Priyanka Mattoo

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

A Memoir

From a wry, insightful, and very funny new voice, here is one woman’s search for home, from Kashmir to England to Saudi Arabia to Michigan to Rome and, finally, to Los Angeles—standalone essays that together form a sweeping portrait of a peripatetic life. "I would follow Priyanka Mattoo to the ends of the earth, because she would know what to eat there, and how to make a friend, and then sit me down and tell me a story." —Emma Straub Priyanka Mattoo was born into a wooden house in the Himalayas, as were most of her ancestors. In 1989, however, mounting violence in the region forced Mattoo’s community to flee. The home into which her family poured their dreams was reduced to a pile of rubble. Mattoo never moved back to her beloved Kashmir—because it no longer existed. She and her family just kept packing and unpacking and moving on. In forty years, Mattoo accumulated thirty-two different addresses, and she chronicles her nomadic existence with wit, wisdom, and an inimitable eye for light within the darkest moments. She takes us from her grandparents’ sprawling home in Srinagar, where her boisterous aunties raced through the halls, to Saudi Arabia, where friendships were gained and lost behind the sandstone walls of a foreigners’ compound. We witness her courtship with a nice Jewish boy, now her husband, and her efforts to rep­licate her mother’s rogan josh recipe via Zoom. And we are with her as she settles into her unlikely new home­land, Los Angeles, where she sets off on what is perhaps her most meaningful journey: that of becoming a writer. Through these astonishingly poignant and often laugh-out loud essays, Mattoo has given us an open­hearted, frank, revealing glimpse into a journey of almost constant motion, as well as a journey of self-discovery.

Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones

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Tarjei Vesaas

Elizabeth Rokkan

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A tale of intense friendship and almost overwhelming grief amongst the frozen fjords of rural Norway

In winter, the black ice cracks like a gunshot across the lake, growing thicker and darker every night. Nearby, a frozen waterfall transforms into a fantastic, baroque structure with dripping buttresses, flying spurs of ice and translucent, sparkling towers. The schoolchildren call it the ice palace.

When eleven-year-old Unn arrives in the village, she avoids the other children- she lives alone with her aunt and nurses a secret grief. But her boisterous classmate Siss refuses to be ignored and the two girls strike up an intense friendship. That is, until Unn decides to explore the Ice Palace on her own, squeezing deep into its beautiful but chilling inner chambers.

When Unn doesn't return home, Siss must struggle to cope with the loss of her friend, without succumbing to an ice palace of her own making.

The Ice Palace

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Pedro Mairal

Nick Caistor

At age nine, Juan Salvatierra became mute following a horse riding accident. At twenty, he began secretly painting a series of long rolls of canvas, minutely detailing six decades of life in his village on Argentina's river frontier with Uruguay. After his death, his sons return to the village from Buenos Aires to deal with their inheritance: a shed packed with canvases stretching over two miles in length, depicting personal and communal history. Museum curators come calling to acquire this strange, gargantuan artwork but an essential one of its rolls is missing...

The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra

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Susanna Kaysen

The author offers a compelling memoir of her two years as a teenager in a psychiatric hospital, sharing vivid portraits of her fellow patients, their keepers, and her experiences during treatment

Girl, Interrupted

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Dawn Kurtagich

A Novel

Beware what waits in the shadows... With one unexpected email from her estranged best friend, Lucy, Mina Murray's carefully curated life is turned upside down. Leaving behind her psychiatric practice in London, along with her routine and the calm it brings, she returns to the windswept shores of Wales. Faced with everything she's left behind, she soon discovers that Lucy's symptoms mirror those of her mysterious patient with amnesia hundreds of miles away. With nothing but an untreatable sickness connecting the two women, and with Lucy's life on the line, Mina finds herself asking questions and being drawn ever-deeper into a web of secrets, missing girls, and the powerful, nameless force at its center--one that has been haunting her for years. As terrible, ancient truths begin to reveal themselves, Mina prepares to confront her own darkest secrets, and with them, an evil beyond comprehension. Together with a group of smart, savvy women, Mina seizes one last, desperate chance to stop the cycle that began so long ago. But there are dangers to inviting the attentions of what might not be a man, but a monster...

The Madness

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Kerstin Gier

Romy Fursland

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Witty and charming, New York Times bestselling author Kerstin Gier's contemporary young adult novel A Castle in the Clouds follows a girl as she navigates secrets, romance, and danger in an aging grand hotel. Way up in the Swiss mountains, there's an old grand hotel steeped in tradition and faded splendor. Once a year, when the famous New Year's Eve Ball takes place and guests from all over the world arrive, excitement returns to the vast hallways. Sophie, who works at the hotel as an intern, is busy making sure that everything goes according to plan. But unexpected problems keep arising, and some of the guests are not who they pretend to be. Very soon, Sophie finds herself right in the middle of a perilous adventure—and at risk of losing not only her job, but also her heart.

A Castle in the Clouds

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Dan Walsh

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

2nd Edition -- Finalist RT Book Reviews' Inspirational Novel of the Year Rick Denton lives his life on his terms. He works hard, plays hard and answers to no one. So when his mother calls on Thanks-giving weekend begging him to come home after his stepfather has a stroke, Rick is reluctant. He's never liked Art, despite the fact his own father abandoned them when Rick was twelve. Rick's attitude sours even more when a couple of days helping at the family bookstore turns into weeks of cashing out old ladies and running off the homeless man who keeps hanging about, Slowly but surely, the little bookstore and its quirky patrons-as well as the lovely young woman who works at his side each day-work their magic on him, revealing to Rick the truth about his family, his own life, and the true meaning of Christmas.

Remembering Christmas

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Hans von Trotha

Elisabeth Lauffer

"Enthralling ... A great read."--Philippe de Montebello, former director, Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 16, 1943, inside the Vatican as darkness descends upon Rome. Having been alerted to the Nazi plan to round up the city's Jewish population the next day, Monsignor F. dispatches an envoy to a nearby palazzo to bring Ludwig Pollak and his family to safety within the papal premises. But Pollak shows himself in no hurry to leave his home and accept the eleventh-hour offer of refuge. Pollak's visitor is obliged to take a seat and listen as he recounts his life story: how he studied archaeology in Prague, his passion for Italy and Goethe, how he became a renowned antiquities dealer and advisor to great collectors like J. P. Morgan and the Austro-Hungarian emperor after his own Jewishness barred him from an academic career, and finally his spectacular discovery of the missing arm from the majestic ancient sculpture of Laocoön and his sons. Torn between hearing Pollak's spellbinding tale and the urgent mission to save the archaeologist from certain annihilation, the Vatican's anxious messenger presses him to make haste and depart. This stunning novel illuminates the chasm between civilization and barbarism by spotlighting a now little-known figure devoted to knowledge and the power of artistic creation.

Pollak's Arm

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Laurie Gilmore

From the author of the viral TikTok sensation, The Pumpkin Spice Cafe, comes the only spicy grumpy x sunshine Christmas romcom you need this year! Kira North hates Christmas. Which is unfortunate since she just bought a Christmas tree farm in a town that's too cute for its own good. Bennett Ellis is on vacation in Dream Harbor taking a break from his life in California. And most importantly, taking a break from his latest run of disastrous dates. After a run in with Kira in her fields, Ben has no intention of offering to help the grumpy owner set up her tree farm, despite the fact she's clearly got no idea what she's doing. Kira knows she should stop being so stubborn, but her farm is not all cute and cozy like people always show on social media, it's borderline dangerous with no heating, and she'd rather no one saw it. But somehow fate finds Ben at Kira's farm once more, and as Kira watches him swing an ax at the first tree, she finds herself appreciating his strength and questionning why she refused help in the first place.. The Christmas Tree Farm is a spicy romantic mystery for fans of Gilmore Girls with a HEA guaranteed! Tropes: Grumpy x Sunshine Small Town Forced Proximity One Bed

The Christmas Tree Farm

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Colleen Burner

Sister Golden Calf

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Max Porter

Originally published: London: Faber & Faber Ltd, 2015.

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

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Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

FIRST LOVE and ANYA by Ivan Turgenev in English and russian.

Asya

This is a dual-language book with the Russian text on the left side, and the English text on the right side of each spread. The texts are precisely synchronized. A great book for learning both languages while reading a Russian classic masterpiece.

First Love

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Aimee Nezhukumatathil

In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

"Hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year." --NPR From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction--a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us. As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted--no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape--she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance. "What the peacock can do," she tells us, "is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life." The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world's gifts. Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.

World of Wonders

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Shze-Hui Tjoa

A transcendent, profoundly imaginative memoir that explores the complexities of sisterhood, the cost of expectation, and the power of storytelling to shape--and ultimately repair--a life.

The Story Game

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Kate Atkinson

Case Histories

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Louise Erdrich

"Dazzling. . . . A hard-won love letter to readers and to booksellers, as well as a compelling story about how we cope with pain and fear, injustice and illness. One good way is to press a beloved book into another's hands. Read The Sentence and then do just that."--USA Today, Four Stars

In this New York Times bestselling novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors.

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written. 

The Sentence

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Katie Williams

NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND GLAMOUR! “One of those rare emotionally intelligent books that are also fun reads… Going to keep readers turning pages late into the night.” –The New York Times “Ingenious…fresh and unpredictable.” –The Washington Post “Gleefully overturn[s] the age-old ‘woman-in-trouble’ plot…eerie and inventive.” –NPR's Fresh Air What if the murder you had to solve was your own? Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She’s also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her. Now it’s not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she’s always enjoyed—she must also figure out the circumstances of her death. Darkly comic, tautly paced, and full of surprises, My Murder is a devour-in-one-sitting, clever twist on the classic thriller.

My Murder

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Hanna Pylvainen

An epic love story in the vein of Cold Mountain and The Great Circle, about a young reindeer herder and a minister's daughter in the nineteenth century Arctic Circle

In 1851, at a remote village in the Scandinavian tundra, a Lutheran minister known as Mad Lasse tries in vain to convert the native Sámi reindeer herders to his faith. But when one of the most respected herders has a dramatic awakening and dedicates his life to the church, his impetuous son, Ivvár, is left to guard their diminishing herd alone. By chance, he meets Mad Lasse's daughter Willa, and their blossoming infatuation grows into something that ultimately crosses borders--of cultures, of beliefs, and of political divides--as Willa follows the herders on their arduous annual migration north to the sea.

Gorgeously written and sweeping in scope, Hanna Pylväinen's The End of Drum-Time immerses readers in a world lit by the northern lights, steeped in age-old rituals, and guided by passions that transcend place and time.

The End of Drum-Time

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Peter Heller

The best-selling author of The River returns with a vibrant, lyrical novel about an enforcement ranger in Yellowstone National Park who likes wolves better than most people. When a clandestine range war threatens his closest friend, he must shake off his own losses and act swiftly to discover the truth and stay alive. Officer Ren Hopper is an enforcement ranger with the National Park Service, tasked with duties both mundane and thrilling: Breaking up fights at campgrounds, saving clueless tourists from moose attacks, and attempting to broker an uneasy peace between the wealthy vacationers who tromp through the park with cameras, and the residents of hardscrabble Cooke City who want to carve out a meaningful living. When Ren, hiking through the backcountry on his day off, encounters a tall man with a dog and a gun chasing a small black bear up a hill, his hackles are raised. But what begins as an investigation into the background of a local poacher soon opens into something far murkier: A shattered windshield, a series of red ribbons tied to traps, the discovery of a frightening conspiracy, and a story of heroism gone awry. Populated by a cast of extraordinary characters—famous scientists, tattooed bartenders, wildlife guides in slick Airstreams—and bursting with unexpected humor and grace, Peter Heller masterfully unveils a portrait of the American west where our very human impulses—for greed, love, family, and community—play out amidst the stunning beauty of the natural world.

The Last Ranger

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Eric Nguyen

A captivating novel about an immigrant Vietnamese family who settles in New Orleans and struggles to remain connected to one another as their lives are inextricably reshaped. This stunning debut is "vast in scale and ambition, while luscious and inviting ... in its intimacy" (The New York Times Book Review).

When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father.

But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she attempts to come to terms with this loss, her sons, Tuan and Binh, grow up in their absent father's shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memories and imaginations. As they push forward, the three adapt to life in America in different ways: Huong gets involved with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new in town; Tuan tries to connect with his heritage by joining a local Vietnamese gang; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted homeland and his burgeoning sexuality. Their search for identity--as individuals and as a family--threatens to tear them apart, un­til disaster strikes the city they now call home and they are suddenly forced to find a new way to come together and honor the ties that bind them.

Things We Lost to the Water

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stacy Willingham

A New York Times Bestseller

"A smart, edge-of-your-seat story with plot twists you'll never see coming. Stacy Willingham's debut will keep you turning pages long past your bedtime." --Karin Slaughter

When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, her own father had confessed to the crimes and was put away for life, leaving Chloe and the rest of her family to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.

Now twenty years later, Chloe is a psychologist in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. While she finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she's worked so hard to achieve, she sometimes feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. So when a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, seeing parallels from her past that aren't actually there, or for the second time in her life, is Chloe about to unmask a killer?

From debut author Stacy Willingham comes a masterfully done, lyrical thriller, certain to be the launch of an amazing career. A Flicker in the Dark is eerily compelling to the very last page.

A Flicker in the Dark

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Andrea Penrose

In Regency London, an unconventional scientist and a fearless female artist form an unlikely alliance to expose unspeakable evil . . .

The Earl of Wrexford possesses a brilliant scientific mind, but boredom and pride lead him to reckless behavior. So when pompous, pious Reverend Josiah Holworthy publicly condemns him for debauchery, Wrexford unsheathes his rapier-sharp wit and strikes back. As their war of words escalates, London's most popular satirical cartoonist, A.J. Quill, skewers them both. But then the clergyman is found slain in a church-his face burned by chemicals, his throat slashed ear to ear-and Wrexford finds himself the chief suspect.

An artist in her own right, Charlotte Sloane has secretly slipped into the persona of her late husband, using his nom de plume A.J. Quill. When Wrexford discovers her true identity, she fears it will be her undoing. But he has a proposal-use her sources to unveil the clergyman's clandestine involvement in questionable scientific practices, and unmask the real murderer. Soon Lord Wrexford and the mysterious Mrs. Sloane plunge into a dangerous shadow world hidden among London's intellectual enclaves to trap a cunning adversary-before they fall victim to the next experiment in villainy . . .

"Thoroughly enjoyable . . . with sharp, engaging characters, rich period detail, and a compellingly twisty plot, Andrea Penrose delivers a winner."
-Deanna Raybourn, New York Times bestselling author

"Fans of C.S. Harris take note! A riveting ride through Regency London, from the slums of St. Giles, to the mansions of Mayfair."-Lauren Willig, New York Times bestselling author

"Historical chemistry meets alchemy . . . A delight of a book."
-Joanna Bourne, award-winning author

Murder on Black Swan Lane

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Tatsuya Endo

An action-packed comedy about a fake family that includes a spy, an assassin and a telepath! Master spy Twilight is the best at what he does when it comes to going undercover on dangerous missions in the name of a better world. But when he receives the ultimate impossible assignment—get married and have a kid—he may finally be in over his head! Not one to depend on others, Twilight has his work cut out for him procuring both a wife and a child for his mission to infiltrate an elite private school. What he doesn’t know is that the wife he’s chosen is an assassin and the child he’s adopted is a telepath!

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