David Bowles

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

California

A Border Kid's Poems

Bluebonnet Award Master List 2020-2021
Pura Belpré Author Honor Book, 2019
ALSC Notable Children's Book, 2019
Walter Award Honor Book, 2019


Twelve-year-old Güero is Mexican American, at home with Spanish or English and on both sides of the river. He's starting 7th grade with a woke English teacher who knows how to make poetry cool.

In Spanish, "Güero" is a nickname for guys with pale skin, Latino or Anglo. But make no mistake: our red-headed, freckled hero is puro mexicano, like Canelo Álvarez, the Mexican boxer. Güero is also a nerd--reader, gamer, musician--who runs with a squad of misfits like him, Los Bobbys. Sure, they get in trouble like anybody else, and like other middle-school boys, they discover girls. Watch out for Joanna! She's tough as nails.

But trusting in his family's traditions, his accordion and his bookworm squad, he faces seventh grade with book smarts and a big heart. Life is tough for a border kid, but Güero has figured out how to cope.

He writes poetry.

In Spanish, "Güero" is a nickname for guys with pale skin, Latino or Anglo. But make no mistake: our red-headed, freckled hero is puro mexicano, like Canelo Álvarez, the Mexican boxer. Gero is also a nerd--reader, gamer, musician--who runs with a squad of misfits like him, Los Bobbys. Sure, they get in trouble like anybody else, and like other middle-school boys, they discover girls. Watch out for Joanna! She's tough as nails.

But trusting in his family's traditions, his accordion and his bookworm squad, he faces seventh grade with book smarts and a big heart. Life is tough for a border kid, but Güero has figured out how to cope.

He writes poetry.

Claudia Lewis Award for Excellence in Poetry, Bank Street 2019
NCTE 2019 Notable Verse Novels
Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children's Book Award
TIL Jean Flynn Award for Best Middle Grade Book 2018
Skipping Stones Award
Ámericas Award, Commended Title
School Library Journal's 2018 Best Books
Shelf Awareness 2018 Best Children's & Teen Books of the Year, Middle Grade
Favorites of 2019, Americas Society / Council of the Americas

A product of a Mexican-American family, David Bowles has lived most of his life in deep South Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. Recipient of awards from the American Library Association, Texas Institute of Letters and Texas Associated Press, David has written several books, including the Pura Belpré Honor Book The Smoking Mirror, Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico, The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande (The Unicorn Rescue Society series), and the middle grade graphic novel Rise of the Halfling King (Tales of the Feathered Serpent #1).

They Call Me Güero

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Ernest Cline

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A Novel

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read The worldwide bestseller--now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines--puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win--and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

Ready Player One (Movie Tie-In)

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Clive Barker

Special collectors edition. Yellowing pages. Worn edges. Price sticker on back. 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A landmark collector's edition of short stories by an immensely popular horror writer brings back the terrifying tales with which he first gained acclaim. Reprint.

Clive Barker's Books of Blood 1-3

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Gabriel García Márquez

Edith Grossman

The author traces his life from his birth in 1927 to his 1950 proposal to his wife, discussing such topics as his love for Colombia, the impact of literature and music on his life, and how his written works reflect his life.

Living to Tell the Tale

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Colson Whitehead

In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men." In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy. Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.

The Nickel Boys

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Ebony Flowers

An auspicious debut examining the culture of hair from the Rona Jaffe Foundation Award–winning cartoonist Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into black women’s lives and coming-of-age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon while ladies gossip and bond over the burn. The titular “Hot Comb” is about a young girl’s first perm—a doomed ploy to look cool and stop seeming “too white” in the all-black neighborhood her family has just moved into. In “Virgin Hair,” taunts of “tender-headed” sting as much as the perm itself. “My Lil Sister Lena” shows the stress of being the only black player on a white softball team. Lena’s hair is the team curio, an object to be touched, a subject to be discussed and debated at the will of her teammates, leading Lena to develop an anxiety disorder of pulling her own hair out. Throughout Hot Comb, Ebony Flowers re-creates classic magazine ads idealizing women’s need for hair relaxers and products. “Change your hair form to fit your life form” and “Kinks and Koils Forever” call customers from the page. Realizations about race, class, and the imperfections of identity swirl through these stories and ads, which are by turns sweet, insightful, and heartbreaking. Flowers began drawing comics while earning her Ph.D., and her early mastery of sequential storytelling is nothing short of sublime. From her black-and-white drawings to her color construction-paper collages, Hot Comb is a propitious display of talent from a new cartoonist who has already made her mark.

Hot Comb

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Hilton Als

A Paean to Prince

In this brilliant two-part memoir, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Hilton Als distills into one cocktail the deep and potent complexities of love and of loss, of Prince and of power, of desire and of race. It's delicious and it's got the kick of a mule, especially as Als swirls into his mix the downtown queer nightclub scene, the AIDS crisis, Prince's ass in his tight little pants, an ill-fated peach pie, Dorothy Parker, and his desire for true love. Always surprising and stealthily--even painfully--moving, Als plumbs longing: "I inched closer to him as he danced to you, Prince. But already he was you, Prince, in my mind. He had the same coloring, and the same loneliness I wanted to fill with my admiration. I couldn't love him enough. We were colored boys together. There is not enough of that in the world, Prince--but you know that. Still, when other people see that kind of fraternity they want to kill it. But we were so committed to each other, we never could work out what that violence meant. There was so much love between us. Why didn't anyone want us to share it?"

My Pinup

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Edwidge Danticat

This is an annotated copy with used stickers on the back 

Nine short stories describe life under the dictatorship in Haiti and the experiences of families who fled to the United States to begin new lives. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

Krik? Krak!

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Peter Haining

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

A Treasury of Fear

A collection of scary Irish tales by various writers arranged in sections by story type.

Great Irish Tales of Horror

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Nabarun Bhattacharya

Sunandini Banerjee

Siddharta Deb

Poor, poor, hard-luck Herbert Sarkar: born into a fancy Calcutta family but cursed from birth (his philandering movie director father is killed in a car crash and his mother dies soon after, when he's still just a baby), he is taken as an orphan into his uncle's house, only to fall further and further down the family totem pole. Despite good looks ("Hollywood-ish, Leslie Howard-ish)" and native talents, he is scorned by all but his kind aunt. Poor Herbert: so lovable but so little loved. Cheated of his inheritance, living on the roof in cast-off clothing, he pines for love, but all is woe: his own nephews beat him up. At twenty, however, he suddenly seems to possess the gift of speaking with the dead. Herbert is bathed in glory. From less than zero to starry heights--what an apotheosis. The wheel of fortune turns again, all too soon... Legendary, scathingly satiric, wildly energetic, deeply tender, Herbert is an Indian masterwork.

Harbart

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Rigoberta Menchu

Ann Wright

An Indian Woman in Guatemala

A Nobel Peace Prize winner reflects on poverty, injustice, and the struggles of Mayan communities in Guatemala, offering “a fascinating and moving description of the culture of an entire people” (The Times) Now a global bestseller, the remarkable life of Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan peasant woman, reflects on the experiences common to many Indian communities in Latin America. Menchú suffered gross injustice and hardship in her early life: her brother, father and mother were murdered by the Guatemalan military. She learned Spanish and turned to catechistic work as an expression of political revolt as well as religious commitment. Menchú vividly conveys the traditional beliefs of her community and her personal response to feminist and socialist ideas. Above all, these pages are illuminated by the enduring courage and passionate sense of justice of an extraordinary woman.

I, Rigoberta Menchu

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Set on the Caribbean coast of South America, this love story brings together Fermina Daza, her distinguished husband, and a man who has secretly loved her for more than fifty years.

Love in the Time of Cholera

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Kurt Vonnegut

Breakfast Of Championsis vintage Vonnegut. One of his favorite characters, aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. The result is murderously funny satire as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

Breakfast of Champions

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Akwaeke Emezi

From National Book Award finalist Akwaeke Emezi comes a companion novel to the critically acclaimed PET that explores both the importance and cost of social revolution--and how youth lead the way. After a childhood in foster care, Bitter is thrilled to have been chosen to attend Eucalyptus, a special school where she can focus on her painting surrounded by other creative teens. But outside this haven, the streets are filled with protests against the deep injustices that grip the city of Lucille. Bitter's instinct is to stay safe within the walls of Eucalyptus . . . but her friends aren't willing to settle for a world that's so far away from what they deserve. Pulled between old friendships, her artistic passion, and a new romance, Bitter isn't sure where she belongs--in the studio or in the streets. And if she does find a way to help the revolution while being true to who she is, she must also ask: at what cost? This timely and riveting novel--a companion to the National Book Award finalist Pet--explores the power of youth, protest, and art.

Bitter

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Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton

Ana Castillo

“The Squatter and the Don, like its author, has come out a survivor,” notes Ana Castillo in her Introduction. “The fact that it has resurfaced after more than a century from its original publication is a testimony to its worthiness.” Inviting comparison to Uncle Tom's Cabin, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's illuminating political novel is also an engaging historical romance. Set in San Diego shortly after the United States' annexation of California and written from the point of view of a native Californio, the story centers on two families: the Alamars of the landed Mexican gentry, and the Darrells, transplanted New Englanders–and their tumultuous struggles over property, social status, and personal integrity. This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the first edition of 1885. Ana Castillo is a poet, essayist, and novelist whose works include the recent poetry collection I Ask the Impossible and the novel Peel My Love Like an Onion. She lives in Chicago and teaches at DePaul University.

The Squatter and the Don

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Agatha Christie

A Hercule Poirot Mystery

Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of his fellow passengers must be the murderer. Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man's enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again.

Murder on the Orient Express

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No. 2

This Baffling World

Studies of the problems beyond desegregation

American Race Relations Today

The Secret Powers of Plants

AMERICA'S FOREMOST AUTHORITY
ON MODERN MANNERS ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT CORRECT SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
IN TODAY'S BUSY WORLD.
From the hundreds of thousands of questions on everyday etiquette received from her newspaper readers and TV audience,
Miss Vanderbilt has selected those most frequently asked. In this unique and fascinating book she answers these questions for everyone.
Amy Vanderbilt's EVERYDAY ETIQUETTE is a book to use -your comprehensive, down-to-earth guide to gracious modern living-completely indexed and carefully arranged for ready use.

Answers to today’s etiquette questions

Amy Vanderbilt’s Everyday Etiquette

Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor's first novel for middle grade readers introduces a boy who can access super powers with the help of the magical Ikenga.

Nnedi Okorafor's acclaimed first novel for middle grade readers introduces a boy who can access super powers with the help of the magical Ikenga.

Nnamdi's father was a good chief of police, perhaps the best Kalaria had ever had. He was determined to root out the criminals that had invaded the town. But then he was murdered, and most people believed the Chief of Chiefs, most powerful of the criminals, was responsible. Nnamdi has vowed to avenge his father, but he wonders what a twelve-year-old boy can do. Until a mysterious nighttime meeting, the gift of a magical object that enables super powers, and a charge to use those powers for good changes his life forever. How can he fulfill his mission? How will he learn to control his newfound powers?

Award-winning Nnedi Okorafor, acclaimed for her Akata novels, introduces a new and engaging hero in her first novel for middle grade readers set against a richly textured background of contemporary Nigeria.

Ikenga

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“I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn only regret.” For young Peony, betrothed to a suitor she has never met, these lyrics from The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen Family Villa, amid the scent of ginger, green tea, and jasmine, a small theatrical troupe is performing scenes from this epic opera, a live spectacle few females have ever seen. Like the heroine in the drama, Peony is the cloistered daughter of a wealthy family, trapped like a good-luck cricket in a bamboo-and-lacquer cage. Though raised to be obedient, Peony has dreams of her own. Peony’s mother is against her daughter’s attending the production: “Unmarried girls should not be seen in public.” But Peony’s father assures his wife that proprieties will be maintained, and that the women will watch the opera from behind a screen. Yet through its cracks, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man with hair as black as a cave–and is immediately overcome with emotion. So begins Peony’s unforgettable journey of love and destiny, desire and sorrow–as Lisa See’s haunting new novel, based on actual historical events, takes readers back to seventeenth-century China, after the Manchus seize power and the Ming dynasty is crushed. Steeped in traditions and ritual, this story brings to life another time and place–even the intricate realm of the afterworld, with its protocols, pathways, and stages of existence, a vividly imagined place where one’s soul is divided into three, ancestors offer guidance, misdeeds are punished, and hungry ghosts wander the earth. Immersed in the richness and magic of the Chinese vision of the afterlife, transcending even death, Peony in Love explores, beautifully, the many manifestations of love. Ultimately, Lisa See’s new novel addresses universal themes: the bonds of friendship, the power of words, and the age-old desire of women to be heard.

Peony in Love

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The extraordinary stories of 'Saki' are a mixture of humorous satire, irony and the macabre, in which the stupidities and hypocrisy of conventional society are viciously pilloried.

The Complete Stories of Saki

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Short stories on science and monster fiction  from late popular authors. 

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