J. California Cooper

This is a clean, remaindered copy with a small, red dot on the bottom.

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Illinois

Stories

Whether through her stories or her legendary readings, J. California Cooper has an uncanny ability to reach out to readers like an old and dear friend. Her characters are plain-spoken and direct: simple people for whom life, despite its ever-present struggles, is always worth the journey. In Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime, Cooper's characteristic themes of romance, heartbreak, struggle and faith resonate. We meet Darlin, a self-proclaimed femme fatale who uses her wiles to try to find a husband; MLee, whose life seems to be coming to an end at the age of forty until she decides to set out and see if she can make a new life for herself; Kissy and Buddy, both trying and failing to find them until they finally meet each other; and Aberdeen, whose daughter Uniqua shows her how to educate herself and move up in the world. These characters and others offer inspiration, laughter, instruction and pure enjoyment in what is one of J. California Cooper's finest story collections.

Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime

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The is is a clean, remaindered copy in excellent condition. One corner on cover with slight wear.

Recounts the life of Josephus, a freed slave whose desire for wealth for him and his illegitimate daughter affects the whole community

In Search of Satisfaction

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This is a remaindered copy with a red dot on the bottom.

In 1984, an extraordinary first collection of short stories written by award-winning playwright J. California Cooper was published to much acclaim. Now back in print, A Piece of Mine remains one of her most loved books. "Cooper's characters are the folk heroes of Black culture . . ".--Essence.

A Piece of Mine

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Gloria Naylor

A little shelfwear to this remaindered copy. See photos.

A powerful look at an affluent black community from Gloria Naylor (1950-2016), the National Book Award-winning author of The Women of Brewster Place

A world away from Brewster Place, yet intimately connected to it, lies Linden Hills. With its showcase homes, elegant lawns, and other trappings of Wealth, Linden Hills is not unlike other affluent black communities. But residence in this community is indisputable evidence of "making it." Although no one knows what the precise qualifications are, everyone knows that only certain people get to live there - and that they want to be among them. In a resonant novel that takes as it's model Dante's Inferno, Gloria Naylor reveals the truth about the American dream - that the price of success may very well be on a journey down to the lowest circle of hell.

"With Linden Hills, Naylor has constructed a place for herself among the leading contemporary writers of fiction." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

Linden Hills

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Diana Gardner

Woman Novelist and Other Stories

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Sheilah Graham

Wendy W. Fairey

The Story of How F. Scott Fitzgerald Educated the Woman He Loved

The moving story of how F. Scott Fitzgerald—washed up, alcoholic and ill—dedicated himself to devising a heartfelt course in literature for the woman he loved. In 1937, on the night of her engagement to the Marquess of Donegall, Sheilah Graham met F. Scott Fitzgerald at a party in Hollywood. Graham, a British-born journalist, broke off her engagement, and until Fitzgerald had a fatal heart attack in her apartment in 1940, the two writers lived the fervid, sometimes violent affair that is memorialized here with unprecedented intimacy. When they met, Fitzgerald’s fame had waned. He battled crippling alcoholism while writing screenplays to support his daughter and institutionalized wife. Graham’s star, however, was rising, to the point where she became Hollywood’s highest-paid, best-read gossip columnist. But if Fitzgerald had lived out his “crack-up” in public, Graham kept her demons secret—such as that she believed herself to be “a fascinating fake who pulled the wool over Hollywood’s eyes.’’ Most poignantly, she keenly felt her lack of education, and Fitzgerald rose to the occasion. He became her passionate tutor, guiding her through a curriculum of his own design: a college of one. Graham loved him the more for it, writing the book as a tribute. As she explained, “An unusual man’s ideas on what constituted an education had to be preserved. It is a new chapter to add to what is already known about an author who has been microscopically investigated in all the other areas of his life.”

College of One

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Ottessa Moshfegh

This is a remaindered copy in excellent condition with a small red dot on the bottom.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 An electrifying first collection from one of the most exciting short story writers of our time "I can’t recall the last time I laughed this hard at a book. Simultaneously, I’m shocked and scandalized. She’s brilliant, this young woman."—David Sedaris Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel Eileen was one of the literary events of 2015. Garlanded with critical acclaim, it was named a book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. But as many critics noted, Moshfegh is particularly held in awe for her short stories. Homesick for Another World is the rare case where an author's short story collection is if anything more anticipated than her novel. And for good reason. There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O'Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources. And the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We're in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.

Homesick for Another World

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Ge Fei

Canaan Morse

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

An enthralling story of revolution, idealism, and a savage struggle for utopia by one of China's greatest living novelists. In 1898 reformist intellectuals in China persuaded the young emperor that it was time to transform his sclerotic empire into a prosperous modern state. The Hundred Days’ Reform that followed was a moment of unprecedented change and extraordinary hope—brought to an abrupt end by a bloody military coup. Dashed expectations would contribute to the revolutionary turn that Chinese history would soon take, leading in time to the deaths of millions. Peach Blossom Paradise, set at the time of the reform, is the story of Xiumi, the daughter of a wealthy landowner and former government official who falls prey to insanity and disappears. Days later, a man with a gold cicada in his pocket turns up at his estate and is inexplicably welcomed as a relative. This mysterious man has a great vision of reforging China as an egalitarian utopia, and he will stop at nothing to make it real. It is his own plans, however, which come to nothing, and his “little sister” Xiumi is left to take up arms against a Confucian world in which women are chattel. Her campaign for change and her struggle to seize control over her own body are continually threatened by the violent whims of men who claim to be building paradise.

Peach Blossom Paradise

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Annabel Lyon

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Novel

"Saskia and Jenny--twins--are alike in appearance only: Saskia is a grad student with a single-minded focus on her studies, while Jenny is glamorous, thrill-seeking, and capricious. Still, when Jenny is severely injured in an accident, Saskia puts her life on hold to be with her sister. Sara and Mattie are sisters with another difficult dynamic. Mattie, who is younger, is intellectually disabled. Sara loves nothing more than fine wines, perfumes, and expensive clothing, and leaves home at the first opportunity. But when their mother dies, Sara inherits the duty of caring for her sister. Arriving at the house one day, she is horrified to discover that Mattie has married their mother's handyman. The relationship ends in tragedy. Now, Sara and Saskia, both caregivers for so long, are on their own--and come together through a cascade of circumstances as devastating as they are unexpected. Razor-sharp and profoundly moving, Consent is a thought-provoking exploration of the complexities of familial duty, of how love can become entangled with guilt, resentment, and regret"--

Consent

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Robbie Arnott

A gripping novel of myth, environment, adventure, and an unlikely friendship, from an award-winning Australian author Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup d'état. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting, farming, trading, and forgetting the contours of what was once a normal life. But her quiet stability is disrupted when an army unit, led by a young female soldier, comes to the mountains on government orders in search of a legendary creature called the rain heron—a mythical, dangerous, form-shifting bird with the ability to change the weather. Ren insists that the bird is simply a story, yet the soldier will not be deterred, forcing them both into a gruelling quest. Spellbinding and immersive, Robbie Arnott’s The Rain Heron is an astounding, mythical exploration of human resilience, female friendship, and humankind’s precarious relationship to nature. As Ren and the soldier hunt for the heron, a bond between them forms, and the painful details of Ren’s former life emerge—a life punctuated by loss, trauma, and a second, equally magical and dangerous creature. Slowly, Ren's and the soldier’s lives entwine, unravel, and ultimately erupt in a masterfully crafted ending in which both women are forced to confront their biggest fears—and regrets. Robbie Arnott, one of Australia’s most acclaimed young novelists, sews magic into reality with a steady, confident hand. Bubbling with rare imagination and ambition, The Rain Heron is an emotionally charged and dazzling novel, one that asks timely yet eternal questions about environment, friendship, nationality, and the myths that bind us.

The Rain Heron

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Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

J. Keith Vincent

Now in paperback, a suspenseful early novella from "the outstanding Japanese novelist of this century" (Edmund White).

Devils in Daylight

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Kate Zambreno

A remaindered copy but nice, clean and readable

With the fierce emotional and intellectual power of such classics as Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star, Kate Zambreno's novel Green Girl is a provocative, sharply etched portrait of a young woman navigating the spectrum between anomie and epiphany. First published in 2011 in a small press edition, Green Girl was named one of the best books of the year by critics including Dennis Cooper and Roxane Gay. In Bookforum, James Greer called it "ambitious in a way few works of fiction are." This summer it is being republished in an all-new Harper Perennial trade paperback, significantly revised by the author, and including an extensive P.S. section including never before published outtakes, an interview with the author, and a new essay by Zambreno. Zambreno's heroine, Ruth, is a young American in London, kin to Jean Seberg gamines and contemporary celebutantes, by day spritzing perfume at the department store she calls Horrids, by night trying desperately to navigate a world colored by the unwanted gaze of others and the uncertainty of her own self-regard. Ruth, the green girl, joins the canon of young people existing in that important, frightening, and exhilarating period of drift and anxiety between youth and adulthood, and her story is told through the eyes of one of the most surprising and unforgettable narrators in recent fiction—a voice at once distanced and maternal, indulgent yet blackly funny. And the result is a piercing yet humane meditation on alienation, consumerism, the city, self-awareness, and desire, by a novelist who has been compared with Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, and Elfriede Jelinek.

Green Girl

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Isabella Lucy Bird

Inspired by Penguin's innovative Great Ideas series, our new Great Journeys series presents the most incredible tours, voyages, treks, expeditions, and travels ever written- from Isabella Bird's exaltation in the dangers of grizzlies, rattlesnakes, and cowboys in the Rocky Mountains to Marco Polo's mystified reports of a giant bird that eats elephants during his voyage along the coasts of India. Each beautifully packaged volume offers a way to see the world anew, to rediscover great civilizations and legends, vast deserts and unspoiled mountain ranges, unusual flora and strange new creatures, and much more.

Adventures in the Rocky Mountains

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Rose MacAulay

Jan Morris

Serio-comic novel about English eccentrics who travel in Turkey.

The Towers of Trebizond

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Mavis Gallant

Michael Ondaatje

A little shelfwear on this one, inscribed with previous owner’s name inside, and the spine is cracked, but otherwise in readable shape!

A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL

Mavis Gallant is a contemporary legend, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker for close to fifty years who has, in the words of The New York Times, "radically reshaped the short story for decade after decade." Michael Ondaatje's new selection of Gallant's work gathers some of the most memorable of her stories set in Europe and Paris, where Gallant has long lived. Mysterious, funny, insightful, and heartbreaking, these are tales of expatriates and exiles, wise children and straying saints. Together they compose a secret history, at once intimate and panoramic, of modern times.

Paris Stories

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Kirstin Chen

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

"Chen keeps readers on the edge of their seats as she weaves an addictive tale about the high/low world of counterfeit luxury handbags . . . A glittering, provocative read." -- JANICE Y.K. LEE, New York Times bestselling author of The Expatriates

"Sly and thoroughly compelling . . . Chen's ingenious plot will keep you breathless to the last page." -- CLAIRE MESSUD, New York Times bestselling author of The Burning Girl

Recommended by Entertainment Weekly * Cosmopolitan * Harper's Bazaar * Vogue * Good Housekeeping * Buzzfeed * Oprah Daily * Parade * Popsugar * Goodreads * Katie Couric Media * The Millions * Bookpage * Electric Literature * and more!

For fans of Hustlers and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, the story of two Asian American women who band together to grow a counterfeit handbag scheme into a global enterprise--an incisive and glittering blend of fashion, crime, and friendship from the author of Bury What We Cannot Take and Soy Sauce for Beginners.

Money can't buy happiness... but it can buy a decent fake.

Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home--she's built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava's world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn't been used in years, and her toddler's tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.

Enter Winnie Fang, Ava's enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business--someone who'd never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences.

Swift, surprising, and sharply comic, Counterfeit is a stylish and feminist caper with a strong point of view and an axe to grind. Peering behind the curtain of the upscale designer storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced, Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women determined to demand more from life.

Counterfeit

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Jennifer Croll

Kickass Cocktails Inspired by Iconic Women

Celebrating women? Cheers to that! These cocktail recipes are inspired by some of the world's most amazing ladies. Sixty of the world's coolest and most influential women are the inspiration for this refreshing and fun collection of drink recipes that are sure to bring extra zest to your cocktail shaker. Free the Tipple pays tribute to a brilliant range of diverse women from the 20th century to today who have made waves in entertainment, the arts, politics, fashion, literature, sports, and science, including Frida Kahlo, Rihanna, Serena Williams, Virginia Woolf, Yoko Ono, Zaha Hadid, Marlene Dietrich, Zadie Smith, and more. Each double-page spread features a recipe crafted to reflect its namesake's personality, style, legacy, or what she liked to drink herself. This ranges from The Gloria Steinem, which uses a complex liquor with a radical twist, to The Beyoncé, made, of course, with lemonade. The cocktails are simple to make, kitchen-tested, and incorporate easy-to find ingredients. Snappy, informative biographies, illustrated with newly-commissioned portraits, offer revealing insights into the women's lives. This highly original guide to delicious beverages is a perfect gift for those in your life who encourage and inspire you.

Browse by categories

J. California Cooper

Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime

J. California Cooper

In Search of Satisfaction

J. California Cooper

A Piece of Mine

Gloria Naylor

Linden Hills

Diana Gardner

Woman Novelist and Other Stories

Sheilah Graham; Wendy W. Fairey

College of One

Ottessa Moshfegh

Homesick for Another World

Ge Fei; Canaan Morse

Peach Blossom Paradise

Annabel Lyon

Consent

Robbie Arnott

The Rain Heron

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki; J. Keith Vincent

Devils in Daylight

Kate Zambreno

Green Girl

Isabella Lucy Bird

Adventures in the Rocky Mountains

Rose MacAulay; Jan Morris

The Towers of Trebizond

Mavis Gallant; Michael Ondaatje

Paris Stories

Kirstin Chen

Counterfeit

Jennifer Croll

Free the Tipple

Tim Federle

Tequila Mockingbird

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