Penny Sparke

Oversized Hardcover (4 to 6 lbs)

Connecticut

Art, Music, Drama/Theater

The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration

Elsie de Wolfe is a twentieth-century legend and is the mother of modern interior decoration. Her name is familiar to many who practice the art of interior design or who are linked to the fashionable world of tastemaking. She provided appropriate settings for the new rich in the first half of the twentieth century and in the process helped to shape our understanding of what we have come to know as the modern domestic interior. Through the measured re-examination of known materials as well as the review of history-clarifying documents that have been overlooked or underused by previous de Wolfe enthusiasts, Elsie de Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration provides the foundation of a renewed interest in her groundbreaking career, her philosophy of design, and her belief that an atmosphere of beauty could cure a world of ills. This large format, profusely illustrated book covers twenty-nine projects (including Villa Trianon, The Colony Club, Anne Vanderbilt, Anne Morgan, the Duchess of Windsor, and J. Ogden Armour, to name a few) and concludes with a timeline of her works. Written by English decorative arts scholar Penny Sparke and edited by New York Times contributor Mitchell Owens, Elsie de Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration presents the most in-depth look ever into the design aesthetic of this early twentieth-century master decorator. AUTHOR: Penny Sparke is Professor of Design History and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Kingston University, London. She is the author of over a dozen books on twentieth-century design. Her best known publications include An Introduction to Design and Design; and, most recently, A Century of Design and A Century of Car Design. She has also curated a number of exhibitions and has broadcast widely on her specialist area. Mitchell Owens is a style and design correspondent for The New York Times, a consulting editor of Elle Decor, and a frequent contributor to Travel + Leisure. Owens was a co-curator of Inside Design Now, the 2003 triennial of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, and author of twenty-one essays in the exhibition's catalogue. He is also an independent scholar of the history of interior design, with a specialty in American decorators of the early twentieth century. 330 duotone and 14 colour illustrations

Elsie de Wolfe

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François Baudot

Jean Demachy


$50.00
$72.00 in Canada
ELLE DECOR:
THE GRAND BOOK OF FRENCH STYLE
JEAN DEMACHY
AND FRANÇOIS BAUDOT
From the editors of French ELLE Decor, one of the leading interior magazines, comes this deluxe volume of fine French style.
If there is one design book that will look elegant on every coffee table, this is it. Compiled by top industry professionals, the definitive voice of good taste, this rich collection of interiors-from eclectic and eccentric to classic-can inspire every reader looking for a little "je ne sais quoi" for their home.
Featuring a sumptuous array of fashionable homes-with styles that range from formal to casual chic-ELLE Decor also offers an insider's look at the private homes of the great French contemporary designers, including Philippe Starck, Jacques Grange, and Yves Saint Laurent.
Whether looking for ideas how to add some French country to your living room or how to transform your bedroom into a boudoir, the editors of ELLE Decor-using their magazine's vast resources
-bring you the very best in French interior design.
250 FULL-COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS

The Grand Book of French Style

From the editors of Elle Decor comes a richly illustrated overview of the quintessential French style of home design and decorating, featuring an array of interiors, ranging from the eclectic to classic chic, that represent the influences, principles, and work of distinguished designers in eight chapters focusing on distinctive styles. 20,000 first printing.

Elle Decor

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Sarah Susanka

Grey Crawford

Best Selling author of the Not So Big House

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Transforming Your House into Home

In Home by Design, Sarah Susanka presents the 30 key design concepts that can be applied to any home - no matter what the style or size. Using 28 of the best designed homes from around the country, Susanka brings these concepts to life with 150 powerful and inspirational examples: from something as simple as placing a rug under a table to renovating a whole second floor. Home by Design shows homeowners a new way to look at their spaces and provides ideas for how to make each home reach its full potential.

Home by Design

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Meg Kissinger

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

From award-winning journalist Meg Kissinger, a searing memoir of a family besieged by mental illness, as well as an incisive exploration of the systems that failed them and a testament to the love that sustained them.Growing up in the 1960s in the suburbs of Chicago, Meg Kissinger's family seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, the Kissingers radiated a warm, boisterous energy. Whether they were spending summer days on the shores of Lake Michigan, barreling down the ski slopes, or navigating the trials of their Catholic school, the Kissingers always knew how to live large and play hard.But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding. A heavily-medicated mother hospitalized for anxiety and depression, a manic father prone to violence, and children in the throes of bipolar disorder and depression, two of whom would take their own lives. Through it all, the Kissingers faced the world with their signature dark humor and the unspoken family rule-never talk about it.While You Were Out begins as the personal story of one family's struggles then opens outward, as Kissinger details how childhood tragedy catalyzed a journalism career focused on exposing our country's flawed mental health care. Combining the intimacy of memoir with the rigor of investigative reporting, the book explores the consequences of shame, the havoc of botched public policy, and the hope offered by new strategies. This is a story of one family's love and devotion in the face of relentless struggle. It is a book for anyone who cares about someone with mental illness. In other words, it is a book for everyone.

While You Were Out

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Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Private Lives of Spies

Ann Patchett

A Novel

In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America's finest writers. "Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature." --The Guardian In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

Tom Lake

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Eliza Maxwell

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

In the isolated estate she's found the perfect getaway. But there's no escaping the past in this chilling novel from the bestselling author of The Unremembered Girl. Filmmaker Tessa Shepherd helped free a man she believed was wrongly imprisoned for murder. When he kills again, Tessa's life is upended. She's reeling with guilt, her reputation destroyed. Worse, Tessa's mother has unexpectedly passed away, and her sister, Margot, turns on her after tensions from their past escalate. Hounded by a bullying press, Tessa needs an escape. That's when she learns of a strange inheritance bequeathed by her mother: a derelict and isolated estate known as Fallbrook. It seems like the perfect refuge. A crumbling monument to a gruesome history, the mansion has been abandoned by all but two elderly sisters retained as caretakers. They are also guardians of all its mysteries. As the house starts revealing its dark secrets, Tessa must face her fears and right the wrongs of her past to save herself and her relationship with Margot. But nothing and no one at Fallbrook are what they seem.

The Caretakers

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Jonathan Franzen

In perfect condition. Never opened. Great gift for Jonathan Franzen fans

Jonathan Franzen’s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads. It’s December 23, 1971, and the Hildebrandt family is at a crossroads. The patriarch, Russ, the associate pastor of a suburban Chicago church, is poised to break free of a marriage he finds joyless—unless his brilliant and unstable wife, Marion, breaks free of it first. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college afire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has veered into the era’s counterculture, while their younger brother Perry, fed up with selling pot to support his drug habit, has firmly resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate. Universally recognized as the leading novelist of his generation, Jonathan Franzen is often described as a teller of family stories. Only now, though, in Crossroads, has he given us a novel in which a family, in all the intricacy of its workings, is truly at the center. By turns comic and harrowing, a tour-de-force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, Crossroads is the first volume of a trilogy, A Key to All Mythologies, that will span three generations and trace the inner life of our culture through the present day. Complete in itself, set in a historical moment of moral crisis, and reaching back to the early twentieth century, Crossroads serves as a foundation for a sweeping investigation of human mythologies, as the Hildebrandt family navigates the political, intellectual, and social crosscurrents of the past fifty years.

Crossroads

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Zibby Owens

A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

A deeply personal memoir about one woman's journey to finding her voice and rewriting her story by the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books(tm).

Zibby Owens has become a well-known personality in the publishing world. Her infectious energy, tasteful authenticity, and smart, steadfast support of authors started in childhood, a precedent set by the profound effect books and libraries had on her own family.

But after losing her closest friend on 9/11 and later becoming utterly stressed out and overwhelmed by motherhood, Zibby was forgetting what made her her. She turned to books and writing for help.

Just when things seemed particularly bleak, Zibby unexpectedly fell in love with a tennis pro turned movie producer who showed her the path to happiness: away from type-A perfectionism and toward letting things unfold organically. What unfolded was a meaningful career, a great love, and finally, her voice, now heard by millions of listeners.

An honest and moving story about relationships, love, food issues, the writing life, and finding one's true calling, Bookends will inspire and uplift.

Bookends

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Anthony Doerr

An Instant New York Times BestsellerA Pulitzer Prize WinnerA blind child, Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up enchanted by a crude radio he's found. His talent with these crucial instruments will eventually bring Werner to Saint-Malo, where their stories converge.

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