Joseph Epstein

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Pennsylvania

The American Version

A collection of essays making light of elitist behaviors shares the author's arch observations on such topics as food and wine, fashion, high-achieving children, educational institutions, politics, and name dropping. Reprint.

Snobbery

6dc2d486-8d31-4122-9a70-681e1234ea24-1

Richard Ayoade

In this book Richard Ayoade -- actor, writer, director, and amateur dentist -- reflects on his cinematic legacy as only he can: in conversation with himself. Over ten brilliantly insightful and often erotic interviews, Ayoade examines Ayoade fully and without mercy, leading a breathless investigation into this once-in-a-generation visionary. They have called their book Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey. Take the journey, and your life will never be the same again.

Ayoade on Ayoade

2d8b0ae0-eed0-4818-a670-84628cab0780-1

Octavia E. Butler

In an "epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant" story of love and hate, two immortals chase each other across continents and centuries, binding their fates together -- and changing the destiny of the human race (Viola Davis). Doro knows no higher authority than himself. An ancient spirit with boundless powers, he possesses humans, killing without remorse as he jumps from body to body to sustain his own life. With a lonely eternity ahead of him, Doro breeds supernaturally gifted humans into empires that obey his every desire. He fears no one -- until he meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu is an entity like Doro and yet different. She can heal with a bite and transform her own body, mending injuries and reversing aging. She uses her powers to cure her neighbors and birth entire tribes, surrounding herself with kindred who both fear and respect her. No one poses a true threat to Anyanwu -- until she meets Doro. The moment Doro meets Anyanwu, he covets her; and from the villages of 17th-century Nigeria to 19th-century United States, their courtship becomes a power struggle that echoes through generations, irrevocably changing what it means to be human.

Wild Seed

2bc92d8d-37f0-4c47-8365-1fc8a26878df-1

Sara Gran

From the author of Come Closer and the Claire DeWitt series comes a highly acclaimed--and unusual--gritty thriller about a missing girl... and the addict tasked with saving her.

Josephine, a former addict, is offered a thousand dollars to find a suburban couple's missing daughter. But the search will take her into the dark underbelly of New York she thought she'd escaped--and a web of deceit that threatens to destroy her.

Dope

0f395a0a-4bde-4167-a5ca-640020f326c7-1

Zülfü Livaneli

Brendan Freely

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

A Novel

Named a Favorite Book of the Year by readers of the Boston Globe and a Best Book of the Year by PopMatters In this heartbreaking Turkish novel based on the real-life sinking of a refugee ship during World War II, an elderly professor leaves America to revisit the city where he last glimpsed his beloved wife. Istanbul, 2001. Maya Duran is a single mother struggling to balance a demanding job at Istanbul University with the challenges of raising a teenage son. Her worries increase when she is tasked with looking after the enigmatic Maximilian Wagner, an elderly German-born Harvard professor visiting the city at the university’s invitation. Although he is distant at first, Maya gradually learns of the tragic circumstances that brought him to Istanbul sixty years before, and the dark realities that continue to haunt him. Inspired by the 1942 Struma disaster, in which nearly 800 Jewish refugees perished after the ship carrying them to Palestine was torpedoed off the coast of Turkey, Serenade for Nadia is both a poignant love story and a gripping testament to the power of human connection in crisis.

Serenade for Nadia

2abd9698-0aa3-45f6-81ca-9cd5b8987640-1

Pitchaya Sudbanthad

"Recreates the experience of living in Thailand's aqueous climate so viscerally that you can feel the water rising around your ankles." --Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Important, ambitious, and accomplished." --Mohsin Hamid, New York Times bestselling author of Exit West

A missionary doctor pines for his native New England even as he succumbs to the vibrant chaos of nineteenth-century Siam. A post-World War II society woman marries, mothers, and holds court, little suspecting her solitary fate. A jazz pianist in the age of rock, haunted by his own ghosts, is summoned to appease the house's resident spirits. In the present, a young woman tries to outpace the long shadow of her political past. And in a New Krungthep yet to come, savvy teenagers row tourists past landmarks of the drowned old city they themselves do not remember. Time collapses as these lives collide and converge, linked by the forces voraciously making and remaking the amphibious, ever-morphing capital itself. Bangkok Wakes to Rain is an elegy for what time erases and a love song to all that persists, yearning, into the unknowable future.

Bangkok Wakes to Rain

70698387-cf16-4456-a9c6-972103c91df1-1

Raymond Khoury

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Empire of Lies is a sweeping thriller in the tradition of The Man in the High Castle, Fatherland, and Underground Airlines from New York Times bestselling author Raymond Khoury.

"The best what-if thriller for a long, long time--makes you think, makes you sweat, and makes you choose, between what is and what might have been."--Lee Child

Istanbul, 1683: Mehmed IV, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, is preparing to lay siege to Vienna, capital of the Holy Roman Empire, when a mysterious visitor arrives in his bedroom--naked, covered in strange tattoos--to deliver a dangerous, world-changing message.

Paris, 2017: Ottoman flags have been flying over the great city for three hundred years, ever since its fall--along with all of Europe--to the empire's all-conquering army. Notre Dame has been renamed the Fatih Mosque. Public spaces are segregated by gender. And Kamal Arslan Agha, a feted officer in the sultan's secret police, is starting to question his orders.

Rumors of an impending war with the Christian Republic of America, attacks by violent extremists, and economic collapse have heightened surveillance and arrests across the empire. Tasked with surveying potential threats, Kamal has a heavy caseload--and conscience.

When a mysterious stranger--naked, covered in strange tattoos--appears on the banks of the Seine, Kamal is called in to investigate. But what he discovers is a secret buried in the empire's past, a secret the Sultan will do anything to silence.

With the mysterious Z Protectorate one step behind, Kamal, together with Nisreen--a fierce human rights lawyer--is caught up in a race across the empire and time itself--a race that could change their world, or destroy it.

Empire of Lies is being published as "The Ottoman Secret" in the UK.

Empire of Lies

b1236a69-ce65-4817-8963-998d81cad70c-1

Michel Foucault

And the Discourse on Language

Madness, sexuality, power, knowledge--are these facts of life or simply parts of speech? In a series of works of astonishing brilliance, historian Michel Foucault excavated the hidden assumptions that govern the way we live and the way we think.
 
The Archaeology of Knowledge begins at the level of "things aid" and moves quickly to illuminate the connections between knowledge, language, and action in a style at once profound and personal. A summing up of Foucault's own methodological assumptions, this book is also a first step toward a genealogy of the way we live now.
 
Challenging, at times infuriating, it is an absolutely indispensable guide to one of the most innovative thinkers of our time.

The Archaeology of Knowledge

e149661c-ef79-4354-82e9-846bbe8da882-1

James Gaylord

Michelle Hagen

Everything parents need to give their babies the best start Each year, more than 4 million babies are born in the United States-and the first year of a baby's life is a joyous, challenging, and sometimes overwhelming time. Your Baby's First Year For Dummies serves as a complete guide for baby's first twelve months-from what to do when arriving home from the hospital to handling feeding, bathing, and sleeping routines to providing the right stimuli for optimal progress. Packed with tips on every aspect of baby's physical, emotional, and social development, this friendly guide gives parents advice on such important topics as breastfeeding vs. bottle-feeding, teething, baby toy safety, food preparation, food allergies, traveling, and much more.

Your Baby's First Year for Dummies

dd2baab6-2273-454b-8b6e-92003f7e2541

Nina Blackwood

Mark Goodman

Alan Hunter

Martha Quinn

Gavin Edwards

The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave

In this “highly entertaining snapshot of a wild-frontier moment in pop culture” (Rolling Stone), discover the wild and explosive true story of the early years of MTV directly from the original VJs. Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, and Martha Quinn (along with the late J. J. Jackson) had front-row seats to a cultural revolution—and the hijinks of pop music icons like Adam Ant, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, and Duran Duran—as the first VJs on the fledgling network MTV. From partying with David Lee Roth to flying on Bob Dylan’s private jet, they were on a breakneck journey through a music revolution. Boing beyond the compelling behind the scenes tales of this unforgettable era, VJ is also a coming-of-age story about the 1980s, its excesses, controversies, and everything in between. “At last—the real inside story of the MTV explosion that rocked the world, in all its giddy excess, from the video pioneers who saw all the hair, drugs and guitars up close. VJ is the wild, hilarious, addictive tale of how one crazy moment changed pop culture forever” (Rob Sheffield, New York Times bestselling author).

9fcce942-f350-41cb-9662-29d1120c4f64-1

Bram Stoker

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Count Dracula has inspired countless movies, books, and plays. But few, if any, have been fully faithful to Bram Stoker's original, best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. Dracula chronicles the vampire's journey from Transylvania to the nighttime streets of London. There, he searches for the blood of strong men and beautiful women while his enemies plot to rid the world of his frightful power. Today's critics see Dracula as a virtual textbook on Victorian repression of the erotic and fear of female sexuality. In it, Stoker created a new word for terror, a new myth to feed our nightmares, and a character who will outlive us all. This book includes three novels: Dracula, The Jewel of Seven Stars and The Lair of the White Worm. It also includes a short fiction collection called Dracula's Guest and Other Stories: Dracula's Guest; The Judge's House; The Squaw; The Secret of Growing Gold; The Gipsy Prophecy; The Coming of Abel Behenna; The Burial of the Rats; A Dream of Red Hands; Crooken Sands; The Crystal Cup; The Chain of Destiny and The Dualitists.

Dracula and Other Horror Classics (Barnes and Noble Collectible Classics: Omnibus Edition)

699e3d1e-bbb7-46c1-9de7-991dbc3e4d51-1

Bill Bryson

"Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain-which is to say, all of it." After nearly two decades spent on British soil, Bill Bryson-bestsellingauthor of The Mother Tongue and Made in America-decided to returnto the United States. ("I had recently read," Bryson writes, "that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another,so it was clear that my people needed me.") But before departing, he set out ona grand farewell tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. Veering from the ludicrous to the endearing and back again, Notes from a Small Island is a delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation that has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie's Farm, and places with names like Farleigh Wallop and Titsey. The result is an uproarious social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain, from the satiric pen of an unapologetic Anglophile. "Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain-which is to say, all of it." After nearly two decades spent on British soil, Bill Bryson-bestselling author of ,i>The Mother Tongue and Made in America-decided to return to the United States. ("I had recently read," Bryson writes, "that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another, so it was clear that my people needed me.") But before departing, he set out on a grand farewell tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. Veering from the ludicrous to the endearing and back again, Notes from a Small Island is a delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation that has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie's Farm, and places with names like Farleigh Wallop and Titsey. The result is an uproarious social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain, from the satiric pen of an unapologetic Anglophile.

Notes from a Small Island

9095f2a1-2cda-4e97-8575-75f50ed9c3b2-1

Lisa Scottoline

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

From #1 bestselling author Lisa Scottoline comes a pulse-pounding new novel. Your family has been attacked, never again to be the same. Now you have to choose between law…and justice. Jason Bennett is a suburban dad who owns a court-reporting business, but one night, his life takes a horrific turn. He is driving his family home after his daughter’s lacrosse game when a pickup truck begins tailgating them, on a dark stretch of road. Suddenly two men jump from the pickup and pull guns on Jason, demanding the car. A horrific flash of violence changes his life forever. Later that awful night, Jason and his family receive a visit from the FBI. The agents tell them that the carjackers were members of a dangerous drug-trafficking organization - and now Jason and his family are in their crosshairs. The agents advise the Bennetts to enter the witness protection program right away, and they have no choice but to agree. But WITSEC was designed to protect criminal informants, not law-abiding families. Taken from all they know, trapped in an unfamiliar life, the Bennetts begin to fall apart at the seams. Then Jason learns a shocking truth and realizes that he has to take matters into his own hands.

What Happened to the Bennetts

f911180b-fda0-4108-88ff-b4269eeafee1-1

Samantha Downing

"Beth, Portia, and Eddie Morgan haven't all been together in years. And for very good reasons--we'll get to those later. But when their wealthy grandfather dies and leaves a cryptic final message in his wake, the siblings and their respective partners must come together for a cross-country road trip to fulfill his final wish and--more importantly--secure their inheritance. But time with your family can be tough"--

He Started It

8f88257d-419f-42b4-b08d-a6ff02d0b881-1

Louisa May Alcott

This beautiful collectible edition presents three novels from one of the most beloved American authors: Louisa May Alcott. It includes her most famous and cherished classic, Little Women, about the lives of four sisters in Civil War-era America, as well as its sequels, Little Men and Jo's Boys.

B&N Little Women and Other Novels Leather

a6aa60d8-c0de-4e8e-a925-2ea64c7469b6-1

Arthur Doyle

A master of deductive reasoning who can solve the most difficult crimes by spotting obscure clues overlooked by others, dilettante sleuth Sherlock Holmes was the hero of sixty stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle between 1887 and 1927. He even rose from the dead after Doyle tried to dispatch him in his twenty-fourth adventure, and readers protested. Here, in one volume, are all four full-length novels and fifty-six short stories about the colourful adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- every word Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote about Baker Street's most famous resident. Also included is an introduction by lifetime Sherlockians Barbara and Christopher Roden. 

The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Barnes and Noble Collectible Classics: Omnibus Edition)

5590674c-0318-4e96-a250-56df6b36da39-1

Oversized Hardcover (4 to 6 lbs)

The Sun Also Rises, For Whom The Bell Tolls, A Farewell To Arms, The Old Man And The Sea

Earnest Hemingway: Four Novels 

Amor Towles

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” – NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.

The Lincoln Highway

bcfbaf7f-baa4-4577-abe2-411eddd81582-1

Interview With A Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen Of The Damned

The Vampire Chronicles 

9e145bf2-c852-4715-8503-9ad69a30df6a-1

Paul Youngquist

Alfred Mac Adam

H. G. Wells

"His goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the penthouse of his hat came with a disagreeable suddenness out of the darkness," Wells wrote in The Invisible Man. H. G. Wells described wonders of science and imagined possible futures, meanwhile critiquing his own society and contributing more to the science fiction genre than almost any other writer. This collection brings two of Well's most beloved classics together in one volume. It also includes a discussion of the films inspired by the novels, reviews of Wells's works, and discussion questions.

The Time Machine and the Invisible Man

12d25985-db33-45c1-966b-221863124e27-1

Lauren Weisberger

Realizing that her prestigious investment banking job is making her miserable, Bette Robinson impulsively quits and accepts an opportunity with a successful PR firm, a job that tests the boundary between her personal and professional lives.

Everyone Worth Knowing

ec60d59b-0c65-469c-9d29-a569415f335b-1

James A. Michener

The Covenant

7e907dde-f961-429a-8c07-f54bd848a271-1

All American Boys

Mary Roach

The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

A look inside the world of forensics examines the use of human cadavers in a wide range of endeavors, including research into new surgical procedures, space exploration, and a Tennessee human decay research facility.

Stiff

d391a9c3-39f0-4892-a2e7-b8cd307893e4-1

THE READING ROOM PITTSBURGH

Browse by categories