Emma Donoghue

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Michigan

A Novel

THE NEW #1 BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE WONDER AND ROOM 

Dublin, 1918: three days in a maternity ward at the height of the great flu. A small world of work, risk, death and unlooked-for love, by the bestselling author of The Wonder and Room. 

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city centre, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders--Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. 

In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, caregivers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work. 

In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds. 

The Pull of the Stars

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Megan Campisi

“For fans of The Handmaid’s Tale...a debut novel with a dark setting and an unforgettable heroine...is a riveting depiction of hard-won female empowerment” (The Washington Post). The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard The Sin Eater Walks Among Us. For the crime of stealing bread, fourteen-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater—a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven. Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands. When a deer heart appears on the coffin of a royal governess who did not confess to the dreadful sin it represents, the older Sin Eater refuses to eat it. She is taken to prison, tortured, and killed. To avenge her death, May must find out who placed the deer heart on the coffin and why. “Very much reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale…it transcends its historical roots to give us a modern heroine” (Kirkus Reviews). “A novel as strange as it is captivating” (BuzzFeed), The Sin Eater “is a treat for fans of feminist speculative fiction” (Publishers Weekly) and “exactly what historical fiction lovers have unknowingly craved” (New York Journal of Books).

Sin Eater

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K. Patrick

A sublime and sensual debut novel exploring the nature of queer love and attraction, the transformative power of desire, and the dissonance between self and place, by White Review Fiction Prize shortlisted writer K Patrick In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a butch antipodean outsider arrives to take up the antiquated role of "matron." Within this landscape of immense privilege, where difference is met with hostility, the matron finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body. That is until she meets Mrs. S, the headmaster's wife, a woman who is her polar opposite--an assured, authoritative paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless summer, their unspoken yearning blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer fades, a choice must be made. Seductive, stylish, and disarmingly wry, K Patrick's bold and revelatory debut smolders with the heat of summer as it explores the queer experience and the force of forbidden love.

Mrs. S

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A Celtic Adventure

Saint Brigid's Bones

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Kazuo Ishiguro

As elderly Briton couple Axl and Beatrice journey to visit the son they've not seen in years, they begin to remember the troubled past they share with their traveling companions--a Saxon warrior, his orphaned charge, and an illustrious knight.

The Buried Giant

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LaTanya McQueen

A haunting novel about a black woman who returns to her hometown for a plantation wedding and the horror that ensues as she reconnects with the blood-soaked history of the land and the best friends she left behind. More than a decade ago, Mira fled her small, segregated hometown in the south to forget. With every mile she traveled, she distanced herself from her past: from her best friend Celine, mocked by their town as the only white girl with black friends; from her old neighborhood; from the eerie Woodsman plantation rumored to be haunted by the spirits of slaves; from the terrifying memory of a ghost she saw that terrible day when a dare-gone-wrong almost got Jesse--the boy she secretly loved--arrested for murder. But now Mira is back in Kipsen to attend Celine's wedding at the plantation, which has been transformed into a lush vacation resort. Mira hopes to reconnect with her friends, and especially, Jesse, to finally tell him the truth about her feelings and the events of that devastating long-ago day. But for all its fancy renovations, the Woodsman remains a monument to its oppressive racist history. The bar serves antebellum drinks, entertainments include horrifying reenactments, and the service staff is nearly all black. Yet the darkest elements of the plantation's past have been carefully erased--rumors that slaves were tortured mercilessly and that ghosts roam the lands, seeking vengeance on the descendants of those who tormented them, which includes most of the wedding guests. As the weekend unfolds, Mira, Jesse, and Celine are forced to acknowledge their history together, and to save themselves from what is to come.

When the Reckoning Comes

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Kate Morton

A cloth bag containing eight paperback copies of the title, that may also include a folder with sign out sheets.

The Lake House

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Amy Meyerson

"Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric uncle Billy's bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her. On Miranda's twelfth birthday, Billy has a falling-out with her mother and disappears from Miranda's life. Sixteen years later she receives news that Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy-- and one final scavenger hunt. Home in Los Angeles, Miranda finds clues that Billy has hidden for her inside novels on the store's shelves, in locked drawers of his apartment upstairs, in the name of the store itself. She is drawn into a journey where she meets people whose stories reveal a history that Miranda's mother has kept hidden-- and the terrible secret that tore her family apart."-- Adapted from book jacket.

The Bookshop of Yesterdays

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Ann Patchett

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Ann Patchett, the New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth and State of Wonder, returns with her most powerful novel to date: a richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go. "'Do you think it's possible to ever see the past as it actually was?' I asked my sister. We were sitting in her car, parked in front of the Dutch House in the broad daylight of early summer." At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril's son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures. Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they're together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they've lost with humor and rage. But when at last they're forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested. The Dutch House is the story of a paradise lost, a tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance, love and forgiveness, of how we want to see ourselves and of who we really are. Filled with suspense, you may read it quickly to find out what happens, but what happens to Danny and Maeve will stay with you for a very long time.

The Dutch House

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Alix E. Harrow

"A vivid, subversive and feminist reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, where implacable destiny is no match for courage, sisterhood, stubbornness and a good working knowledge of fairy tales." —Katherine Arden It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one. Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.

A Spindle Splintered

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Susanna Kearsley

"I've loved every one of Susanna's books! She has bedrock research and a butterfly's delicate touch with characters--sure recipe for historical fiction that sucks you in and won't let go!"--DIANA GABALDON, #1 New York Timesbestselling author of Outlander From international bestselling author Susanna Kearsley comes a historical tale of intrigue and revolution in Scotland, where the exile of King James brought plots, machinations, suspicion and untold bravery to light. An investigation of a young widow's secrets by a man who's far from objective, leads to a multi-layered tale of adventure, endurance, romance...and the courage to hope. In the autumn of 1707, old enemies from the Highlands to the Borders are finding common ground as they join to protest the new Union with England. At the same time, the French are preparing to launch an invasion to bring the young exiled Jacobite king back to Scotland to reclaim his throne, and in Edinburgh the streets are filled with discontent and danger. Queen Anne's commissioners, seeking to calm the situation, have begun paying out money sent up from London to settle the losses and wages owed to those Scots who took part in the disastrous Darien expedition eight years earlier--an ill-fated venture that left Scotland all but bankrupt. When the young widow of a Darien sailor comes forward to collect her husband's wages, her claim is challenged. One of the men assigned to investigate has only days to decide if she's honest, or if his own feelings are blinding him to the truth. The Vanished Daysis a prequel and companion novel to The Winter Sea, with action that overlaps some of the action in that book. The Vanished Daysgoes back in time to the 1680s and introduces the reader to the Moray and Graeme families.

The Vanished Days

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Annie Dillard

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Blue Ridge valley. Annie Dillard sets out to see what she can see. What she sees are astonishing incidents of "mystery, death, beauty, violence."

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

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Beatrice Hitchman

From an acclaimed and powerful talent in historical fiction, a literary historical novel set in a bohemian enclave of Vienna about love, freedom, and what constitutes a family Set in Vienna from 1910 to 1946, All of You Every Single One is an atmospheric, original, and deeply moving novel about family, freedom, and how true love might survive impossible odds. Julia Lindqvist, a woman unhappily married to a famous Swedish playwright, leaves her husband to begin a passionate affair with a female tailor named Eve. The pair run away together and settle in the more liberal haven of Vienna, where they fall in love, navigate the challenges of their newfound independence, and find community in the city's Jewish quarter. But Julia's yearning for a child throws their fragile happiness into chaos and threatens to destroy her life and the lives of those closest to her. Ada Bauer's wealthy industrialist family have sent her to Dr. Freud in the hope that he can cure her mutism--and do so without a scandal. But help will soon come for Ada from an unexpected place, changing many lives irrevocably. Through the lives of her queer characters, and against the changing backdrop of one of the greatest cities of the age, Hitchman asks what it's like to live through oppression, how personal decisions become political, and how far one will go to protect the ones they love. Moving across Europe and through decades, Hitchman's sophomore novel is an intensely poignant portrait of life and love on the fringes of history.

All of You Every Single One

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Sonia Purnell

The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Chosen as a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by NPR, the New York Public Library, Amazon, the Seattle Times, the Washington Independent Review of Books, PopSugar, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, BookBrowse, the Spectator, and the Times of London Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography “Excellent…This book is as riveting as any thriller, and as hard to put down.” -- The New York Times Book Review "A compelling biography of a masterful spy, and a reminder of what can be done with a few brave people -- and a little resistance." - NPR "A meticiulous history that reads like a thriller." - Ben Macintyre A never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine. In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day. Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall--an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity. A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman's fierce persistence helped win the war.

A Woman of No Importance

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Jean Kyoung Frazier

"Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She's grieving the death of her father (who she has more in common with than she'd like to admit), avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future. Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickled covered pizzas for her son's happiness. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other towards middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways. Bold, tender, propulsive, and unexpected in countless ways, Jean Kyoung Frazier's Pizza Girl is a moving and funny portrait of a flawed, unforgettable young woman as she tries to find her place in the world"--

Pizza Girl

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Sandra Cisneros

For Esperanza, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, life is an endless landscape of concrete and run-down tenements, and she tries to rise above the hopelessness

The House on Mango Street

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Eric Van Lustbader

"Swiftly paced and fascinating...An intricately designed puzzle." CHICAGO SUN-TIMES She is a sorceress--indescribably beautiful, overpoweringly sensual--who possesess incomprehensible powers. She is also a murderess who plans to use her power to kill Nicholas Linnear, the hero of THE NINJA. This is only the beginning of this exotic thriller, where Lustbader weaves an utterly compelling tale of the CIA, the KGB, the technological world of modern Japan, and the mystical and dangerous realms of Ninja warriors....

The Miko

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Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

Volume 2 of the fullest repository on organ building and history in English language. Includes outline of organ history, external design and decoration, internal arrangement and mechanical systems, acoustics and theories of sound-production in organ pipes, tonal structure and appointment, compound stops of the organ, more. Complete with illustrations, tables, and specifications. ..".the most significant republication in our field for the past twenty years...an incomparable, invaluable book." -- "American Guild of Organists Quarterly."

A Woman of Independent Means

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John Eldredge

Stasi Eldredge

Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul

Captivating

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Louise Arbour

Simon Schama

Nigel Farage

Mark Steyn

How Should We Respond?

The world is facing the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. Over 300,000 are dead in Syria, and one and half million are either injured or disabled. Four and a half million people are trying to flee the country. And Syria is just one of a growing number of failed or failing states in the Middle East and North Africa. How should developed nations respond to human suffering on this mass scale? Do the prosperous societies of the West, including Canada and the U.S., have a moral imperative to assist as many refugees as they reasonably and responsibly can? Or, is this a time for vigilance and restraint in the face of a wave of mass migration that risks upending the tolerance and openness of the West? The eighteenth semi-annual Munk Debate, which was held on April 1, 2016, pits former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour and leading historian Simon Schama against leader of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage and bestselling author Mark Steyn to debate the West's response to the global refugee crisis.

The Global Refugee Crisis

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Michael Phillips

Judith Pella

When trouble threatens to divide her family and the town of Miracle Springs, Corries' faith and love are tested.

A Place in the Sun

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Daniel V. Runyon Ph D

An Allegorical History of the Universe

Lord William's perfect world is shattered by Deception. Now locked in a dungeon awaiting execution, he thinks about his failure as Captain of the Castle, Governor of the Wall, and Keeper of the Gates of Havilah. From the prison cell he writes this gripping memoir of devastating loss. Haunted by the spectre of the loathsome creature Bwing who occupies the next cell, Lord William explores the roots of the human condition: loss of identity and the quest to regain it. A dead man already, he can afford to face the hardest questions-even the most profound and deeply disturbing loss of his own gender identity. After 40 days of fasting, the real story begins.... Readers often compare this story to The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis and The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Runyon skillfully combines character, mood, and setting to present this haunting story in simple prose that follows Lord William (both a leader and an everyman) into spiritual warfare. Effectively depicting the challenges of mankind in recognition of and relationship to good and evil, beauty and ugliness, despair and joy, justice and forgiveness, truth and deception, condemnation and redemption, this gripping work holds the reader's interest with suspense and mystery, humor and horror, love and hate in an imaginary yet very familiar world, peopled with imaginary yet very familiar characters. Vibrant descriptions transport readers to depths and heights of recognition with dark despair or fresh delight. The story alone holds the interest; profound truths inherent to the story remind the reader of the outcomes of the momentous decisions we all make in life. -Marvelle Vannest The Shattered Urn articulates fresh biblical insights on pressing issues that plague our culture. -Rev. G. Harry Bonney A wonderful modern recapitulation of John Bunyan's style to tell a story that is accessible to all ages. A delightful, imaginative story full of wisdom. -Marsha Daigle-Williamson, Ph. D. An unforgettably detailed depiction of mankind's spiritual journey to both degradation and redemption. Profound insights shine like jewels in this masterful allegory. - Carol Morrisey Vivid contrast marks this novel. Black is darkness incarnate; White is dazzling light. Many shades of gray are nuanced, and much is revealed in the shadows. -Virgil B. Hartgerink

The Shattered Urn

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Benjamin Franklin shaped American journalism, civic life, economics, and politics by his example as a publisher, editor, writer, business leader, and statesman. Every American should read the story he wrote of his own life. And now they can, for this edition of his autobiography tells his entire story in his own words, just with fewer words and shorter sentences. His 75,000 word manuscript is boiled down to 53,000 words in this digest, so you get all the calories with 29% less chewing. You will smile, cry, laugh, or wince on almost every page at his humor, pathos, wit, and profound insight into human thought and behavior. Daniel V. Runyon, Ph.D., is Professor of English and Communication at Spring Arbor University in Michigan. He produced this book for the benefit of his writing students as well as for anyone who enjoys learning about people and events that shaped western civilization.

The Abridged Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

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Jeff Van Vonderen

Jeffrey VanVonderen

A random man handed me this in college… I found it recently and do not want it.

Building a graceful marriage and raising creative, competent, contented children without legalism or manipulation.

Browse by categories

Emma Donoghue

The Pull of the Stars

Megan Campisi

Sin Eater

K. Patrick

Mrs. S

Philip Freeman

Saint Brigid's Bones

Kazuo Ishiguro

The Buried Giant

LaTanya McQueen

When the Reckoning Comes

Kate Morton

The Lake House

Amy Meyerson

The Bookshop of Yesterdays

Ann Patchett

The Dutch House

Alix E. Harrow

A Spindle Splintered

Susanna Kearsley

The Vanished Days

Annie Dillard

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Beatrice Hitchman

All of You Every Single One

Sonia Purnell

A Woman of No Importance

Jean Kyoung Frazier

Pizza Girl

Sandra Cisneros

The House on Mango Street

Eric Van Lustbader

The Miko

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

A Woman of Independent Means

John Eldredge; Stasi Eldredge

Captivating

Louise Arbour; Simon Schama; Nigel Farage; Mark Steyn

The Global Refugee Crisis

Michael Phillips; Judith Pella

A Place in the Sun

Daniel V. Runyon Ph D

The Shattered Urn

Daniel V. Runyon Ph D

The Abridged Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Jeff Van Vonderen; Jeffrey VanVonderen

Families Where Grace Is in Place

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