Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New Mexico

Mindful Meditation Mandala Coloring Book 

Alexander McCall Smith

Clean unmarked pages, excellent reading copy 

A Paul Stuart Novel (2)

In this delightful sequel to the best-selling comedic novel My Italian Bulldozer, Paul Stuart's travels take him to a French village, where the local restaurant's haute cuisine leaves a lot to be desired.

Renowned Scottish cookbook writer Paul Stuart is hard at work on his new book, The Philosophy of Food, but complicated domestic circumstances, and two clingy cats, are making that difficult.

So when Paul's eccentric cousin Chloe suggests that he join her at the house she's rented in the French countryside, he jumps at the chance. The two quickly befriend the locals, including their twin-sister landladies, who also own the infamous local restaurant known to be the second-worst eatery in all of France. During their stay, the restaurant's sole waitress gives birth mid-dinner service and the maître d' storms off after fighting with the head chef. Paul is soon drafted to improve the gastronomy of the village, while Chloe, ever on the hunt for her next romance, busies herself with distracting the handsome but incompetent chef. Could he be husband number six?

With all this local drama to deal with, Paul finds it next to impossible to focus on his writing, and that's before he learns that Chloe's past is far more complicated than he'd ever imagined. Paul will have to call upon al his experience--with food and with people--to bring order back to the village. And he may just learn something about family--and about himself--along the way.

The Second-Worst Restaurant in France

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Barbara Kingsolver

Very good condition, clean pages, bookstore sticker over barcode on back cover 

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

A Novel

New York Times Notable Book Washington Post Best Book Of The Year Amazon's Top 100: Editor's Choice Usa Today Best Book Of The Year Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. She hikes up a mountain road behind her house toward a secret tryst, but instead encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome. As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.

Flight Behavior

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Very good condition, clean pages, slight wear on spine

In this powerfully imagined, provocative novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is the poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as well as an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself.

The Lacuna

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Ex library has barcode and label, clean pages, LARGE PRINT 

A Paul Stuart Novel (1)

When writer Paul Stewart heads to the idyllic Italian town of Montalcino to finish his already overdue cookbook, he expects it to be the perfect escape from stressful city life. But when he arrives his hired car is nowhere to be found, and with no record of a reservation at the car-rental counter and no other cars are available, it appears that Paul will be stuck at the airport. An enterprising stranger offers him an unexpected alternative: a bulldozer. So begins a series of laugh-out-loud adventures as Paul trundles through the Tuscan countryside.

My Italian Bulldozer

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Kaye Gibbons

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

In alternating chapters, two ill-matched people--Jack Ernest Stokes and his wife, Ruby Pitt Woodrow Stokes--describe their lives together and apart

A Virtuous Woman

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Annie Proulx

Small tear in dust jacket, very good condition, LARGE PRINT 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

4 Cassettes: Running Time - Approximately 6.5 Hours.

That Old Ace in the Hole

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Peter Mayle

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Magazine photographer Andre Kelly stumbles onto an art scam.

Chasing Cezanne

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Anchee Min

The setting is China's Forbidden City in the last days of its imperial glory, a vast complex of palaces and gardens run by thousands of eunuchs and encircled by a wall in the center of Peking. In this highly ordered place -- tradition-bound, ruled by strict etiquette, rife with political and erotic tension -- the Emperor, "the Son of Heaven," performs two duties: he must rule the court and conceive an heir. To achieve the latter, tradition provides a stupendous hierarchy of hundreds of wives and concubines. It is as a minor concubine that the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid as a girl, enters the Forbidden City at the age of seventeen.

It is not a good time to enter the city. The Ch'ing Dynasty in 1852 has lost its vitality, and the court has become an insular, xenophobic place. A few short decades earlier, China lost the Opium Wars, and it has done little since to strengthen its defenses or improve diplomatic ties. Instead, the inner circle has turned further inward, naively confident that its troubles are past and the glory of China will keep the "barbarians" -- the outsiders -- at bay.

Within the walls of the Forbidden City the consequences of a misstep are deadly. As one of hundreds of women vying for the attention of the Emperor, Orchid soon discovers that she must take matters into her own hands. After training herself in the art of pleasing a man, she bribes her way into the royal bedchamber and seduces the monarch. A grand love affair ensues; the Emperor is a troubled man, but their love is passionate and genuine. Orchid has the great good fortune to bear him a son. Elevated to the rank of Empress, she still must struggle to maintain her position and the right to raise her own child. With the death of the Emperor comes a palace coup that ultimately thrusts Orchid into power, although only as regent until her son's maturity. Now she must rule China as its walls tumble around her, and she alone seems capable of holding the country together.

This is an epic story firmly in the mold of Anchee Min's Becoming Madame Mao. Like that best-selling historical novel, the heroine of Empress Orchid comes down to us with a diabolical reputation -- a woman who seized power through sexual seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. But reality tells a different story. Based on copious research, this is a vivid portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman who survived in a male world, a woman whose main struggle was not to hold on topower but to her own humanity. Richly detailed and completely gripping, Empress Orchid is a novel of high drama and lyricism and the first volume of a trilogy about the life of one of the most important women in history.

Empress Orchid

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Emma Callery

Dust jacket has small tear and marks, inside is perfect 

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

A Practical Guide to Cultivating, Drying and Cooking with More Than 50 Herbs

Features advice on all aspects of growing herbs--from buying and planting them to caring for and harvesting them--and includes a section on designing an herb garden and information on drying herbs and creating potpourri.

The Complete Book of Herbs

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Hubert Comte

Molly Stevens

David Marinelli

Small mark from sticker on flyleaf, light wear on dust jacket. *Very good, coffee table book.

Huge Hardcover (6 to 8 lbs)

Making Things Around the World

Looks at an international assortment of hand tools used for working with a variety of materials, including metal, leather, glass, wood, stone, and soil

Tools

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Fred Leebron

Andrew Levy

Paula Geyh

Some wear to back cover, clean pages and copy, good 

A Norton Anthology

It includes works bysixty-eight authors: short fiction, novels, cartoons, graphics,hypertexts, creative nonfiction, and theoretical writings. This is thefirst anthology to do full justice to the vast range of Americaninnovation in fiction writing since 1945.

Postmodern American Fiction

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Marilynne Robinson

Abandoning her homeless existence to become a minister's wife, Lila reflects on her hardscrabble life on the run with a canny young drifter and her efforts to reconcile her painful past with her husband's gentle Christian worldview.

Lila (Oprah's Book Club)

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David W. Orr

Confronting Climate Collapse

David W. Orr offers a sobering look at the causes and consequences of the coming climate destabilization, which he argues is the result of the largest political failure in history. While better technology and smarter economics are important to limit the eventual scope and scale of the problem, climate change will require fundamental changes in governance and leadership at all levels.

Down to the Wire

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Harold Bloom

Light wear to cover, very good condition 

The Books and School of the Ages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

"Heroically brave, formidably learned... The Western Canon is a passionate demonstration of why some writers have triumphantly escaped the oblivion in which time buries almost all human effort. It inspires hope... that what humanity has long cherished, posterity will also." -The New York Times Book Review

Literary critic Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list -- it is a vision. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the great works of the western literary tradition and essential writers of the ages: the "Western Canon." Harold Bloom's book, much-discussed and praised in publications as diverse as The Economist and Entertainment Weekly, offers a dazzling display of erudition mixed with passion. For years to come it will serve as an inspiration to return to the joys of reading our literary tradition offers us.

The Western Canon

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Denise Chavez

Divorced, thirtysomething Teresina, "Tere," spends her time working in a small dusty town near El Paso, Texas, but her life begins a series of turns when she meets ne'er-do-well Lucio, who ties her heart in knots with a string of empty promises, and joins the Pedro Infante Fan Club #256.

Loving Pedro Infante

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Graham Salisbury

Tomi was born in Hawaii. His grandfather and parents were born in Japan, and came to America to escape poverty.

World War II seems far away from Tomi and his friends, who are too busy playing ball on their eighth-grade team, the Rats.

But then Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese, and the United States declares war on Japan. Japanese men are rounded up, and Tomi’s father and grandfather are arrested. It’s a terrifying time to be Japanese in America. But one thing doesn’t change: the loyalty of Tomi’s buddies, the Rats.

Under the Blood-Red Sun

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Frances Mayes

20th-Anniversary Edition

Applies a poet's sensibility, a traveler's eye, and a cook's palate to the pleasures of the Tuscan countryside, where the author began restoring an abandoned villa

Under the Tuscan Sun

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Kelly Barnhill

Winner of the 2017 Newbery Award The New York Times Bestseller An Entertainment Weekly Best Middle Grade Book of 2016 A New York Public Library Best Book of 2016 A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2016 An Amazon Top 20 Best Book of 2016 A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016 A School Library Journal Best Book of 2016 Named to KirkusReviews’ Best Books of 2016 2017 Booklist Youth Editors’ Choice Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the Forest, Xan, is kind. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon. Xan rescues the children and delivers them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey. One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. As Luna’s thirteenth birthday approaches, her magic begins to emerge—with dangerous consequences. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Deadly birds with uncertain intentions flock nearby. A volcano, quiet for centuries, rumbles just beneath the earth’s surface. And the woman with the Tiger’s heart is on the prowl . . .

The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Winner of the 2017 Newbery Medal)

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Young, bright Taylor Greer leaves her poverty-stricken life in Kentucky and heads west, picking up an abandoned Native American baby girl whom she names Turtle and finds a new home in Tucson with Mattie, an old woman who takes in Central American refugees

The Bean Trees

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Louise Erdrich

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF 2020 AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2020 NPR BEST BOOK OF 2020 CBS SUNDAY MORNING BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST FICTION OF 2020 CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY'S BEST OF THE BEST GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF 2020 Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman. Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new "emancipation" bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn't about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a "termination" that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans "for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run"? Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice's shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn't been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life. Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice's best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice. In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.

The Night Watchman

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Clean unmarked pages, shelf wear on dust jacket 

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the self-centered, teenaged Rachel; shrewd adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility. Dancing between the dark comedy of human failings and the breathtaking possibilities of human hope, The Poisonwood Bible possesses all that has distinguished Barbara Kingsolver's previous work, and extends this beloved writer's vision to an entirely new level. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, this ambitious novel establishes Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers.

The Poisonwood Bible

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Edward Burman

Dust jacket has two stickers on it, clean pages, like new inside 

Exploring the Most Intriguing Puzzle in Chinese History

A history of the famous Terracotta Army in Xi’an, China, exploring what we now know about it, what remains hidden, and the fascinating theories that surround its creation. Exciting investigations in northwest China are about to reveal more of the mysteries of the huge mausoleum of the Qin Emperor, a portion of which was accidently discovered in 1974 by farmers who were digging a well. The second phase of an international research project began in 2011 and is ongoing. More recently still, promising new excavations began in Pit 2, with exciting fresh discoveries already announced. The Terracotta Warriors seeks to examine one of China’s most famous archaeological discoveries in light of these new findings. The book begins with the discovery of the terracotta warriors and then tells the history of the Qin Dynasty and as much as is known about the construction of the 3rd century BCE mausoleum, based on the work of the historian Sima Qian (145–90 BCE). He wrote that the First Emperor was buried with palaces, towers, officials, valuable artifacts, and wondrous objects. According to this account, one hundred flowing rivers were simulated using mercury; the ceiling was decorated with heavenly bodies, high above the features of the land. The new findings and the description of the mausoleum based on the quoted historical accounts suggest that the next discoveries may surpass the size and conception of the original discovery of the terracotta warriors. In the second part, Edward Burman asks: Who built it and how? He also questions the role of the terracotta warriors, who may be servants and not warriors, and what their function may have been in the afterlife. Finally, he anticipates the ongoing discoveries and describes teh new methods of excavation and preservation.

The Terracotta Warriors

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Ann Patchett

Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist with a Minnesota pharmaceutical company, is sent to the Amazon to find her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have disappeared while working on a new drug. No one knows where Dr. Swenson is, and the last person sent to find her died before completing his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey in hopes of finding answers. Now in her seventies, the uncompromising Dr. Swenson dominates her research team and the natives with the force of an imperial ruler. But while she is as threatening as anything the jungle has to offer, the greatest sacrifices are those Dr. Swenson asks of herself, and will ultimately ask of Marina, who finds she is still unable to live up to her teacher’s expectations. Replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, and cannibals, State of Wonder is a tale that leads you into the very heart of darkness, and then shows what lies on the other side.

Browse by categories

Crayola

Mindful Meditation Mandala Coloring Book

Alexander McCall Smith

The Second-Worst Restaurant in France

Barbara Kingsolver

Flight Behavior

Barbara Kingsolver

The Lacuna

Alexander McCall Smith

My Italian Bulldozer

Kaye Gibbons

A Virtuous Woman

Annie Proulx

That Old Ace in the Hole

Peter Mayle

Chasing Cezanne

Anchee Min

Empress Orchid

Emma Callery

The Complete Book of Herbs

Hubert Comte; Molly Stevens; David Marinelli

Tools

Fred Leebron; Andrew Levy; Paula Geyh

Postmodern American Fiction

Marilynne Robinson

Lila (Oprah's Book Club)

David W. Orr

Down to the Wire

Harold Bloom

The Western Canon

Denise Chavez

Loving Pedro Infante

Graham Salisbury

Under the Blood-Red Sun

Frances Mayes

Under the Tuscan Sun

Kelly Barnhill

The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Winner of the 2017 Newbery Medal)

Barbara Kingsolver

The Bean Trees

Louise Erdrich

The Night Watchman

Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible

Edward Burman

The Terracotta Warriors

Ann Patchett

State of Wonder

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