Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Kentucky

Lucky Girls

#hardcover #contemporaryfiction #fiction #literaryfiction #litfic #shortstories #Alarcon #theauroras #latinamerica

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Minnesota

Stories

LONGLISTED for the 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION An urgent, essential collection of stories about immigration, broken dreams, Los Angeles gang members, Latin American families, and other tales of high stakes journeys, from the award-winning author of War by Candlelight and At Night We Walk in Circles. Migration. Betrayal. Family secrets. Doomed love. Uncertain futures. In Daniel Alarcón's hands, these are transformed into deeply human stories with high stakes. In "The Thousands," people are on the move and forging new paths; hope and heartbreak abound. A man deals with the fallout of his blind relatives' mysterious deaths and his father's mental breakdown and incarceration in "The Bridge." A gang member discovers a way to forgiveness and redemption through the haze of violence and trauma in "The Ballad of Rocky Rontal." And in the tour de force novella, "The Auroras", a man severs himself from his old life and seeks to make a new one in a new city, only to find himself seduced and controlled by a powerful woman. Richly drawn, full of unforgettable characters, The King is Always Above the People reveals experiences both unsettling and unknown, and yet eerily familiar in this new world.

The King Is Always above the People

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Former debutante Margaret Hunter Bridges finds the social skills and personal values she has so carefully cultivated throughout her life becoming increasingly irrelevant in the face of her husband's infidelity and her daughter's accidental death.

Looking for Atlanta

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Sisterland

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From bestselling authors, Bodie and Brock Thoene, comes this compelling portrait of an American dustbowl family. Shiloh Autumn transports readers to the Great Depression to experience Depression-era life, from possum hunts to mass migration, Penny Auctions to the Veteran's March on Washington.

Shiloh Autumn

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Jason Martin

New Jersey

A Novel

Ellen, a young professor, gives up a promising university career to immerse herself in the mysterious world of Amazonian shamanism. There, drawing on untapped courage, self-reliance and a spirit of adventure, she fulfills her highest potential in a way she never dreamed possible. The novel provides a satirical look behind the scenes in academia, and also takes the reader into the world of Amazonian shamanism, a subject Ellen studies in her research. When she meets Hugo, an enigmatic stranger with first-hand knowledge of Peruvian shamanism, her life takes an unexpected twist. Hugo brings about a remarkable transformation in Ellen's sick mother, and also introduces her to ayahuasca, the most powerful entheogenic healing plant in the Amazon. She then, too, begins to change. Through a series of events at the university, including sexual harassment and a suicide, Ellen heads to the Amazon for a rendezvous with Voluptua, an elusive forest spirit calling to her in her dreams. There she participates in ayahuasca ceremonies led by Hugo's shaman, and spends time in a native village before going off to stay in the jungle on her own. Living in a simple hut, she learns the rhythms and ways of the rainforest, acquires a monkey as a friend, and merges with Voluptua, beginning the process of her own transformation. Voluptua encompasses one woman's transformation from university professor to an inspired, courageous, spiritual being embracing her power through her travels to the Amazon and beyond.

Voluptua

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 #bookclub #litfic #popular #clubpick #bookclub #mentalhealth #contemporaryfiction #bookstagram #bookrec For similar 🔖Bookmark Journey 📚 titles, click #bookmarkjourneyfiction 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Illinois

A Place at the Table

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#hardcover #fiction #gritlit #litfic #woodrell ex library book but otherwise great condition

In 1929, Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the maid for a prominent family in Missouri, chases down justice after her younger sister is one of forty-two people killed in a mysterious explosion at a local dance hall.

The Maid's Version

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Unsheltered

#hardcover #action #litfic #regional #kentucky #gritlit

A new collection of stories by the acclaimed author of Kentucky Straight, whom Tobias Wolff has deemed one of the best writers of short fiction in his--or any--generation.

Out of the Woods

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"With his first two novels, David Payne earned the rare combination of critical and commercial success, and established himself as one of our most gifted young novelists." "Now, in Ruin Creek, Payne travels deep into the soul of a troubled and unforgettable family and, along the way, establishes his rightful place in the legion of great Southern writers who know that we can neither escape nor recapture the past." "It is 1954 in Killdeer, North Carolina, and May Tilley, a beautiful young debutante, decides that she wants "a different life from what Mamma and Daddy had." She finds it, in spades, with Jimmy Madden, a former high school basketball hero with the dangerous combination of good looks, a smooth tongue and big, secret dreams." "Soon May finds herself pregnant, and after some serious soul-searching she and Jimmy decide to get married. But times are tough, as Jimmy enters medical school and struggles with his studies, while May adjusts to the strange new worlds of marriage and motherhood. Day-to-day life gets in the way of the couple's dreams, and they gradually realize that love and passion aren't always enough to preserve a failing marriage. Yet they stay together for more than a decade, and it is their son Joey who suffers the most as he watches his parents drift further apart. As he tries to cope with the devastation of his family life, Joey turns to his grandfather, Pa, for advice on how to move away from his troubled family and into the world of men - how to see his parents as they are, instead of how he desperately wants them to be." "Conscious at every moment of the bonds and burdens of family, David Payne has written Ruin Creek with the mature authority of a writer who knows the human heart in all its fragility and glory. No reader will come away from this novel unmoved."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Ruin Creek

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Clifford Irving

When his in-laws are charged with the murders of their close friends, a married couple in their late sixties, Dennis Conway, a former New York criminal attorney takes the case, only to discover that the entire town of Springhill, Colorado, is banding together to keep him from uncovering the truth. 50,000 first printing.

The Spring

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West Of Then

Maisy Card

book has been read once. shows no shelf/wear damage. 

*An Entertainment Weekly, Millions, and LitHub Most-Anticipated Book of 2020 pick* *A Rumpus and Electric Literature Most-Anticipated Debut of 2020 pick* *A Ms. Magazine Top Feminist Book Coming Out in 2020* *A BookRiot Best Book Club Pick of 2020* *A Celadon Books Most-Anticipated Novel of 2020* *A Lily Top Book to Read by Women in 2020 Selection* *A Buzz Magazine Top New Book of the New Decade* *A She Reads Most-Anticipated Historical Fiction Pick of 2020* A transporting debut novel that reveals the ways in which a Jamaican family forms and fractures over generations, in the tradition of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Stanford Solomon has a shocking, thirty-year-old secret. And it’s about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley, a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead. These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present day Harlem. There is Vera, whose widowhood forced her into the role of single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the house boy who loved Vera, whose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley’s actions. These Ghosts Are Family explores the ways each character wrestles with their ghosts and struggles to forge independent identities outside of the family and their trauma. The result is an engrossing portrait of a family and individuals caught in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret. This electric and luminous family saga announces the arrival of a new American talent.

These Ghosts Are Family

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#paperback #nighttrain #gritlit #litfic #regionallit

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

In 1963, at the age of 17, Dwayne Hallston discovers James Brown and wants to perform just like him. His band, the Amazing Rumblers, studies and rehearses Brown's Live at the Apollo album in the storage room of his father's shop in their small North Carolina town. Meanwhile, Dwayne's forbidden black friend Larry -- aspiring to play piano like Thelonius Monk -- apprentices to a jazz musician called the Bleeder. His mother hopes music will allow him to escape the South.

A dancing chicken and a mutual passion for music help Dwayne and Larry as they try to achieve their dreams and maintain their friendship, even while their world says both are impossible. In The Night Train, Edgerton's trademark humor reminds us of our divided national history and the way music has helped bring us together.

The Night Train

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Paula Bomer

Arkansas

A woman and her niece are bound together and driven apart by loves, desires, frustrations, and addictions.

East Berlin, a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Eva, a retired nurse, makes it through her day on a combination of stimulants and sleeping pills, wine and brandy. She finds fleeting joy in American jazz and blues records, and occasional visits from her married lover. Her friendly teenaged neighbor is her closest companion. Then her American niece, Maggie, arrives in Berlin. Eva is thrilled--Maggie is just the companion she's been seeking. But happiness begins to slide from Eva's grasp as Maggie's own fierce drug addiction reveals itself.

Tante Eva is a story that deftly takes in decades of family life and German history, estrangement, joys, and disappointments. It is a portrait of East Berlin in the years after the Wall came down, and of an overlooked woman pursuing happiness and sexual pleasure. It is the finest book yet from Paula Bomer, an author whose work Jonathan Franzen describes as "some of the rawest and most urgent writing I can remember encountering."

♻️ Tante Eva

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Mary Beth Keane

Connecticut

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

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J. William Lewis

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Arizona

The Essence of Nathan Biddle

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Muriel Spark

New York

At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the bachelor music master, Gordon Lowther, and—most important—in her dedication to "her girls," the students she selects to be her crème de la crème. Fanatically devoted, each member of the Brodie set—Eunice, Jenny, Mary, Monica, Rose, and Sandy—is "famous for something," and Miss Brodie strives to bring out the best in each one. Determined to instill in them independence, passion, and ambition, Miss Brodie advises her girls, "Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty come first. Follow me." And they do. But one of them will betray her.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

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"Intensely thoughtful...honest...intelligent....The book spans half a century and addresses not only (these women's) histories but also their children's, their lovers', their country's, and, in the process, their gender's." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Eight women gather together over the years to piece together an extrarodinary quilt of their own imaginative devising. And as they stitch, we listen to the stories they have to tell of their successes and failures, their lives and loves, their dreams, desires, and the surprise and sometimes joy of living. A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE COMING OUT FALL 1995 -- with Winona Ryder, Maya Angelou, and Rip Torn

How to Make an American Quilt

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Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

Pennsylvania

Washington, DC, 2019: Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister, Beatrice, as their elegant, formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother, who disappeared decades earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, she ignores Bea's warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers. Bangkok, 1972: Genevieve and Robert Preston live in a beautiful house behind a high wall, raising their three children with the help of a cadre of servants. In these unfamiliar surroundings, Genevieve strives to create a semblance of the life they would have had at home in the US--ballet and riding classes for the children, impeccable dinner parties, a meticulously kept home. But in truth, Robert works for American intelligence, Genevieve is entabgled in a passionate affair, and their serene household is vulnerable to unseen dangers in a rapidly changing world and a country they don't really understand. -- back cover

What Could Be Saved

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Susan Choi

Ohio

WINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Electrifying” (People) • “Masterly” (The Guardian) • “Dramatic and memorable” (The New Yorker) • “Magic” (TIME) • “Ingenious” (The Financial Times) • "A gonzo literary performance” (Entertainment Weekly) • “Rare and splendid” (The Boston Globe) • “Remarkable” (USA Today) • “Delicious” (The New York Times) • “Book groups, meet your next selection" (NPR) In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley. The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence. As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi's Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

Trust Exercise

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Daniyal Mueenuddin

Winner of the Story Prize
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction


Passing from the mannered drawing rooms of Pakistan's cities to the harsh mud villages beyond, Daniyal Mueenuddin's linked stories describe the interwoven lives of an aging feudal landowner, his servants and managers, and his extended family, industrialists who have lost touch with the land. Refined, sensuous, by turns humorous, elegiac, and tragic, Mueenuddin evokes the complexities of the Pakistani feudal order as it is undermined and transformed.

In Other Rooms Other Wonders

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Dani Shapiro

A "gripping" new novel (PEOPLE) from the best-selling author of Inheritance: On a  summer night in 1985, three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything changes.

"A haunting, moving, and propulsive exploration of family secrets." --Meg Wolitzer

ONE OF MOST EAGERLY ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF THE YEAR: L.A. Times, TIME, LitHub, BookPage, Library Journal, The Millions

Signal Fires opens on a summer night in 1985. Three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything on Division Street changes. Each of their lives, and that of Ben Wilf, a young doctor who arrives on the scene, is shattered. For the Wilf family, the circumstances of that fatal accident will become the deepest kind of secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken.

On Division Street, time has moved on. When the Shenkmans arrive--a young couple expecting a baby boy--it is as if the accident never happened. But when Waldo, the Shenkmans' brilliant, lonely son who marvels at the beauty of the world and has a native ability to find connections in everything, befriends Dr. Wilf, now retired and struggling with his wife's decline, past events come hurtling back in ways no one could ever have foreseen.

In Dani Shapiro's first work of fiction in fifteen years, she returns to the form that launched her career, with a riveting, deeply felt novel that examines the ties that bind families together--and the secrets that can break them apart. Signal Fires is a work of haunting beauty by a masterly storyteller.

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