Literature/fiction

MY YEAR OF REST & RELAXATION

MY YEAR OF REST & RELAXATION
$18.00
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible

A New York Times Bestseller - New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

"One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound." -- Entertainment Weekly

"Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfegh's] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood." --Vogue

From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes.

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780525522133
Publication Date: 
June 25, 2019
Author: 
Publisher: 

NEVER LET ME GO (P)

NEVER LET ME GO (P)
$17.00
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER - From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes "a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist--a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic.

One of The New York Times's 10 Best Books of the 21st Century - A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century - A Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Book of the Last 30 Years

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special--and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781400078776
Publication Date: 
March 14, 2006
Author: 
Publisher: 

Normal People

Normal People
$17.00
NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED HULU ORIGINAL SERIES - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE - "A stunning novel about the transformative power of relationships" (People) from the author of Conversations with Friends, "a master of the literary page-turner" (J. Courtney Sullivan).

"[A] novel that demands to be read compulsively, in one sitting."--The Washington Post

ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE

TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: People, Slate, The New York Public Library, Harvard Crimson

Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation--awkward but electrifying--something life changing begins.

A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can't.

WINNER: The British Book Award, The Costa Book Award, The An Post Irish Novel of the Year, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award

BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Vogue, Esquire, Glamour, Elle, Marie Claire, Vox, The Paris Review, Good Housekeeping, Town & Country

ISBN/SKU: 
9781984822185
Publication Date: 
February 18, 2020
Author: 

Only Revolutions

Only Revolutions
$33.00
Sam:
They were with us before Romeo & Juliet. And long after too. Because they're forever around. Or so both claim, carolling gleefully:

We're allways sixteen.

Sam & Hailey, powered by an ever-rotating fleet of cars, from Model T to Lincoln Continental, career from the Civil War to the Cold War, barrelling down through the Appalachians, up the Mississippi River, across the Badlands, finally cutting a nation in half as they try to outrace History itself.

By turns beguiling and gripping, finally worldwrecking, Only Revolutions is unlike anything ever published before, a remarkable feat of heart and intellect, moving us with the journey of two kids, perpetually of summer, perpetually sixteen, who give up everything except each other.

Hailey:
They were with us before Tristan & Isolde. And long after too. Because they're forever around. Or so both claim, gleefully carolling:

We're allways sixteen.

Hailey & Sam, powered by an ever-rotating fleet of cars, from Shelby Mustang to Sumover Linx, careen from the Civil Rights Movement to the Iraq War, tearing down to New Orleans, up the Mississippi River, across Montana, finally cutting a nation in half as they try to outrace History itself.

By turns enticing and exhilarating, finally breathtaking, Only Revolutions is unlike anything ever conceived before, a remarkable feat of heart and intellect, moving us with the journey of two kids, perpetually of summer, perpetually sixteen, who give up everything except each other.

ISBN/SKU: 
2800375713905
Publication Date: 
July 10, 2007
Author: 
Publisher: 

Our Strangers

Our Strangers
$26.00
Only available at independent bookstores and libraries, by request of the author. From one of the most accomplished writers of our time comes another brilliant collection of short fiction. Artful, deft, and inventive; Lydia Davis' newest collection of stories delves into topics ranging from marriage to tiny insects. These stories are a celebration of language and careful observation that once again confirms Davis' sincere love and mastery of the form.
ISBN/SKU: 
9798987717103
Publication Date: 
October 1, 2023
Author: 
Publisher: 

Pachinko

Pachinko
$21.99

Pachinko is so soapy! I went through it so quickly and cried my eyes out toward the end. It is the book I recommend to anyone and everyone!

- Angelica C., Book Associate

 



In this New York Times bestseller, four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan-the inspiration for the television series on Apple TV+.

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger. When she discovers she is pregnant-and that her lover is married-she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

Profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty.

*Includes reading group guide*

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 * A USA TODAY TOP TEN OF 2017 * JULY PICK FOR THE PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB NOW READ THIS * FINALIST FOR THE 2018DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE* WINNER OF THE MEDICI BOOK CLUB PRIZE

Roxane Gay's Favorite Book of 2017, Washington Post

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER

ISBN/SKU: 
9781455563920
Publication Date: 
November 14, 2017
Author: 

Post-Traumatic

Post-Traumatic
$10.00
$20.00
Sale 50% off 1 item

The contributors of this anthology make up a wide spectrum of South Africans: black, white, men and women, established and budding who write in either English or Afrikaans. Among these are writers who began their careers in the fifties (George Weideman), to those who were active in the black consciousness period of the seventies (Achmat Dangor, Chris van Wyk, Maropodi Mapalakanye) through to writers who first appeared in print in the eighties and nineties (Rayda Jacobs, Finuala Dowling, Zachariah Raphola, Roshila Nair, Roy Blumenthal, Allan Kolski Horwitz).

While many of the writers in this anthology have established themselves as poets, novelists, dramatists and oral storytellers, they all choose the short story as another means of expressing a diverse South Africa of rural and urban life, white suburbia, black township, childhood, love, hate, reconciliation, the grim as well as the funny that make up the tapestry of a country as it used to be and as it is today.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780620305006
Publication Date: 
December 25, 2008
Publisher: 

Remains of the Day

Remains of the Day
$12.75
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER - From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, here is "an intricate and dazzling novel" (The New York Times) about the perfect butler and his fading, insular world in post-World War II England.

This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of a butler named Stevens. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780679731726
Publication Date: 
September 12, 1990
Author: 
Publisher: 

Secrets No More

Secrets No More
$12.00
$24.00
Sale 50% off 1 item
Marina, a Rwandan child and her family experience the horror of the war in the 1990s. Her parents are killed, and she is cared for in an orphanage, where an Italian priest favours her and tries to plan a better life for her. She attracts the unwanted attention of Matayo, who leaves her pregnant, so she determines to run away from the orphanage and to start a new life in the city.
ISBN/SKU: 
9789970901050
Publication Date: 
January 1, 1999
Author: 
Publisher: 

Shuggie Bain

Shuggie Bain
$16.98

by Douglas Stuart

ON CAMPUS - October 9


 

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

A stunning debut novel by a masterful writer telling the heart-wrenching story of a young boy and his alcoholic mother, whose love is only matched by her pride.

Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings.

Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good-her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamorous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion's share of each week's benefits--all the family has to live on--on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs. Agnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is "no right," a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her--even her beloved Shuggie.

A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Édouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.

ISBN/SKU: 
2800802148508
Publication Date: 
October 13, 2020
Author: 
Publisher: