Ali Smith

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

North Carolina

A Novel

"Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy, and the color hit of pop art, Autumn is [an] ... excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture and a meditation--in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive--on what richness and worth are, what harvest means"--

Autumn

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Michael J. Malone

Ran McGhie's world has been turned upside down. A young, lonely, and frustrated writer, and suffering from mental-health problems, he discovers that his long-dead mother was related to one of Glasgow's oldest merchant families. Not only that, but Ran has inherited Newton Hall, a vast mansion that belonged to his great-uncle, who it seems has been watching from afar as his estranged great-nephew has grown up. Entering his new-found home, it seems Great-Uncle Fitzpatrick has turned it into a temple to the written word--the perfect place for poet Ran. But everything is not as it seems. As he explores the Hall's endless corridors, Ran's grasp on reality appears to be loosening. And then he comes across an ancient lift; and in that lift a mirror. And in the mirror . . . the reflection of a woman. A terrifying psychological thriller with more than a hint of the Gothic, House of Spines is a love letter to the power of books, and an exploration of how lust and betrayal can be deadly.

House of Spines

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Monique Roffey

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

When a female musician is found murdered on a small tropical island, after a string of similar deaths, outraged local women take matters into their own hands. The quiet calm of Ash Wednesday morning. Carnival is over. Everyone on the small island of St. Colibri is sleeping peacefully. Everyone except Sora Tanaka, a young pan player lying under the cannonball tree. Sora, a professional musician, had been visiting St. Colibri to take part in the island’s famous steel pan competition. But Sora isn’t asleep; she’s dead: brutally murdered, and still in her costume. And as the women of this island know all too well, Sora is far from the first woman to be killed, and she probably won’t be the last, either. In fact, the problem of women being killed on the island is so bad, there’s even a dedicated unit within the police department: OMWEN, the Office for Murdered Women, headed by Inspector Cuthbert Loveday. In this powerful new rewriting of the detective novel, Sora’s death is the last straw and the beginning of something much larger, a "revolution" some are calling it. The event draws together four women who have never before seen each other as allies: a friend of the victim, the organizer of a sex workers’ collective, a local activist, and the prime minister’s wife. Tenderly, sometimes hilariously, Passiontide chronicles how these women join forces and find new ways to help one another.

Passiontide

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Juliet Grames

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

One unidentified skeleton. Three missing men. A village full of secrets. The best-selling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna brings us a sparkling—by turns funny and moving—novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy. Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either. Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When the local priest's housekeeper begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival. Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.

The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia

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Sonia Velton

A Novel of Erzsébet Báthory, the Blood Countess

"For readers of Hamnet, Circe--and Dracula--comes a propulsive, fictional, feminist reimagining of the real story of Erzsébet Báthory, the infamous 'Blood Countess' who was rumored to have murdered and bathed in the blood of hundreds of peasant girls"--

The Nightingale's Castle

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Dinaw Mengestu

Red dust cover came from publisher with pieces of red worn off to white

The son of Ethiopian immigrants seeks to understand a hidden family history and uncovers a past colored by unexpected loss, addiction, and the enduring emotional pull toward home. After abandoning his once-promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannah—a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage to Hannah on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington, DC, that defined his childhood. At its center is Mamush’s stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as a cover for a harder, more troubling truth. But on the same day that Mamush arrives home in Washington, Samuel is found dead in his garage. With Hannah and their two-year-old son back in Paris, Mamush sets out on an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions he'd been told never to ask. As he does so, he begins to understand that perhaps the only chance he has of saving his family and making it back home is to confront not only the unresolved mystery around Samuel’s life and death, but his own troubled memories, and the years spent masking them. Breathtaking, commanding, unforgettable work from one of America’s most prodigiously gifted novelists.

Someone Like Us

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Marie Lu

"When teenage coder Emika Chen hacks her way into the opening tournament of the Warcross Championships, she glitches herself into the game as well as a sinister plot with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire"--

Warcross

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Megan Miranda

From the New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls and "master of suspense, Megan Miranda" (Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Girl), a thrilling mystery about a group of former classmates who reunite to mark the tenth anniversary of a tragic accident--only to have one of the survivors disappear, casting fear and suspicion on the original tragedy.

Seven hours in the past. Seven days in the present. Seven survivors remaining. Who would you save?

A decade ago, two vans filled with high school seniors on a school service trip crashed into a Tennessee ravine--a tragedy that claimed the lives of multiple classmates and teachers. The nine students who managed to escape the river that night were irrevocably changed. A year later, after one of the survivors dies by suicide on the anniversary of the crash, the rest of them make a pact: to come together each year to commemorate that terrible night.

To keep one another safe.
To hold one another accountable.
Or both.

Their annual meeting place, a house on the Outer Banks, has long been a refuge. But by the tenth anniversary, Cassidy Bent has worked to distance herself from the tragedy, and from the other survivors. She's changed her mobile number. She's blocked the others' email addresses. This year, she is determined to finally break ties once and for all. But on the day of the reunion, she receives a text with an obituary attached: another survivor is gone. Now they are seven--and Cassidy finds herself hurling back toward the group, wild with grief--and suspicion.

Almost immediately, something feels off this year. Cassidy is the first to notice when Amaya, annual organizer, slips away, overwhelmed. This wouldn't raise alarm except for the impending storm. Suddenly, they're facing the threat of closed roads and surging waters...again. Then Amaya stops responding to her phone. After all they've been through, she wouldn't willfully make them worry. Would she?

And--as they promised long ago--each survivor will do whatever he or she can do to save one another. Won't they?

A propulsive and chilling locked-box mystery filled with the dazzling hairpin twists that are the author's signature, The Only Survivors is New York Times-bestselling author Megan Miranda's best novel yet.

The Only Survivors

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Veronica Roth

Fans of Star Wars and Divergent will revel in internationally bestselling author Veronica Roth’s stunning new science-fiction fantasy series. On a planet where violence and vengeance rule, in a galaxy where some are favored by fate, everyone develops a currentgift, a unique power meant to shape the future. While most benefit from their currentgifts, Akos and Cyra do not—their gifts make them vulnerable to others’ control. Can they reclaim their gifts, their fates, and their lives, and reset the balance of power in this world? Cyra is the sister of the brutal tyrant who rules the Shotet people. Cyra’s currentgift gives her pain and power—something her brother exploits, using her to torture his enemies. But Cyra is much more than just a blade in her brother’s hand: she is resilient, quick on her feet, and smarter than he knows. Akos is from the peace-loving nation of Thuvhe, and his loyalty to his family is limitless. Though protected by his unusual currentgift, once Akos and his brother are captured by enemy Shotet soldiers, Akos is desperate to get his brother out alive—no matter what the cost. When Akos is thrust into Cyra’s world, the enmity between their countries and families seems insurmountable. They must decide to help each other to survive—or to destroy one another.

Carve the Mark

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Tana French

Best Book of 2020 New York Times |NPR | New York Post "This hushed suspense tale about thwarted dreams of escape may be her best one yet . . . Its own kind of masterpiece." --Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post "A new Tana French is always cause for celebration . . . Read it once for the plot; read it again for the beauty and subtlety of French's writing." --Sarah Lyall, The New York Times Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a bucolic Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realize that even small towns shelter dangerous secrets. "One of the greatest crime novelists writing today" (Vox) weaves a masterful, atmospheric tale of suspense, asking how to tell right from wrong in a world where neither is simple, and what we stake on that decision.

The Searcher

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Simran Jeet Singh

How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life

A National Bestseller

"I love this book... It is rich in wisdom, religious and personal, and it is absolutely charming." --Anne Lamott, author of Dusk, Night, Dawn and Help, Thanks, Wow

An inspiring approach to a happier, more fulfilling life through Sikh teachings on love and service.

As a boy growing up in South Texas, Simran Jeet Singh and his brothers confronted racism daily: at school, in their neighborhood, playing sports, and later in college and beyond. Despite the prejudice and hate he faced, this self-described "turban-wearing, brown-skinned, beard-loving Sikh" refused to give in to negativity. Instead, Singh delved deep into the Sikh teachings that he grew up with and embraced the lessons to seek the good in every person and situation and to find positive ways to direct his energy. These Sikh tenets of love and service to others have empowered him to forge a life of connection and a commitment to justice that have made him a national figure in the areas of equity, inclusion, and social justice. 
           
The Light We Give lays out how we can learn to integrate ethical living to achieve personal happiness and a happier life. It speaks to those who are inspired to take on positive change but don't know where to begin. To those who crave the chance to be empathetic but are afraid of looking vulnerable. To those who seek the courage to confront hatred with love and compassion. Singh reaches beyond his comfort zone to practice this deeper form of living and explores how everyone can learn the insights and skills that have kept him engaged and led him to commit to activism without becoming consumed by anger, self-pity, or burnout.
 
Part memoir, part spiritual journey, The Light We Give is a transformative book of hope that shows how each of us can turn away from fear and uncertainty and move toward renewal and positive change.

The Light We Give

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Christopher Bollen

A Best in Fiction Book for 2023 A young woman finds herself in the crosshairs of powerful and very dangerous enemies when she travels to Cairo to uncover the truth about her brother's mysterious death in this smart, atmospheric, and propulsive literary thriller from the acclaimed author of A Beautiful Crime and Orient "Bollen writes expansive, psychologically probing novels in the manner of Updike, Eugenides and Franzen, but he is also an avowed disciple of Agatha Christie."--Daily Telegraph (UK) When the lifeless body of Eric Castle, a weapons technician for a major American defense contractor, is found under his hotel balcony, both his employer and the Egyptian authorities quickly declare his death a suicide. But the dead man's sister, Cate, doesn't believe Eric took his own life and is determined to get to the truth. Traveling to Egypt she begins to piece together her brother's life in Cairo with the help of a handsome, young, gay Egyptian man named Omar, who yearns to escape the brutality of his nation's harsh, restrictive government. Unfortunately, Cate's quest raises more questions--and problems--than she ever imagined, as she takes on not only the arms company's top brass but the Egyptian military, secret police, and a slew of American expats with their own reasons to keep the dead buried once and for all. Soon she's in over her head, and it's not clear if either she or Omar will get out alive. This riveting thriller of set in loud, boisterous Cairo of Americans lost and found showcases Bollen's depth of characterization and haunting descriptive powers.

The Lost Americans

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Alexander McCall Smith

The latest installment in the warm and welcoming 44 Scotland Street series finds all our favorite residents of Scotland's most celebrated address navigating their enchanting and eventful lives. Angus Lordie is approached in the park by a shadowy, Deep Throat-like figure with government secrets to share, who mistakes him for a journalist. Now Angus is privy to some controversial plans of the Scottish Parliament—but just what is he meant to do about it? Elsewhere, Big Lou’s husband Bob hires a personal trainer who changes his entire outlook on life, much to Lou’s dismay. At the schoolhouse, young Bertie Pollock’s class has a new ringleader, Galactica MacFee, who quickly comes between Bertie and Olive. All this proves too much for Bertie to bear, and he flees to Glasgow with best friend Ranald Braveheart MacPherson in tow. And the indomitable Irene again finds herself in Edinburgh ... and it looks like there might be romance in the air. Meanwhile, Matthew, too, is keeping busy. He invests in a brand new Pictish Experience Centre, meant to allow residents to experience what life was like for Scotland’s mysterious early people, the Picts. And they may have made a fantastic discovery — the earliest known work of Scottish literature! But what exactly do those mysterious Pictish runes say? As always, McCall Smith draws on his seemingly unlimited stores of goodwill and generosity in describing the goings-on of this beloved cast of characters.

The Stellar Debut of Galactica MacFee

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Maggie Stiefvater

Returning champion Sean Kendrick competes against Puck Connolly, the first girl ever to ride in the annual Scorpio Races, both trying to keep hold of their dangerous water horses long enough to make it to the finish line.

The Scorpio Races

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Richard Russo

Excellent, minus a red mark on the bottom of the pages ￼

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Miles Roby tries to hold his family together while working at the Empire Grill in the once-successful logging town of Empire Falls while dealing with the imperious Mrs. Whiting, the heir to a faded logging and textile legacy, in this evocative novel by the author of Nobody's Fool. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 150,000 first printing.

Empire Falls

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Jonathan Freedland

Excellent condition, because the black cover showed signs of wear straight from the publisher ￼

The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

"A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information--and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?" -- Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

A complex hero. A forgotten story. The first witness to reveal the full truth of the Holocaust . . .

Award-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Jonathan Freedland tells the astonishing true story of Rudolf Vrba, the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world of a truth too few were willing to hear.

In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became one of the very first Jews to escape from Auschwitz and make his way to freedom--among only a tiny handful who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world--and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. Against all odds, Vrba and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen--a forensically detailed report that eventually reached Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the Pope.

And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba had risked everything to deliver. Though Vrba helped save two hundred thousand Jewish lives, he never stopped believing it could have been so many more.

This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man--a gifted "escape artist" who, even as a teenager, understood that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death. Rudolf Vrba deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust.

The Escape Artist

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Dann McDorman

An irresistible murder mystery set at a remote hunting lodge where everyone is a suspect, including the erratic detective on the scene—a remarkable debut that gleefully upends the rules of the genre and marks the arrival of a major new talent "A thoroughly original suspense novel that hops across elements of the genre—a diabolical locked-room mystery interspersed with a fascinating primer on the form—while always being tremendous fun to read."—Chris Pavone, best-selling author of Two Nights in Lisbon An isolated hunt club. A raging storm. Three corpses, discovered within four days. A cast of monied, scheming, unfaithful characters. When private detective Adam McAnnis joins an old college friend for the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York, he finds himself among a set of not-entirely-friendly strangers. Then the body of one of the members is found at the lake’s edge; hours later, a major storm hits. By the time power is restored on Sunday, two more people will be dead. The elements of the classic murder mystery are all present in West Heart Kill, but it’s the daring structure and mischievously subversive narration that set this debut apart. This is no ordinary whodunit. Both an homage to the masters of the genre, and a wholly original spin on the form, it’s a sheer delight from start to finish.

West Heart Kill

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Kate Quinn

Janie Chang

From bestselling authors Janie Chang and Kate Quinn, a thrilling and unforgettable narrative about the intertwined lives of two wronged women, spanning from the chaos of the San Francisco earthquake to the glittering palaces of Versailles. San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing's fallen Summer Palace. His patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined . . . until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice.

The Phoenix Crown

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Nishanth Injam

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Stories

An emotionally rich portrait of contemporary India and its diaspora and a yearning rendering of the people and places we call home, from a major new literary talent. • “A full-hearted, brilliant debut of necessary beauty.” —Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars and New York Times-bestseller Friday Black Vivid, vibrant, and unwaveringly affecting, The Best Possible Experience brings us intimate, impeccably realized accounts of individuals living in one of the most populous countries in the world, and its American diaspora, all haunted, in every sense of the word, by a loss of home. Classically elegant in prose and consistently modern in outlook, Injam’s stories question what it means to have a home, to return home, and show, above all, that home is not a place so much as a people ready to accept you as you are. We see a young man trapped on a bus to visit his parents as his fellow passengers vanish into the restroom. A family, newly in America, determined to host a perfect luncheon for their son’s white classmate, with no idea what to serve him. A woman who returns to a small village in India every summer to visit the grandfather who raised her, who lives with the ghosts of his son and wife. And a man preparing for his Green Card interview with the American woman he’s paid to marry him. A sui generis talent, Injam first started writing after coming to America from India in his twenties. The Best Possible Experience, his profoundly personal debut collection, delivers a universal inquiry into the idea of belonging and preserves in writing a home he left behind before it was lost to him forever.

The Best Possible Experience

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Heather Morris

Sisters under the Rising Sun

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Jess Walter

And Other Stories

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and The Cold Millions comes a stunning collection about those moments when everything changes--for the better, for the worse, for the outrageous--as a diverse cast of characters bounces from Italy to Idaho, questioning their roles in life and finding inspiration in the unlikeliest places. We all live like we're famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don't want others to see. In this riveting collection of stories from acclaimed author Jess Walter, a teenage girl tries to live up to the image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A son must repeatedly come out to his senile father while looking for a place to care for the old man. A famous actor in recovery has a one-night stand with the world's most surprising film critic. And in the romantic title story, a shy twenty-one-year-old studying Latin in Rome during "the year of my reinvention" finds himself face-to-face with the Italian actress of his adolescent dreams. Funny, poignant, and redemptive, this collection of short fiction offers a dazzling range of voices, backdrops, and situations. With his signature wit and bighearted approach to the darkest parts of humanity, Walter tackles the modern condition with a timeless touch, once again "solidifying his place in the contemporary canon as one of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds" (Esquire).

The Angel of Rome

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Cristina García

￼ bottom right corner has a white mark, arrived this way

From the acclaimed author of Dreaming in Cuban, a follow-up novel that tracks four generations of the del Pino family against the tumultuous backdrops of Cuba, the U.S., Germany, and Russia in the new millennium "A beautiful novel: hilarious one moment, haunting the next.” —Chris Bohjalian, author of The Flight Attendant and The Lioness Celia del Pino, the matriarch of a far-flung Cuban family, has watched her descendants spread out across the globe, struggling to make sense of their transnational identities and strained relationships with one another. In Berlin, the charismatic yet troubled Ivanito performs on stage as his drag queen persona, while being haunted by the ghost of his mother. Pilar Puente, adrift in Los Angeles, is a struggling sculptor and the single mother of a young son. In Moscow, Ivanito’s cousin Irina has become the wealthy owner of a lingerie company, but she remains deeply lonely in the wake of her parents’ deaths and her estrangement from her Cuban heritage. Meanwhile, in Havana, Celia prepares to reunite with her lost lover, Gustavo, and wonders whether age and the decades spent apart have altered their bond. Cut off from their Cuban roots, yet still feeling the island’s ineluctable pull, Ivanito and his extended family try to reimagine where—and with whom—they belong. Over the course of a momentous year, each will grapple with their histories as they are pulled to Berlin for a final, explosive reunion. Set twenty years after the events in Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina García’s new novel is an epic tale of family, devotion, and the timeless search for home.

Vanishing Maps

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Joyce Carol Oates

Zero-sum games are played for lethal stakes in these arresting stories by one of America’s most acclaimed writers. A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered; diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community; a woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover; a young mother finds herself increasingly captivated by her infant. In the collection’s longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with “drafts” of his own suicide. In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to our time, Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism, and ever-shifting identities. Provocative and stunning, Zero-Sum reinforces Oates’s standing as a literary treasure and an artist of the mysterious interior life.

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