Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Washington

Stories of loss and love

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

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Sujata Massey

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New Jersey

While struggling to adjust to the nuances of Japanese propriety, trying to keep her business afloat, and dealing with veiled messages left under her door, Rei Shimura sifts through the bones of old skeletons to keep her family name clear and her own life safe from an enemy with a mysterious agenda. If Rei doesn't want to be crushed, she's must walk a perilous line and uncover a killer with a dramatic flare for deadly arrangements.

The Flower Master

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Sadeqa Johnson

New York

A Novel

Called “wholly engrossing” by New York Times bestselling author Kathleen Grissom, this “fully immersive” (Lisa Wingate, #1 bestselling author of Before We Were Yours) story follows an enslaved woman forced to barter love and freedom while living in the most infamous slave jail in Virginia. Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world. She’d been promised freedom on her eighteenth birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known. She unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half Acre, a jail in Richmond, Virginia, where the enslaved are broken, tortured, and sold every day. There, Pheby is exposed not just to her Jailer’s cruelty but also to his contradictions. To survive, Pheby will have to outwit him, and she soon faces the ultimate sacrifice.

Yellow Wife

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Asian Literature

Amanda Lee

Michigan

An Embroidery Mystery

When murder strikes the small town of Tallulah Falls, embroidery shop owner Marcy Singer isn’t afraid of getting down to the knitty-gritty to clear her name.... For most small-business owners in Tallulah Falls, the upcoming Renaissance Faire is a wonderful way to promote their specialty shops. For Marcy’s nemesis, Nellie, and her sister, Clara, it’s an opportunity to finally put Marcy and her shop, the Seven-Year Stitch, out of business. Apparently the sisters like to make grudges a family affair and have set up competing booths right next to Marcy’s at the Ren Faire. When Clara is discovered dead in her own booth—strangled by the scarf she had almost finished knitting—Marcy becomes the prime suspect. Now she has to do whatever it takes to keep her reputation from unraveling—and get to the bottom of a most deadly yarn....

Wicked Stitch

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Sarah Graves

There is wear on the back cover and a crease on the back cover corner

Pennsylvania

Eastport, Maine, has plenty of salty local character. It also has a sweet side, thanks to Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree, her best friend Ellie, and their waterfront bake shop, The Chocolate Moose. But when island life is disrupted by the occasional killer, Jake and Ellie put their chocolate treats aside to make sure justice is served.
 
This summer, Eastport's favorite lovebirds, kindergarten teacher Sharon Sweetwater and Coast Guard Captain Andy Devine, are getting married. The gala reception is sure to be the fête of the season, especially with a wedding-cake-sized whoopie pie courtesy of The Chocolate Moose. For Jake and Ellie, the custom-ordered confection will finally reel in some much-needed profits. But the celebratory air, and sweet smell of success, are ruined when Sharon's bitter ex-boyfriend Toby is murdered with a poisoned milkshake. With Andy jailed as the prime suspect and the wedding cancelled, it's up to Jake and Ellie to catch a poisonous predator before someone else sips their last dessert.
 
Includes a Recipe!

  "Graves' second case of chocolate murder offers fans of the genre a trifecta of coziness: plucky heroines, sweet treats, and just enough puzzlement to keep you on your toes."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Lively characters, an intricate plot, and enticing descriptions of Down East Maine make this cozy a winner."
--Publishers Weekly 

Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake

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Kate Kingsbury

West Virginia

No Clue at the Inn

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Comfy, Cozy Mystery

Tsugumi Ohba

All are in excellent to like new condition. 

Oversized Paperback (4 to 6 lbs)

Virginia

Death Note Manga Lot Vol. 1-9 

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David J. Seibold

Charles J. Adams

Shipwrecks, Sea Stories and Legends of the Delaware Coast

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Chris Bohjalian

On an icy winter night in an isolated house in rural Vermont, a seasoned midwife named Sibyl Danforth takes desperate measures to save a baby’s life. She performs an emergency cesarean section on a mother she believes has died of stroke. But what if—as Sibyl's assistant later charges—the patient wasn't already dead? The ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt, forcing Sibyl to face the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her own conscience. Exploring the complex and emotional decisions surrounding childbirth, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the very best novels ever do.

California

In the winter of 1981, trapped by unpassable roads, midwife Sibyl Danforth makes a life-altering decision when she performs an emergency cesarean section on a woman she fears has died of a stroke

Midwives

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Gift Ideas for Friends and Family

Sulari Gentill

"With each new chapter, The Woman in the Library opens the door to new histories. More murders...more clues...As Gentill's characters grow, the desire to know more about each ensnares us, and the only way out is to read to the end." --New York Journal of Books

Ned Kelly award winning author, Sulari Gentill sets this mystery-within-a-mystery in motion with a deceptively simple, Dear Hannah, What are you writing?pulling us into theornate reading room at the Boston Public Library.

But fair reader, in every person's story, there is something to hide...

The tranquility is shattered by a woman's terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who'd happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning--it just happens that one is a murderer.

Sulari Gentill delivers a sharply thrilling read with The Woman in the Library, an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.

The Woman in the Library

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Tracy Chevalier

The New York Times bestselling novel by the author of A Single Thread and At the Edge of the Orchard Translated into thirty-nine languages and made into an Oscar-nominated film, starring Scarlett Johanson and Colin Firth Tracy Chevalier transports readers to a bygone time and place in this richly-imagined portrait of the young woman who inspired one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings. History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. Girl with a Pearl Earring tells the story of sixteen-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius . . . even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

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Great book!

Sonia Purnell

The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Chosen as a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by NPR, the New York Public Library, Amazon, the Seattle Times, the Washington Independent Review of Books, PopSugar, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, BookBrowse, the Spectator, and the Times of London Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography “Excellent…This book is as riveting as any thriller, and as hard to put down.” -- The New York Times Book Review "A compelling biography of a masterful spy, and a reminder of what can be done with a few brave people -- and a little resistance." - NPR "A meticiulous history that reads like a thriller." - Ben Macintyre A never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine. In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day. Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall--an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity. A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman's fierce persistence helped win the war.

A Woman of No Importance

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Hilary Mantel

Purchased from a library sale in Minneapolis, there are some library sticker remnants as pictured. Gorgeous deckle-edge pages

Minnesota

Bring up the Bodies

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Historical Fiction

Jewell Reinhart Coburn

Slight edge wear. Sticker to lower spine. Tight binding. Pages like new. 

A Cambodian version of Cinderella in which a poor girl marries a prince, is killed by her jealous stepfamily, and then, through her virtue, returns to become queen.

Angkat: The Cambodian Cinderella

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Ann M. Martin

Oregon

The first book in the bestselling series for younger readers. The series follows the exploits of Karen Brewer, the spunky, bespeckled younger step-sister of Baby-sitters Club member Kristy.

Karen's Witch

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Costanza Casati

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

"Fans of Circe and Elektra should pick up this powerful Greek myth retelling." --Cosmopolitan

For fans of Madeline Miller, a stunning debut following Clytemnestra, the most notorious villainess of the ancient world and the events that forged her into the legendary queen.

As for queens, they are either hated or forgotten. She already knows which option suits her best...

You were born to a king, but you marry a tyrant. You stand by helplessly as he sacrifices your child to placate the gods. You watch him wage war on a foreign shore, and you comfort yourself with violent thoughts of your own. Because this was not the first offence against you. This was not the life you ever deserved. And this will not be your undoing. Slowly, you plot.

But when your husband returns in triumph, you become a woman with a choice.

Acceptance or vengeance, infamy follows both. So, you bide your time and force the gods' hands in the game of retribution. For you understood something long ago that the others never did.

If power isn't given to you, you have to take it for yourself.

A blazing novel set in the world of Ancient Greece, this is a thrilling tale of power and prophecies, of hatred, love, and of an unforgettable Queen who fiercely dealt out death to those who wronged her.

"Crackles with vivid fury, passion, and strength." --Jennifer Saint, bestselling author of Elektra and Ariadne

Clytemnestra

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Kids

Massachusetts

Sylvia Plath began keeping a diary as a young child. By the time she was at Smith College, when this book begins, she had settled into a nearly daily routine with her journal, which was also a sourcebook for her writing. Plath once called her journal her “Sargasso,” her repository of imagination, “a litany of dreams, directives, and imperatives,” and in fact these pages contain the germs of most of her work. Plath’s ambitions as a writer were urgent and ultimately all-consuming, requiring of her a heat, a fantastic chaos, even a violence that burned straight through her. The intensity of this struggle is rendered in her journal with an unsparing clarity, revealing both the frequent desperation of her situation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. Written in electrifying prose, The Journals of Sylvia Plath provide unique insight, and are essential reading for all those who have been moved and fascinated by Plath’s life and work.

The Journals of Sylvia Plath

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#paperback #fiction #edgarallanpoe #horror #fantasy #poetry #mystery #dark #gothic #classic 

A chilling, thrilling collection of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry, introduced by best-selling author Philip PullmanThe Raven . . . Annabel Lee . . . Ulalume . . . these are some of the spookiest, most macabre poems ever written, now collected in this chilling, affordable volume.

The Raven and Other Poems (Scholastic Books, 2000)

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Harold Bloom

Texas

The charm of Dickens can be found in his characters, which have been called too alive to be real. Learn more about the author of such works as Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, and, the work generally considered his masterpiece, Bleak House.

Charles Dickens

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Poetry

Eowyn Ivey

Rated 4 out of 5 on Goodreads, this paperback book is in very good condition 

Maryland

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

The Snow Child

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Hilary Spurling

Alabama

Journey to the Good Earth

One of the twentieth century's most extraordinary Americans, Pearl Buck was the first person to make China accessible to the West.

 

She recreated the lives of ordinary Chinese people in The Good Earth, an overnight worldwide bestseller in 1932, later a blockbuster movie. Buck went on to become the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Long before anyone else, she foresaw China's future as a superpower, and she recognized the crucial importance for both countries of China's building a relationship with the United States. As a teenager she had witnessed the first stirrings of Chinese revolution, and as a young woman she narrowly escaped being killed in the deadly struggle between Chinese Nationalists and the newly formed Communist Party.

Pearl grew up in an imperial China unchanged for thousands of years. She was the child of American missionaries, but she spoke Chinese before she learned English, and her friends were the children of Chinese farmers. She took it for granted that she was Chinese herself until she was eight years old, when the terrorist uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion forced her family to flee for their lives. It was the first of many desperate flights. Flood, famine, drought, bandits, and war formed the background of Pearl's life in China. "Asia was the real, the actual world," she said, "and my own country became the dreamworld."

Pearl wrote about the realities of the only world she knew in The Good Earth. It was one of the last things she did before being finally forced out of China to settle for the first time in the United States. She was unknown and penniless with a failed marriage behind her, a disabled child to support, no prospects, and no way of telling that The Good Earth would sell tens of millions of copies. It transfixed a whole generation of readers just as Jung Chang's Wild Swans would do more than half a century later. No Westerner had ever written anything like this before, and no Chinese had either.

Buck was the forerunner of a wave of Chinese Americans from Maxine Hong Kingston to Amy Tan. Until their books began coming out in the last few decades, her novels were unique in that they spoke for ordinary Asian people-- "translating my parents to me," said Hong Kingston, "and giving me our ancestry and our habitation." As a phenomenally successful writer and civil-rights campaigner, Buck did more than anyone else in her lifetime to change Western perceptions of China. In a world with its eyes trained on China today, she has much to tell us about what lies behind its astonishing reawakening.

Pearl Buck in China

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Adeline Yen Mah

The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter

The daughter of a wealthy Hong Kong businessman describes her very difficult childhood and the psychological abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepmother

Falling Leaves

46097f70-6460-4f02-ba2d-069679911759

#paperback #fiction #jacklondon #classic #classics #80s #vintage #adventure #animals #dogs 

Tor Classics are affordably-priced editions designed to attract the young reader. Original dynamic cover art enthusiastically represents the excitement of each story. Appropriate "reader friendly" type sizes have been chosen for each title--offering clear, accurate, and readable text. All editions are complete and unabridged, and feature Introductions and Afterwords. This edition of "The Call of the Wild" includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword by Dwight Swain. Kidnapped form his safe California home. Thrown into a life-and-death struggle on the frozen Artic wilderness. Half St. Bernard, half shepard, Buck learns many hard lessons as a sled dog: the lesson of the leash, of the cold, of near-starvation and cruelty. And the greatest lesson he learns from his last owner, John Thornton: the power of love and loyalty. Yet always, even at the side of the human he loves, Buck feels the pull in his bones, an urge to answer his wolf ancestors as they howl to him.

The Call of the Wild (Watermill Classic Edition, 1980)

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Karen Hesse

Charles. Dickens

Scrooge learns a thing or two about Christmas, with the help of a few ghosts.

A Christmas Carol (Scholastic Books Edition, 1999)

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Pearl S. Buck

Wang Lung, a simple farmer, is helped by his faithful wife to become a prosperous lord. Tragedy follows along the way as he betrays his family and neglects the earth he has worshipped.

Shelves by The Mystery Cauldron

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Gift Ideas for Friends and Family

Great book!

Historical Fiction

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Shelves by The Mystery Cauldron

The Mystery Cauldron

Asian Literature

Comfy, Cozy Mystery

Gift Ideas for Friends and Family

Great book!

Historical Fiction

Kids

Poetry

TBR

Vintage Classic