Reading
Books to read/ had read
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To Read
The Country Will Bring Us No Peace
Matthieu Simard • 2019
The Art of Being Normal: A Novel
Lisa Williamson • 2018
House of Frank
Kay Synclaire • 2024
Legends & Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes
Travis Baldree • 2022
The Deep
Rivers Solomon • 2019
The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms Book 1)
Tasha Suri • 2021
<b>WINNER OF THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL<br><br> NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2021 BY <i>PUBLISHERS WEEKLY</i>, <i>LIBRARY JOURNAL</i>, <i>BOOKLIST</i>, AND THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY<br><br> A ruthless princess and a powerful priestess come together to rewrite the fate of an empire in this “fiercely and unapologetically feminist tale of endurance and revolution set against a gorgeous, unique magical world” (S. A. Chakraborty, author of the <i>The City of Brass</i>).</b><br><br> Exiled by her despotic brother, princess Malini spends her days dreaming of vengeance while imprisoned in the Hirana: an ancient cliffside temple that was once the revered source of the magical deathless waters but is now little more than a decaying ruin.<br> <br> The secrets of the Hirana call to Priya. But in order to keep the truth of her past safely hidden, she works as a servant in the loathed regent’s household and cleaning Malini’s chambers.<br> <br> When Malini witnesses Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a ruthless princess seeking to steal a throne. The other a powerful priestess desperate to save her family. Together, they will set an empire ablaze.<br><br>Praise for <i>The Jasmine Throne</i>:<br><br><b>"Suri’s writing always brings me to another world; one full of wonders and terrors, where every detail feels intricately and carefully imagined." </b>—R. F. Kuang, author of <i>Babel</i><br><br><b>"Raises the bar for what epic fantasy should be." </b>—Chloe Gong, author of <i>These Violent Delights</i><br><br><b>"An intimate, complex, magical study of empire and the people caught in its bloody teeth. I loved it.”</b> —Alix E. Harrow, author of <i>The Once and Future Witches</i><br><br><b>"Suri’s incandescent feminist masterpiece hits like a steel fist inside a velvet glove. Simply magnificent."</b> —Shelley Parker-Chan, author of <i>She Who Became the Sun</i><br><br><b>"A fierce, heart-wrenching exploration of the value and danger of love in a world of politics and power." </b>—<i>Publishers Weekly </i>(starred review)<br><br><b>"Lush and stunning....Inspired by Indian epics, this sapphic fantasy will rip your heart out."</b> —<i>BuzzFeed News</i>
She Who Became the Sun Sneak Peek
Shelley Parker-Chan • 2021
Written in the Stars: A Novel
Alexandria Bellefleur • 2020
She Drives Me Crazy
Kelly Quindlen • 2022
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - Carmilla
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu • 2016
Tell Me How You Really Feel
Aminah Mae Safi • 2019
<p><b>Aminah Mae Safi's <i>Tell Me How You Really Feel</i> is an ode to romantic comedies, following two girls on opposite sides of the social scale as they work together to make a movie and try very hard not to fall in love.</b><br><br>The first time Sana Khan asked out a girl–Rachel Recht--it went so badly that she never did it again. Rachel is a film buff and aspiring director, and she’s seen <i>Carrie</i> enough times to learn you can never trust cheerleaders (and beautiful people). Rachel was furious that Sana tried to prank her by asking her on a date.<br><br>But when it comes time for Rachel to cast her senior project, she realizes that there’s no more perfect lead than Sana--the girl she's sneered at in the halls for the past three years. And poor Sana--she says yes. She never did really get over that first crush, even if Rachel can barely stand to be in the same room as her.<br><br>Told in alternative viewpoints and set against the backdrop of Los Angeles in the springtime, when the rainy season rolls in and the Santa Ana's can still blow--these two girls are about to learn that in the city of dreams, anything is possible--even love.</p>
The Princess and the Fangirl (Once Upon A Con)
Ashley Poston • 2020
Imogen, Obviously
Becky Albertalli • 2023
A Stonewall Honor Book · A New York Times and Indie bestseller!<br/>“A big-hearted, deeply vulnerable, love-bubbly tumble through self-discovery.” — Casey McQuiston, author of #1 New York Times bestselling I Kissed Shara Wheeler<br/>With humor and insight, #1 New York Times bestseller Becky Albertalli explores the nuances of sexuality, identity, and friendship in this timely new novel.<br/>Imogen Scott may be hopelessly heterosexual, but she’s got the World’s Greatest Ally title locked down.<br/>She's never missed a Pride Alliance meeting. She knows more about queer media discourse than her very queer little sister. She even has two queer best friends. There's Gretchen, a fellow high school senior, who helps keep Imogen's biases in check. And then there's Lili—newly out and newly thriving with a cool new squad of queer college friends.<br/>Imogen's thrilled for Lili. Any ally would be. And now that she's finally visiting Lili on campus, she's bringing her ally A game. Any support Lili needs, Imogen's all in.<br/>Even if that means bending the truth, just a little.<br/>Like when Lili drops a tiny queer bombshell: she's told all her college friends that Imogen and Lili used to date. And none of them know that Imogen is a raging hetero—not even Lili’s best friend, Tessa.<br/>Of course, the more time Imogen spends with chaotic, freckle-faced Tessa, the more she starts to wonder if her truth was ever all that straight to begin with. . .
I Kissed Shara Wheeler: A Novel
Casey McQuiston • 2022
The Lost Coast
Amy Rose Capetta • 2019
Ophelia After All
Racquel Marie • 2022
<p><b>California Book Award Winner<br>One of NPR's Best Books of the Year</b><br><b><br>A teen girl navigates friendship drama, the end of high school, and discovering her queerness in <i>Ophelia After All, </i>a hilarious and heartfelt contemporary YA debut by author Racquel Marie.<br></b><br>Ophelia Rojas knows what she likes: her best friends, Cuban food, rose-gardening, and boys – way too many boys. Her friends and parents make fun of her endless stream of crushes, but Ophelia is a romantic at heart. She couldn’t change, even if she wanted to.<br><br>So when she finds herself thinking more about cute, quiet Talia Sanchez than the loss of a perfect prom with her ex-boyfriend, seeds of doubt take root in Ophelia’s firm image of herself. Add to that the impending end of high school and the fracturing of her once-solid friend group, and things are spiraling a little out of control. But the course of love—and sexuality—never did run smooth. As her secrets begin to unravel, Ophelia must make a choice between clinging to the fantasy version of herself she’s always imagined or upending everyone’s expectations to rediscover who she really is, after all.<br><br><b>"Ophelia Rojas is the type of character that leaps off the page and directly into your heart—<i>Ophelia After All</i> is a queer delight through and through." —Leah Johnson, bestselling author of <i>You Should See Me in a Crown</i></b></p>
The Last True Poets of the Sea
Julia Drake • 2021
Tell Me How It Ends (Chaos in the Cards)
Quinton Li • 2023
For Her Consideration
Amy Spalding • 2023
Late to the Party
Kelly Quindlen • 2021
This Is How You Lose the Time War
Amal El-Mohtar • 2020
One Last Stop
Casey McQuiston • 2021
<p><b>*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*<br>*INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER*<br>*INSTANT #1 INDIE BESTSELLER*</b><br><b><br>From the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>Red, White & Royal Blue</i> comes a new romantic comedy that will stop readers in their tracks...</b><br><br>For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.<br><br>But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train. <br><br>Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.<br><br>Casey McQuiston’s <i>One Last Stop </i>is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time.<br><br><b>"A dazzling romance, filled with plenty of humor and heart." - <i>Time Magazine</i>, "The 21 Most Anticipated Books of 2021"<br><br></b><b>"Dreamy, other worldly, smart, swoony, thoughtful, hilarious - all in all, exactly what you'd expect from Casey McQuiston!" - Jasmine Guillory, <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author of <i>The Proposal </i>and</b><i><b> Party for Two</b></i></p>
Grey Dog
Elliott Gish • 2024
“Gish’s prose is as sharp as a scalpel.” ― Publishers Weekly, starred review<br/>“Grey Dog is a bewitching tale of the horrors of spinsterhood in the early 1900s, with madness and magic threaded through every sentence.” ― Heather O’Neill, author of When We Lost Our Heads and Lullabies for Little Criminals<br/>A subversive literary horror novel that disrupts the tropes of women’s historical fiction with delusions, wild beasts, and the uncontainable power of female rage<br/>The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd ― spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist ― accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. She develops friendships with her neighbors, explores the woods with her students, and begins to see a future in this tiny farming community. Her past ― riddled with grief and shame ― has never seemed so far away.<br/>But then, Ada begins to witness strange and grisly phenomena: a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun. She soon believes that something old and beastly ― which she calls Grey Dog ― is behind these visceral offerings, which both beckon and repel her. As her confusion deepens, her grip on what is real, what is delusion, and what is traumatic memory loosens, and Ada takes on the wildness of the woods, behaving erratically and pushing her newfound friends away. In the end, she is left with one question: What is the real horror? The Grey Dog, the uncontainable power of female rage, or Ada herself?
Written On The Body
Jeanette Winterson • 1993
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. "At once a love story and a philosophical meditation."--New York Times Book Review.
Stone Butch Blues
Leslie Feinberg • 2010
Published in 1993, this brave, original novel is considered to be the finest account ever written of the complexities of a transgendered existence. Woman or man? Thats the question that rages like a storm around Jess Goldberg, clouding her life and her identity. Growing up differently gendered in a blue--collar town in the 1950s, coming out as a butch in the bars and factories of the prefeminist 60s, deciding to pass as a man in order to survive when she is left without work or a community in the early 70s. This powerful, provocative and deeply moving novel sees Jess coming full circle, she learns to accept the complexities of being a transgendered person in a world demanding simple explanations: a he-she emerging whole, weathering the turbulence.
The Ride of Her Life
Jennifer Dugan • 2024
Jericho (A Jericho Novel)
Ann McMan • 2017
A Little Bit of Spice
Georgia Beers • 2015
When Women Were Warriors Book I: The Warrior's Path
Catherine M Wilson • 2008
That Summer Feeling
Bridget Morrissey • 2023
Who'd Have Thought
G Benson • 2017
The Secret of You and Me: A Novel
Melissa Lenhardt • 2020
A DVF Book Club Pick! <br> <br> <br> <br> True love never fades--and old secrets never die...<br> <br> <br> <br> Nora hasn't looked back. Not since she fled Texas to start a new life. Away from her father's volatile temper and the ever-watchful gaze of her claustrophobically conservative small town, Nora has freed herself. She can live--and love--however she wants. The only problem is that she also left behind the one woman she can't forget. Now tragedy calls her back home to confront her past--and reconcile her future.<br> <br> <br> <br> Sophie seems to have everything--a wonderful daughter, a successful husband and a rewarding career. Yet underneath that perfection lies an explosive secret. She still yearns for Nora--her best friend and first love--despite all the years between them. Keeping her true self hidden hasn't been easy, but it's been necessary. So when Sophie finds out that Nora has returned, she hopes Nora's stay is short. The life she has built depends on it.<br> <br> <br> <br> But they both find that first love doesn't fade easily. Memories come to light, passion ignites and old feelings resurface. As the forces of family and intolerance that once tore them apart begin to reemerge, they realize some things may never change--unless they demand it.
Wrong Number, Right Woman (Unexpected Love)
Jae • 2020
Backwards to Oregon
Jae • 2017
Strawberry Summer
Melissa Brayden • 2017
She Gets the Girl
Rachael Lippincott • 2023
<b><i>She’s All That</i> meets <i>What If It’s Us</i> in this <i>New York Times </i>bestselling hate-to-love YA romantic comedy from the coauthor of <i>Five Feet Apart </i>Rachael Lippincott and debut writer Alyson Derrick.</b><br><br>Alex Blackwood is a little bit headstrong, with a dash of chaos and a whole lot of flirt. She knows how to get the girl. <i>Keeping</i> her on the other hand…not so much. Molly Parker has everything in her life totally in control, except for her complete awkwardness with just about anyone besides her mom. She knows she’s in love with the impossibly cool Cora Myers. She just…hasn’t actually talked to her yet. <br> <br>Alex and Molly don’t belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus. But when Alex, fresh off a bad (but hopefully not permanent) breakup, discovers Molly’s hidden crush as their paths cross the night before classes start, they realize they might have a common interest after all. Because maybe if Alex volunteers to help Molly learn how to get her dream girl to fall for her, she can prove to her ex that she’s not a selfish flirt. That she’s ready for an actual commitment. And while Alex is the last person Molly would ever think she could trust, she can’t deny Alex knows what she’s doing with girls, unlike her. <br> <br>As the two embark on their five-step plans to get their girls to fall for them, though, they both begin to wonder if maybe they’re the ones falling…for each other.
Yerba Buena: A Novel
Nina LaCour • 2022
The Romantic Agenda
Claire Kann • 2022
Something to Talk About
Meryl Wilsner • 2020
One Last Stop
Casey McQuiston • 2021
<p><b>*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*<br>*INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER*<br>*INSTANT #1 INDIE BESTSELLER*</b><br><b><br>From the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>Red, White & Royal Blue</i> comes a new romantic comedy that will stop readers in their tracks...</b><br><br>For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.<br><br>But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train. <br><br>Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.<br><br>Casey McQuiston’s <i>One Last Stop </i>is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time.<br><br><b>"A dazzling romance, filled with plenty of humor and heart." - <i>Time Magazine</i>, "The 21 Most Anticipated Books of 2021"<br><br></b><b>"Dreamy, other worldly, smart, swoony, thoughtful, hilarious - all in all, exactly what you'd expect from Casey McQuiston!" - Jasmine Guillory, <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author of <i>The Proposal </i>and</b><i><b> Party for Two</b></i></p>
Delilah Green Doesn't Care
Ashley Herring Blake • 2022
Girls of Paper and Fire
Natasha Ngan • 2019
The Weight of the Stars
K. Ancrum • 2020
Honey Girl: A Novel
Morgan Rogers • 2021
Pet
Akwaeke Emezi • 2021
The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows: Feminine Pursuits
Olivia Waite • 2020
Under The Udala Trees
Chinelo Okparanta • 2015
Night Shine
Tessa Gratton • 2022
Sparks Like Ours (Seven Shores Romance)
Melissa Brayden • 2018
Crier's War (Crier's War, 1)
Nina Varela • 2020
Malice: A Novel
Heather Walter • 2021
The Midnight Girls: Sapphic Monster Girl Romance
Alicia Jasinska • 2021
Iron & Velvet (Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator Book 1)
Alexis Hall • 2019
Bluebird
Ciel Pierlot • 2022
Implanted
Lauren C. Teffeau • 2018
The Cybernetic Tea Shop
Meredith Katz • 2019
House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition
Mark Z. Danielewski • 2000
Everything Leads to You
Nina LaCour • 2014
"I want you to do something with the place. Something epic." After being entrusted with her brother's Los Angeles apartment for the summer as a graduation gift, Emi Price isn't sure how to fulfill his one condition: that something great take place there while he's gone. Emi may be a talented young production designer, already beginning to thrive in the competitive film industry, but she still feels like an average teen, floundering when it comes to romance. But when she and her best friend, Charlotte, discover a mysterious letter at the estate sale of a Hollywood film legend, Emi must move beyond the walls of her carefully crafted world to chase down the loose ends of a movie icon’s hidden life, leading her to uncover a decades’ old secret and the potential for something truly epic: love.
We Are Okay
Nina LaCour • 2019
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: A Novel
Gail Honeyman • 2017
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND THE PERFECT HOLIDAY GIFT A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick “Beautifully written and incredibly funny, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is about the importance of friendship and human connection. I fell in love with Eleanor, an eccentric and regimented loner whose life beautifully unfolds after a chance encounter with a stranger; I think you will fall in love, too!” —Reese Witherspoon No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . . The only way to survive is to open your heart.
How to Solve Your Own Murder
Kristen Perrin • 2024
Light From Uncommon Stars
Ryka Aoki • 2021
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in Ryka Aoki's Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts. Hugo Award Finalist A National Bestseller Indie Next Pick New York Public Library Top 10 Book of 2021 A Kirkus Best Book of 2021 A Barnes & Noble Best Science Fiction Book of 2021 2022 Alex Award Winner 2022 Stonewall Book Award Winner Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline. As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Sleepless Night
Margriet de Moor • 2019
A woman gets up in the middle of a wintry night and starts baking a cake while her lover sleeps upstairs. When it’s time for her to take the cake out of the oven, we have read a story of romance and death. The narrator of this novel was widowed years ago and is trying to find new passion. But the memory of her deceased husband and a shameful incident still holds her in its grasp. Why did he do it? Margriet de Moor, the grande dame of Dutch literature, tells a gripping love story about endings and demise, rage and jealousy, knowledge and ambiguity—and the possibility of new beginnings. Reading group guide is available at newvesselpress.com.
Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical
Robert Shearman • 2009
Women Without Men
Shahrnush Parsipur • 2012
Greek Lessons
Han Kang • 2024
Everything I Never Told You
Celeste Ng • 2015
Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.<br/><br/>So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.<br/><br/>A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
If You Could See the Sun
Ann Liang • 2022
"Academic rivals portrayed to perfection… An all-time top favorite." —Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights and Our Violent Ends <br><br>"Utterly unique, thought-provoking, and wonderfully written." —Gloria Chao, author of American Panda and Rent a Boyfriend<br><br>In this genre-bending , speculative YA debut, a Chinese American girl monetizes her strange new invisibility powers by discovering and selling her wealthy classmates’ most scandalous secrets.<br> <br>Alice Sun has always felt invisible at her elite Beijing international boarding school, where she’s the only scholarship student among China’s most rich and influential teens. But then she starts uncontrollably turning invisible—actually invisible.<br> <br>When her parents drop the news that they can no longer afford her tuition, even with the scholarship, Alice hatches a plan to monetize her strange new power—she’ll discover the scandalous secrets her classmates want to know, for a price.<br> <br>But as the tasks escalate from petty scandals to actual crimes, Alice must decide if it’s worth losing her conscience—or even her life.
The Smell of Other People's Houses
Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock • 2017
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
Hwang Bo-reum • 2023
Anxious People
Fredrik Backman • 2020
I Who Have Never Known Men
Jacqueline Harpman • 1997
A work of fantasy, I Who Have Never Known Men is the haunting and unforgettable account of a near future on a barren earth where women are kept in underground cages guarded by uniformed groups of men. It is narrated by the youngest of the women, the only one with no memory of what the world was like before the cages, who must teach herself, without books or sexual contact, the essential human emotions of longing, loving, learning, companionship, and dying. Part thriller, part mystery, I Who Have Never Known Men shows us the power of one person without memories to reinvent herself piece by piece, emotion by emotion, in the process teaching us much about what it means to be human.
Sweet Days of Discipline
Fleur Jaeggy • 1993
The story of a fourteen-year-old girl living in a bording school in postwar Switzerland.
In the Café of Lost Youth
Patrick Modiano • 2016
NYRB Classics Original<br/>Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature<br/><br/>In the Café of Lost Youth is vintage Patrick Modiano, an absorbing evocation of a particular Paris of the 1950s, shadowy and shady, a secret world of writers, criminals, drinkers, and drifters. The novel, inspired in part by the circle (depicted in the photographs of Ed van der Elsken) of the notorious and charismatic Guy Debord, centers on the enigmatic, waiflike figure of Louki, who catches everyone’s attention even as she eludes possession or comprehension. Through the eyes of four very different narrators, including Louki herself, we contemplate her character and her fate, while Modiano explores the themes of identity, memory, time, and forgetting that are at the heart of his spellbinding and deeply moving art.
The Houseguest: And Other Stories
Amparo Dávila • 2018
The Wall
Marlen Haushofer • 2013
Interesting Facts about Space
Emily Austin • 2024
We Mostly Come Out at Night
Rob Costello • 2024
Blue Hunger
Viola Di Grado • 2023
Scorched Grace
Margot Douaihy • 2023
A USA TODAY Bestseller · A New York Times, Apple Books, and The Guardian Best Crime Novel of the Year · An Indie Next Pick · Winner of the Pinckley Prize for Crime Fiction and the Saints & Sinners LGBTQ+ Festival Emerging Writer Award · Longlisted for the Mass Book Award · A Finalist for the ITW Thrillerfest, New England Book, Left Coast Crime “Lefty”, and Anthony Awards · Best Author by Boston Magazine Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun, puts her amateur sleuthing skills to the test in this “unique and confident” debut crime novel (Gillian Flynn). When Saint Sebastian’s School becomes the target of a shocking arson spree, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and their surrounding New Orleans community are thrust into chaos. Patience is a virtue, but punk rocker turned nun Sister Holiday isn’t satisfied to just wait around for officials to return her home and sanctuary to its former peace, instead deciding to unveil the mysterious attacker herself. Her investigation leads her down a twisty path of suspicion and secrets, turning her against colleagues, students, and even fellow Sisters along the way. And to piece together the clues of this high-stakes mystery, she must at last reckon with the sins of her own past. An exciting start to a bold series that breathes new life into the hard-boiled genre, Scorched Grace is a fast-paced and punchy whodunnit that will keep readers guessing until the very end. Now with an exclusive sneak peek at the second Sister Holiday mystery!
Mary
Nat Cassidy • 2022
Fair Play
Tove Jansson • 2011
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Jeanette Winterson • 2007
<p>The New York Times –bestselling author's Whitbread Prize–winning debut—"Winterson has mastered both comedy and tragedy in this rich little novel" ( The Washington Post Book World ). When it first appeared, Jeanette Winterson's extraordinary debut novel received unanimous international praise, including the prestigious Whitbread Prize for best first fiction. Winterson went on to fulfill that promise, producing some of the most dazzling fiction and nonfiction of the past decade, including her celebrated memoir Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?. Now required reading in contemporary literature, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a funny, poignant exploration of a young girl's adolescence. Jeanette is a bright and rebellious orphan who is adopted into an evangelical household in the dour, industrial North of England and finds herself embroidering grim religious mottoes and shaking her little tambourine for Jesus. But as this budding missionary comes of age, and comes to terms with her unorthodox sexuality, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household dissolves. Jeanette's insistence on listening to truths of her own heart and mind—and on reporting them with wit and passion—makes for an unforgettable chronicle of an eccentric, moving passage into adulthood. "If Flannery O'Connor and Rita Mae Brown had collaborated on the coming-out story of a young British girl in the 1960s, maybe they would have approached the quirky and subtle hilarity of Jeanette Winterson's autobiographical first novel.... Winterson's voice, with its idiosyncratic wit and sensitivity, is one you've never heard before." — Ms. Magazine<br></p>
Winter Love
Suyin Han • 2022
<p><b>An unheralded queer classic set in wartime London--"Han Suyin's outstanding achievement . . . her finest novel." (Alison Hennegan)</b></p> <p>As a college student in London during the bitterly cold winter of 1944, Red falls in love with her married classmate Mara. Their affair unleashes a physical passion, jealousy, and self-doubt that sweep all her previous experiences aside and will leave her changed forever. </p> <p>Set against the rubble and austerity of wartime London--barrage balloons overhead, blackout curtains drawn, cafés eking out tins of powdered egg--Winter Love evokes the exhilaration and the peril of living and loving in a city under siege.</p> <p>First published in 1962, this novella was long overlooked in Han's prolific career. "Probably the best thing she has ever written" (<i>Daily Telegraph</i>), it is also Han Suyin's most unexpected, tender, and stirring work.</p>
A Long Time Dead
Samara Breger • 2023
Monstrilio
Gerardo Sámano Córdova • 2023
Notes of a Crocodile
Qiu Miaojin • 2017
Winner of the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize Longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize A New York Times Editors' Choice<br/>The English-language premiere of Qiu Miaojin's coming-of-age novel about queer teenagers in Taiwan, a cult classic in China and winner of the 1995 China Times Literature Award.<br/><br/>An NYRB Classics Original<br/><br/>Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and major countercultural figure.<br/><br/>Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend.<br/><br/>Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.
Small Town Monsters
Diana Rodriguez Wallach • 2021
The Loneliest Girl in the Universe
Lauren James • 2018
A surprising and gripping sci-fi thriller with a killer twist The daughter of two astronauts, Romy Silvers is no stranger to life in space. But she never knew how isolating the universe could be until her parents’ tragic deaths left her alone on the Infinity, a spaceship speeding away from Earth. Romy tries to make the best of her lonely situation, but with only brief messages from her therapist on Earth to keep her company, she can’t help but feel like something is missing. It seems like a dream come true when NASA alerts her that another ship, the Eternity, will be joining the Infinity. Romy begins exchanging messages with J, the captain of the Eternity, and their friendship breathes new life into her world. But as the Eternity gets closer, Romy learns there’s more to J’s mission than she could have imagined. And suddenly, there are worse things than being alone…. Now nominated as a YALSA Quick Pick!
Voice Like a Hyacinth
MALLORY. PEARSON • 2025
Paradise Rot
Jenny Hval • 2024
"As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder.”<br/>—Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick<br/><br/>A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery<br/><br/>Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo’s sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.<br/><br/>This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire.
After Sappho
Selby Wynn Schwartz • 2022
It's 1895. Amid laundry and bruises, Rina Pierangeli Faccio gives birth to the child of the man who raped her – and who she has also been forced to marry. Unbroken, she determines to change her name; and her life, alongside it. 1902. Romaine Brooks sails for Capri. She has barely enough money for the ferry, nothing for lunch; her paintbrushes are bald and clotted... But she is sure she can sell a painting – and is fervent in her belief that the island is detached from all fates she has previously suffered. ... In 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: I want to make life fuller – and fuller. Sarah Bernhardt – Colette – Eleanora Duse – Lina Poletti – Josephine Baker – Virginia Woolf... these are just a few of the women sharing the pages of a book as fierce as it is luminous. Lush and poetic; furious and funny; in After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz has created a novel that celebrates the women and trailblazers of the past – their constant efforts to push against the boundaries of what it means, and can mean, to be a woman – that also offers hope for our present, and our futures.
Personal Attention Roleplay
Helen Chau Bradley • 2021
Why Fish Don't Exist
Lulu Miller • 2021
A Best Book of 2020: The Washington Post * NPR * Chicago Tribune * Smithsonian<br/><br/>A “remarkable” (Los Angeles Times), “seductive” (The Wall Street Journal) debut from the new cohost of Radiolab, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and—possibly—even murder.<br/><br/>“At one point, Miller dives into the ocean into a school of fish…comes up for air, and realizes she’s in love. That’s how I felt: Her book took me to strange depths I never imagined, and I was smitten.” —The New York Times Book Review<br/><br/>David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake—which sent more than a thousand discoveries, housed in fragile glass jars, plummeting to the floor. In an instant, his life’s work was shattered.<br/><br/>Many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish that he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world.<br/><br/>When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool—a cautionary tale in hubris, or denial. But as her own life slowly unraveled, she began to wonder about him. Perhaps instead he was a model for how to go on when all seemed lost. What she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet.<br/><br/>Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a wondrous fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.
Autumn
Ali Smith • 2017
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES AND GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2017 Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. That’s what it felt like for Keats in 1819. How about Autumn 2016? Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdon is in pieces, divided by a historic, once-in-a-generation summer. Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand-in-hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever. Ali Smith’s new novel is a meditation on a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, on what harvest means. It is the first installment of her Seasonal quartet—four stand-alone books, seperate yet interconnected and cyclical (as the seasons are)—and it casts an eye over our own time. Who are we? What are we made of? Shakespearean jeu d’esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s pop art: the centuries cast their eyes over our own history making. Here’s where we’re living. Here’s time at its more contemporaneous and its most cyclic. From the imagination of the peerless Ali Smith comes a shape-shifting series, wide-ranging in time-scale and light-footed through histories, a story about aging and time and love and stories themselves.
The Priory of the Orange Tree
Samantha Shannon • 2019
Get ready for Samantha Shannon's new novel, A Day of Fallen Night, coming in February 2023! The New York Times bestselling "epic feminist fantasy perfect for fans of Game of Thrones" (Bustle). NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: AMAZON (Top 100 Editors Picks and Science Fiction and Fantasy) * CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY * BOOKPAGE * AUTOSTRADDLE A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens. The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction--but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel. Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein
Coco Mellors • 2024
East of Eden
John Steinbeck • 2003
A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors, in a commemorative hardcover edition In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. Adapted for the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan introducing James Dean, and read by thousands as the book that brought Oprah’s Book Club back, East of Eden has remained vitally present in American culture for over half a century.
Murder at the Bookstore: An absolutely charming bookish cozy mystery (The Bookstore Mystery Series)
Sue Minix • 2023
<p>“A super cozy mystery... The perfect pick up for a weekend read by the fire. It has everything... Hijinks, who-dun-its, loveable characters, and a wonderful setting. And a main character who is FIERCE” NetGalley review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐</p> <p> She can write the perfect murder mystery... But can she solve one in real life? </p> <p>Meet Jen Dawson, mystery writer, coffee lover, and amateur detective?</p> <p>Crime writer Jen returns to her small hometown with a bestselling book behind her and a bad case of writer’s block. Finding sanctuary in the local bookstore, with an endless supply of coffee, Jen waits impatiently for inspiration to strike.</p> <p> But when the owner of the bookstore dies suddenly in mysterious circumstances, Jen has a real-life murder to solve. </p> <p>The stakes are suddenly higher when evidence places Jen at the scene of the crime and the reading of the will names her as the new owner of the bookstore ...</p> <p>Can she crack the case and clear her name, before the killer strikes again?</p> <p> Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Lauren Elliott and Ellery Adams, this is an absolutely gripping new bookish cozy crime series that will have you hooked from the very first page. </p> Readers adore Murder at the Bookstore: <p>“Warm, amusing, and relatable... A very entertaining cozy mystery... A relaxing night-time read, and it was perfect for that... I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys cozy mysteries” NetGalley review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐</p> <p>“I loved trying to figure out the murder before I got to the end. This was a cozy, page-turning read” NetGalley review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐</p> <p>“This ingenious author has written a cannot put down novel” NetGalley review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐</p>
Briefly, A Delicious Life: A Novel
Nell Stevens • 2022
*A Cosmopolitan Best Book of Summer * One of BuzzFeed’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books* An “exquisite…too lovely to bear” (The New York Times Book Review) debut novel from an award-winning writer: a playful and daring tale about a teenage ghost who falls in love with the writer George Sand. In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when George Sand, her two children, and her lover Frederic Chopin arrive in the village, Blanca is still there: a spirited, funny, righteous ghost, she’s been hanging around the monastery since her accidental death, spying on the monks and the townspeople and keeping track of her descendants. Blanca is enchanted the moment she sees George, and the magical novel unfolds as a story of deeply felt, unrequited longing—a teenage ghost pining for a woman who can’t see her and doesn’t know she exists. As George and Chopin, who wear their unconventionality, in George’s case, literally on their sleeves, find themselves in deepening trouble with the provincial, 19th-century villagers, Blanca watches helplessly and reflects on the circumstances of her own death (which involved an ill-advised love affair with a monk-in-training). Charming, original, and emotionally moving, this “deeply wild debut follows the unconventional love triangle” (Cosmopolitan) between George, Chopin, and Blanca—a gorgeous and surprising exploration of artistry, desire, and life after death.
Did Not Finish
Viper's Daughter (Wolf Brother)
Michelle Paver • 2020
Mirror, Mirror
Cara Delevingne • 2018
Finished
The Midnight Library: A Novel
Matt Haig • 2023
