Amy Poeppel

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

California

A Novel

In a smart and funny novel by the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed "big-hearted, charming" (The Washington Post) Small Admissions, a family's move to New York City brings surprises and humor.

Allison Brinkley--wife, mother, and former unflappable optimist--discovers that her decision to pack up and move her family from suburban Dallas to the glittery chaos of Manhattan may have been more complicated than she and her husband initially thought. New York is more unruly and bewildering than she expected, defying the notions she developed from romantic movies and a memorable childhood visit. After a humiliating call from the principal's office and the loss of the job she was counting on, Allison begins to accept that New York may not suit her after all.

When she has a fender-bender, witnessed by a flock of mothers at her son's new school, she is led to the penthouse apartment of a luxurious Central Park West building and encounters a spoiled, hungover, unsupervised teenager who looks familiar. It doesn't take long to recognize him as Carter Reid--a famous pop star who has been cast in a new Broadway musical. Through this brush with stardom, Allison embraces a unique and unexpected opportunity that helps her find her way in the heart of Manhattan.

"A tribute to Broadway, teen celebrity life, and a mother who has now seen it all, this work is tough love at its finest and a great read for those wanting a ride on the wild side" (Booklist, starred review).

Limelight

efe78ab2-3c47-4ffd-94d3-82cefb6f79f9-1

Dinaw Mengestu

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

The son of Ethiopian immigrants seeks to understand a hidden family history and uncovers a past colored by unexpected loss, addiction, and the enduring emotional pull toward home. After abandoning his once-promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannah—a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage to Hannah on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington, DC, that defined his childhood. At its center is Mamush’s stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as a cover for a harder, more troubling truth. But on the same day that Mamush arrives home in Washington, Samuel is found dead in his garage. With Hannah and their two-year-old son back in Paris, Mamush sets out on an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions he'd been told never to ask. As he does so, he begins to understand that perhaps the only chance he has of saving his family and making it back home is to confront not only the unresolved mystery around Samuel’s life and death, but his own troubled memories, and the years spent masking them. Breathtaking, commanding, unforgettable work from one of America’s most prodigiously gifted novelists.

Someone Like Us

8b79a3d4-137d-4120-bf59-a714a595cade-0

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Murtagh 

Jill Santopolo

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Light We Lost comes a sweeping story of two star-crossed lovers in post-World War II Italy, and a blossoming relationship generations later that will reveal a long-buried family secret. Genoa, Italy, 1946. Vincenzo and Giovanna fall in love at twenty-one the moment they set eyes on each other. The son of a count and the daughter of a tailor, they belong to opposing worlds. Despite this, the undeniable spark between them quickly burns into a deep and passionate relationship spent exploring each other’s minds, bodies and their city, as well as Vincenzo’s family’s sprawling vineyard, Villa Della Rosa—until shifts in political power force them each to choose a side and commit what the other believes is a betrayal, shattering the bright future they dreamed of together. New York, 2017. Cassandra and Luca are in love. Although neither quite fits with the other's family, Cass and Luca have always felt like a perfect match for each other. But when Luca, an artist, convinces his grandfather and Cass’s grandmother to pose for a painting, past and present collide and reveal a secret that changes everything.

Stars in an Italian Sky

afead8f7-13df-49a3-b237-230c9940549d-0

Ruth Hogan

From the wildly popular bestselling author of The Keeper of Lost Things: a heartfelt and inspiring story about a wealthy widow who revives a beloved famous local landmark--and restores joy and sparkle to her own life in the process. It's never too late to start dancing again... For fifty years, Venetia Hargreaves's world revolved around her husband. She built their life around his big career, with dinner on the table at six, a lovely home, and a dutiful son just as business-minded as his father. Now Venetia's a wealthy widow left with a beautiful but empty home, an enviable bank balance, and a distinct feeling that she missed the boat. Once upon a time, she was a dance instructor who dreamed of opening her own ballroom school with a fellow teacher who won her heart. Instead, Venetia chose the safer path. So, at seventy-four years of age, Venetia declares her independence, first with a makeover, and then by adopting a new dog. But something is still missing...until on one of her dog walks by the river she passes by a building she remembers all too well. In her youth it was the spectacular Phoenix Ballroom, where she used to teach waltzes and tangos. These days it's a community center and spiritualist church, funded by a mysterious benefactor who only pays for the upkeep. Eager to revive at least one meaningful thing from her past, Venetia buys the Phoenix Ballroom, and finds a supportive and loving community of lost souls who become a delightful multigenerational family-by-choice. As the ballroom regains its former glory, the community and Venetia's humdrum life are revived as well...proving wonderful things can come from the darkest of places.

The Phoenix Ballroom

dc908115-ef43-4f6f-823a-83c424719fc3-0

Joanna Goodman

From the bestselling author of The Home for Unwanted Girls and The Forgotten Daughter comes a compulsively readable mother-daughter story in which two women who share a difficult past must come to together to claim the future they deserve. Arden Moore enjoyed an affluent life thanks to her husband's high-paying job. But a year after his death, the 36-year-old is a grieving single mother deeply in debt and living paycheck to paycheck with her three children. Then an unexpected call from a well-known estate lawyer in New York offers a glimmer of hope. It is the beginning of a complex legal journey that could mean the difference between a life of abject poverty and unthinkable wealth thanks to her father, deceased billionaire Wallace Barclay. Thirty years before, Arden's mother Virginia Bunt, a flirtatious love addict with a string of failed affairs, met Wallace, an encounter that transformed her life. When he died unexpectedly without a will, Virginia fought to secure a comfortable future for her and the secret unborn daughter she shared with Wallace. Yet despite her best efforts, society and the legal system prevented her from receiving the money that should rightfully have been hers. Now, though, with changes in the legal system and science, her daughter Arden may finally succeed in claiming the inheritance that has been long denied. Told from both Arden and Virginia's viewpoints, straddling past and present, and moving from Toronto to New York City, The Inheritance is a poignant portrait of familial bonds, haunting pasts, the collateral damage of life choices, and the promise of hopeful futures as two venerable women fight for the life they deserve.

The Inheritance

26f41fdb-d5ed-414d-8756-77ae782d6259-1

Janet A. Wilson

Resetting a Marriage on an Adventure Through Africa

As Janet Wilson and her husband struggled to reset their relationship, Africa reached out and threw everything--including every traveler's worst nightmare--at them. An inspiring story that speaks to human experiences and the power of love and trusting relationships in the face of adversity, All You'll See is Sky is a captivating travel memoir of a couple's adventurous journey across Africa.

All You'll See Is Sky

7cdfebee-ca37-4a35-95f7-c6fb6b2e3410-0

Margaret Verble





A gripping, gut-punch of a novel about a Cherokee child removed from her family and sent to a Christian boarding school in the 1950s--an ambitious, eye-opening reckoning of history and small-town prejudices from Pulitzer Prize finalist Margaret Verble. 



Since her mother's death, Kit Crockett has lived with her grief-stricken father, spending lonely days far out in the country tending the garden, fishing in a local stream, and reading Nancy Drew mysteries from the library bookmobile.  One day when Kit discovers a mysterious and beautiful woman has moved in just down the road, she is intrigued.

Kit and her new neighbor Bella become fast friends. Both outsiders, they take comfort in each other's company. But malice lurks near their quiet bayou and Kit suddenly finds herself at the center of tragic, fatal crime.  Soon, Kit is ripped from her home and Cherokee family and sent to Ashley Lordard, a religious boarding school. Along with the other Native students, Kit is stripped of her heritage, force-fed Christian indoctrination, and is sexually abused by the director. But Kit, as strong-willed and shrewd as ever, secretly keeps a journal recounting what she remembers--and revealing just what she has forgotten. Over the course of Stealing, she slowly unravels the truth of how she ended up at the school--and plots a way out. 

In swift, sharp, and stunning prose, Margaret Verble spins a powerful coming-of age tale and reaffirms her place as an indelible storyteller and chronicler of history.



Stealing

d7cb623f-1a09-4ce9-be9f-d87b3bcd0ca1-1

Laurence Ralph

An American Teenager and the City That Failed Him

A riveting and heart-wrenching story of violence, grief and the American justice system, exploring the systemic issues that perpetuate gang participation in one of the wealthiest cities in the country, through the story of one teenager. In September of 2019, Luis Alberto Quiñonez--known as Sito-- was shot to death as he sat in his car in the Mission District of San Francisco. He was nineteen. His killer, Julius Williams, was seventeen. It was the second time the teens had encountered one another. The first, five years before, also ended in tragedy, when Julius watched as his brother was stabbed to death by an acquaintance of Sito's. The two murders merited a few local news stories, and then the rest of the world moved on. But for the families of the slain teenagers, it was impossible to move on. And for Laurence Ralph, the stepfather of Sito's half-brother who had dedicated much of his academic career to studying gang-affiliated youth, Sito's murder forced him to revisit a subject of scholarly inquiry in a profoundly different, deeply personal way. Written from Ralph's perspective as both a person enmeshed in Sito's family and as an Ivy League professor and expert on the entanglement of class and violence, SITO is an intimate story with an message about the lived experience of urban danger, and about anger, fear, grief, vengeance, and ultimately grace.

Sito

0e24cfd7-6886-42ad-b697-2a50ab47fb41-0

Samantha Leach

Three Girls, One Fate, and the Deadly Secrets of Suburbia

In the tradition of Three Women, Bustle editor and writer Samantha Leach traces the lives of a trio of girls who met in the Troubled Teen Industry and went on to share the same tragic fate. Samantha and her best friend Elissa were typical privileged, rebellious, suburban girls. But after Elissa was kicked out of their private school, she soon disappeared. At fifteen years old, her parents quietly flew her from Providence, Rhode Island to a $10,000/month therapeutic boarding school in Nebraska. Ponca Pines Academy was part of the Troubled Teen Industry, a network of programs meant to reform wealthy, wayward teens. There she met two girls uncannily named Alissa and Alyssa, who had similar backgrounds and similar vices. In The Three Elissas, Samantha channels her personal grief and utilizes years of immersive research combined with her biting prose to reveal the cultural forces and systemic failings that contributed to the deaths of all three girls. In 2011, less than a year after graduating from Ponca Pines Academy, Elissa died of encephalitis. Four years later, Alyssa died of a heroin overdose. Another four years after that, Alissa died while battling an opioid addiction. Samantha endeavors to tell each of their stories, expanding on what shaped these young women before, during, and after their time in the Troubled Teen Industry. Based on interviews with other survivors, friends and family of the girls, educators, experts, and comprehensive reporting, The Three Elissas will challenge what you know about the opioid epidemic and the Troubled Teen Industry -- and in doing so, will ultimately offer a window into the secret lives of young suburban women.

The Elissas

390a51b2-3ef4-42fa-8e89-c989e83ef87e-1

Colin Meloy

From the creators of the New York Times bestselling Wildwood Chronicles comes an original, humorous, and fast-paced middle grade novel about a band of child pickpockets—imagine The Invention of Hugo Cabret meets Oliver Twist. It is an ordinary Tuesday morning in April when bored, lonely Charlie Fisher witnesses something incredible. Right before his eyes, in a busy square in Marseille, a group of pickpockets pulls off an amazing robbery. As the young bandits appear to melt into the crowd, Charlie realizes with a start that he himself was one of their marks. Yet Charlie is less alarmed than intrigued. This is the most thrilling thing that’s happened to him since he came to France with his father, an American diplomat. So instead of reporting the thieves, Charlie defends one of their cannons, Amir, to the police, under one condition: he teach Charlie the tricks of the trade. What starts off as a lesson on pinches, kicks, and chumps soon turns into an invitation for Charlie to join the secret world of the whiz mob, an international band of child thieves who trained at the mysterious School of Seven Bells. The whiz mob are independent and incredibly skilled and make their own way in the world—they are everything Charlie yearns to be. But what at first seemed like a (relatively) harmless new pastime draws him into a dangerous adventure with global stakes greater than he could have ever imagined.

The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid

5236d20f-8abc-4523-a93a-6498068ec8a1-1

Elisa Marks

Elisa Marks

@elisa732054

Books Listed

Following

Followers

Amy Poeppel

Limelight

Dinaw Mengestu

Someone Like Us

Christopher Paolini

Murtagh

Jill Santopolo

Stars in an Italian Sky

Ruth Hogan

The Phoenix Ballroom

Joanna Goodman

The Inheritance

Janet A. Wilson

All You'll See Is Sky

Margaret Verble

Stealing

Laurence Ralph

Sito

Samantha Leach

The Elissas

Colin Meloy

The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid

Get The App

Browse by categories

Amy Poeppel

Limelight

Dinaw Mengestu

Someone Like Us

Christopher Paolini

Murtagh

Jill Santopolo

Stars in an Italian Sky

Ruth Hogan

The Phoenix Ballroom

Joanna Goodman

The Inheritance

Janet A. Wilson

All You'll See Is Sky

Margaret Verble

Stealing

Laurence Ralph

Sito

Samantha Leach

The Elissas

Colin Meloy

The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid

Get The App