General Books

Your BMC Bookshop carries a wide variety of books beyond the curriculum, a curated selection handpicked by store staff.  If you don't see what you're looking for here on on our shelves, we are happy to special order practically anything for you.  Over 100,000 titles are available for fast shipment directly to your address from our partner warehouses.  Enter a title, author or ISBN in the search box at the top of this page to see what's in stock.  If the search doesn't work for you, please email us at bookshop@brynmawr.edu and we will be happy to research your request.  It's no trouble -- we love helping folks find books they're looking for.

Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions

Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions
$18.99

"I couldn't put this book down and I loved spending time in the lives of Nonso, Remi, Aisha, and Solape. Truly this book will grab hold of your heart and mind and everything in between."--Roxane Gay, author of Hunger and Bad Feminist

?"Poignant and beautiful. . . . Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi will sweep you away with these subtle yet profound stories. She is a bold and elegant writer, and this debut is such a pleasure."--Edan Lepucki, author of Woman No. 17 and California

Nigerian author Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi makes her American debut with this dazzling novel which explores her homeland's past, present, and possible future through the interconnected stories of four fearless globe-trotting women.

Moving between Nigeria and America, Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions is a window into the world of accomplished Nigerian women, illuminating the challenges they face and the risks they take to control their destinies.

Students at an all-girls boarding school, Nonso, Remi, Aisha, and Solape forge an unbreakable sisterhood that is tempered during a school rebellion, an uprising with repercussions that will forever reverberate through their lives. The children of well-to-do families, these young women have been raised with a thirst for independence, believing a university education is their right--a legacy of ambition and hope inherited from their foremothers.

Leaving school and adolescence behind, the women grapple with the unexpected possibilities--and limitations--of adulthood and the uncertainties of the world within and outside of Nigeria. A trip to Ghana opens Nonso's eyes to the lasting impact of the transatlantic slave trade, she falls in love with an African American, and makes a new home in the United States. Remi meets Segun, a dynamic man of Nigerian descent from Yonkers whose own traumatic struggles and support gives her the strength to confront painful family wounds. Aisha's overwhelming sense of guilt haunts her, influencing career and relationship decisions until she sees a chance to save her son's life and, through her sacrifice, redefine her own.

Revolving around loss, belonging, family, friendship, alienation, and silence, Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions is a moving, multifaceted portrait of lives shaped by hope and sorrow--of women who must contend with the ever-present and unsettling notion that moving forward in time isn't necessarily progress.

"I truly loved this linked short story collection. The narrative takes us into the intimate workings of friends and families. Omolola explores their complex lives in astoundingly beautiful language. If, like me, you enjoy stories that take you out of your reading chair to worlds that follow you back to your own, then this is the book for you."--Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, award-winning author of A Woman of Endurance

ISBN/SKU: 
9780063117068
Publication Date: 
November 9, 2023
Publisher: 

Journey Through Our Solar System

Journey Through Our Solar System
$3.48
$6.95
Sale 50% off 1 item
Our solar system is made up of eight planets orbiting around the star we call the sun, as well as the various moons that orbit the planets.
For hundreds of years, curious scientists have been studying these planets and moons and learning more about them. Readers (Grades 3-5) will learn about the many methods astronomers have used to study our solar system, from the basic telescopes of the 17th century to today's advanced space probes.
ISBN/SKU: 
9780531240618
Publication Date: 
March 1, 2013
Author: 

Just City

Just City
$18.99

"Here in the Just City you will become your best selves. You will learn and grow and strive to be excellent."

Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community, populated by over ten thousand children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future--all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past.

The student Simmea, born an Egyptian farmer's daughter sometime between 500 and 1000 A.D, is a brilliant child, eager for knowledge, ready to strive to be her best self. The teacher Maia was once Ethel, a young Victorian lady of much learning and few prospects, who prayed to Pallas Athene in an unguarded moment during a trip to Rome--and, in an instant, found herself in the Just City with grey-eyed Athene standing unmistakably before her.

Meanwhile, Apollo--stunned by the realization that there are things mortals understand better than he does--has arranged to live a human life, and has come to the City as one of the children. He knows his true identity, and conceals it from his peers. For this lifetime, he is prone to all the troubles of being human.

Then, a few years in, Sokrates arrives--the same Sokrates recorded by Plato himself--to ask all the troublesome questions you would expect. What happens next is a tale only the brilliant Jo Walton could tell.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781250811837
Publication Date: 
January 13, 2015
Author: 
Publisher: 

Kick the Latch

Kick the Latch
$8.98
$17.95
Sale 50% off 1 item
Kathryn Scanlan's Kick the Latch vividly captures the arc of one woman's life at the racetrack--the flat land and ramshackle backstretch; the bad feelings and friction; the winner's circle and the racetrack bar; the fancy suits and fancy boots; and the "particular language" of "grooms, jockeys, trainers, racing secretaries, stewards, pony people, hotwalkers, everybody"--with economy and integrity.

Based on transcribed interviews with Sonia, a horse trainer, the novel investigates form and authenticity in a feat of synthesis reminiscent of Charles Reznikoff's Testimony. As Scanlan puts it, "I wanted to preserve--amplify, exaggerate--Sonia's idiosyncratic speech, her bluntness, her flair as a storyteller. I arrived at what you could call a composite portrait of a self." Whittled down with a fiercely singular artistry, Kick the Latch bangs out of the starting gate and carries the reader on a careening joyride around the inside track.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780811232005
Publication Date: 
September 27, 2022

KINDRED (25TH ANNIVERSARY ED) (P)

KINDRED (25TH ANNIVERSARY ED) (P)
$16.00
Experience the novel that redefined American literature by the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower, MacArthur "Genius," and Nebula and Hugo award winner

Selected by The Atlantic as one of the "most consequential novels of the past 100 years"

"I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm."

Dana's 26th birthday celebration ends when she's ripped from 1976 California and thrust onto a Maryland slave plantation in 1815. Her mission: keep alive the white boy who will grow up to assault her ancestor--because without him, she'll never be born.

Every trip back grows more dangerous. Dana feels the lash, wears the chains, endures the daily terror that defined millions of lives. She can't just read about slavery's horrors--she lives them, bleeds from them, nearly breaks under them.

Butler doesn't let you observe from a safe distance. You're trapped in Dana's skin as she navigates impossible choices: submit to survive, or resist and risk everything. You'll feel her desperation as she fights to preserve her humanity while the plantation's brutality threatens to consume her.

This isn't historical fiction--it's time travel that cuts straight to the bone of American racism. Butler pioneered the neo-slavery narrative that inspired Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Water Dancer. But Kindred remains unmatched in its raw power to make slavery's legacy feel immediate, personal, and inescapable.

You'll finish this book changed. Dana's story will lodge itself in your chest and refuse to leave. You'll understand, in ways textbooks never taught you, how the past lives in our present--and why that matters more than ever.

"Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise" (New York Times).

"Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it's absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream."
--N. K. Jemisin

This book has been published with two different covers. Customers will be shipped the cover available.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780807083697
Author: 
Publisher: 

Klara and the Sun

Klara and the Sun
$18.00
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is "an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness" (The Associated Press). - A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick!

Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

ISBN/SKU: 
9780593311295
Publication Date: 
March 1, 2022
Author: 
Publisher: 

L'ETRANGER (FOLIO #2) (P)

L'ETRANGER (FOLIO #2) (P)
$16.25
L'Etranger est un roman d Albert Camus, paru en 1942. Il prend place dans la trilogie que Camus nommera « cycle de l absurde » qui d'ecrit les fondements de la philosophie camusienne : l absurde. Cette trilogie comprend également l essai philosophique intitulé Le Mythe de Sisyphe ainsi que les deux pièces de théâtre Caligula et Le Malentendu. Le roman a été traduit en quarante langues et une adaptation cinématographique a été réalisée par Luchino Visconti en 1967.
ISBN/SKU: 
9782070360024
Author: 
Publisher: 

Liliana's Invincible Summer

Liliana's Invincible Summer
$19.00
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER - NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST - A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK - "A searing account of grief and the quest to bring her sister's murderer to justice years after the fact" (The Boston Globe), from "one of Mexico's greatest living writers" (Jonathan Lethem).

"Part memoir, part true-crime story, Garza's chronicle is both personal and political."--The Washington Post

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, Chicago Public Library, She Reads, Electric Lit

October 18, 2019. Cristina Rivera Garza travels from her home in Texas to Mexico City, in search of an old, unresolved criminal file. "My name is Cristina Rivera Garza," she writes in her request to the attorney general, "and I am writing to you as a relative of Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered on July 16, 1990." It's been twenty-nine years. Twenty-nine years, three months, and two days since Liliana was murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend. Inspired by feminist movements across the world and enraged by the global epidemic of femicide and intimate partner violence, Cristina embarks on a path toward justice. Liliana's Invincible Summer is the account--and the outcome--of that quest .

In luminous, poetic prose, Rivera Garza tells a singular yet universally resonant story: Liliana is a spirited, wondrously hopeful young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence. Rivera Garza traces her sister's history, depicting everything from Liliana's early romance with a handsome but possessive and short-tempered man to that exhilarating final summer of 1990 when she loved, thought, and traveled more widely and freely than she ever had before.

Using her skills as an acclaimed scholar, novelist, and poet, Rivera Garza collected and curated evidence--handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, interviews with Liliana's loved ones--to document her sister's life. Through this remarkable and genre-defying memoir, she confronts the trauma of losing her sister and examines how this tragedy continues to shape who she is--and what she fights for--today.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780593244111
Publication Date: 
March 12, 2024
Publisher: 

Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
$19.99

The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet is a fresh and uplifting approach to the sci-fi genre. By following the diverse crew of the Wayfarer, we are introduced to a thoughtful and character driven story where you can’t help but fall in love with the created found family. After putting it down, I remember looking up at the stars and rethinking my place in the universe.

-- Grace R, BMC '25



National Bestseller!

The acclaimed modern science fiction masterpiece, Hugo Award winner for Best Series!

Follow a motley crew on an exciting journey through space--and one adventurous young explorer who discovers the meaning of family in the far reaches of the universe--in this light-hearted debut space opera from a rising sci-fi star.

Rosemary Harper doesn't expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. In this character-driven sci-fi story, the introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself has never met anyone remotely like the ship's diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.

Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy--exactly what Rosemary wants. It's also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn't part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, this tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling sci-fi adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary's got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs--an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn't necessarily the worst thing in the universe.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780062444134
Publication Date: 
July 5, 2016
Author: 
Publisher: 

Lost Keats

Lost Keats
$16.00
Owen Keane, a seminarian in the wilds of southern Indiana, is at risk of failure. When an insightful priest offers him a chance at redemption by asking him to find a runaway classmate, mystery addict Keane turns the assignment into a search for a fabulous missing sonnet, an investigation into illicit drug trade, and a harrowing confrontation with his darkest fears.
ISBN/SKU: 
9781932325324
Publication Date: 
July 31, 2013
Author: 
Publisher: