Paula Bomer

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Arkansas

A woman and her niece are bound together and driven apart by loves, desires, frustrations, and addictions.

East Berlin, a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Eva, a retired nurse, makes it through her day on a combination of stimulants and sleeping pills, wine and brandy. She finds fleeting joy in American jazz and blues records, and occasional visits from her married lover. Her friendly teenaged neighbor is her closest companion. Then her American niece, Maggie, arrives in Berlin. Eva is thrilled--Maggie is just the companion she's been seeking. But happiness begins to slide from Eva's grasp as Maggie's own fierce drug addiction reveals itself.

Tante Eva is a story that deftly takes in decades of family life and German history, estrangement, joys, and disappointments. It is a portrait of East Berlin in the years after the Wall came down, and of an overlooked woman pursuing happiness and sexual pleasure. It is the finest book yet from Paula Bomer, an author whose work Jonathan Franzen describes as "some of the rawest and most urgent writing I can remember encountering."

♻️ Tante Eva

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Dani Shapiro

Colorado

A Novel

A "gripping" new novel (PEOPLE) from the best-selling author of Inheritance: On a  summer night in 1985, three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything changes.

"A haunting, moving, and propulsive exploration of family secrets." --Meg Wolitzer

ONE OF MOST EAGERLY ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF THE YEAR: L.A. Times, TIME, LitHub, BookPage, Library Journal, The Millions

Signal Fires opens on a summer night in 1985. Three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything on Division Street changes. Each of their lives, and that of Ben Wilf, a young doctor who arrives on the scene, is shattered. For the Wilf family, the circumstances of that fatal accident will become the deepest kind of secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken.

On Division Street, time has moved on. When the Shenkmans arrive--a young couple expecting a baby boy--it is as if the accident never happened. But when Waldo, the Shenkmans' brilliant, lonely son who marvels at the beauty of the world and has a native ability to find connections in everything, befriends Dr. Wilf, now retired and struggling with his wife's decline, past events come hurtling back in ways no one could ever have foreseen.

In Dani Shapiro's first work of fiction in fifteen years, she returns to the form that launched her career, with a riveting, deeply felt novel that examines the ties that bind families together--and the secrets that can break them apart. Signal Fires is a work of haunting beauty by a masterly storyteller.

Signal Fires

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#hardcover #fiction #litfic #botm #drama #richardroper #life #romance #debut #hownottodiealone 

Arizona

It’s never too late to start living.

Smart, darkly funny, and life-affirming, How Not to Die Alone is the bighearted debut novel we all need, for fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, it's a story about love, loneliness, and the importance of taking a chance when we feel we have the most to lose.

"Off-beat and winning...Gives resiliency and the triumph of the human spirit a good name." --The Wall Street Journal

All Andrew wants is to be normal. That's why his coworkers believe he has the perfect wife and two children waiting at home for him after a long day. But the truth is, his life isn't exactly as people think . . . and his little white lie is about to catch up with him. Because in all of Andrew's efforts to fit in, he's forgotten one important thing: how to really live. And maybe, it's finally time for him to start.

"Roper illuminates Andrew's interior life to reveal not what an odd duck he is, but what odd ducks we all are." --The New York Times Book Review

How Not to Die Alone

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Richard Roper

California

Susan Choi

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Texas

WINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Electrifying” (People) • “Masterly” (The Guardian) • “Dramatic and memorable” (The New Yorker) • “Magic” (TIME) • “Ingenious” (The Financial Times) • "A gonzo literary performance” (Entertainment Weekly) • “Rare and splendid” (The Boston Globe) • “Remarkable” (USA Today) • “Delicious” (The New York Times) • “Book groups, meet your next selection" (NPR) In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley. The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence. As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi's Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

Trust Exercise

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#hardcover #fiction #botm #litfic #drama #richardroper #stephsbargainbooks #life #oop #outofprintcover #somethingtolivefor 

New Jersey

How Not to Die Alone-DISCONTINUED TITLE (Something To Live For-UK)

Lucie Britsch

"This dark-comedic novel is about a woman, Janet, who wears a cloak of gloomy realism, until one summer when she learns of a new pill that offers even confirmed cynics a short-term taste of happiness. Her family stages an intervention, her boyfriend leaves her, and she decides to take the pill to get through the Christmas holiday. What follows is life-changing for all concerned, in ways no one expected"--

Sad Janet

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Ruth Emmie Lang

Georgia

"Told with brains and heart" —Michelle Gable, New York Times bestselling author of A Paris Apartment "Bristles with charm and curiosity" —Winston Groom, New York Times bestselling author of Forrest Gump "A wholly original and superbly crafted work of art, Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance is a masterpiece of the imagination." —Lori Nelson Spielman, New York Times bestselling author of The Life List and Sweet Forgiveness "Charlotte's Web for grown-ups who, like Weylyn Grey, have their own stories of being different, feared, brave, and loved." —Mo Daviau, author of Every Anxious Wave Finding magic in the ordinary. In this warm debut novel, Ruth Emmie Lang teaches us about adventure and love in a beautifully written story full of nature and wonder. Orphaned, raised by wolves, and the proud owner of a horned pig named Merlin, Weylyn Grey knew he wasn’t like other people. But when he single-handedly stopped that tornado on a stormy Christmas day in Oklahoma, he realized just how different he actually was. That tornado was the first of many strange events that seem to follow Weylyn from town to town, although he doesn’t like to take credit. As amazing as these powers may appear, they tend to manifest themselves at inopportune times and places. From freak storms to trees that appear to grow over night, Weylyn’s unique abilities are a curiosity at best and at worst, a danger to himself and the woman he loves. But Mary doesn’t care. Since Weylyn saved her from an angry wolf on her eleventh birthday, she’s known that a relationship with him isn’t without its risks, but as anyone who’s met Weylyn will tell you, once he wanders into your life, you’ll wish he’d never leave. Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance tells the story of Weylyn Grey’s life from the perspectives of the people who knew him, loved him, and even a few who thought he was just plain weird. Although he doesn’t stay in any of their lives for long, he leaves each of them with a story to tell. Stories about a boy who lives with wolves, great storms that evaporate into thin air, fireflies that make phosphorescent honey, and a house filled with spider webs and the strange man who inhabits it. There is one story, however, that Weylyn wishes he could change: his own. But first he has to muster enough courage to knock on Mary’s front door.

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance

11c4a5b9-1bbf-4cd6-83c9-fda3cba56237-1

Brandon Taylor

Washington

A FINALIST for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the VCU/Cabell First Novelist Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the NYPL Young Lions Award, and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award “A blistering coming of age story” —O: The Oprah Magazine Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Public Library, Vanity Fair, Elle, NPR, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Harper's Bazaar, Financial Times, Huffington Post, BBC, Shondaland, Barnes & Noble, Vulture, Thrillist, Vice, Self, Electric Literature, and Shelf Awareness A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice. Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community. Real Life is a novel of profound and lacerating power, a story that asks if it’s ever really possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost.

Real Life

b6246323-56e5-43cc-a86c-9cb648106f68-1

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Kentucky

Settling in the swamps of early-nineteenth-century Ohio, the Goodenough family establish an apple orchard that begins a long family battle, and years later, as their youngest son wanders through Gold Rush California, his family's past makes an unexpected appearance.

At the Edge of the Orchard

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Lucky Girls

Rebecca Makkai

"A twisty, immersive whodunit perfect for fans of Donna Tartt's The Secret History." --People 

"Spellbinding." --The New York Times Book Review

"[An] irresistible literary page-turner." --The Boston Globe

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by TIME, NPR, USA Today, Elle, Newsweek, Salon, Bustle, AARP, The Millions, Good Housekeeping, and more

The riveting new novel -- "part true-crime page-turner, part campus coming-of-age" (San Francisco Chronicle) -- from the author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist The Great Believers

A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past--the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death and the conviction of the school's athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers--needs--to let sleeping dogs lie.

But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent ﬂaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought--if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.

In I Have Some Questions for You, award-winning author Rebecca Makkai has crafted her most irresistible novel yet: a stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman's reckoning with her past, with a transﬁxing mystery at its heart. Timely, hypnotic, and populated with a cast of unforgettable characters, I Have Some Questions for You is at once a compulsive page-turner and a literary triumph.

I Have Some Questions for You

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Never read paperback. #paperback #womensfiction #literaryfiction #litfic #historicalfiction #mystery

New York

Separated by a century. Bonded by loss. Will examining all that was invoke comfort or calamity? Seattle, 2015. Emily Reed refuses to dwell on her emotions. When the first-year attorney is assigned a church archival project, she dives into the records to hide from her own heartache. But when she discovers her parents were married in this very chapel, she is forced to confront the grief she buried a decade ago. After she died in 1935, Elizabet Thomas was devastated when her beloved husband wasn't waiting for her on the other side. A lost soul, she's wandered their church for the past eighty years, desperate to find him. And now she must persuade a young, living lawyer that the historic building needs to be preserved rather than sold and torn down. Discovering a diary among the disarray in the building's basement, Emily is first engrossed and then moved by the dead woman's words. And as the fate of her home unravels, Elizabet realizes she and the grieving archivist have more in common than she ever would have guessed. Can Emily and Elizabet save themselves and their cherished sanctuary? All That Was is an uplifting standalone women's literary fiction novel deeply woven with historical elements. If you enjoy dual-perspective storylines, complex female characters, and the rekindling of lost hope, then you'll love Tanya E Williams's soul-stirring tale.

All That Was

5b81530d-bb64-4100-9527-3c76878bf75e-1

Gail Godwin

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

"As always, wry, beady-eyed, acute." -Margaret Atwood, via Twitter From the bestselling, award-winning author of Flora and Evensong comes the story of two remarkable women and the complex friendship between them that spans decades. When the dean of Lovegood Junior College for Girls decides to pair Feron and Merry as roommates in 1958, she has no way of knowing the far-reaching consequences of the match. Surrounded by the traditions and four-story Doric columns of Lovegood, the girls--and their friendship--begin to thrive. But underneath their fierce friendship is a stronger, stranger bond, one comprised of secrets, rivalry, and influence--with neither of them able to predict that Merry is about to lose everything she grew up taking for granted, and that their time together will be cut short. Ten years later, life has led Feron and Merry into vastly different worlds. But when each woman finds herself in need of the other's essence, that spark--that remarkable affinity, unbroken by time--between them is reignited, and their lives begin to shift as a result. Luminous and masterfully crafted, Old Lovegood Girls is the story of a powerful friendship between talented writers, two college friends who have formed a bond that takes them through decades of a fast-changing world, finding and losing and finding again the one friendship that defines them.

♻️ Old Lovegood Girls

4f70dd35-0454-4dee-ad69-10618648a209-1

Connecticut

Mary Beth Keane

Maryland

The triumphant New York Times Bestseller * The Tonight Show Summer Reads Pick * Named one of the best books of the year by People, Vogue, Parade, NPR, and Elle “This is one beautiful book. I was wowed by Keane’s writing and narrative skill—and by what she knows about trouble.” —Stephen King How much can a family forgive? Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie NYPD cops, are neighbors in the suburbs. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come. In Mary Beth Keane's extraordinary novel, a lifelong friendship and love blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next thirty years. Heartbreaking and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes is a gorgeous and generous portrait of the daily intimacies of marriage and the power of forgiveness.

Ask Again, Yes

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North Dakota

perfect condition besides highlighter on the first 30ish pages

The Most Precious Substance on Earth

#paperback #fiction #feminism #youngadult #megwolitzer #bestseller #new #litfic #literaryfiction #womensfiction

Ohio

A New York Times Bestseller “A powerful coming-of-age story that looks at ambition, friendship, identity, desire, and power from the much-needed female lens." —Bustle “Ultra-readable.” —Vogue From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Interestings, comes an electric novel not just about who we want to be with, but who we want to be. To be admired by someone we admire—we all yearn for this: the private, electrifying pleasure of being singled out by someone of esteem. But sometimes it can also mean entry to a new kind of life, a bigger world. Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at sixty-three, has been a central pillar of the women’s movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world. Upon hearing Faith speak for the first time, Greer—madly in love with her boyfriend, Cory, but still full of longing for an ambition that she can’t quite place—feels her inner world light up. And then, astonishingly, Faith invites Greer to make something out of that sense of purpose, leading Greer down the most exciting path of her life as it winds toward and away from her meant-to-be love story with Cory and the future she’d always imagined. Charming and wise, knowing and witty, Meg Wolitzer delivers a novel about power and influence, ego and loyalty, womanhood and ambition. At its heart, The Female Persuasion is about the flame we all believe is flickering inside of us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time. It’s a story about the people who guide and the people who follow (and how those roles evolve over time), and the desire within all of us to be pulled into the light.

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Paula Bomer

♻️ Tante Eva

Dani Shapiro

Signal Fires

Richard Roper

How Not to Die Alone

Richard Roper

How Not to Die Alone

Susan Choi

Trust Exercise

Richard Roper

How Not to Die Alone-DISCONTINUED TITLE (Something To Live For-UK)

Lucie Britsch

Sad Janet

Ruth Emmie Lang

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance

Brandon Taylor

Real Life

Richard Roper

How Not to Die Alone

Tracy Chevalier

At the Edge of the Orchard

Nell Freudenberger

Lucky Girls

Rebecca Makkai

I Have Some Questions for You

Brandon Taylor

Real Life

Tanya E. Williams

All That Was

Gail Godwin

♻️ Old Lovegood Girls

Richard Roper

How Not to Die Alone

Mary Beth Keane

Ask Again, Yes

Mary Beth Keane

Ask Again, Yes

Shashi Bhat

The Most Precious Substance on Earth

Mary Beth Keane

Ask Again, Yes

Mary Beth Keane

Ask Again, Yes

Meg Wolitzer

The Female Persuasion

Dani Shapiro

Signal Fires