Sarah Bird

Sarah Bird takes on Austin high society in this critically acclaimed, hilarious comedy of manners in which a newly divorced heroine eventually comes to realize what matters most in life.

In social satirist Sarah Bird’s seventh novel, Blythe Young is happily immersed in Austin society after she marries Trey Biggs–Dix, naively signing a strict prenuptial agreement insisted upon by her mother-in-law. But when that same mother-in-law lands a better catch for her son ten years later, Blythe, now thirty-three and childless, is unceremoniously dumped. Penniless, desperate, but determined, Blythe finds herself taking refuge at Seneca House, the housing co-op where she lived a decade ago in college. There she encounters her old college roommate, the sweet Millie Ott, one of the many friends Blythe shucked off during a frenzy of social climbing.

Before long, Blythe comes face to face with her past sins and dubious moral choices, and under the unlikely tutelage of Millie, the eternal optimist, Blythe is finally able to discover the path to real happiness. Combining the wicked humor of David Sedaris with the hip, trendy style of Lauren Weisberger, this fast-paced, and sharply observed tale is a comic triumph of a novel.

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Texas


Sarah Bird takes on Austin high society in this critically acclaimed, hilarious comedy of manners in which a newly divorced heroine eventually comes to realize what matters most in life.

In social satirist Sarah Bird's seventh novel, Blythe Young is happily immersed in Austin society after she marries Trey Biggs-Dix, naively signing a strict prenuptial agreement insisted upon by her mother-in-law. But when that same mother-in-law lands a better catch for her son ten years later, Blythe, now thirty-three and childless, is unceremoniously dumped. Penniless, desperate, but determined, Blythe finds herself taking refuge at Seneca House, the housing co-op where she lived a decade ago in college. There she encounters her old college roommate, the sweet Millie Ott, one of the many friends Blythe shucked off during a frenzy of social climbing.

Before long, Blythe comes face to face with her past sins and dubious moral choices, and under the unlikely tutelage of Millie, the eternal optimist, Blythe is finally able to discover the path to real happiness. Combining the wicked humor of David Sedaris with the hip, trendy style of Lauren Weisberger, this fast-paced, and sharply observed tale is a comic triumph of a novel.

How Perfect Is That - First Pocket Books Trade Edition

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Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

California

A Novel

From the widely praised author of The Yokota Officers Club and The Flamenco Academy, a novel as hilarious as it is heartbreaking about a single mom and her seventeen-year-old daughter learning how to let go in that precarious moment before college empties the nest.

In The Gap Year, told with perfect pitch from both points of view, we meet Cam Lightsey, lactation consultant extraordinaire, a divorcée still secretly carrying a torch for the ex who dumped her, a suburban misfit who’s given up her rebel dreams so her only child can get a good education.

We also learn the secrets of Aubrey Lightsey, tired of being the dutiful, grade-grubbing band geek, ready to explode from wanting her “real” life to begin, trying to figure out love with boys weaned on Internet porn.

When Aubrey meets Tyler Moldenhauer, football idol–sex god with a dangerous past, the fuse is lit. Late-bloomer Aubrey metastasizes into Cam’s worst silent, sullen teen nightmare, a girl with zero interest in college. Worse, on the sly Aubrey’s in touch with her father, who left when she was two to join a celebrity-ridden nutball cult.

As the novel unfolds—with humor, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and penetrating insights about love in the twenty-first century—the dreams of daughter, mother, and father chart an inevitable, but perhaps not fatal, collision . . .

The Gap Year

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Pennsylvania

A Seattle Times Best Book of the Year

In her most ambitious, moving, and provocative novel to date, Sarah Bird makes a stunning departure. Above the East China Sea tells the entwined stories of two teenaged girls, an American and an Okinawan, whose lives are connected across seventy years by the shared experience of profound loss, the enduring strength of an ancient culture, and the redeeming power of family love.

Luz James, a contemporary U.S. Air Force brat, lives with her strictly-by-the-rules sergeant mother at Kadena Air Base in Okianawa. Luz's older sister, her best friend and emotional center, has just been killed in the Afghan war. Unmoored by her sister's death and a lifetime of constant moving from base to base, Luz turns for the comfort her service-hardened mother cannot offer to the "Smokinawans," the "waste cases," who gather to get high every night in a deserted cove. When even pills, one-hitters, Cuervo Gold, and a growing crush on Jake Furusato aren't enough to soften the unbearable edge, the desolate girl contemplates taking her own life.

In 1945, Tamiko Kokuba, along with two hundred of her classmates, is plucked out of her elite girls' high school and trained to work in the Imperial Army's horrific cave hospitals. With defeat certain, Tamiko finds herself squeezed between the occupying Japanese and the invading Americans. She believes she has lost her entire family, as well as the island paradise she so loved, and, like Luz, she aches with a desire to be reunited with her beloved sister.

On an island where the spirits of the dead are part of life and your entire clan waits for you in the afterworld, suicide offers Tamiko the promise of peace. As Luz tracks down the story of her own Okinawan grandmother, she discovers that, if she surrenders to the most unbrat impulse and allows herself to connect completely with a place and its people, the ancestral spirits will save not only Tamiko but her as well.

Propelled by a riveting narrative and set at the very epicenter of the headline-grabbing clash now emerging between the great powers, Above the East China Sea is at once a remarkable chronicle of how war shapes the lives of conquerors as well as the conquered and a deeply moving account of family, friendship, and love that transcends time.

Above the East China Sea

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South Carolina

"You'll be swept away by the passion and power of this remarkable, trailblazing woman who risked everything to follow her own heart." - Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"An epic page-turner." - Christina Baker Kline

"Bird's fast-paced, action-packed story is a bittersweet one--grand love and legacy ultimately eluded Williams--but this fearless, often heartbreaking account sheds a welcome light on an extraordinary American warrior." - Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review

Named Best Fiction Writer in the Austin Chronicle's "Austin's Best 2018"
Named one of Lone Star Literary Life's "Top 20 Texas Books of 2018"

The compelling, hidden story of Cathy Williams, a former slave and the only woman to ever serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers.

"Here's the first thing you need to know about Miss Cathy Williams: I am the daughter of a daughter of a queen and my mama never let me forget it."

Though born into bondage on a "miserable tobacco farm" in Little Dixie, Missouri, Cathy Williams was never allowed to consider herself a slave. According to her mother, she was a captive, destined by her noble warrior blood to escape the enemy. Her chance at freedom presents itself with the arrival of Union general Phillip Henry "Smash 'em Up" Sheridan, the outcast of West Point who takes the rawboned, prideful young woman into service. At war's end, having tasted freedom, Cathy refuses to return to servitude and makes the monumental decision to disguise herself as a man and join the Army's legendary Buffalo Soldiers.

Alone now in the ultimate man's world, Cathy must fight not only for her survival and freedom, but she also vows to never give up on finding her mother, her little sister, and the love of the only man strong enough to win her heart. Inspired by the stunning, true story of Private Williams, this American heroine comes to vivid life in a sweeping and magnificent tale about one woman's fight for freedom, respect and independence.

"Sarah Bird masterfully tells the story of Cathy (Cathay) Williams, the only female ever to serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers...Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen is a wonderful read." - Michael Hurd, author of Thursday Night Lights, managing editor of The Texas Black History Project, and director of the Texas Preservation of History and Culture

Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen

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Kansas

Set during the Great Depression, Sarah Bird's Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a novel about one woman—and a nation—struggling to be reborn from the ashes. July 3. 1932. Shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She’d come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is cruelly thwarted, Evie is swept into the alien world of dance marathons. All that she has been denied—a family, a purpose, even love—waits for her there in the place she dreads most: the spotlight. Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a sweeping novel that brings to spectacular life the enthralling worlds of both dance marathons and the family-run empire of vice that was Galveston in the Thirties. Unforgettable characters tell a story that is still deeply resonant today as America learns what Evie learns, that there truly isn’t anything this country can’t do when we do it together. That indomitable spirit powers a story that is a testament to the deep well of resilience in us all that allows us to not only survive the hardest of hard times, but to find joy, friends, and even family, in them.

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

17af9952-f254-4818-a3c1-76c9373d12b8-1

Connecticut

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

"You'll be swept away by the passion and power of this remarkable, trailblazing woman who risked everything to follow her own heart." - Kristin Hannah, #1New York Timesbestselling author

"An epic page-turner."-Christina Baker Kline

Named Best Fiction Writer in theAustin Chronicle's "Austin's Best 2018"
Named one of Lone Star Literary Life's "Top 20 Texas Books of 2018"

The compelling, hidden story of Cathy Williams, a former slave and the only woman to ever serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers.

"Here's the first thing you need to know about Miss Cathy Williams: I am the daughter of a daughter of a queen and my mama never let me forget it."

Though born into bondage on a "miserable tobacco farm" in Little Dixie, Missouri, Cathy Williams was never allowed to consider herself a slave. According to her mother, she was a captive, destined by her noble warrior blood to escape the enemy. Her chance at freedom presents itself with the arrival of Union general Phillip Henry "Smash 'em Up" Sheridan, the outcast of West Point who takes the rawboned, prideful young woman into service. At war's end, having tasted freedom, Cathyrefuses to return to servitude and makes the monumental decision to disguise herself as a man and join the Army's legendary Buffalo Soldiers.

Alone now in the ultimate man's world, Cathy must fight not only for her survival and freedom, but she also vows to never give up on finding her mother, her little sister, and the love of the only man strong enough to win her heart. Inspired by the stunning, true story of Private Williams, this American heroine comes to vivid life in a sweeping and magnificent tale about one woman's fight for freedom, respect and independence.

Alabama

Oregon

Michigan

A paperback book of comic female friendship and solidarity set against a backdrop of collegiate lowlife.

Alamo House

229a8f44-7d04-473f-b600-1fccedb34e3c-0

Maine

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Georgia

How Perfect Is That

New York

Colorado

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier (First Edition)

Assigned to cover a convention of romance writers and bored with the prospect, Gretchen Griner is surprised to find the authors intelligent and offbeat, and is even more surprised when two of the writers attempt to fix her up with the perfect boyfriend

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Sarah Bird

How Perfect Is That - First Pocket Books Trade Edition

Sarah Bird

The Gap Year

Sarah Bird

Above the East China Sea

Sarah Bird

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Sarah Bird

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

Sarah Bird

Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen

Sarah Bird

Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen

Sarah Bird

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

Sarah Bird

Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen

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Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen

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Sarah Bird

Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen

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Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

Sarah Bird

Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen

Sarah Bird

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

Sarah Bird

How Perfect Is That

Sarah Bird

How Perfect Is That

Sarah Bird

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier (First Edition)

Sarah Bird

Boyfriend School

Sarah Bird

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

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Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

Sarah Bird

Boyfriend School

Sarah Bird

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

Sarah Bird

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier