Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Maryland

A Novel

A cinematic Reconstruction-era drama of violence and fraught moral reckoning

In Dawson's Fall, a novel based on the lives of Roxana Robinson's great-grandparents, we see America at its most fragile, fraught, and malleable. Set in 1889, in Charleston, South Carolina, Robinson's tale weaves her family's journal entries and letters with a novelist's narrative grace, and spans the life of her tragic hero, Frank Dawson, as he attempts to navigate the country's new political, social, and moral landscape.

Dawson, a man of fierce opinions, came to this country as a young Englishman to fight for the Confederacy in a war he understood as a conflict over states' rights. He later became the editor of the Charleston News and Courier, finding a platform of real influence in the editorial column and emerging as a voice of the New South. With his wife and two children, he tried to lead a life that adhered to his staunch principles: equal rights, rule of law, and nonviolence, unswayed by the caprices of popular opinion. But he couldn't control the political whims of his readers. As he wrangled diligently in his columns with questions of citizenship, equality, justice, and slavery, his newspaper rapidly lost readership, and he was plagued by financial worries. Nor could Dawson control the whims of the heart: his Swiss governess became embroiled in a tense affair with a drunkard doctor, which threatened to stain his family's reputation. In the end, Dawson--a man in many ways representative of the country at this time--was felled by the very violence he vehemently opposed.

Dawson's Fall

51229646-396a-4c43-bc21-a4df6e6a3520-1

Wally Lamb

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose characters struggle not only with their respective pasts, but with a "mocking, sadistic God" in whom they don't believe but to whom they turn, nevertheless, in times of trouble (New York Times). In his new novel, The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character. When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues. While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface. As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary—and American. The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.

The Hour I First Believed

de475322-1323-49a6-adcc-1d13e7ad5f48

#hardcover #carolynsee #hardtimes #america #americana #memior #hillbillyelegy #familyhistory. For fans of Half-broke Horses, or Alexandra Fuller.  A beautifully written story of those lost in middle America.

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Minnesota

Hard Luck and Good Times in America

The award-winning author of Golden Days and The Rest Is Done With Mirrors now tells her life story and that of her family--one in which heavy drinking and, later, recreational drugs, were something of a family tradition. A fiercely funny and deeply empathetic book which shows that the wild life, for better and worse, has made us what we are. Photos.

Dreaming

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#hardcover #southernfiction #biltmorehistory #bestseller #historicalfiction #Vanderbilt #familyhistory #northcarolina #heirloom #remarkablewomen

New Jersey

The Wedding Veil

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#hardcover #fredChappell #northcarolina #mystery #family #familyhistory 

With Look Back All the Green Valley, Fred Chappell brings to a close one of the most rewarding cycles of novels in recent memory. Now grown, Jess Kirkman returns to the North Carolina mountain town of his boyhood to be with his ailing mother and to settle at last the family's accounts after the death of his father ten years ago. Established in Greensboro with a wife and the beginnings of a career as a poet, Jess has long been removed from his time in the hills.But cleaning out a secret workroom reunites Jess with tales of his youth and the spirit of his irrepressible father, Joe Robert Kirkman. A discovery he makes in his father's shed leads him back into the past-for in the dusty room he finds an unusual machine made of stovepipe and ceramic, and a handwritten map peppered with the names of several women.These clues help Jess uncover a part of his father's history he never knew: a quest through space and time in search of truth, beauty, and a perfect revenge.Rich in the storytelling traditions of Southern Appalachia, Fred Chappell's magical novel celebrates a way of life that has passed.Look Back All the Green Valley follows Chappell's three previous novels-Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You, Brighten the Corner Where You Are, and I Am One of You Forever-and confirms his status as one of our most treasured writers.

Look Back All the Green Valley

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Janis Owens

Ohio

JOLIE HOYT IS A GOOD SOUTHERN GIRL living in Hendrix, a small Florida Panhandle town. The daughter of a Pentecostal preacher who sells insurance on the side, and the best friend of a lively beauty who moves to the big city to pursue a career in interior design, Jolie is all too aware of her family’s closet full of secrets and long-held distrust of outsiders. Nevertheless, she throws caution to the wind when she meets Sam Lense, a Jewish anthropology student from Miami, who is in town to study the ethnic makeup of the region. Jolie and Sam fall recklessly in love and dream of beginning a life together, far away from Jolie’s buried past. But their affair ends abruptly when Sam is discovered to have pried too deeply into Hendrix’s dark racial history and he becomes the latest victim in a long tradition of small-town violence. Twelve years later, when a black businessman from Memphis returns to Hendrix to do right by his father’s memory, Jolie and Sam are brought together again. They are forced to revisit the unresolved issues of their young love and finally shed light on the ugly history of Jolie’s hometown. A complex and compulsively readable Southern saga, continuing in the tradition established by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and brought into the new millennium by writers like Karen Russell and Kathryn Stockett, American Ghost was inspired by Janis Owens’s extensive research on a real lynching that occurred in 1934 in Marianna, Florida. American Ghost is a richly woven exploration of how the events of our past haunt our present.

American Ghost

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Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Arizona

A Guide to Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor's Arrival Record

Chances are excellent that your ancestors came to America from somewhere-England, Spain, Germany, China, Africa. Can you imagine how they felt as they left their homes, what they left behind? Do you want to know? Would you know where to even start looking for the details? Author and genealogist John P. Colletta prepares you to undertake the search. He tells you not only what fundamental facts you need to know about your immigrant ancestor before beginning, but suggests where you may find that information as well.

They Came in Ships

eb61009f-ec7c-4f43-b767-9bec618117da-1

Martha MacCallum

Florida

A Story of Family, Courage, and Sacrifice from Pearl Harbor to Iwo Jima

In honor of the 75th Anniversary of one of the most critical battles of World War II, the popular primetime Fox News anchor of The Story with Martha MacCallum pays tribute to the heroic men who sacrificed everything at Iwo Jima to defeat the Armed Forces of Emperor Hirohito--among them, a member of her own family, Harry Gray. Admiral Chester Nimitz spoke of the "uncommon valor" of the men who fought on Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest and most brutal battles of World War II. In thirty-six grueling days, nearly 7,000 Marines were killed and 22,000 were wounded. Martha MacCallum takes us from Pearl Harbor to Iwo Jima through the lives of these men of valor, among them Harry Gray, a member of her own family. In Unknown Valor, she weaves their stories--from Boston, Massachusetts, to Gulfport, Mississippi, as told through letters and recollections--into the larger history of what American military leaders rightly saw as an eventual showdown in the Pacific with Japan. In a relentless push through the jungles of Guadalcanal, over the coral reefs of Tarawa, past the bloody ridge of Peleliu, against the banzai charges of Guam, and to the cliffs of Saipan, these men were on a path that ultimately led to the black sands of Iwo Jima, the doorstep of the Japanese Empire. Meticulously researched, heart-wrenching, and illuminating, Unknown Valor reveals the sacrifices of ordinary Marines who saved the world from tyranny and left indelible marks on those back home who loved them.

Unknown Valor

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George Howe Colt

New York

A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home

Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt recounts returning for one last stay with his wife and children in this stunning memoir that was a National Book Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. This poignant tribute to the eleven-bedroom jumble of gables, bays, and dormers that watched over weddings, divorces, deaths, anniversaries, birthdays, breakdowns, and love affairs for five generations interweaves Colt’s final visit with memories of a lifetime of summers. Run-down yet romantic, The Big House stands not only as a cherished reminder of summer’s ephemeral pleasures but also as a powerful symbol of a vanishing way of life.

The Big House

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#paperback #nonfiction #capecod #nationalbestseller #nationalbookaward #summer #familyhistory 

Pennsylvania

Hannah Reynolds

Perfect for fans of Morgan Matson and Ruta Sepetys, this sweet, summery romance set in Nantucket follows seventeen-year-old Abby Schoenberg as she uncovers a secret about her grandmother's life during WWII. Seventeen-year-old Abby Schoenberg isn't exactly looking forward to the summer before her senior year. She's just broken up with her first boyfriend and her friends are all off in different, exciting directions for the next three months. Abby needs a plan--an adventure of her own. Enter: the letters. They show up one rainy day along with the rest of Abby's recently deceased grandmother's possessions. And these aren't any old letters; they're love letters. Love letters from a mystery man named Edward. Love letters from a mansion on Nantucket. Abby doesn't know much about her grandmother's past. She knows she was born in Germany and moved to the US when she was five, fleeing the Holocaust. But the details are either hazy or nonexistent; and these letters depict a life that is a bit different than the quiet one Abby knows about. And so, Abby heads to Nantucket for the summer to learn more about her grandmother and the secrets she kept. But when she meets Edward's handsome grandson, who wants to stop her from investigating, things get complicated. As Abby and Noah grow closer, the mysteries in their families deepen, and they discover that they both have to accept the burdens of their pasts if they want the kinds of futures they've always imagined.

The Summer of Lost Letters

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Still wrapped in plastic together ready to help you learn about your family history.

Utah

A Beginner guide to Genealogy 

Tracing Your Family History 

Lisa See

The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

Documenting the history of her own Chinese-American family, a journalist shares the results of five years of research, including interviews with nearly one hundred Chinese and Caucasian relatives.

On Gold Mountain

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S261, c1964, No Dust Jacket, Solid Binding

The How and Why of Genealogy, Third Revised Ed., 3rd Printing, 1964

Searching For Your Ancestors

New Hampshire

An interracial relationship at the end of the Civil War between a Union soldier and a runaway slave initiates a haunting family legacy of war, racism, and secrets that follows three generations from the end of the Civil War to the Great Depression. A first novel. 100,000 first printing. $200,000 ad/promo. BOMC Main. QPB.

In the Fall

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#hardcover #binladen #history #familyhistory #nonfiction

Nevada

An Arabian Family in the American Century

A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the best-selling Ghost Wars traces the Bin Laden family's rise to power and privilege, describes the diverse lifestyles of the generation to which Osama bin Laden belongs, and discusses their attempts to recover from the effects of September 11.

The Bin Ladens

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A. J. Jacobs

Adventures up and down the World's Family Tree

Traces the author's three-year investigation into what constitutes family, describing how, after receiving an e-mail from a stranger who claimed to be a distant cousin, he embarked on an effort to build the biggest family tree in history.

It's All Relative

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Anna Quindlen

Oregon

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * In a small town on the verge of big change, a young woman unearths deep secrets about her family and unexpected truths about herself. Filled with insights that are the hallmark of Anna Quindlen's bestsellers, Miller's Valley is an emotionally powerful story about a family you will never forget.

For generations the Millers have lived in Miller's Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty. As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship and the risks of passion, loyalty, and love. Home, as Mimi begins to realize, can be "a place where it's just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content."

Miller's Valley is a masterly study of family, memory, loss, and, ultimately, discovery, of finding true identity and a new vision of home. As Mimi says, "No one ever leaves the town where they grew up, even if they go." Miller's Valley reminds us that the place where you grew up can disappear, and the people in it too, but all will live on in your heart forever.

Praise for Miller's Valley

"Overwhelmingly moving . . . In this novel, where so much is about what vanishes, there is also a deep beating heart, of what also stays."--The New York Times Book Review 

"Stunning . . . The matriarchal theme [is] at the heart of Miller's Valley. Miriam pushes her smart daughter to consider college, and other women--a teacher, a doctor, a benefactor--will raise Mimi up past the raging waters that swirl in her heart."--The Washington Post 

"Economical and yet elegant . . . [Anna Quindlen's] storytelling and descriptive powers make Miller's Valley compelling. . . . Miller's Valley has a geography and fate all its own but its residents, realities, disappointments, joys and cycle of life feel familiar, in the best way possible."--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"A family story with humor, surprise, sorrow and mystery . . . Quindlen has created distinctive characters, none of whom seems like anyone you've met before in fiction."--The Columbus Dispatch

"A breathtakingly moving look at a family."--USA Today

"[Anna] Quindlen's provocative novel will have you flipping through the pages of your own family history and memories even as you can't stop reading about the Millers. . . . a coming-of-age story that reminds us that the past continues to wash over us even as we move away from the places and events that formed us."--Chicago Tribune

"Picking up a novel by Anna Quindlen means more than just meeting a new family--it's like moving in and pretending they are yours. It's a rare gift for a writer, and Quindlen does it to near perfection."--St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Quindlen's novel of a childhood examined by someone who literally can't go home again is an incredibly engaging read. . . . Miller's Valley takes familiar themes and manages to make them fresh and new."--Bust

Miller's Valley

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Retired school library book. Previous owners information has been marked out on the inside of the front cover. The interior pages are in excellent condition. 

North Carolina

History Mystery

Tatiana de Rosnay

This book is in excellent condition without creases, blemishes, or tears. Please refer to the photos for the condition. 

A New York Times best seller in hardcover! From the New York Times and international best-selling author Tatiana de Rosnay comes The Other Story, "[a] brilliant pager-turner"(BookPage), layered and beautifully written, that is a reflection on identity, the process of being a writer and the repercussions of generations-old decisions as they echo into the present and shape the future. When Nicolas Duhamel was twenty-four years old, he stumbled upon a troubling secret about his family, a secret that was carefully concealed. In shock, Nicolas embarked on a journey to uncover the truth that took him from the Basque coast to St. Petersburg-but the answers wouldn't come easily. In the process of digging into his past, something else happened. Nicolas began writing a novel that was met with phenomenal success, skyrocketing him to literary fame whether he was ready for it or not-and convincing him that he had put his family's history firmly behind him. But now, years later, Nicolas must reexamine everything he thought he knew, as he learns that, however deeply buried, the secrets of the past always find a way out. Page-turning, layered and beautifully written, THE OTHER STORY is a reflection on identity, the process of being a writer and the repercussions of generations-old decisions as they echo into the present and shape the future. "The tension of Nicholas's unsustainable half-truths and the gradual parceling out of his father's secrets will keep readers in de Rosnay's thrall, hoping redemption will come. Readers in real life should anticipate de Rosnay's latest with all the fervor Nicholas's fans show in awaiting his." -Shelf Awareness "de Rosnay's fans...will not be disappointed." -Library Journal

The Other Story

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Joanna Ho





New York Times bestselling team Joanna Ho and Dung Ho present Eyes That Speak to the Stars, companion to the acclaimed Eyes That Kiss in the Corners.

"A brilliant treatise to love of self and heritage." --School Library Journal (starred review)

"A beautifully validating book that builds on the necessary work of its predecessor." --Kirkus

"Affirmative poetry about a child's eyes and the tale they tell about him. An uplifting read." --Booklist

A young boy comes to recognize his own power and ability to change the future. When a friend at school creates a hurtful drawing, the boy turns to his family for comfort. He realizes that his eyes rise to the skies and speak to the stars, shine like sunlit rays, and glimpse trails of light from those who came before--in fact, his eyes are like his father's, his agong's, and his little brother's, and they are visionary.

Inspired by the men in his family, he recognizes his own power and strength from within. This extraordinary picture book redefines what it means to be truly you.

Eyes That Kiss in the Corners received three starred reviews and was embraced as "breathtaking," "lyrical," and "poignant." This companion volume is sure to be welcomed with equal joy.

January/February 2021 Kids' Indie Next List

An Amazon January Best Book of the Month

A Bank Street College of Education's Children's Book Committee's The Best Children's Books of the Year (2023)

Eyes That Speak to the Stars

f79df21a-fa22-4a90-9e8c-d72785a9c3c8-1

Steve Coll

*see photos for condition. Price reflects condition. Book was packed up, smells musty and isnt quite straight, but all pages are intact and binding is tight. 

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the national bestseller Ghost Wars, Steve Coll presents the story of the Bin Laden family’s rise to power and privilege, revealing new information to show how American influences changed the family and how one member’s rebellion changed America.

Arkansas

N. Hendrickson

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

How To Find Your Family History On The #1 Genealogy Website

A guide to the genealogy website provides strategies for structuring a genealogy search, details on the website's historical record collections, and tips for creating and managing a family tree.

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Roxana Robinson

Dawson's Fall

Wally Lamb

The Hour I First Believed

Carolyn See

Dreaming

Kristy Woodson Harvey

The Wedding Veil

Fred Chappell

Look Back All the Green Valley

Janis Owens

American Ghost

John P. Colletta

They Came in Ships

Martha MacCallum

Unknown Valor

George Howe Colt

The Big House

George Howe Colt

The Big House

Hannah Reynolds

The Summer of Lost Letters

N/A

Tracing Your Family History

Lisa See

On Gold Mountain

Gilbert H Doane

Searching For Your Ancestors

Jeffrey Lent

In the Fall

Steve Coll

The Bin Ladens

A. J. Jacobs

It's All Relative

Anna Quindlen

Miller's Valley

Janelle Cherrington

History Mystery

Tatiana de Rosnay

The Other Story

Joanna Ho

Eyes That Speak to the Stars

Steve Coll

The Bin Ladens

Anna Quindlen

Miller's Valley

Nancy Hendrickson

Unofficial Guide to Ancestry Com