Deesha Philyaw

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Mississippi

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions. There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who has a crush on the preacher's wife. At forty-two, Lyra realizes that her discomfort with her own body stands between her and a new love. As Y2K looms, Caroletta's "same time next year" arrangement with her childhood best friend is tenuous. A serial mistress lays down the ground rules for her married lovers. In the dark shadows of a hospice parking lot, grieving strangers find comfort in each other. With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be, and as free as they deserve to be.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

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Karen Russell

Wisconsin

Here is the debut short story collection from the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Swamplandia! and the New York Times bestselling Vampires in the Lemon Grove.

In these ten glittering stories, the award-winning, bestselling author Orange World and Other Stories takes us to the ghostly and magical swamps of the Florida Everglades. Here wolf-like girls are reformed by nuns, a family makes their living wrestling alligators in a theme park, and little girls sail away on crab shells.

Filled with inventiveness and heart, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is the dazzling debut of a blazingly original voice.

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

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Emma Cline

book has been read once. shows no damage. 

Illinois

Stories

From the bestselling author of The Girls comes a “brilliant” (The New York Times) story collection exploring the dark corners of human experience. “Daddy’s ten masterful, provocative stories confirm that Cline is a staggering talent.”—Esquire NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY An absentee father collects his son from boarding school after a shocking act of violence. A nanny to a celebrity family hides out in Laurel Canyon in the aftermath of a tabloid scandal. A young woman sells her underwear to strangers. A notorious guest arrives at a placid, not-quite rehab in the Southwest. In ten remarkable stories, Emma Cline portrays moments when the ordinary is disturbed, when daily life buckles, revealing the perversity and violence pulsing under the surface. She explores characters navigating the edge, the limits of themselves and those around them: power dynamics in families, in relationships, the distance between their true and false selves. They want connection, but what they provoke is often closer to self-sabotage. What are the costs of one’s choices? Of the moments when we act, or fail to act? These complexities are at the heart of Daddy, Emma Cline’s sharp-eyed illumination of the contrary impulses that animate our inner lives.

Shelves by Michelle Martin

Michelle Martin

Short Stories

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Shelves by Michelle Martin

Michelle Martin

Short Stories