, there are more places to discover with these niche local guides! Written by the people who call it home, the Like A Local series from DK takes you beyond the tourist track to experience the heart and soul of each city!

Paris Like a Local

a20db543-106d-4e54-992c-b584389d9a2d-1

Jillian Medoff

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

"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

b3711e70-fd5d-44b8-8939-5f425ae87838-1

Brit Bennett

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR 2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST “Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal “A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….” – Entertainment Weekly From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.

The Vanishing Half

4b609151-23ba-4e71-961f-ff918ad3d8c4-1

Jen Waite

By the bestselling author of A Beautiful, Terrible Thing, a haunting thriller about a mother and daughter who must draw strength from each other when they find themselves trapped in a cabin with a stranger who wants to either control them--or kill them. FOURTEEN YEARS BEFORE THE CABIN: Twenty-something Anne meets the man of her dreams right out of college, but after they get married, Anne notices that her husband begins acting differently. Why is Ethan suddenly so moody? And will their marriage endure? A WEEK BEFORE THE CABIN: Ten years later, Anne and her twelve-year-old daughter, Thea, are safely living in Vermont. Anne is a successful therapist, Thea has friends at her new school, and they receive an endless stream of love, support, and baked goods from Anne's sweet mom, Rose. When Thea takes to brooding and showing classic signs of teen angst, a trip for the three women to the White Mountains of New Hampshire seems like the perfect chance to bond. THE CABIN: A man follows the three women on a hike at a nature reserve and drags them at gunpoint to an abandoned cabin in the woods. And just like that their peaceful weekend away turns into a fight for survival. It isn't clear what this man wants from these women or how he is connected to them if at all, but it is increasingly clear that they won't all get out of the cabin alive. SURVIVAL INSTINCTS is a captivating and terrifying novel that brings to life one of the scariest truths of all--that people's inner monsters come in various forms, some more recognizable than others, and that we are all one random encounter away from tragedy.

Survival Instincts

42664f2e-dbd8-45e7-86f9-c0240862f48c-1

Nina Sadowsky

When Natalie discovers her father dead in a luxury hotel room in Paris, she's terrified that his death--or is it a murder?--will open up a history she'd rather forget. Years before, her mother went missing from their home in a wealthy Connecticut suburb, triggering a chain of violence that echoed through the years. Now Natalie is set on a collision course with her brother, who has secrets of his own. And watching from the shadows is a mysterious and alluring woman with a talent for making people in trouble disappear, who holds more answers than anyone would guess.

The Burial Society

a592d504-c2c6-4b18-8492-0ae8e9a7176b-1

Rebecca Kauffman

A taut, page-turning novel of secrets and strife. When two families--one rich, one not--vacation together off the coast of South Carolina, little do they know that someone won't be returning home. Fripp Island, South Carolina is the perfect destination for the wealthy Daly family: Lisa, Scott, and their two girls. For Lisa's childhood friend, Poppy Ford, the resort island is a world away from the one she and Lisa grew up in--and when Lisa invites Poppy's family to join them, how can a working-class woman turn down an all-expenses paid vacation for her husband and children? But everyone brings secrets to the island, distorting what should be a convivial, relaxing summer on the beach. Lisa sees danger everywhere--the local handyman can't be allowed near the children, and Lisa suspects Scott is fixated on something, or someone, else. Poppy watches over her husband John and his routines with a sharp eye. It's a summer of change for all of the children: Ryan Ford who prepares for college in the fall, Rae Daly who seethes on the brink of adulthood, and the two youngest, Kimmy Daly and Alex Ford, who are exposed to new ideas and different ways of life as they forge a friendship of their own. Those who return from this vacation will spend the rest of their lives trying to process what they witnessed, the tipping points, moments of violence and tenderness, and the memory of whom they left behind.

The House on Fripp Island

147e6b50-346e-46bd-91a4-fdad4eb17093-1

Elinor Lipman

"Ms. Demeanor is a complete and utter delight. Of course it is. What Elinor Lipman novel isn't?"--Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls and Chances Are . . .

"Who knew house arrest could be sexy and fun? Not me, at least not until I read Ms. Demeanor. Written with Elinor Lipman's signature wit and charm, this breezy, engrossing novel tells the story of two people who make the most of their shared confinement."--Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Tracy Flick Can't Win

"When a neighbor's complaint about consensual al fresco sex turns into house arrest and a suspended legal license, Jane's recipe for survival involves cooking for another home-arrested tenant (could this be a match made in confinement?) while trying to figure out the whys and hows of her mysterious accuser. Filled with food, family, romance and intrigue, Lipman's novel cooks up a bounty of delights as sparkling as prosecco and as deeply satisfying and delicious as a five-star meal."--Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of With or Without You 

From one of America's most beloved contemporary novelists, a delicious and witty story about love under house arrest

Jane Morgan is a valued member of her law firm--or was, until a prudish neighbor, binoculars poised, observes her having sex on the roof of her NYC apartment building.  Police are summoned, and a punishing judge sentences her to six months of home confinement. With Jane now jobless and rootless, trapped at home, life looks bleak. Yes, her twin sister provides support and advice, but mostly of the unwelcome kind. When a doorman lets slip that Jane isn't the only resident wearing an ankle monitor, she strikes up a friendship with fellow white-collar felon Perry Salisbury. As she tries to adapt to life within her apartment walls, she discovers she hasn't heard the end of that tattletale neighbor--whose past isn't as decorous as her 9-1-1 snitching would suggest. Why are police knocking on Jane's door again? Can her house arrest have a silver lining? Can two wrongs make a right? In the hands of "an inspired alchemist who converts serious subject into humor" (New York Times Book Review)--yes, delightfully.  

Ms. Demeanor

54a59b31-25b8-4e57-b1a4-724732e4c538-1

Lawrence Osborne

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE * A tense, stunningly well-observed novel of a young American on the run, from Lawrence Osborne, "an heir to Graham Greene" (The New York Times Book Review)
 
"Bangkok is the star of this accomplished novel. Its denizens are aliens to themselves, glittering on the horizon of their own lives, moving--restless and rootless and afraid--though a cityscape that has more stories than they know."--Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

Escaping New York for the anonymity of Bangkok, Sarah Mullins arrives in Thailand on the lam with nothing more than a suitcase of purloined money. Her plan is to lie low and map out her next move in a high-end apartment complex called the Kingdom, whose glass-fronted façade boasts views of the bustling city and glimpses into the vast honeycomb of lives within. 

It is not long before she meets the alluring Mali doing laps in the apartment pool, a fellow tenant determined to bring the quiet American out of her shell. An invitation to Mali's weekly poker nights follows, and--fueled by shots of yadong, good food, and gossip--Sarah soon falls in with the Kingdom's glamorous circle of ex-pat women.

But as political chaos erupts on the streets below and attempted uprisings wrack the city, tensions tighten within the gilded compound. When the violence outside begins to invade the Kingdom in a series of strange disappearances, the residents are thrown into suspicion: both of the world beyond their windows and of one another. And under the constant surveillance of the building's watchful inhabitants, Sarah's safe haven begins to feel like a snare.

From a master of atmosphere and mood, The Glass Kingdom is a brilliantly unsettling story of civil and psychological unrest, and an enthralling study of karma and human greed.

The Glass Kingdom

d00f1661-bcbf-4574-a9e1-51b17fed6d16-1

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes

Nancy Jooyoun Kim

An electrifying debut novel for fans of Celeste Ng and Jean Kwok, The Last Story of Mina Lee is a poignant mother-daughter story and surprising mystery that illustrates the devastating realities of being an immigrant in America. Margot Lee's mother, Mina, isn't returning her calls. It's a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the tenuous invisible strings that held together her single mother's life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother. Interwoven with Margot's present-day search is Mina's story of her first years in Los Angeles as she navigates the promises and perils of the American myth of reinvention. Barely earning a living by stocking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing Mina ever expects is to fall in love. But that love story sets in motion a string of events that have consequences for years to come, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death. Told through the intimate lens of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other, The Last Story of Mina Lee is both a gripping page-turner and a profound family saga that explores identity, secrets and what it truly means to belong.

The Last Story of Mina Lee

a95b86a7-1349-4d06-8c00-782e9077a191-1

The Verifiers

Christina Dalcher

One of PureWow's 9 Books We Can't Wait to Read in October!

A chilling look into an alternate near future where a woman and her daughter seek refuge in a women-only colony, only to find that the safe haven they were hoping for is the most dangerous place they could be.

Miranda Reynolds always thought she would rather die than live in Femlandia. But that was before the country sank into total economic collapse and her husband walked out in the harshest, most permanent way, leaving her and her sixteen-year-old daughter with nothing. The streets are full of looting, robbing, and killing, and Miranda and Emma no longer have much choice--either starve and risk getting murdered, or find safety. And so they set off to Femlandia, the women-only colony Miranda's mother, Win Somers, established decades ago.

Although Win is no longer in the spotlight, her protégé Jen Jones has taken Femlandia to new heights: The off-grid colonies are secluded, self-sufficient, and thriving--and Emma is instantly enchanted by this idea of a safe haven. But something is not right. There are no men allowed in the colony, but babies are being born--and they're all girls. Miranda discovers just how the all-women community is capable of enduring, and it leads her to question how far her mother went to create this perfect, thriving, horrifying society.

Femlandia

66b41fec-fc68-4473-adc0-b3800472bdde-1

Lynn Steger Strong

The new novel from the critically acclaimed author of Want, told through the shifting voices of a family gathering for Christmas in upstate New York after the death of their beloved matriarch, at odds over the settling of her estate--a novel about art, grief, shame, ambition, joy, and the American safety net. 

It's December twenty-second and siblings Henry, Kate, and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry's house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother, the first not at their mother's Florida house. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals, while also trying to decide what to do with their mother's house, their sole inheritance. As tensions rise, the whole group is forced to come together unexpectedly when a local mother and daughter need help. 

With the urgency and artfulness that cemented her previous novel Want as "a defining novel of our age" (Vulture), Strong once again turns her attention to the structural and systemic failings that are haunting Americans, but also to the ways in which family, friends, and strangers can support each other through the gaps. Flight is a novel of family, ambition, precarity, art, and desire, one that forms a powerful next step from a brilliant chronicler of our time.

Flight

77014e3a-dd67-41de-9471-1464c55a6560-1

Carl Hiaasen

"When Lane Coolman's car is bashed from behind on the road to the Florida Keys, what appears to be an innocent accident is anything but (this is Hiaasen!). Behind the wheel of the offending car is Merry Mansfield--the eponymous Razor Girl--so named for her unique, eye-popping addition to what might be an otherwise unexciting scam. But, of course--this is Hiaasen!--the scam is only the very beginning of a situation that's going to spiral crazily out of control while gathering in some of the wildest characters Hiaasen has ever set loose on the page. There's the owner of Sedimental Journey--the company that steals sand from one beach to restore erosion on another...Dominick "Big Noogie" Aeola, the NYC mafia capo with a taste for the pinkest of sands...Zeto, the small-time hustler who gets electrocuted trying to charge a Tesla...Nance Buck, native Wisconsinite who's nonetheless the star of the red neck reality TV show, "Bayou Brethren."..a psycho who goes by the name of Blister and who's more Nance Buck than Buck could ever be...the multimillionaire product liability lawyer who's getting dangerously--and deformingly--hooked on the very product he's litigating against...and Andrew Yancy--formerly Detective Yancy, busted to Key West roach patrol after he beat up his then-lover's husband with a Dustbuster--who's convinced that if he can just solve one more murder on his own, he'll get his detective badge back. That the Razor Girl may be the key to his success in this deeply ill-considered endeavor will be as surprising to him as anything else he encounters along the way--including the nine-pound Gambian pouched rats getting very used to the good life in the Keys... "--

Razor Girl

a1e0a57d-5664-4f2e-b9d0-37eeea29f0e9-1

Amanda Eyre Ward

"When seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the "Become a Jetsetter" contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children: Lee, an almost-famous actress; Cord, a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist who can't seem to find a bride; and Regan, a harried mother who took it all wrong when Charlotte bought her a Weight Watchers gift certificate for her birthday. Charlotte yearns for the years when her children were young and she was a single mother who meant everything to them. When she wins the cruise, the family packs all their baggage--literal and figurative--and spends ten days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso. As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed, and the Perkins family is forced to confront the defining choices in their lives. Can four lost adults find the peace they've been seeking by reconciling their childhood aches and coming back to each other? In the vein of The Nest and The Vacationers, Ward has created a delicious and intelligent novel about the courage it takes to reveal our true selves, the pleasures and perils of family, and how we navigate the seas of adulthood to cruise--we can only hope--toward joy"--

The Jetsetters

7cc356ad-e181-4031-b9a9-66836dac8810-1

Bethany Ball

From Center for Fiction First Novel Prize finalist Bethany Ball comes a biting and darkly funny new novel that follows a set of privileged, jaded Connecticut suburbanites whose cozy, seemingly picture-perfect, lives begin to unravel amid shocking turns of fate and revelations of long-held secrets.

Welcome to small-town Connecticut, a place whose inhabitants seem to have it all -- the status, the homes, the money, and the ennui. There's Tripp and Virginia, beloved hosts whom the community idolizes, whose basement hides among other things a secret stash of guns and a drastic plan to survive the end times. There's Gunter and Rachel, recent transplants who left New York City to raise their children, only to feel both imprisoned by the banality of suburbia. And Richard and Margot, community veterans whose extramarital affairs and battles with mental health are disguised by their enviably polished veneers and perfect children. At the center of it all is the Petra School, the most coveted of all the private schools in the state, a supposed utopia of mindfulness and creativity, with a history as murky and suspect as our character's inner worlds.

With deep wit and delicious incisiveness, in The Pessimists, Bethany Ball peels back the veneer of upper-class white suburbia to expose the destructive consequences of unchecked privilege and moral apathy in a world that is rapidly evolving without them. This is a superbly drawn portrait of a community, and its couples, torn apart by unmet desires, duplicity, hypocrisy, and dangerous levels of discontent.

Pessimists

f0eb44fc-7759-417c-ad75-6602583159af-1

Luke Geddes

A hilarious debut novel about an eclectic group of merchants at a Kansas antique mall who become implicated in the kidnapping of a local beauty pageant star. The city of Wichita, Kansas, is wracked with panic over the abduction of toddler pageant princess Lindy Bobo. However, the dealers at The Heart of America Antique Mall are too preoccupied by their own neurotic compulsions to take much notice. Postcards, perfume bottles, Barbies, vinyl records, kitschy neon beer signs—they collect and sell it all. Rather than focus on Lindy, this colorful cast of characters is consumed by another drama: the impending arrival of Mark and Grant from the famed antiques television show Pickin’ Fortunes, who are planning to film an episode at The Heart of America and secretly may be the last best hope of saving the mall from bankruptcy. Yet the mall and the missing beauty queen have more to do with each other than these vendors might think, and before long, the group sets in motion a series of events that lead to surprising revelations about Lindy’s whereabouts. As the mall becomes implicated in her disappearance, will Mark and Grant be scared away from all of the drama or will they arrive in time to save The Heart of America from going under? Equally comical and suspenseful, Heart of Junk is also a biting commentary on our current Marie Kondo era. It examines why certain objects resonate with us so deeply, rebukes Kondo’s philosophy of wholesale purging, and argues that “junk” can have great value—connecting us not only to our personal pasts but to our shared human history. As author Luke Geddes writes: “A collection was a record of a life lived, maybe not well or happily but at least with attention and passion. It was autobiography made whole.”

Heart of Junk

afd4adaa-38a6-4c12-90dd-fd850c02d3da-1

Mary Gordon

In this novel of lifelong reckoning between two women by the award-winning Mary Gordon, we meet Quin Archer, the revenge-loving queen of the reality-TV show Payback. Unbeknownst to her many fans, Quin was once an angry teen named Heidi, whose true story may be known only to Agnes, her art teacher at a private New England girls' school in the 1970s. Then a young woman herself, Agnes saw a spark of originality in the brooding Heidi. But when she suggested Heidi visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the girl returned with a disastrous account of having been picked up at the museum by an older man. Agnes's stunned response will haunt both women for decades.
 
Gordon narrates this tale of #MeToo misunderstanding, from a time before there was language to contain it, with a sharp sense of life's changing tempo. She takes us through Heidi's disappearance and reinvention as Quin, and Agnes's escape into career and family in Italy, exploring their choices and potential for happiness until, inevitably, they meet again. Payback is a remarkable book about the precise weight of our words and deeds from a writer whose moral vision is deeply rewarding in its subtlety.

Payback

6fda4ea2-c7ba-466c-ac11-97358a8628ed-1

Angela Carter

In their heyday on the vaudeville stages of the early twentieth century, Dora Chance and her twin sister, Nora--unacknowledged daughters of Sir Melchior Hazard, the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day--were known as the Lucky Chances, with private lives as colorful and erratic as their careers. But now, at age 75, Dora is typing up their life story, and it is a tale indeed that Angela Carter tells. A writer known for the richness of her imagination and wit as well as her feminist insights into matters large and small, she created in Wise Children an effervescent family saga that manages to celebrate the lore and magic of show business while also exploring the connections between parent and child, the transitory and the immortal, authenticity and falsehood.

Wise Children

b65288a0-a2e7-46f5-9474-e7c83bb160bc-1

Mia Mercado

Essays on Being Bad at Being Good

A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY SUMMER READ

"And, at the center of it all, am I actually nice or am I just performing a role I think I'm expected to play?"

Mia Mercado is a razor-sharp cultural critic and essayist known for her witty and hilarious dissections of the uncomfortable truths that rule our lives. In this thought-provoking collection of new essays, Mercado examines what it means to be "polite," "agreeable," and "nice." She covers topics from the subtleties of the "Bad Bitch" and why women dominate the ASMR market, to what makes her dog an adorable little freak and how you know if you're shy. This is a book about the unspoken trick mirror of our "good" intentions: the inherent performance of the social media apology, celebrating men when they do the bare minimum, and why we trust a Midwesterner to watch our stuff when we go pee.

Throughout, she ponders her identity as an Asian woman and asks what "nice" even means--and why anyone would want to be it. With writing that is as precise as it is profound, and cultural references that range from trash reality television to the New York Times Sunday-morning crossword puzzle, Mercado uncovers weird, long-overdue truths about our frailties and failings. In the end, she sees them not as a source of shame but as a cause for celebration. Filled with revelations that range from the silly to the serious,

She's Nice Though offers a mind-bending glimpse into the illusions and delusions of contemporary life--and reveals who we *really* are when no one is watching.

Browse by categories