Unforgettable Books
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Typhoon
Typhoon, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Top Ten Thriller of the Year (London Times), further confirms what all the critics have been saying: Charles Cumming is a modern master of the classic espionage thriller, heir to le Carre and Deighton. In 1997, a few months before the British government is scheduled to return Hong Kong to Chinese rule, Joe Lennox, a brilliant young operative for SIS (MI6), loses both his girlfriend and his first high profile asset - a prominent defector who disappears from a safe house. The girlfriend, the ravishing Isabella Aubert, he lost to Miles Coolidge, a hard-bitten CIA agent; the asset to collusion between his bosses and the CIA. A decade later, Lennox is back in China, facing his old nemeses. With the CIA plotting to use an Islamic group to destabilize China, the SIS seeking to thwart them and his old asset the key to all of this, Lennox, Coolidge, and the girlfriend they shared are hopelessly intertwined in a plot where trust is impossible and truth is unknowable.
$28.00
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Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
NOW A NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER A love letter to city life in all its guts and grandeur, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney paints a portrait of a remarkable woman across the canvas of a changing America: from the Jazz Age to the onset of the AIDS epidemic; the Great Depression to the birth of hip-hop. "In my reckless and undiscouraged youth," Lillian Boxfish writes, "I worked in a walnut-paneled office thirteen floors above West Thirty-Fifth Street..." She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy's to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. It was a job that, she says, "in some ways saved my life, and in other ways ruined it." Now it's the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just as sharp and savvy as ever, is on her way to a party. It's chilly enough out for her mink coat and Manhattan is grittier now--her son keeps warning her about a subway vigilante on the prowl--but the quick-tongued poetess has never been one to scare easily. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, she meets bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be, while reviewing a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak, illuminating all the ways New York has changed--and has not. Lillian figures she might as well take her time. For now, after all, the night is still young. "Transporting...witty, poignant and sparkling." --People (People Picks Book of the Week)
$18.00
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Heartburn
A 40th anniversary reissue of the national bestselling author's hilarious first novel that memorably mixed food, heartbreak, and revenge into a comic masterpiece--now with a new foreword by Stanley Tucci. - "Touching and funny.... Proof that writing well is the best revenge." --Chicago TribuneIs it possible to write a sidesplitting novel about the breakup of the perfect marriage? If the writer is Nora Ephron, the answer is a resounding yes. In this inspired confection of adultery, revenge, group therapy, and pot roast, the creator of Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally... reminds us that comedy depends on anguish as surely as a proper gravy depends on flour and butter. Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel Samstat discovers that her husband, Mark, is in love with another woman. The fact that the other woman has "a neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb and you should see her legs" is no consolation. Food sometimes is, though, since Rachel writes cookbooks for a living. And in between trying to win Mark back and loudly wishing him dead, Ephron's irrepressible heroine offers some of her favorite recipes. Heartburn is a sinfully delicious novel, as soul-satisfying as mashed potatoes and as airy as a perfect soufflé.
$17.00
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The School of Night
London. 1985. A city rife with possibility and desire. One young man who wants it all. Kristian Hadeland, young and ambitious, has moved to London to study photography; he knows that he and his art are destined for more. His family never understood him, and his fellow photography students bore him. But when he meets Hans, an eccentric Dutch artist, the future he yearns for becomes possible--as long as he is willing to sacrifice everything and stop at nothing. Twenty-four years later, Kristian sees his dreams come to fruition when a major retrospective of his work is held in New York City. As his past catches up to him, Kristian's world begins to crumble. Success comes at a price, but is he prepared to pay it? In a thrilling twist on Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Karl Ove Knausgaard masterfully spins a cautionary tale about the lengths that we will go to achieve success--and how far we are willing to fall. His most daring and macabre novel yet, The School of Night is an indelible tale about dark temptations and moral depravity, and what we forget when we bargain with the devil.
$32.00
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Every One Still Here: Stories: Stories
A searching, incisive, and profound debut collection of stories about people--mothers, fathers, sons, strangers, sisters--living in the aftermath of violence. What good is it to know what things are, what lies beneath the appearance of them? It is nothing until it is stated. It is nothing if it is not named. It is just blood, like you have never seen before. A young man studying anatomy looks at a cadaver. Flowers are found, left in bouquets, all over a museum. A mother dies, leaving a stain on the carpet: whether or not anyone acknowledges it, they know it's there. The searching and clear-eyed stories in Every One Still Here are set in Ireland under British occupation, a place where the past, grief, and guilt thrum behind every surface and refuse to stay buried. Liadan Ní Chuinn is a debut writer of uncommon power, clarity, and precision, whose characters in Every One Still Here stay lodged within us long after we leave them.
$17.00
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Fields of Fire
"In my opinion, the finest of the Vietnam novels."--Tom Wolfe They each had their reasons for joining the Marines. They each had their illusions. Goodrich came from Harvard. Snake got the tattoo--"Death Before Dishonor"--before he got the uniform. Hodges was haunted by the ghosts of family heroes. They were three young men from different worlds, plunged into a white-hot, murderous realm of jungle warfare as it was fought by one Marine platoon in the An Hoa Basin, 1969. They had no way of knowing what awaited them. Nothing could have prepared them for the madness to come. And in the heat and horror of battle they took on new identities, took on one another, and were each reborn in fields of fire. Fields of Fire is James Webb's classic novel of the Vietnam War, a novel of poetic power, razor-sharp observation, and agonizing human truths seen through the prism of nonstop combat. Weaving together a cast of vivid characters, Fields of Fire captures the journey of unformed men through a man-made hell--until each man finds his fate. Praise for Fields of Fire "Few writers since Stephen Crane have portrayed men at war with such a ring of steely truth."--The Houston Post "A stunner . . . Webb gives us an extraordinary range of acutely observed people, not one a stereotype, and as many different ways of looking at that miserable war."--Newsweek "A novel of such fullness and impact, one is tempted to compare it to Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead."--The Oregonian "Webb's book has the unmistakable sound of truth acquired the hard way. His men hate the war; it is a lethal fact cut adrift from personal sense. Yet they understand that its profound insanity, its blood and oblivion, have in some way made them fall in love with battle and with each other."--Time
$10.99
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Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
NEW YORK TIMES AND NATIONAL BESTSELLERA GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "A modern-day story of love that takes everyone--grown children, villagers, and the main participants--by surprise, as real love stories tend to do." --Elizabeth Strout Written with a delightfully dry sense of humour and the wisdom of a born storyteller, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand explores the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of family obligation and tradition. When retired Major Pettigrew strikes up an unlikely friendship with Mrs. Ali, the Pakistani village shopkeeper, he is drawn out of his regimented world and forced to confront the realities of life in the twenty-first century. Brought together by a shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship on the cusp of blossoming into something more. But although the Major was actually born in Lahore, and Mrs. Ali was born in Cambridge, village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as a permanent foreigner. The Major has always taken special pride in the village, but will he be forced to choose between the place he calls home and a future with Mrs. Ali?
$20.00
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Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: Reese's Book Club
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick "Beautifully written and incredibly funny, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is about the importance of friendship and human connection. I fell in love with Eleanor, an eccentric and regimented loner whose life beautifully unfolds after a chance encounter with a stranger; I think you will fall in love, too!" --Reese WitherspoonNo one's ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . . The only way to survive is to open your heart.
$20.00
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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Now a major motion picture starring Jude Dench, Bill Nighy, Dev Patel, Tom Wilkinson, and Maggie Smith. When Ravi Kapoor, an overworked London doctor, reaches the breaking point with his difficult father-in-law, he asks his wife: "Can't we just send him away somewhere? Somewhere far, far away." His prayer is seemingly answered when Ravi's entrepreneurial cousin sets up a retirement home in India, hoping to re-create in Bangalore an elegant lost corner of England. Several retirees are enticed by the promise of indulgent living at a bargain price, but upon arriving, they are dismayed to find that restoration of the once sophisiticated hotel has stalled, and that such amenities as water and electricity are . . . infrequent. But what their new life lacks in luxury, they come to find, it's plentiful in adventure, stunning beauty, and unexpected love.
$22.00
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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a now-classic novel about two women: Evelyn, who's in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who's telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women--the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth--who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering good coffee, southern barbecue, and all kinds of love and laughter--even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present will never be quite the same again. Praise for Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe "A real novel and a good one [from] the busy brain of a born storyteller."--The New York Times "Happily for us, Fannie Flagg has preserved [the Threadgoodes] in a richly comic, poignant narrative that records the exuberance of their lives, the sadness of their departure."--Harper Lee "This whole literary enterprise shines with honesty, gallantry, and love of perfect details that might otherwise be forgotten."--Los Angeles Times "Funny and macabre."--The Washington Post "Courageous and wise."--Houston Chronicle
$20.00
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The Bean Trees
"The Bean Trees is the work of a visionary. . . . It leaves you open-mouthed and smiling." -- Los Angeles TimesAn acclaimed bestseller that has come to be regarded as an American classic, The Bean Trees is the novel that launched Barbara Kingsolver's remarkable literary career. Kingsolver has gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, Demon Copperhead, and is the recipient of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguish Contribution to American LettersThe Bean Trees is the charming, engrossing tale of rural Kentucky native Taylor Greer, who only wants to get away from her roots and avoid getting pregnant. She succeeds, but inherits a three-year-old Native American girl named Turtle along the way, and together, from Oklahoma to Arizona, half-Cherokee Taylor and her charge search for a new life in the West. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in seemingly empty places.
$18.99
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Over the Mountain
It's 1961, and Harriet Elizabeth Oechsner has almost completed her sophomore year in high school, when she's faced with the dreaded news that her family is moving again. This time it's because her father Erik's liberal theology and commitment to social justice has angered his parishioners, and he's been forced to resign from his church after only a year as pastor. The resulting move thrusts the five members of the close knit Oechsner family into a community bathed in privilege, steeped in tradition, and staunchly resistant to change. Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, is a community separated only by a mountain ridge from the struggle for human rights being waged on the other side. And yet, it's a community so distanced by privilege and color from its parent city and the needs of the poor and disenfranchised within, that it may as well be on the other side of the world.Harriet must once again assume the role of the outsider adapting to another new school, her third in three years. Her encounters with new teachers and peers lead her into situations that are at times painful, lonely, embarrassing, shocking, and often humorous.Harriet's adjustment to her new school is fraught by teenage angst and emotion; and, as a child of the Cold War and the civil rights era, she is thrust into the realities of injustice, separation, and the threat of nuclear holocaust. However, the story maintains a hopeful tone, as the plot is interwoven with themes of inclusiveness, loyalty, friendship, and reconciliation.Readers who fell in love with Hattie Robinson in Hattie's Place and In the Fullness of Time, will be happy to know that Over the Mountain takes up two generations later, with Hattie's granddaughter and namesake, Harriet, as the main character.
$14.99
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