Stef Penney

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Florida

A Novel

Enter the world of Haussmann's newly built City of Light: a dazzling, panoramic novel of love and survival set during the Siege of Paris in 1870. A diverse group of memorable characters find themselves in Paris during the build up to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Dreamer Anne is half-Haitian, possessed of incredible gifts, but with a past she tries to bury; Lawrence is desperate to spread his wings, develop his talents as a photographer, and escape the restrictions of his Canadian upbringing; Ellis, an American army surgeon, has lived through the trauma of the American Civil War and will do anything to avoid further violence. We join these characters and others as they live through, and are buffeted by, momentous historical events that will change them forever. The Franco-Prussian War ends in a devastating defeat for the French after the Siege of Paris, in which countless Parisians die of starvation and cold during a bitter winter. This terrible time is quickly followed by yet more horror: the socialist revolution of the Paris Commune that seizes the government, briefly, until it is brutally crushed by the French Army. Against this backdrop our characters meet, struggle, grow, fight their demons, lose their hearts, find love. The reader witnesses the ebb and flow of history as the characters confront a changing world around them. And although set in the nineteenth century, the novel explores questions that are uniquely contemporary: issues of gender, sexuality, inequality, and race.

The Beasts of Paris - New!

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Alan Paton

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New Jersey

For millions of readers worldwide, Alan Paton's books have vividly described life in contemporary South Africa. Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful revolves around the everyday experiences of a group of men and women whose lives reflect the human costs of maintaining a racially divided society. Writing at the peak of his powers, Paton delivers a masterpiece.

Ah, but Your Land Is Beautiful

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Of The Moon Reflected Fire and its subject, the Vietnam War, poet James Tate writes: "These are trenchant, wrenching poems. With artistry and honesty they perform an inquest into war and its corrosive after effects."

The Moon Reflected Fire

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Elizabeth Berg

What do women talk about when they know they don't have forever? They talk about what they have always talked about, only they go deeper and more honest: with outrageous humor they try to mitigate pain. Intimate and uncensored sharing, the kind of connection women prize, is at the heart of this deeply moving novel about the grit and power of female friends. Ann and Ruth have always talked as only great friends can--honestly, and about everything: husbands and marriages, sex lives and children, their work, their hopes, their disappointments, and their dreams. For Ann, cautious and conventional, her closeness to the outspoken and eccentric Ruth brings about discovery and liberation, a chance to say whatever she wants, and, most important, under the insistent tutelage of Ruth, to become herself. Over the years, the women have shared recipes, quilting patterns, child care, delicate and dangerous secrets. Each rests secure in the knowledge that they will be friends forever. Then something happens that will change their lives forever, and the women begin to share something more profound than either of them might have predicted. Written with an unerring ear for how women talk, laugh, and cry together, and with a gift for capturing the uniqueness of personality, Talk Before Sleep is sure to find a place in readers' hearts.

Talk Before Sleep

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Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Colorado

A dazzling epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West, from the author of the National Book Award finalist Sabrina & Corina

A Phenomenal Book Club Pick * "Sometimes you just step into a book and let it wash over you, like you're swimming under a big, sparkling night sky."--Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022--The Millions, Electric Lit, Lit Hub, Book Riot

There is one every generation, a seer who keeps the stories.

Luz "Little Light" Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors' origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion.

Written in Kali Fajardo-Anstine's singular voice, the wildly entertaining and complex lives of the Lopez family fill the pages of this multigenerational western saga. Woman of Light is a transfixing novel about survival, family secrets, and love--filled with an unforgettable cast of characters, all of whom are just as special, memorable, and complicated as our beloved heroine, Luz.

Woman of Light

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GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • A woman who’s used to going solo discovers that there’s one relationship she can’t run away from in this “hilarious, electric” (The New York Times) novel, a probing examination of the complexities of family, queerness, race, and community

LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER• ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Boston Globe, Autostraddle, Shondaland • “A new kind of love story, the best kind.”—Ashley C. Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Somebody’s Daughter

When she was twenty-six and broke, Skye didn’t think twice before selling her eggs and happily pocketing the cash. Now approaching forty, Skye still moves through life entirely—and unrepentantly—on her own terms, living out of a suitcase and avoiding all manner of serious relationships. Maybe her junior high classmates weren’t wrong when they voted her “Most Likely to Be Single” instead of “Most Ride-or-Die Homie,” but at least she’s always been free to do as she pleases.

Then a twelve-year-old girl tracks Skye down during one of her brief visits to her hometown of Philadelphia and informs Skye that she’s “her egg.” Skye’s life is thrown into sharp relief and she decides that it might be time to actually try to have a meaningful relationship with another human being. Spoiler alert: It’s not easy.

Things get even more complicated when Skye realizes that the woman she tried and failed to pick up the other day is the girl’s aunt, and now it’s awkward. All the while, her brother is trying to get in touch, her mother is being bewilderingly kind, and the West Philly pool halls and hoagie shops of her youth have been replaced by hipster cafés.

With its endearingly prickly narrator and a cast of characters willing to both challenge her and catch her when she falls, this novel is a clever, moving portrait of a woman and the relationships she thought she could live without.

Texas

BOTM edition

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • A woman who’s used to going solo discovers that there’s one relationship she can’t run away from in this “endearing and hilarious” (BuzzFeed) novel, a probing examination of the complexities of family, queerness, race, and community “Razor-sharp and outrageously funny, Skye Falling is an absolute winner.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo When she was twenty-six and broke, Skye didn’t think twice before selling her eggs and happily pocketing the cash. Now approaching forty, Skye still moves through life entirely—and unrepentantly—on her own terms, living out of a suitcase and avoiding all manner of serious relationships. Maybe her junior high classmates weren’t wrong when they voted her “Most Likely to Be Single” instead of “Most Ride-or-Die Homie,” but at least she’s always been free to do as she pleases. Then a twelve-year-old girl tracks Skye down during one of her brief visits to her hometown of Philadelphia and informs Skye that she’s “her egg.” Skye’s life is thrown into sharp relief and she decides that it might be time to actually try to have a meaningful relationship with another human being. Spoiler alert: It’s not easy. Things get even more complicated when Skye realizes that the woman she tried and failed to pick up the other day is the girl’s aunt, and now it’s awkward. All the while, her brother is trying to get in touch, her mother is being bewilderingly kind, and the West Philly pool halls and hoagie shops of her youth have been replaced by hipster cafés. With its endearingly prickly narrator and a cast of characters willing to both challenge her and catch her when she falls, this novel is a clever, moving portrait of a woman and the relationships she thought she could live without.

Skye Falling

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Dave Eggers

Oregon

"This great volume highlights the very best of this year's fiction, nonfiction, alternative comics, screenplays, blogs, and more" (OK!). Compiled by Dave Eggers and students of his San Francisco writing center, it is thoroughly "entertaining and thought-provoking reading" (Library Journal).

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008 includes MARJORIE CELONA * DAVID GESSNER * ANDREW SEAN GREER * RAFFI KHATCHADOURIAN * STEPHEN KING * EMILY RABOTEAU * GEORGE SAUNDERS * PATRICK TOBIN * LAURA VAN DEN BERG * MALERIE WILLENS * and others

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008

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Lots of great authors. Some wear. Published in 1925. Fiction and non-fiction.

Connecticut

Book 2

The Hale Literary Readers

#paperback #fiction #youngadult #bellwetherprizewinner #literary #exquisite #excellent 

Oklahoma

After a family tragedy orphans her, Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., moves into her grandmother's mostly black community in the 1980s, where she must swallow her grief and confront her identity as a biracial woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white. A first novel. Reprint.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

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Noel R. Fitch

Walks in Hemingway's Paris is the perfect travel companion to the most romantic and fascinating of cities for those who want to experience Paris beyond the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. Covering all the area of Paris that Hemingway and his fellow expatriates once roamed from Left Bank to Right, Noel Riley Fitch provides an intimate visit to major Parisian landmarks as well as to out-of-the-way cafes, hotels and residences immortalized by "Papa" and his friends.

A Guide to Paris for the Literary Traveler

This guide includes seven unique walking tours of Paris's Left and Right Banks for the newest or the most seasoned traveler. It provides an intimate journey to major Parisian landmarks as well as out-of-the-way cafes, hotels, and residences immortalized by Hemingway and his friends. Maps and photographs.

Walks in Hemingway's Paris - First St. Martin's Griffin Edition

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About Harry Towns

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Pennsylvania

Ploughshares

The Paris Review

Sigrid Rausing

The Politics of Feeling

This issue of Granta looks at the ways we feel politically - and asks whether it's possible to feel any other way. When people predicate their politics only on what they feel and can no longer be swayed by expertise, reason or facts, what results would seem the most unfeeling sort of politics. Rage, resentment, hysteria, guilt, shame, all figure highly in our conflicted times, as does the intemperate adoration of popular figures. A Pandora's box of furies has opened up. But if it's too late now to put those furies back, might anything else be done with them? This issue of Granta looks at the ways we feel politically - and asks whether it's possible to feel any other way. Adam Phillips analyses politics in the consulting room, Roxane Gay considers 'unfeeling', Peter Pomerantsev unearths his data profile to conduct sentiment analysis, Margie Orford explores shame in South Africa, Joff Winterhart graphically imagines road rage, Pankaj Mishra reflects on bodily decadence, Josh Cohen inspects his own apathy, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor witnesses devastation, David Baddiel probes the outrage of life online. With new fiction from Olga Tokarczuk, Ben Markovits, Deborah Levy, Hanif Kureishi and new poetry from Nick Laird and Alissa Quart.

Granta 146

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#paperback #edgarallanpoe #literary #guides #ela #English #education #teaching #homework 

New York

English

Spark notes

Poe's Short Stories

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Both delightful and wise, Jim the Boy brilliantly captures the pleasures and fears of youth at a time when America itself was young and struggling to come into its own.

Jim the Boy

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Diana Souhami

A solid addition to the Gertrude Stein /Alice Toklas canon.

Minnesota

The story of their life together. From letters, memoirs and the published writings of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, this is the story of one of the most solid marriages of the century.

Gertrude and Alice

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Mia McKenzie

Abandoning her homeless existence to become a minister's wife, Lila reflects on her hardscrabble life on the run with a canny young drifter and her efforts to reconcile her painful past with her husband's gentle Christian worldview.

Lila (Oprah's Book Club)

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Returning to Gilead to care for her dying father, Glory Boughton is joined by her long-absent brother, with whom she bonds throughout his struggles with alcoholism, unemployment, and their father's traditionalist values.

Home

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James McBride

California

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction Winner of the Gotham Book Prize One of Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of the Year" Oprah's Book Club Pick Named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and TIME Magazine A Washington Post Notable Novel From the author of the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water, comes one of the most celebrated novels of the year. In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride’s funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird. In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood’s Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself. As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters—caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York—overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion. Bringing to these pages both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel every bit as involving as The Good Lord Bird and as emotionally honest as The Color of Water. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us.

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Stef Penney

The Beasts of Paris - New!

Alan Paton

Ah, but Your Land Is Beautiful

Doug Anderson

The Moon Reflected Fire

Elizabeth Berg

Talk Before Sleep

Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Woman of Light

Mia McKenzie

Skye Falling

Dave Eggers; Dave Eggers

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008

Edward Everett Hale

The Hale Literary Readers

Heidi W. Durrow

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

Noel R. Fitch

Walks in Hemingway's Paris - First St. Martin's Griffin Edition

Bruce Jay Friedman

About Harry Towns

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Viet Thanh Nguyen

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The Paris Review

Sigrid Rausing

Granta 146

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Ploughshares

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Poe's Short Stories

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Skye Falling

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James McBride

Deacon King Kong