#paperback #historicalfiction #fiction #gritlit #litfic #wileycash 

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A Novel

Named a Best Book of 2017 by the Chicago Public Library and the American Library Association “Wiley Cash reveals the dignity and humanity of people asking for a fair shot in an unfair world.” - Christina Baker Kline, author of A Piece of the World and Orphan Train The New York Times bestselling author of the celebrated A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy returns with this eagerly awaited new novel, set in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina in 1929 and inspired by actual events. The chronicle of an ordinary woman’s struggle for dignity and her rights in a textile mill, The Last Ballad is a moving tale of courage in the face of oppression and injustice, with the emotional power of Ron Rash’s Serena, Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day, and the unforgettable films Norma Rae and Silkwood. Twelve times a week, twenty-eight-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the mill’s owners—the newly arrived Goldberg brothers—white but not American and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May’s best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars for seventy-two hours of work each week, it’s the only opportunity she has. Her no-good husband, John, has run off again, and she must keep her four young children alive with whatever work she can find. When the union leaflets begin circulating, Ella May has a taste of hope, a yearning for the better life the organizers promise. But the mill owners, backed by other nefarious forces, claim the union is nothing but a front for the Bolshevik menace sweeping across Europe. To maintain their control, the owners will use every means in their power, including bloodshed, to prevent workers from banding together. On the night of the county’s biggest rally, Ella May, weighing the costs of her choice, makes up her mind to join the movement—a decision that will have lasting consequences for her children, her friends, her town—indeed all that she loves. Seventy-five years later, Ella May’s daughter Lilly, now an elderly woman, tells her nephew about his grandmother and the events that transformed their family. Illuminating the most painful corners of their history, she reveals, for the first time, the tragedy that befell Ella May after that fateful union meeting in 1929. Intertwining myriad voices, Wiley Cash brings to life the heartbreak and bravery of the now forgotten struggle of the labor movement in early twentieth-century America—and pays tribute to the thousands of heroic women and men who risked their lives to win basic rights for all workers. Lyrical, heartbreaking, and haunting, this eloquent novel confirms Wiley Cash’s place among our nation’s finest writers.

The Last Ballad

2655977f-9a44-4051-99f4-e9573bcfb033-1

Slight yellowing on edges of pages, but pages themselves are white. See pictures for reference. #contemporary #fiction #hardcover #litfic #gradschool #lgbt #literaryfiction 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Texas

Real Life

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

#hardcover #fiction #romance #drama #lgbtqauthor #nonbinaryauthor #litfic #bisexualromance 

North Carolina

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by The Washington Post, Oprah Daily, Vulture, Harper's Bazaar, Thrillist, Essence, Good Housekeeping, Glamour, Marie Claire, Parade, Bustle, BuzzFeed, Refinery29, Business Insider, The Guardian, Financial Times, PopSugar, Book Riot, LitHub, Bookish, LGBTQ Reads, and more!

"A deeply heartfelt romance novel." --Marie Claire

"Riveting...emotional." --Book Riot

A New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and "one of our greatest living writers" (Shondaland) reimagines the love story in this fresh and seductive novel about a young woman seeking joy while healing from loss.

Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again.

It's been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she's almost a new person now--an artist with her own studio and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it's time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn't ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.

She's even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance by the overwhelming desire Feyi feels every time she locks eyes with the one person in the house who is most definitely off-limits--his father.

This new life she asked for just got a lot more complicated, and Feyi must begin her search for real answers. Who is she ready to become? Can she release her past and honor her grief while still embracing her future? And, of course, there's the biggest question of all--how far is she willing to go for a second chance at love? Akwaeke Emezi's vivid and passionate writing takes us deep into a world of possibility and healing, and the constant bravery of choosing love against all odds.

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

170b21ce-e0ed-4be1-a48b-45d5113eb99b-1

#hardcover #fiction #romance #drama #lgbtqauthor #nonbinaryauthor #bisexualromance #litfic 

Copy is just like new, no wear, bent pages, annotations, or stains. Spine is unbroken. #paperback #sheilaheti #fiction #litfic #literary

Pennsylvania

A Novel from Life

"Funny...odd, original, and nearly unclassifiable...unlike any novel I can think of."--David Haglund, The New York Times Book Review "Brutally honest and stylistically inventive, cerebral, and sexy."--San Francisco Chronicle Named a Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review,The New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Flavorpill, The New Republic, The New York Observer, The Huffington Post A raw, startling, genre-defying novel of friendship, sex, and love in the new millennium--a compulsive read that's like "spending a day with your new best friend" (Bookforum) By turns loved and reviled upon its U.S. publication, Sheila Heti's "breakthrough novel" (Chris Kraus, Los Angeles Review of Books) is an unabashedly honest and hilarious tour through the unknowable pieces of one woman's heart and mind. Part literary novel, part self-help manual, and part vivid exploration of the artistic and sexual impulse, How Should a Person Be? earned Heti comparisons to Henry Miller, Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, and Flaubert, while shocking and exciting readers with its raw, urgent depiction of female friendship and of the shape of our lives now. Irreverent, brilliant, and completely original, Heti challenges, questions, frustrates, and entertains in equal measure. With urgency and candor she asks: What is the most noble way to love? What kind of person should you be?

How Should a Person Be?

85956aa5-56e5-4e7c-83ce-4783ab993744-1

Literay Fiction — 4.05 on goodreads! Perfect condition #paperback #writersandlovers #lilyking #literaryfiction #litfic #romance 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Tennessee

Writers & Lovers 

#paperback #fiction #litfic #gritty #horror #signed and inscribed by the author #rare

Kentucky

An American Parable

Prodigal

4bf699ce-566b-481f-8156-16414c879954-1

#hardcover #contemporary #fiction #litfic #lgbt #literaryfiction #gradschool #race 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Utah

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.

#paperback #fiction #breakfastattiffanys #classic #modernclassic #litfic #drama #incoldblood 

One of the most beloved novels of the twentieth century by a writer of neverending interest, newly available in a 50th anniversary edition.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

4216f942-d924-4413-9a72-19cedac8fb23-1

#hardcover #adultfiction #queer #lgbtqrepresentation #shortstories #litfic #generalfiction


Ohio

Blind Date with a Book (Lit Fic) (Short Story Collection)

#paperback #fiction #love #emotional #familystory #litfic #drama 

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

bf99b330-2a66-49e3-acc9-673c19a67a1a-1

#paperback #feminism #japan #litfic #motherhood #translated #ukedition #popular

California

'Breathtaking' - Haruki Murakami author of Norwegian Wood

A beguiling novel about three women struggling to determine their own lives in contemporary Tokyo.

A New York Times 'Notable Book of the Year' and one of Elena Ferrante's 'Top 40 Books by Female Authors'

On a hot summer's day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko's teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss of her looks, has travelled to Tokyo in search of breast enhancement surgery. She's accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently stopped speaking, finding herself unable to deal with her own changing body and her mother's self-obsession. Her silence dominates Natsuko's rundown apartment, providing a catalyst for each woman to grapple with their own anxieties and their relationships with one another.

Eight years later, we meet Natsuko again. She is now a writer and finds herself on a journey back to her native city, returning to memories of that summer and her family's past as she faces her own uncertain future.

In Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami paints a radical and intimate portrait of contemporary working class womanhood in Japan, recounting the heartbreaking journeys of three women in a society where the odds are stacked against them. This is an unforgettable English language debut from a major new international talent.

'Bold, modern and surprising' - An Yu, author of Braised Pork
'Incredible and propulsive' - Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times

Shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd.

Breasts and Eggs

c7a322dd-fefe-4cca-936d-8ba6243e19b6-1

#hardcover #fiction #adolescent #adulthood #author #bestselling #dogeared #family #literaryfiction #litfic

A powerful new novel set in a divided Naples by Elena Ferrante, the beloved best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend. Giovanna's pretty face has changed: it's turning into the face of an ugly, spiteful adolescent. But is she seeing things as they really are? Into which mirror must she look to find herself and save herself? She is searching for a new face in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: the Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and the Naples of the depths, which professes to be a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves between these two cities, disoriented by the fact that, whether high or low, the city seems to offer no answer and no escape.

The Lying Life of Adults

fc8a4750-6cb5-46ce-9bff-cf75182eb152-1

#hardcover #fiction #botm #stephsbargainbooks #litfic #richardroper #drama #life 

BOTM edition 

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

70dcafad-94b2-45fa-bddc-ea20233282f1-1

Illinois

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, O, the Oprah Magazine, Esquire, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Refinery29, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, and Lit Hub

"A masterpiece." --NPR

"No other novel this year captures so gracefully the full palette of America." --The Washington Post

"Wryly funny, gently devastating." --Entertainment Weekly

A funny and profound story about family in all its strange forms, joyful and hard-won vulnerability, becoming who you're supposed to be, and the limits of love.
 
Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've been together for a few years--good years--but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other.

But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike's immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.

Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they've ever known. And just maybe they'll all be okay in the end.

Memorial

e5ead6aa-0d79-4011-961a-1ef28ab9a009-1

#paperback #fiction #bookclub #emotional #familystory #litfic #love #drama 

#paperback #kentuckyauthor #litfic #rare #counterculture 📚 

A Novel of the Counterculture

Fiction. A "novel of the counterculture," Gurney Norman's DIVINE RIGHT'S TRIP elicited comparison to Salinger and Kerouac upon its publication in 1971. "DIVINE RIGHT'S TRIP shows itself to be a subtly written and morally passionate epic of the counterculture, a fictional explication of the hopeful new consciousness come to birth.Divine Right is bigger than life, and in giving the story thus far of a segment of his generation, in prose nicely threaded between the vernacular and the symbolic, Gurney Norman has shown a noble reach and a healthy grasp." - John Updike

Divine Right's Trip

cab8c295-d3d1-4ebc-9bbb-f18b135e2cfb-1

#hardcover #fiction #bisexualromance #litfic 

Wiley Cash

The Last Ballad

Brandon Taylor

Real Life

Akwaeke Emezi

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

Akwaeke Emezi

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

Sheila Heti

How Should a Person Be?

Lily King

Writers & Lovers

Blake Johnson

Prodigal

Brandon Taylor

Real Life

Truman Capote

Breakfast at Tiffany's

N/A

Blind Date with a Book (Lit Fic) (Short Story Collection)

Mary Beth Keane

Ask Again, Yes

Mieko Kawakami; Sam Bett (Translator); David Boyd (Translator)

Breasts and Eggs

Elena Ferrante; Ann Goldstein (Translator)

The Lying Life of Adults

Richard Roper

How Not to Die Alone

Akwaeke Emezi

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

Bryan Washington

Memorial

Mary Beth Keane

Ask Again, Yes

Gurney Norman; Ed McClanahan (Afterword by)

Divine Right's Trip

Akwaeke Emezi

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty