Jessamine Chan

The dust jacket has some warping, but the book itself is in good shape. 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Wisconsin

A Novel

In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance. Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough. Until Frida has a very bad day. The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgment, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion. Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good. A searing page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages. Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.

The School for Good Mothers

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Wendy Corsi Staub

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A Foundlings Novel

From New York Times Bestselling Author Wendy Corsi Staub comes a gripping novel of psychological suspense, as a young foundling's path to her biological parents leads to a killer with a chilling agenda.

May, 1968

On a murky pre-dawn Mother's Day, sinister secrets play out miles apart in New York City. In Harlem, a church janitor finds an innocent newborn in a basket. In Brooklyn, an elusive serial killer prowls slumbering families, leaving a trail of blood and a twisted calling card. Cloaked in lies, these seemingly unrelated lives--and deaths--are destined to intersect on a distant, blood-soaked day.

October, 1987

Reeling from shocking personal discoveries, two strangers navigate a world where nothing is as it seems. Amelia Crenshaw embarks on a search to discover the truth about the birth mother who abandoned her, never suspecting she's on a collision course with a killer. Detective Stockton Barnes, a brash young NYPD detective, trails a missing millionaire whose disappearance is rooted in a nightmare that began twenty years ago.

The past returns with a brutal vengeance as a masked predator picks off victims whose fates intertwine with a notorious murder spree solved back in '68--or was it?

Little Girl Lost

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Simon Easton

A Step-By-Step Guide to Getting Started in Pyrography

This easy-to-learn introduction to the art of pyrography offers fifteen step-by-step projects for making decorative gifts--from spoons and spatulas to bangles, bowls and bookmarks--illustrated with clear how-to photographs. Each pyro project can be completed using ready-made materials that are easy to find at your local craft store. Fifty bonus patterns will allow you to unleash your creativity on hundreds of additional woodburning projects.

Learn to Burn

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Erik Larson

Cover has some wear but otherwise in perfect shape 

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

An account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 relates the stories of two men who shaped the history of the event--architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and serial killer Herman Mudgett.

The Devil in the White City

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Eric Hill

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A mother dog finds eight other animals hiding around the house before finding her lost puppy. On board pages.

Where's Spot?

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Blaine Harden

One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

With a New Foreword The heartwrenching New York Times bestseller about the only known person born inside a North Korean prison camp to have escaped. North Korea’s political prison camps have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. No one born and raised in these camps is known to have escaped. No one, that is, except Shin Dong-hyuk. In Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden unlocks the secrets of the world’s most repressive totalitarian state through the story of Shin’s shocking imprisonment and his astounding getaway. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence—he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his mother and brother. The late “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il was recognized throughout the world, but his country remains sealed as his third son and chosen heir, Kim Jong Eun, consolidates power. Few foreigners are allowed in, and few North Koreans are able to leave. North Korea is hungry, bankrupt, and armed with nuclear weapons. It is also a human rights catastrophe. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people work as slaves in its political prison camps. These camps are clearly visible in satellite photographs, yet North Korea’s government denies they exist. Harden’s harrowing narrative exposes this hidden dystopia, focusing on an extraordinary young man who came of age inside the highest security prison in the highest security state. Escape from Camp 14 offers an unequalled inside account of one of the world’s darkest nations. It is a tale of endurance and courage, survival and hope.

Escape from Camp 14

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Julie Aigner-Clark

Build your baby's vocabulary with this new first words book. Split into familiar catagories such as animals, nature, food and babies themselves, the youngest learners will be able to identify the names of familiar objects. Baby Einstein Books is an imprint of developmentally appropriate, interactive books designed to introduce children ages 0-3 to classic poetry, art, and foreign languages in a fun and accessible way. A combination of playful images, beautiful photography, and bold illustrations with multilayered text will captivate and stimulate babies and young children. This “humanities for babies” program, based on the award-winning video series, taps into the natural learning potential of young children—and their parents’ aspirations for them.

First Words

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Tochi Onyebuchi

In the 2050s, Earth has begun to empty. Those with the means and the privilege have departed the great cities of the United States for the more comfortable confines of space colonies. Those left behind salvage what they can from the collapsing infrastructure. As they eke out an existence, their neighbourhoods are being cannibalized. Brick by brick, their houses are sent to the colonies, what was once a home now a quaint reminder for the colonists of the world that they wrecked. Author of "Riot Baby." Print run 150,000.

Goliath

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It’s an old book so pages are yellowed, but perfectly readable. 

Night Walker

Robert Mayer

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

For fans of Serial and Making a Murderer, the true, bewildering story of a young woman’s disappearance, the nightmare of a small town obsessed with delivering justice, and the bizarre dream of a poor, uneducated man accused of murder. On April 28, 1984, Denice Haraway disappeared from her job at a convenience store on the outskirts of Ada, Oklahoma, and the sleepy town erupted. Tales spread of rape, mutilation, and murder, and the police set out on a relentless mission to bring someone to justice. Six months later, two local men—Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot—were arrested and brought to trial, even though they repudiated their “confessions,” no body had been found, no weapon had been produced, and no eyewitnesses had come forward. The Dreams of Ada is a story of politics and morality, of fear and obsession. It is also a moving, compelling portrait of one small town living through a nightmare. “A riveting true story of a brutal murder in a small town and the tragic errors made in the pursuit of justice.”—John Grisham

The Dreams of Ada

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Richard McGregor

The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers

An eye-opening investigation into China's Communist Party and its integral role in the country's rise as a global superpower and rival of the United States China's political and economic growth in the past three decades is one of astonishing, epochal dimensions. The country has undergone a remarkable transformation on a scale similar to that of the Industrial Revolution in the West. The most remarkable part of this transformation, however, has been left largely untold—the central role of the Chinese Communist Party. As an organization alone, the Party is a phenomenon of unique scale and power. Its membership surpasses seventy-three million, and it does more than just rule a country. The Party not only has a grip on every aspect of government, from the largest, richest cities to the smallest far-flung villages in Tibet and Xinjiang, it also has a hold on all official religions, the media, and the military. The Party presides over large, wealthy state-owned businesses, and it exercises control over the selection of senior executives of all government companies, many of which are in the top tier of the Fortune 500 list. In The Party, Richard McGregor delves deeply into China's inner sanctum for the first time, showing how the Communist Party controls the government, courts, media, and military, and how it keeps all corruption accusations against its members in-house. The Party's decisions have a global impact, yet the CPC remains a deeply secretive body, hostile to the law, unaccountable to anyone or anything other than its own internal tribunals. It is the world's only geopolitical rival of the United States, and is steadfastly poised to think the worst of the West. In this provocative and illuminating account, Richard McGregor offers a captivating portrait of China's Communist Party, its grip on power and control over China, and its future.

The Party

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Sheryl Sandberg

Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

The Facebook chief operating officer and Fortune top-ranked businesswoman shares provocative, anecdotal advice for women that urges them to take risks and seek new challenges in order to find work that they can love and engage in passionately.

Lean In

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#paperback #juvenilefiction #fiction #historicalfiction #likenew #teen #youngadult #charlottedoyle #pirates

As the only passenger, and the only female, on a transatlantic voyage in 1832, thirteen-year-old Charlotte finds herself caught between a murderous captain and a mutinous crew.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

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Ian Ridpath

#paperback #space #outerspace #planets #solarsystem #astronomy

In this new edition of their classic guide, Ian Ridpath and Wil Tirion bring the night sky down to earth with brand new sky charts, diagrams, and photos that enrich the clear, engaging text. Stars and Planets will delight both latent astronomers who have yet to touch a telescope and the more star-savvy who have spent many a night outside craning their necks behind a lens.



The introduction presents the basics of astronomical observation while answering such questions as: How did constellations come to be? Do the stars within them have anything to do with one another? Do stars really flicker? Next comes the book's centerpiece: an excellent series of maps of the night sky from hemisphere to hemisphere, month to month and, above all, charts showing all 88 constellations, including some 5,000 stars. The text vividly relates the human history behind each constellation and notes their most prominent stars while offering sundry stimulating facts.



The second section focuses on the astrophysics behind stars, galaxies, the sun, the planets, comets and meteors, and more. Striking full-color photos, maps, and illustrations appear on almost every page. The guide concludes with helpful tips on the optical tools of the trade and on astrophotography. Astrophysicists and amateur skywatchers agree that Stars and Planets is simply the most user-friendly, compact source of celestial information available. No one should leave home at night without it.



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 * Up-to-date full-color photos and data, including recent planetary images
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 * Monthly maps of the night sky as seen from latitudes throughout the world
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 * Charts of all 88 constellations, with data and notes on bright stars and other objects of interest
 * 
   
 * Illustrated introduction to stars, nebulae, galaxies, and the solar system
 * 
   
 * Advice on choosing and using binoculars and telescopes
 * 
   

Stars and Planets

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John Boyne

#paperback #fiction #juvenilefiction #youngadult #historical #classic #johnboyne #holocaust #wwii #worldwartwo #historicalfiction Small tear on back cover as seen in photos but otherwise in great shape. 

Bored and lonely after his family moves from Berlin to a place called "Out-With" in 1942, Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer, befriends a boy in striped pajamas who lives behind a wire fence. Reprint.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

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Walter Isaacson

#hardcover #biography #nonfiction #autobiography #stevejobs #tech #technology #startup

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Draws on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs, as well as interviews with family members, friends, competitors, and colleagues to offer a look at the co-founder and leading creative force behind the Apple computer company.

Steve Jobs

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Lynne Cox

#hardcover #nonfiction #biography #explorers #adventure #arcticexpeditions

Roald Amundsen, His Polar Explorations, and the Quest for Discovery

Roald Amundsen, “the last of the Vikings,” left his mark on the Heroic Era as one of the most successful polar explorers ever.

A powerfully built man more than six feet tall, Amundsen’s career of adventure began at the age of fifteen (he was born in Norway in 1872 to a family of merchant sea captains and rich ship owners); twenty-five years later he was the first man to reach both the North and South Poles.

Lynne Cox, adventurer and swimmer, author of Swimming to Antarctica (“gripping” —Sports Illustrated) and Grayson (“wondrous, and unforgettable” —Carl Hiaasen), gives us in South with the Sun a full-scale account of the explorer’s life and expeditions.

We see Amundsen, in 1903-06, the first to travel the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in his small ship Gjøa, a seventy-foot refitted former herring boat powered by sails and a thirteen-horsepower engine, making his way through the entire length of the treacherous ice bound route, between the northern Canadian mainland and Canada’s Arctic islands, from Greenland across Baffin Bay, between the Canadian islands, across the top of Alaska into the Bering Strait. The dangerous journey took three years to complete, as Amundsen, his crew, and six sled dogs waited while the frozen sea around them thawed sufficiently to allow for navigation.
We see him journey toward the North Pole in Fridtjof Nansen’s famous Fram, until word reached his expedition party of Robert Peary’s successful arrival at the North Pole. Amundsen then set out on a secret expedition to the Antarctic, and we follow him through his heroic capture of the South Pole.

Cox makes clear why Amundsen succeeded in his quests where other adventurer-explorers failed, and how his methodical preparation and willingness to take calculated risks revealed both the spirit of the man and the way to complete one triumphant journey after another.

Crucial to Amundsen’s success in reaching the South Pole was his use of carefully selected sled dogs. Amundsen’s canine crew members—he called them “our children”—had been superbly equipped by centuries of natural selection for survival in the Arctic. “The dogs,” he wrote, “are the most important thing for us. The whole outcome of the expedition depends on them.” On December 14, 1911, Roald Amundsen and four others, 102 days and more than 1,880 miles later, stood at the South Pole, a full month before Robert Scott.

Lynne Cox describes reading about Amundsen as a young girl and how because of his exploits was inspired to follow her dreams. We see how she unwittingly set out in Amundsen’s path, swimming in open waters off Antarctica, then Greenland (always without a wetsuit), first as a challenge to her own abilities and then later as a way to understand Amundsen’s life and the lessons learned from his vision, imagination, and daring.

South with the Sun—inspiring, wondrous, and true—is a bold adventure story of bold ambitious dreams.

Jess

@biggestlittlepickle

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Jessamine Chan

The School for Good Mothers

Wendy Corsi Staub

Little Girl Lost

Simon Easton

Learn to Burn

Erik Larson

The Devil in the White City

Eric Hill

Where's Spot?

Blaine Harden

Escape from Camp 14

Julie Aigner-Clark

First Words

Tochi Onyebuchi

Goliath

Donald Hamilton

Night Walker

Robert Mayer

The Dreams of Ada

Richard McGregor

The Party

Sheryl Sandberg

Lean In

Avi

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

Ian Ridpath; Wil Tirion (Illustrator)

Stars and Planets

John Boyne

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs

Lynne Cox

South with the Sun

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Jessamine Chan

The School for Good Mothers

Wendy Corsi Staub

Little Girl Lost

Simon Easton

Learn to Burn

Erik Larson

The Devil in the White City

Eric Hill

Where's Spot?

Blaine Harden

Escape from Camp 14

Julie Aigner-Clark

First Words

Tochi Onyebuchi

Goliath

Donald Hamilton

Night Walker

Robert Mayer

The Dreams of Ada

Richard McGregor

The Party

Sheryl Sandberg

Lean In

Avi

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

Ian Ridpath; Wil Tirion (Illustrator)

Stars and Planets

John Boyne

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs

Lynne Cox

South with the Sun

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