Jonathan Franzen

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Pennsylvania

Freedom

4fec4e93-ae45-437d-ad27-5a116e6e10ec-1

Christina Schwarz

Nice clean copy. No dog ears or tears. Spine intact. Dust jacket show minimal shelf wear. 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Michigan

Worn out from nursing soldiers at a Milwaukee hospital and struggling to recover from a traumatic love affair, Amanda Starkey returns to her family's rural Wisconsin farm to stay with her beloved sister, Mattie, and young niece, Ruth.

Drowning Ruth

4decbb81-54a5-4652-8fb6-67f9b144daa2-1

Lalita Tademy

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Ohio

Follows four generations of African American women from slavery to the early twentieth century as they struggle for economic security and the future of their families along the Cane River in rural Louisiana.

Cane River

34f81a52-85b5-4002-9954-656a13db9d01-1

#paperback #fiction #oprahbookclub #ambitious #drama #annmariemacdonald #fallonyourknees #oprahsbookclub 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Spanning five generations and moving from Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, to the bleak landscape of World War I, and to the emerging jazz scene in New York City, this epic tale tells the story of four sisters

Fall on Your Knees

e720f3a1-def0-45db-83b3-df12fefc1a15-1

David Wroblewski

Kentucky

Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and ally. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar's paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles' once peaceful home. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm—and into Edgar's mother's affections. Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires—spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward. David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes—the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain—create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

0a0d73d1-cef4-4402-9e2e-496cd284361f-1

Ann-Marie MacDonald

California

Iowa

Tawni O'Dell

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

With his mother in jail for killing his abusive father, nineteen-year-old Harley Altmyer is saddled with raising his three younger sisters, working two jobs to pay the bills, and an overactive libido that will not let him rest. Reprint.

Back Roads

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Mary McGarry Morris

Utah

It's the summer of 1960 in Atkinson, Vermont. Maria Fermoyle is a strong but vulnerable divorced woman whose loneliness and ambition for her children make her easy prey for dangerous con man Omar Duvall. Marie's children are Alice, seventeen--involved with a young priest; Norm, sixteen--hotheaded and idealistic; and Benny, twelve--isolated and misunderstood, and so desperate for his mother's happiness that he hides the deadly truth he knows about Duvall. We also meet Sam Fermoyle, the children's alcoholic father; Sam's brother-in-law, who makes anonymous "love" calls from the bathroom of his failing appliance store; and the Klubock family, who--in contrast to the Fermoyles--live an orderly life in the house next door.

Songs in Ordinary Time is a masterful epic of the everyday, illuminating the kaleidoscope of lives that tell the compelling story of this unforgettably family.

Songs in Ordinary Time

feae9e46-676c-4d05-a998-8b05f26b2762-1

New Jersey

#hardcover #fiction #historicalfiction #dog #oprahbookclub #asl #backfire #dogs 

New York

#paperback #fiction #strongheroine #oprahbookclub

Indiana

A Novel

After the death of her mother, an eleven-year-old girl finds that life with her father is too dangerous and tries to find a new home.

Ellen Foster

f43f8f96-d864-4e90-ac73-d1f119f9668b-1

Illinois

#hardcover #wallylamb #fiction #oprahbookclub #twins #mentalillness

With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

I Know This Much Is True

d917154a-deac-4b2f-a55a-50bda9e559ff-1

#paperback #historicalfiction #fiction #gritty #oprahbookclub #1960s #addiction #bookmarkjourneyhistoricalfiction 

A novel set in a small town in Vermont in 1960 offers the story of lonely and vulnerable Marie Fermoyle, her three children, and a dangerous con man

#hardcover #fiction #oprahbookclub #adultfiction #drama 

Washington

Susan Cain

There are a couple of pen markings in the first chapter and a couple of wrinkles to the dust jacket. Otherwise the book is like new.

How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

The author of the bestselling phenomenon Quiet reveals the power of a bittersweet, melancholic outlook on life, and why our culture has been so blind to its value. With her mega-bestseller Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an untapped power hidden in plain sight. Now, she employs the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and the surprising lessons these states of mind teach us about creativity, compassion, leadership, spirituality, mortality and love. Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy when beholding beauty. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death--bitter and sweet--are forever paired. A song in a minor key, an elegiac poem, or even a touching television commercial all can bring us to this sublime, even holy, state of mind--and, ultimately, to greater kinship with our fellow humans. But bittersweetness is not, as we tend to think, just a momentary feeling or event. It's also a way of being, a storied heritage. Our artistic and spiritual traditions--amplified by recent scientific and management research--teach us its power. Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain. If we don't acknowledge our own sorrows and longings, she says, we can end up inflicting them on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know--or will know--loss and suffering, we can turn toward each other. And we can learn to transform our own pain into creativity, transcendence, and connection. At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.

Bittersweet

3877955b-4aee-4f59-b41e-dbca744fbcea-1

Colorado

Advance Reader Copy

Chalktown

Book is in excellent condition just old #paperback #oprahbookclub #spiritualsalvation #bookclubbook 

My name is Avocet Abigail Jackson. But because Mama couldn't find anyone who thought Avocet was a fine name for a child, she called me Bird. Which is okay by me. She named both her children after birds, her logic being that if we were named for something with wings then maybe we'd be able to fly above the shit in our lives. . . .                      

So says Bird Jackson, the mesmerizing narrator of Connie May Fowler's vivid and brilliantly written, Before Women Had Wings.                      

Starstruck by a dime-store picture of Jesus, Bird fancies herself "His girlfriend" and embarks upon a spiritual quest for salvation, even as the chaos of her home life plunges her into a stony silence. In stark and honest language, she tells the tragic life of her father, a sweet-talking wanna-be country music star, tracks her older sister's perilous journey into womanhood, and witnesses her mother make a courageous and ultimately devastating decision.                      

Yet most profound is Bird's own story--her struggle to sift through the ashes of her parents' lives, her meeting with Miss Zora, a healer whose prayers over the bones of winged creatures are meant to guide their souls to heaven, and her will to make sense of a world where fear is more plentiful than hope, retribution more valued than love. . . .                    

"A thing of heart-rending beauty, a moving exploration of love and loss, violence and grief, forgiveness and redemption."          
--Chicago Tribune                      

"There is no denying the depth of Connie May Fowler's talent and the breadth of her imagination."          
--The New York Times Book Review                      

"Brilliant."          
--The Boston Sunday Globe

Before Women Had Wings

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#paperback #fiction #oprahbookclub #drama #annmariemacdonald #fallonyourknees #oprahsbookclub 

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Jonathan Franzen

Freedom

Christina Schwarz

Drowning Ruth

Lalita Tademy

Cane River

Ann-Marie MacDonald

Fall on Your Knees

David Wroblewski

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Ann-Marie MacDonald

Fall on Your Knees

Ann-Marie MacDonald

Fall on Your Knees

Tawni O'Dell

Back Roads

Mary McGarry Morris

Songs in Ordinary Time

Jonathan Franzen

Freedom

David Wroblewski

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Kaye Gibbons

Ellen Foster

Christina Schwarz

Drowning Ruth

Wally Lamb

I Know This Much Is True

Wally Lamb

I Know This Much Is True

Ann-Marie MacDonald

Fall on Your Knees

Mary McGarry Morris

Songs in Ordinary Time

Christina Schwarz

Drowning Ruth

Susan Cain

Bittersweet

Ann-Marie MacDonald

Fall on Your Knees

Melinda Haynes

Chalktown

Ann-Marie MacDonald

Fall on Your Knees

Connie May Fowler

Before Women Had Wings

Ann-Marie MacDonald

Fall on Your Knees