Albert Brooks

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

New York

The Real Story of What Happens to America

Is this what's in store?

June 12, 2030 started out like any other day in memory--and by then, memories were long. Since cancer had been cured fifteen years before, America's population was aging rapidly. That sounds like good news, but consider this: millions of baby boomers, with a big natural predator picked off, were sucking dry benefits and resources that were never meant to hold them into their eighties and beyond. Young people around the country simmered with resentment toward "the olds" and anger at the treadmill they could never get off of just to maintain their parents' entitlement programs.

But on that June 12th, everything changed: a massive earthquake devastated Los Angeles, and the government, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, was unable to respond.

The fallout from the earthquake sets in motion a sweeping novel of ideas that pits national hope for the future against assurances from the past and is peopled by a memorable cast of refugees and billionaires, presidents and revolutionaries, all struggling to find their way. In2030, Albert Brooks' all-too-believable, dystopian imagining of where today's challenges could lead us tomorrow makes gripping and thought-provoking reading.

Twenty Thirty 

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Clive James

The author reflects on his latest readings, and re-readings, undertaken after being diagnosed with terminal leukemia, combining thoughts on old favorites and new discoveries with personal musings on living and dying.

Latest Readings

7c29b655-4a71-455e-af8e-6decb40defab-0

Dominick Dunne

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

The way journalist Gus Bailey tells it, old money is always preferred, but occasionally new money sneaks in--even where it is most unwelcome. After moving from Cincinnati, Elias and Ruby Renthal strike it even richer in New York, turning their millions into billions. It would be impolite for high society to refuse them now. Not to mention disadvantageous. As long as the market is strong, there's absolutely nothing to worry about--except for those nasty secrets from the past. Scandal, anyone? Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

People Like Us

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Chilling and suspenseful thriller that explores the Black experience in the mostly white NYC publishing world. Perfect for anyone who has ever felt threatened, manipulated, or overlooked in the workplace. #hardcover #theotherblackgirl #fiction #suspensethrillers #botm #thriller #socialcommentary #gma #africanamericanwomen 

Virginia

A Novel

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Good Morning America, Esquire, and Read with Marie Claire Book Club Pick and a People Best Book of Summer Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Time, The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, Entertainment Weekly, Marie Claire, Bustle, BuzzFeed, Parade, Goodreads, Fortune, and BBC ​​Urgent, propulsive, and sharp as a knife, The Other Black Girl is an electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing. Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust. Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW. It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career. A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.

The Other Black Girl

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California

Good Neighbors 

#DouglasCoupland #Love #Apocalypse #SocialCommentary #LifeToday #GothPhase

Colorado

Over the course of several months, two retail workers at an office supply superstore--Roger, a divorced, middle-aged "aisles associate" at Staples, and his young co-worker, Bethany, an early twenty-something, former Goth--strike up a unique epistolary friendship, in a novel about love, loneliness, and the offbeat comforts of modern-day life.

The Gum Thief

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Jay Solomon

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Massachusetts

Singularity Heights takes us to a future that feels simultaneously familiar and deeply strange. It's a world where bots do all the work, everyone has profoundly personal relationships with their AI, even if their human relationships are quite shallow, and wealth is distributed through an unfair and cruel system designed to perpetuate vast inequality. The sickness in society came about so naturally that most people inhabiting it can hardly imagine any other way of living. The story follows the complex, intertwined lives of Sunny, DeShay, and Jaden, whose rivalries and romances set into motion a series of events that sends society's precarious equilibrium into violent upheaval.

Singularity Heights

1dce19c5-730d-46a0-8a4c-33f7d4c637c2-0

Meghan McCain

Michael Ian Black

Illinois

A Love Letter to Freedom

She is a single, twentysomething, gun-loving, Christian, Republican writer and blogger, the daughter of a Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee. He is a married, forty-year-old, gun-fearing, atheist, Democrat comedian, the son of a lesbian former Social Security employee. Meghan McCain and Michael Ian Black barely know each other. But they are about to change the way politics is discussed in America.

Or at least the way politics are discussed in their crappy RV.
 
InAmerica, You Sexy Bitch, Meghan and Michael embark on a balls-out, cross-country tour starting in California, the heart of liberal America, and ending in the state of Connecticut, the home of blue-blood Wall Street billionaires. Along the way, they visit such cultural touchstones as Graceland and Branson, party in Las Vegas and New Orleans, pretend to be Mormon in Salt Lake City (only for a second), and go to a mosque in Dearborn, Michigan. They tour the nation's capital; they fire semiautomatic weapons. But mostly Meghan McCain and Michael Ian Black talk to each other: about their differences, their similarities, and how American politics has gotten so divided.

America, You Sexy Bitch

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Mike Gallagher

Washington

National radio talk show host Mike Gallagher provides a careful study into the psyche of the liberal mind, using humor and irony to both entertain and instruct.

America, how does the liberal hate thee? Let us count the ways . . .

It's hard work being a liberal these days. Not only do a mere 20 percent of Americans identify themselves as liberal, but one could go broke supporting a skinny double-decaf Starbucks habit. On top of that, when you hate things most Americans love, it's tiring to have to endlessly correct/educate/fix/enlighten the poor dullards out there who just want to enjoy their lives. Which, taken as a whole, makes the average liberal lonely, short on cash, and mad as hell! So, in the spirit of the compassion they themselves espouse, 50 Things Liberals Love to Hate is truth spoken with love, an invitation to the disenfranchised: it's not too late, liberals, to join the fun! C'mon, crack open a Bud and throw another T-bone on the grill. But kindly check your disdain at the door when it comes to:

WALMART: How about a handmade, locally sourced flat-screen television instead?

STEAKHOUSES: There's no steamed tofu on this menu.

McDONALD'S: The stranger in the playground handing out candy to children.

FLAG PINS: It's okay to love America, but not enough to wear it on your lapel.

FOOTBALL: War with cleats and pads.

THE V-8 ENGINE: There's just something plain wrong about all that power and freedom under the control of one person.

SUCCESS: When you make more money than the rest of us, it hurts our feelings.

THE FOUNDING FATHERS: A bunch of old white guys who are making it nearly impossible for modern government to pick our doctors, teach our children, correct our diets, and save our money.

. . . and 42 other things that have liberals packing some serious hate. Mike Gallagher--America's sixth-ranked radio talk show host and Fox News contributor--skewers liberal lunacy with cutting irony and scathing wit. Here are 50 warning signs of a liberal mind implosion, all darn good reasons to lock the doors, crank up the A/C, turn on the game, and let the countdown begin. . . .

50 Things Liberals Love to Hate

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T. C. Boyle

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New York Times bestselling author T.C. Boyle speaks to a brand-new audience in this anthology of his classic, richly imagined short fiction about teenagers. 

His many, varied novels are part of the American literary landscape--but one of the best ways to appreciate T. C. Boyle is through his richly imagined short fiction. Boyle's kaleidoscopic humor and wit, his keen, unforgiving take on American life, and his all-too-human protagonists all combine to make his a singular voice. Here is a collection of classic Boyle stories about teenagers (including the O. Henry Award-winning "The Love of My Life") that will speak directly to them, as well as to anyone who was once a teenager. Includes the previously uncollected story, "Almost Shooting an Elephant."


"Boyle repeatedly demonstrates his masterful grasp of human nature, exposing his characters' foibles and eccentricities."--Publishers Weekly 

The Human Fly and Other Stories

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Joanna Kavenna

✨ Synopsis and details in the photos. ✨

"[An] insightful, unsettling look at how technology impacts our lives. . .Kavenna has skillfully made our present feel like dystopian fiction." USA TODAY

Named a Best Book of 2020 by USA TODAY 

From the winner of the Orange Award for New Writing comes a blistering, satirical novel about life under a global media and tech corporation that knows exactly what we think, what we want, and what we do--before we do.

One corporation has made a perfect world based on a perfect algorithm . . . now what to do with all these messy people?
     Lionel Bigman is dead. Murdered by a robot. Guy Matthias, the philandering founder and CEO of the mega-corporation Beetle, insists it was human error. But was it? Either the predictive algorithms of Beetle's supposedly omniscient 'lifechain' don't work, or, they've been hacked. Both scenarios are impossible to imagine and signal the end of Beetle's technotopia and life as we know it.
     Dazzlingly original and darkly comic, Zed asks profound questions about who we are, what we owe to one another, and what makes us human. It describes our moment--the ugliness and the beauty--perfectly. Kavenna is a prophet who has seen deeply into the present--and thrown back her head and laughed.

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#paperback #essays #socialcommentary #nonfiction

Pennsylvania

Massacre and the Politics of Intervention

The New Killing Fields revisits Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and East Timor-sites of four of the worst instances of state-sponsored killing in the last half of the twentieth century-in order to reconsider the success and failure of U.S. and U.N. military and humanitarian intervention. Through original essays and reporting by, among others, David Rieff, Peter Maass, Philip Gourevitch, William Shawcross, George Packer, Bill Berkeley, and Samantha Power, The New Killing Fields reaches beyond headlines to ask vital questions about the future of peacekeeping in the next century. In addition, theoretical essays by Michael Walzer and Michael Ignatieff frame the issue of both past and future intervention in terms of today's post-Cold War reality. As human rights abuses increasingly occur in "failed states" such as Afghanistan, which pose international security threats, the future of human rights will not be, as it once was, considered solely a question of the beneficence and charity of the West. The prominent group of reporters and academics assembled here ponder these questions in light of their extensive experience, and reveal a fascinating set of conclusions, and further questions, about the future of human rights in the next century.

The New Killing Fields

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James Han Mattson

"An eventual American classic that is unrelenting in its beauty and incisive cultural critique." - KIESE LAYMON A chilling and blisteringly relevant literary novel of social horror centered around a brutal killing that takes place in a full-contact haunted escape room--a provocative exploration of capitalism, hate politics, racial fetishism, and our obsession with fear as entertainment. On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, "reprieve," they'll win a substantial cash prize--a startling feat accomplished only by one other group in the house's long history. But before they can complete the challenge, a man breaks into the cell and kills one of the contestants. Those who were present on that fateful night lend their points of view: Kendra Brown, a teenager who's been uprooted from her childhood home after the sudden loss of her father; Leonard Grandton, a desperate and impressionable hotel manager caught in a series of toxic entanglements; and Jaidee Charoensuk, a gay international student who came to the Unites States in a besotted search for his former English teacher. As each character's journey unfurls and overlaps, deceits and misunderstandings fueled by obsession and prejudice are revealed--forcing all to reckon with the ways in which their beliefs and actions contributed to a horrifying catastrophe. A startlingly soulful exploration of complicity and masquerade, Reprieve combines the psychological tension of classic horror with searing social criticism, and seamlessly threads together trial transcripts, evidence descriptions, and deeply layered individual narratives to present a chilling portrait of this tangled American life.

Reprieve

150e2d23-e77b-443a-b7f6-2411e3b7ef47-1

Chuck Klosterman

Louisiana

A Low Culture Manifesto

Explores a range of modern cultural phenomenon, including Internet pornography, tribute bands, baseball rivalries, and reality television.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

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Maryland

Voltaire

Candide, Zadig, and Selected Stories

89ec4c24-5142-4328-bff5-8a146bdde6fe-1

South Carolina

New hardback. Dust jacket has some slight wear. Feel free to send offers! Thanks so much for lookin!

Texas

Good Neighbors

Overview

Florida, 1955...

Two men are missing.

The sudden disappearance of Pete Demopoulos is front-page news. A bloody crime scene points to violence, and everyone wants to know what happened to the successful husband, father, and heir-apparent to his family's chain of grocery stores.

Hucklebuck Jones is missing, too. When he's not doing odd jobs for pocket change, Hucklebuck, a Negro deaf mute, lives alone in the swamps. Despite his cheerful demeanor, Hucklebuck scares folks. His disappearance goes unnoticed.

If only the truth were known.

Maryland, 1960...

Twinton County has never seen the likes of the new teacher they call Buck. Soon after accepting a position at the local Negro school, Buck challenges the white establishment and helps integrate the public library and a local lunch counter. He also catches the eye of colleague Dottie Hanford. Together they become a formidable force against the status quo.

Then, a single act of violence undermines Buck's efforts. A riot erupts. Three people are dead, and Buck's secrets are exposed. On the run and with no one else to turn to, Buck places his survival in the hands of an unlikely person from his past. What happens next is the stuff of which great stories are made. The Resurrection of Hucklebuck Jones is equal parts historical fiction, social commentary, and love story.


Book condition: mild soil on top edge of pages,  see photos. Otherwise like new. 

Michigan

The Resurrection of Hucklebuck Jones

Mark. Twain

After he and his good buddy Tom Sawyer had uncovered a small fortune, Huckleberry Finn finds himself restrained by the demands of an overbearing guardian. Never one to be confined by the proprieties of society, Huck bolts from this dull life in pursuit of a more exciting and mischievous life.

Witty and poignant, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is often cited as the preeminent “Great American Novel.” So join this willful vagabond as he sails down the Mighty Mississippi and discovers one thrilling adventure followed by another.

Florida

Classics Illustrated

The adventures of Huckleberry finn and his friends Jim and Tom Sawyer down the mississippi River.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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George F. Will

North Carolina

The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George F. Will, his ninth collection of reflections on our culture, examining the many ways in which expertise, reason, and manners are continually under attack in our institutions, courts, political arenas, and social venues. George F. Will has been one of this country's leading columnists since 1974. He won the Pulitzer Prize for it in 1977. The Wall Street Journal once called him "perhaps the most powerful journalist in America." In this new collection, he examines a remarkably unsettling thirteen years in our nation's experience, from 2008 to 2020. Included are a number of columns about court cases, mostly from the Supreme Court, that illuminate why the composition of the federal judiciary has become such a contentious subject. Other topics addressed include the American Revolutionary War, historical figures from Frederick Douglass to JFK, as well as a scathing assessment of how State of the Union Addresses are delivered in the modern day. Mr. Will also offers his perspective on American socialists, anti-capitalist conservatives, drug policy, the criminal justice system, climatology, the Coronavirus, the First Amendment, parenting, meritocracy and education, China, fascism, authoritarianism, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, and the morality of enjoying football. American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020 is a collection packed with wisdom and leavened by humor from one the preeminent columnists and intellectuals of our time.

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Albert Brooks

Twenty Thirty

Clive James

Latest Readings

Dominick Dunne

People Like Us

Zakiya Dalila Harris

The Other Black Girl

Sarah Langan

Good Neighbors

Douglas Coupland

The Gum Thief

Jay Solomon

Singularity Heights

Meghan McCain; Michael Ian Black

America, You Sexy Bitch

Mike Gallagher

50 Things Liberals Love to Hate

T. C. Boyle

The Human Fly and Other Stories

Joanna Kavenna

Zed

Kira Brunner; Nicolaus Mills

The New Killing Fields

James Han Mattson

Reprieve

Chuck Klosterman

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Chuck Klosterman

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Voltaire

Candide, Zadig, and Selected Stories

James Han Mattson

Reprieve

Sarah Langan

Good Neighbors

Paul E. Wootten

The Resurrection of Hucklebuck Jones

Mark. Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

George F. Will

American Happiness and Discontents

James Han Mattson

Reprieve

Joanna Kavenna

Zed

Evelyn Beilenson

Wit and Wisdom of Famous American Women