Omer Aziz

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Virginia

A Memoir

Brown Boy is an uncompromising interrogation of identity, family, religion, race, and class, told through Omer Aziz's incisive and luminous prose.

In a tough neighborhood on the outskirts of Toronto, miles away from wealthy white downtown, Omer Aziz struggles to find his place as a first-generation Pakistani Muslim boy. He fears the violence and despair of the world around him, and sees a dangerous path ahead, succumbing to aimlessness, apathy, and rage.

In his senior year of high school, Omer quickly begins to realize that education can open up the wider world. But as he falls in love with books, and makes his way to Queen's University in Ontario, Sciences Po in Paris, Cambridge University in England, and finally Yale Law School, he continually confronts his own feelings of doubt and insecurity at being an outsider, a brown-skinned boy in an elite white world. He is searching for community and identity, asking questions of himself and those he encounters, and soon finds himself in difficult situations--whether in the suburbs of Paris or at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Yet the more books Omer reads and the more he moves through elite worlds, his feelings of shame and powerlessness only grow stronger, and clear answers recede further away.

Weaving together his powerful personal narrative with the books and friendships that move him, Aziz wrestles with the contradiction of feeling like an Other and his desire to belong to a Western world that never quite accepts him. He poses the questions he couldn't have asked in his youth: Was assimilation ever really an option? Could one transcend the perils of race and class? And could we--the collective West--ever honestly confront the darker secrets that, as Aziz discovers, still linger from the past?

In Brown Boy, Omer Aziz has written a book that eloquently describes the complex process of creating an identity that fuses where he's from, what people see in him, and who he knows himself to be.

Brown Boy

5838dbd1-8ea8-4ee1-8757-c694f9315ea9-1

Crosby N. Bonsall

Texas

A young boy becomes very frustrated when he tries to teach his little sister to play hide-and-seek.

The Day I Had to Play with My Sister

f7f6613e-7f8b-4367-b71c-725854f7c02f-1

Candace Bushnell

Katie Cotugno

Colorado

Candace Bushnell, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sex and the City, and Katie Cotugno, New York Times bestselling author of 99 Days, team up to write a smart, feminist novel about a girl who fights to expose sexism at her school after a run-in with a predatory teacher. It starts before you can even remember: You learn the rules for being a girl. . . . Marin has always been good at navigating these unspoken guidelines. A star student and editor of the school paper, she dreams of getting into Brown University. Marin's future seems bright--and her young, charismatic English teacher, Mr. Beckett, is always quick to admire her writing and talk books with her. But when "Bex" takes things too far and comes on to Marin, she's shocked and horrified. Had she somehow led him on? Was it her fault? When Marin works up the courage to tell the administration what happened, no one believes her. She's forced to face Bex in class every day. Except now, he has an ax to grind. But Marin isn't about to back down. She uses the school newspaper to fight back and she starts a feminist book club at school. She finds allies in the most unexpected people, like "slutty" Gray Kendall, who she'd always dismissed as just another lacrosse bro. As things heat up at school and in her personal life, Marin must figure out how to take back the power and write her own rules.

Rules for Being a Girl

fe67b82a-0da4-4785-b0d5-7565aa605489-1

Shea Ernshaw

Louisiana

Deluxe edition with special embellishments on first printing only!

In this magical romance from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Long Live the Pumpkin Queen, an illness cursing the land forces a teen girl astronomer to venture across the wilderness in search of the stars' message that will, hopefully, save them all.

When all is lost, look to the stars.

Vega has lived in the valley her whole life--forbidden by her mother to leave the safety of its borders because of the unknown threats waiting for her in the wilds beyond. But when Vega sees an omen in the sky--one she cannot ignore--she is forced to leave the protective boundaries of the valley. Yet the outside world is much more terrifying than Vega could have ever imagined. People are gravely sick--they lose their eyesight and their hearing, just before they lose their lives.

But Vega has a secret: she is the Last Astronomer--a title carried from generation to generation--and she is the only one who understands the knowledge of the stars. Knowledge that could hold the key to a cure. So when locals spot the tattoo on Vega's neck in the shape of a constellation--the mark of an astronomer--chaos erupts. Fearing for her life, Vega is rescued by a girl named Cricket who leads her to Noah, a boy marked by his own mysterious tattoos.

On the run from the men hunting her, Vega sets out across the plains with Cricket and Noah, in search of a fabled cure kept secret by the astronomers. But as the line between friends and protectors begins to blur, Vega must decide whether to safeguard the sacred knowledge of the astronomers...or if she will risk everything to try to save them all.

A Wilderness of Stars

cd3b9806-c6c1-4aa7-be7c-4067451863ba-1

Maryland

Children of Blood and Bone

#hardcover #fiction #ya #juvenilefiction #laurenkate #teardrop #booktok #books 

California

Since Eureka's mother drowned, she wishes she were dead too, but after discovering that an ancient book is more than a story Eureka begins to believe that Ander is right about her being involved in strange things--and in grave danger.

Teardrop

7080b10d-b997-4b21-8f6e-3986362e6f8d-1

Sarah Pearse

New Hampshire

A Novel

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Sanatorium, a Reese's Book Club pick, here, Detective Elin Warner uncovers the truth behind the suspicious deaths on a stunning island getaway

They couldn't wait to stay here.

An idyllic wellness retreat has opened on an island off the English coast, promising rest and relaxation--but the island itself, known locally as Reaper's Rock, has a dark past. Once the playground of a serial killer, it's rumored to be cursed.

But now they can't leave.

A young woman is found dead below the yoga pavilion in what seems to be a tragic fall. But Detective Elin Warner soon learns the victim wasn't a guest--she wasn't meant to be on the island at all.

And they would do anything to escape.

The longer Elin stays, the more secrets she uncovers. And when someone else drowns in a diving incident, Elin begins to suspect that there's nothing accidental about these deaths. But why would someone target the guests at this luxury resort? Elin must find the killer--before the island's history starts to repeat itself.

Most came to recharge and refresh. But someone's here for revenge.

The Retreat

3e052869-719f-4535-b3ce-d68dd11a5497-1

Nicole Williams

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

"Phoenix dreads a summer at family summer camp, but head counselor Callum may change all that--if Phoenix can learn to trust him"--

Trusting You and Other Lies

f99b7ca3-7b16-4719-afbe-b15c58ff95af-1

Nancy Thayer

A woman's second act on the beautiful island of Nantucket delivers much more than she expected in this hopeful novel by New York Times bestselling author Nancy Thayer.

Heather Willette has a good life in Concord, Massachusetts-complete with a husband who runs his own business and a son to take up his mantle one day. But now that her marriage has fizzled out and Ross, her only child, is graduating from college and getting serious with his girlfriend, Heather wonders if that life is the one, she really wants. Ready to seek out her own happiness and discover herself again, Heather decides to leave her husband and rent a cottage on Nantucket. And her plan is going perfectly-until Ross announces he's moving to Nantucket to work at his girlfriend's family's construction business instead of going back home to work with his own father, like he'd promised. Worst of all for Heather, this means having to get along with her.

Kailee Essex is thrilled that Ross is willing to move to her hometown. She has big hopes for their happily ever after, especially now that her parents are finally showing interest in her career. She's less thrilled, however, about his mother living nearby. Kailee has clashed with Heather since the day they met. But anything is possible in the summer sun and sea breezes of Nantucket-even reconciliation. And when change comes sooner than either Heather or Kailee expect, they must learn to overcome their differences to fight for the future they want.

With All the Days of Summer, beloved storyteller Nancy Thayer delivers a moving novel that explores the complexity of family, and the unexpected ways fate can guide you forward.

All the Days of Summer

69a914b4-b3ee-4614-b4b6-54a39c9e8aa5-1

Set in modern-day Toronto and the ancient kingdoms of Mytica, two warring evils vie for possession of one elusive, powerful book.

The Darkest Magic

5755a382-e6f0-48b1-bf99-37b9ea40b8ca-1

Téa Obreht

Michigan

The New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife returns with "a bracingly epic and imaginatively mythic journey across the American West" (Entertainment Weekly). In the lawless, drought-ridden lands of the Arizona Territory in 1893, two extraordinary lives unfold. Nora is an unflinching frontierswoman awaiting the return of the men in her life--her husband, who has gone in search of water for the parched household, and her elder sons, who have vanished after an explosive argument. Nora is biding her time with her youngest son, who is convinced that a mysterious beast is stalking the land around their home. Meanwhile, Lurie is a former outlaw and a man haunted by ghosts. He sees lost souls who want something from him, and he finds reprieve from their longing in an unexpected relationship that inspires a momentous expedition across the West. The way in which Lurie's death-defying trek at last intersects with Nora's plight is the surprise and suspense of this brilliant novel. Mythical, lyrical, and sweeping in scope, Inland is grounded in true but little-known history. It showcases all of Téa Obreht's talents as a writer, as she subverts and reimagines the myths of the American West, making them entirely--and unforgettably--her own. Advance praise for Inland "A frontier tale [that] dazzles with camels and wolves and two characters who never quite meet . . . [Obreht] returns with a novel saturated in enough realism and magic to make the ghost of Gabriel García Márquez grin. . . . Will take your breath away."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "This is no boilerplate Louis L'Amour yarn--there are ghosts, camels and other fantastical elements."--Newsday (Best Summer Books 2019) "The long-anticipated second novel from Téa Obreht transports readers to the Wild West through the juxtaposed stories of a frontierswoman whose husband and sons have gone missing, and of an outlaw on the run."--Bustle

Inland

7d3c97ed-ef15-4f11-b659-683b2ee56c76-1

Ruth Emmie Lang

District of Columbia

Ohioana Book Award finalist Ruth Emmie Lang returns with a new cast of ordinary characters with extraordinary abilities in The Wilderwomen.

Five years ago, Nora Wilder disappeared. The older of her two daughters, Zadie, should have seen it coming, because she can literally see things coming. But not even her psychic abilities were able to prevent their mother from vanishing one morning.

Zadie's estranged younger sister, Finn, can't see into the future, but she has an uncannily good memory, so good that she remembers not only her own memories, but the echoes of memories other people have left behind. On the afternoon of her graduation party, Finn is seized by an "echo" more powerful than anything she's experienced before: a woman singing a song she recognizes, a song about a bird...

When Finn wakes up alone in an aviary with no idea of how she got there, she realizes who the memory belongs to: Nora.

Now, it's up to Finn to convince her sister that not only is their mom still out there, but that she wants to be found. Against Zadie's better judgement, she and Finn hit the highway, using Finn's echoes to retrace Nora's footsteps and uncover the answer to the question that has been haunting them for years: Why did she leave?

But the more time Finn spends in their mother's past, the harder it is for her to return to the present, to return to herself. As Zadie feels her sister start to slip away, she will have to decide what lengths she is willing to go to find their mother, knowing that if she chooses wrong, she could lose them both for good.

The Wilderwomen

e8f7594b-1739-47b4-a477-ea5c88d1288c-1

Amanda Eyre Ward

Georgia

"The bonds between three picture-perfect, viciously protective mothers are tested when their sons uncover a horrible crime in this provocative novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters. In Austin's Zilker Park, vigilance and money are enough to keep one insulated from the world's problems and inconveniences. Here, three mothers-Whitney, Annette, and Liza-have grown thick as thieves, and so have their fifteen-year-old sons. While each of them has their own set of values and backgrounds, they share the belief that they can shelter their boys from an increasingly dangerous world. They've raised their families together, and their three sons are about to begin a carefree summer as lifeguards. Their friendship is unbreakable--as safe as the neighborhood where they've raised their sweet little boys. Until the body is found. One night, the three women have been chatting away, drinking wine, when their boys come back with a harrowing story about finding a young woman dead beside a swimming hole in the Greenbelt, a swath of hiking trails and dim wilderness areas that runs through their neighborhood. They swear they haven't done anything. They agree not to call the police-because who would want to cause a scene, to topple their fragile images and arouse suspicion? What choice do mothers have but to believe their sons? All families harbor secrets. Privately, none of them is sure that the boys are telling the truth. And with each woman questioning her son-and her friends' sons-each wonders how many lies they've told each other. The Lifeguards is a riveting, high-stakes novel about the secrets we tell to protect the ones we love-and how sometimes your closest neighbor and ally can become your most dangerous foe"--

The Lifeguards

d4b8971c-7184-4df8-9be3-a7b04ac9c696-1

#hardcover #kids #children #booktok #cartoon #adventure 

Gumball provides advice for his brother, Darwin, on how to create mayhem through all sorts of pranks and stunts.

Mayhem Manual

0206548e-47ce-4b19-ac81-1a6ef91bb287-1

Val Emmich

Has black dot on the top. Some shelf wear. Never been read. 

The Rosie Project meets Tell the Wolves I'm Home in this endearing debut about what happens when a girl who can't forget befriends a man who's desperate to remember. Grief-stricken over his partner's death, Gavin Winters sets fire to every physical reminder in the couple's home. A neighbor captures the ordeal on video, turning this unsung TV actor into a household name. Now Gavin is fleeing the hysteria of Los Angeles for New Jersey, hoping to find peace with the family of an old friend. Instead, he finds Joan. Joan, the family's ten-year-old daughter, was born with the rare ability to recall every day of her life in cinematic detail. In seconds, she can tell you how many times her mother has uttered the phrase "it never fails" in the last six months (twenty-seven) or what she was wearing when her grandfather took her fishing on a particular Sunday in June years ago (fox socks). Joan has never met Gavin until now, but she did know his partner, Sydney, and waiting inside her uncanny mind are a half dozen startlingly vivid memories to prove it. Gavin strikes a deal with Joan: in return for sharing all her memories of Sydney, Gavin will help Joan win a local songwriting contest she's convinced could make her unforgettable. The unlikely duo set off on their quest until Joan reveals unexpected details about Sydney's final months, forcing Gavin to question not only the purity of his past with Sydney but the course of his own immediate future. Told in the alternating voices of these two irresistible characters, The Reminders is a hilarious and tender exploration of loss, memory, friendship, and renewal.

The Reminders

cbc2577f-3bee-4c53-aea2-2efca105c897-1

Jeff Bishop

You've Reached Sam meets John Hughes in a funny and heartfelt debut about a boy's delirious summertime quest with his ex-girlfriend.

The summer after senior year should have been a time for Cam to party and hang out with his friends. It should also have been a time for him to win back the love of his life, Allison Tandy, who'd dumped him so brutally the year before.

But it quickly becomes clear that this summer is going to be worse than a failure for Cam. It's going to be a tragedy.

Ally is left comatose after a terrible car crash, then Cam tears his ACL in a basketball accident. The operation leaves him in agony, confined to his couch and ruminating over the fact that his ex may not survive.

But when (after taking his medication) Cam starts seeing Ally, he starts to think- 1. He may be headed for a complete mental breakdown and 2. This summer might just be interesting afterall.

Brimming with honesty and humor, A Heavy Dose of Allison Tandy interrogates how much control we really have over matters of love-and life.

A Heavy Dose of Allison Tandy

bda28774-c908-4776-96cb-0c06a45cf56c-1

Jen Malone

In this emotionally candid contemporary YA, author Jen Malone delves into the world of a teen whose life is brought to an abrupt halt when she learns she’s in dire need of an organ transplant. Hard-charging and irrepressible, eighteen-year-old Amelia Linehan could see a roller derby opponent a mile away—and that’s while crouched down, bent over skates, and zooming around a track at the speed of light. What she couldn’t see coming, however, was the flare-up of the rare liver disorder she was born with. But now it’s the only thing she—and everyone around her—can think about. With no guarantee of a viable organ transplant, everything Amelia’s been sure of—like college plans or the possibility of one day falling in love—has become a huge question mark, threatening to drag her down into a sea of what-ifs she’s desperate to avoid. Then a friend from the past shows up. With Will, it’s easy to forget about what’s lurking between the lightness of their time together. She feels alive when all signs point elsewhere. But with the odds decidedly not in her favor, Amelia knows this feeling can’t last forever. After all, what can?

The Arrival of Someday

eff77d6f-e8b3-4e8d-9997-3527365eec65

Philippa Gregory

Missouri

In 1453, seventeen-year-old Luca Vero, accused of heresy and expelled from his monastery, is recruited to help investigate evil across Europe but frees his first subject, Isolde, from captivity in a nunnery, and together they seek the one who defends theboundaries of Christendom and holds the secrets of the Order of Darkness.

Changeling

8f33777c-5243-40ee-be93-d57d0ca19f8a-1

James Patterson

Ned Rust

The Gift

eb75bf25-bb54-403a-976b-88a7b6c93beb-1

Abigail Dean

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A stunning debut.” —Washington Post “Haunting [and] powerful.” —The New York Times “A modern-day classic.” —Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Collector “Fantastic, I loved it.” —Paula Hawkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train She thought she had escaped her past. But there are some things you can’t outrun. Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents--her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the home into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings--and with the childhood they shared. What begins as a propulsive tale of escape and survival becomes a gripping psychological family story about the shifting alliances and betrayals of sibling relationships--about the secrets our siblings keep, from themselves and each other. Who have each of these siblings become? How do their memories defy or galvanize Lex's own? As Lex pins each sibling down to agree to her family's final act, she discovers how potent the spell of their shared family mythology is, and who among them remains in its thrall and who has truly broken free. For readers of Room and Sharp Objects, an absorbing and psychologically immersive novel about a young girl who escapes captivity–but not the secrets that shadow the rest of her life.

Girl A

b39070e1-71c7-416c-b24b-4cc444e76ac4

A longtime Nantucket resident is trying to make the best of a lonely summer. Her spirited granddaughter is learning what she wants out of life. Unforgettable surprises await them both in this magical, multigenerational novel from New York Times bestselling author Nancy Thayer. "Readers come to Nancy Thayer novels for the idyllic Nantucket beaches and lifestyle, but they stay for the characters."--New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe Eleanor Sunderland loves living on Nantucket, in a gorgeous cliffside home that has been in her family for decades. Yet this year she can't help but feel a bit isolated, even as the island begins to come alive with summer tourists and travelers. Her best friend has skipped town on a last-minute cruise, leaving Eleanor feeling lonely and nostalgic about her family's weekend trips to the island, made less frequently in the years since her husband's passing. Now, her money-driven children contact her mostly to complain and to beg her to sell her beloved home for a steep payout. Hoping to kick the season off on a good note, Eleanor decides her seventieth birthday may be the perfect occasion for a much-needed reunion. Fresh off the heels of her college graduation, Eleanor's dear granddaughter, Ari, has just ended an engagement that felt less like true love and more like a chore. She longs for a change of scenery and to venture far from her parents' snobbish expectations. Taking advantage of her newfound freedom, she heads to Nantucket to clear her head before graduate school, moving in with her grandmother and taking a job at the local beach camp. As she watches Eleanor begin to form a bond with an old acquaintance, Ari herself becomes completely smitten with a friend's charming older brother. But just as grandmother and granddaughter fall into a carefree routine, a few shocking discoveries throw them off course, and their ideas of the future seem suddenly uncertain. Eleanor and Ari make exciting connections, old and new, over the course of an unpredictable, life-changing few months, and learn to lean on each other through every new challenge they face in life and love, in this tale filled with Nancy Thayer's signature Nantucket magic.

Family Reunion

d15469ae-833f-4e92-b922-04f7f5c9d6a1-1

Celeste Ng

Iowa

The Reese's Book Club October Pick!

From the #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, comes one of the most highly anticipated books of the year - the inspiring new novel about a mother's unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.
 
"It's impossible not to be moved." --Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review
 
"Riveting, tender, and timely." --People, Book of the Week

"Thought-provoking, heart-wrenching...I was so invested in the future of this mother and son, and I can't wait to hear what you think of this deeply suspenseful story!" - Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club October '22 Pick)

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve "American culture" in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic--including the work of Bird's mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.
 
Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn't know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn't wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
 
Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It's a story about the power--and limitations--of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.

Our Missing Hearts

47b20a04-2f18-496f-a99d-0371a516414d-1

#hardcover #fiction #youngadult #romance #love #booktok 

Pennsylvania

In his debut novel, YouTube personality and author of We Should Hang Out Sometime Josh Sundquist explores the nature of love, trust, and romantic attraction. On his first day at a new school, blind sixteen-year-old Will Porter accidentally groped a girl on the stairs, sat on another student in the cafeteria, and somehow drove a classmate to tears. High school can only go up from here, right? As Will starts to find his footing, he develops a crush on a charming, quiet girl named Cecily. Then an unprecedented opportunity arises: an experimental surgery that could give Will eyesight for the first time in his life. But learning to see is more difficult than Will ever imagined, and he soon discovers that the sighted world has been keeping secrets. It turns out Cecily doesn't meet traditional definitions of beauty--in fact, everything he'd heard about her appearance was a lie engineered by their so-called friends to get the two of them together. Does it matter what Cecily looks like? No, not really. But then why does Will feel so betrayed? Told with humor and breathtaking poignancy, Love and First Sight is a story about how we related to each other and the world around us.

Browse by categories

Save this search

Omer Aziz

Brown Boy

Crosby N. Bonsall

The Day I Had to Play with My Sister

Candace Bushnell; Katie Cotugno

Rules for Being a Girl

Shea Ernshaw

A Wilderness of Stars

Henry Holt

Children of Blood and Bone

Lauren Kate

Teardrop

Sarah Pearse

The Retreat

Nicole Williams

Trusting You and Other Lies

Nancy Thayer

All the Days of Summer

Shea Ernshaw

A Wilderness of Stars

Morgan Rhodes

The Darkest Magic

Téa Obreht

Inland

Ruth Emmie Lang

The Wilderwomen

Amanda Eyre Ward

The Lifeguards

Mark Shulman; C. Lamison

Mayhem Manual

Val Emmich

The Reminders

Jeff Bishop

A Heavy Dose of Allison Tandy

Jen Malone

The Arrival of Someday

Philippa Gregory

Changeling

James Patterson; Ned Rust

The Gift

Abigail Dean

Girl A

Nancy Thayer

Family Reunion

Celeste Ng

Our Missing Hearts

Josh Sundquist

Love and First Sight