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Too Busy for Books Book ClubPreviously Read Titles |
Please note: Books not in our collection may be obtained via Interlibrary Loan. |
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How to be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals
by Sy Montgomery (2018; 208 pages)
A naturalist and adventurer discusses the personalities and quirks of thirteen animals who have profoundly affected her, exploring themes of learning to become empathetic, creating families, coping with loss, and the otherness and sameness of people and animals
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Double Indemnity
by James M. Cain (1936; 115 pages)
An unfaithful and unscrupulous wife exploits a morally inert insurance salesman in a scheme to murder her husband and collect his insurance.
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The Stranger
by Albert Camus (1942; 142 pages)
A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character.
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built
by Becky Chambers (2021; 160 pages)
Centuries after disappearing into the wilderness en masse, the sentient robots of Panga return to visit with a tea monk and answer their burning question, “What do people need?”.
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And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer
by Fredrik Backman (2016; 96 pages)
A portrait of an elderly man's struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family's efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go. (From the New York Times best-selling author of A Man Called Ove)
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Open Water
by Caleb Azumah Nelson (2021; 160 pages)
In a crowded London pub, two young people meet. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists - he a photographer, she a dancer - and both are trying to make their mark in a world that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence, and over the course of a year they find their relationship tested by forces beyond their control.
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African Americans of Central New Jersey : A History of Harmony and Hostility
by Beverly Mills and Elaine Buck (2023; 162 pages)
Through grit and determination, the founding Black families of Sourland Mountain and surrounding Central New Jersey put down roots, built homes, established churches and navigated their lives in an unforgiving world. Through extensive research and interviews authors Elaine Buck and Beverly Mills reveal stories of the families who shaped the region for generations.
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Convenience Store Woman
by Sayaka Murata (2018; 176 pages)
Keiko Furukura had been considered a strange child, and her parents worried how she would get on in the real world, so when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her. In the convenience store, she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers' style of dress and speech patterns so that she can play the part of a normal person. Eighteen years later, at age 36, she is still in the same job, has never had a boyfriend, and few friends. She feels comfortable in her life, but is aware that she is not living up to society's expectations and causing her family to worry about her.
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Unaccustomed Earth
by Jhumpa Lahiri (2008; Assigned Sections: 176 pages)
Exploring the secrets and complexities lying at the heart of family life and relationships, a collection of eight stories includes the title work, about a young mother in a new city whose father tends her garden while hiding a secret love affair ...
"Unaccustomed Earth" pp. 3-60
Part Two, pp. 222-332
"Once in a Lifetime"
"Year's End"
"Going Ashore"
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Ellen Foster
by Kaye Gibbons (1987; 146 pages)
Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.
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Ghost Summer : Stories
by Tananarive Due (2015; 336 pages)
A collection that includes a novella and short stories takes readers to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghosts.
Gracetown Section (127 pages) which includes:
"The Lake", "Summer", and "Ghost Summer"
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The Empress of Salt and Fortune
by Nghi Vo (2020; 128 pages)
At once a feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this debut novel follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She's a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.
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Pnin
by Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1957; 208 pages)
Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russion emigre precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950's. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator. Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. ... this gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel will evoke the reader's deepest protective instinct.
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Small Things Like These
by Claire Keegan (2022; 116 pages)
In a small Irish town in 1985, coal merchant and family man, Bill Furlong, while delivering an order to the local convent, makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
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Another Brooklyn
by Jacqueline Woodson (2016; 170 pages)
Torn between the fantasies of her youth and the realities of a life marked by violence and abandonment, August reunites with a beloved old friend who challenges her to reconcile past inconsistencies and come to terms with the difficulties that forced her to grow up too quickly. Reading-group guide available. By a National Book Award-winning author.
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Three Rings : A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate
by Daniel Adam Mendelsohn (2020; 116 pages)
Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Three Rings weaves together the stories of three exiled writers who turned to the classics of the past to create masterpieces of their own-works that pondered the nature of narrative itself. Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who fled Hitler's Germany and wrote his classic study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul... Franðcois Fâenelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose ingenious sequel to the Odyssey, The Adventures of Telemachus-a veiled critique of the Sun King and the best-selling book in Europe for one hundred years-resulted in his banishment... and the German novelist W. G. Sebald, self-exiled to England, whose distinctively meandering narratives explore Odyssean themes of displacement, nostalgia, and separation from home. Intertwined with these tales of exile and artistic crisis is an account of Mendelsohn's struggles to write two of his own books-a family saga of the Holocaust and a memoir about reading the Odyssey with his elderly father-that are haunted by tales of oppression and wandering. As Three Rings moves to its startling conclusion, a climactic revelation about the way in which the lives of its three heroes were linked across borders, languages, and centuries forces the reader to reconsider the relationship between narrative and history, art and life"
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Galatea
by Madeline Miller (2022; 64 pages)
In this short story, Madeline Miller reimagines the Greek myth of Pygmalion and describes how the sculptor brought his gorgeous female statue to life to serve him but didn't expect her to want independence.
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The Crane Husband
by Kelly Regan Barnhill (2023; 120 pages)
A 15-year old girl takes care of her small Midwestern family while her mother, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. However, when her mom brings home a 6-foot-tall crane, the young girl must protect them all from this invasive creature whose demands could destroy everything—unless she changes the story.
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The Hero of This Book
by Elizabeth McCracken (2022; 177 pages)
After her mother's death, the narrator, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary and even though she wants to respect her mother's nearly pathological sense of privacy, must decide whether chronicling this remarkable life is an act of love or betrayal.
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The Red Notebook
by Antoine Laurain (2015; 176 pages)
After finding an abandoned handbag on the street, a Parisian bookseller endeavors to find its owner, the woman whose jottings he discovers in a red notebook within the bag.
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The Captain and the Glory
by Dave Eggers (2019; 128 pages)
When the decorated Captain of the great ship Glory descends the gangplank for the final time, a new leader, a man with a yellow feather in his hair, vows to step forward. Though he has no experience, no knowledge of nautical navigation or maritime law, and though he has often remarked he doesn't much like boats, he solemnly swears to shake things up. Together with his band of petty thieves and confidence men known as the Upskirt Boys, the Captain thrills his passengers, writing his dreams and notions on the cafeteria wipe-away board, boasting of his exemplary anatomy, devouring cheeseburgers, and tossing overboard anyone who displeases him. Until one day a famous pirate, long feared by passengers of the Glory but revered by the Captain for how phenomenally masculine he looked without a shirt while riding a horse, appears on the horizon... Absurd, hilarious, and all too recognizable, The Captain and the Glory is a wicked farce of contemporary America only Dave Eggers could dream up."--Provided by publisher.
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Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
by Lorrie Moore (2004; 147 pages)
The summer Berie was fifteen, she and her best friend Sils had jobs at Storyland in upstate New York where Berie sold tickets to see the beautiful Sils portray Cinderella in a strapless evening gown. They spent their breaks smoking, joking, and gossiping. After work they followed their own reckless rules, teasing the fun out of small town life, sleeping in the family station wagon, and drinking borrowed liquor from old mayonnaise jars. But no matter how wild, they always managed to escape any real danger—until the adoring Berie sees that Sils really does need her help—and then everything changes.
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The Office of Historical Corrections
by Danielle Evans (2021; 288 pages)
Danielle Evans brings her signature voice and insight to the subjects of race, grief, apology, and American history. She is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice and x-ray insights into the complex human relationships. With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters' lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multi-racial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief--all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively. Ultimately, she provokes us to think about the truths of American history - about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight.
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The 39 Steps
by John Buchan (2009; 100 pages)
Richard Hannay - returned to England, after making his fortune in South Africa - is unwillingly ensnared in a tortured plot to assassinate Karolides the Greek premier and so plunge Europe into war. Scudder, an American journalist turned spy has coded information relating to the plot but is murdered in Hannay's luxurious flat before he can pass on the code. Hannay, with all fingers pointing to him as the murderer escapes by Scottish express and with Scudder's coded notebook . . . "Every reading of this splendid and timeless novel reveals further delights that may have been missed before and even well remembered scenes take on a fresh vividness and charm."
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Winter in Sokcho
by âElisa Shua Dusapin (2021; 154 pages)
It's winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape. The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an "authentic" Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows--the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she's pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.
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Cane
by Jean Toomer (2021; 144 pages)
The Harlem Renaissance writer's innovative and groundbreaking novel depicting African American life in the South and North is one of the most significant works to come out of the Harlem Renaissance and a masterpiece in American modernist literature because of its distinct structure and style. First published in 1923 and told through a series of vignettes, Cane uses poetry, prose, and play-like dialogue to create a window into the varied lives of African Americans living in the rural South and urban North during a time when Jim Crow laws pervaded and racism reigned. While critically acclaimed and known today as a pioneering text of the Harlem Renaissance, the book did not gain as much popularity as other works written during the period. Fellow Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes believed Cane's lack of a wider readership was because it didn't reinforce the stereotypes often associated with African Americans during the time, but portrayed them in an accurate and entirely human way, breaking the mold and laying the groundwork for how African Americans are depicted in literature.
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Heart Berries
by Terese Marie Mailhot (2019; 160 pages)
Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father-an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist-who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. Mailhot trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept. Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story, and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people, and to her place in the world.
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The Driver's Seat
by Muriel Spark (1970; 103 pages)
Driven mad by an office job, Lise flies south on holiday ― in search of passionate adventure and sex. In this metaphysical shocker, infinity and eternity attend Lise’s last terrible day in the unnamed southern city that is her final destination.
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Every Heart a Doorway
by Seanan McGuire (2016; 176 pages)
Sent away to a home for children who have tumbled into fantastical other worlds and are looking for ways to return, Nancy triggers dark changes among her fellow schoolmates and resolves to expose the truth when a child dies under suspicious magical circumstances.
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The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
by Elisabeth Tova Bailey (2016; 200 pages)
Bedridden and suffering from a neurological disorder, the author recounts the profound effect on her life caused by a gift of a snail in a potted plant and shares the lessons learned from her new companion about her the meaning of her life and the life of the small creature.
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Black Water
by Joyce Carol Oates (1992; 154 pages)
A senator seduces young Kelly Kelleher at a Fourth of July picnic, and as they head for his hotel, his rented Toyota swerves off the unnamed road and into the black water.
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Panther in the Basement
by Amos Oz (1998; 154 pages)
Set in Jerusalem during the waning days of the British mandate, a novel by the celebrated Israeli novelist features a twelve-year-old boy who dreams of fighting the British and learns the real price of loyalty to a cause.
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The Grammarians
by Cathleen Schine (2019; 258 pages)
The Grammarians are Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. They speak a secret "twin" tongue of their own as toddlers; as adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues - Daphne, copy editor and grammar columnist, devotes herself to preserving the dignity and elegance of Standard English. Laurel, who gives up teaching kindergarten to write poetry, is drawn, instead, to the polymorphous, chameleon nature of the written and spoken word. Their fraying twinship finally shreds completely when the sisters go to war, absurdly but passionately, over custody of their most prized family heirloom: Merriam Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition. A dazzling comedy of sisterly and linguistic manners, a revelation of the delights and stresses of intimacy, The Grammarians is the work of one of our great comic novelists at her very best.
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The Mistletoe Murder
by P. D James (2017; 160 pages)
The Mistletoe Murder from previously uncollected stories by the late Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award-winning author features her popular detective hero, Adam Dalgliesh, in his early years.
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The Maids
by Junichiro Tanizaki (1962; 176)
Follows the lives of the young women who work for the famous Japanese author, Chikura Raikichi, and his family in their wealthy, elegant and pampered household in the years leading up to and after World War II.
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Dept. of Speculation
by Jenny Offill (2014; 179 pages)
An unflinching portrait of marriage by the award-winning author of Last Things features a heroine simply referred to as "the Wife," who transitions from an idealistic woman who once exchanged love letters with her husband and who confronts an array of universal difficulties.
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Call for the Dead
by John Le Carre (1961; 157 pages)
British undercover agent George Smiley accepts one final mission to reveal an insidious plot which may involve a suspect civil servant and a one-time hero of the German underground.
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The Best We Could Do / : An Illustrated Memoir
by Thi Bui (2017; 329 pages)
The author describes her experiences as a young Vietnamese immigrant, highlighting her family's move from their war-torn home to the United States in graphic novel format.
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Glaciers
by Alexis M. Smith (2012; 112 pages)
Isabel is a single twenty-something in Portland, Oregon, who repairs damaged books in the basement of the local library, dreaming of a life she can't quite reach. She is filled with longing--for a life in Amsterdam even though she's never visited, for the unrequited love of a coworker, for a simpler time from her childhood in Alaska among the threatened glaciers she loves, and for the perfect vintage dress to wear to a party that just might change everything. Unfolding over the course of a single day, Alexis M. Smith's shimmering debut finds Isabel looking into her past--remembering her parents' separation, a meeting with an astrologer, and a life-changing encounter with a glacier--and shows us how fleeting, everyday moments can reveal an entire life.
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The Age of Grief
by Jane Smiley (1987; 224 pages)
A dentist, aware that his wife has fallen in love with someone else, must comfort her when she is spurned, while maintaining the secret of his own complicated sorrow. Beautifully written, with a wry intelligence and a lively comic touch, The Age of Grief, captures moments
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Passing
by Nella Larsen (1929; 215 pages)
Clare Kendry, a beautiful light-skinned African American woman married to a white man who is unaware of her heritage, long ago cut all ties to her past, but a reunion with a childhood friend forces her to confront her lies
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The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yōko Ogawa (2009; 192 pages)A strange relationship blossoms between a brilliant math professor suffering from short-term memory problems following a traumatic head injury and the young housekeeper, the mother of a ten-year-old son, hired to care for him, in an enchanting novel that explores what it means to live in the present and to be part of a family, albeit an unusual one. Original. 35,000 first printing.
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The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore (1916; 213 pages)The Home and the World is a 1916 novel by Rabindranath Tagore. The book illustrates the battle Tagore had with himself, between the ideas of Western culture and revolution against the Western culture.
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The Pleasure of My Company
by Steve Martin (2003; 177 pages)
Daniel, a troubled man who lives alone in a Santa Monica apartment, detached from the world, watching life go by, passes his time filling out contest applications, estimating the wattage of light bulbs, and counting ceiling tiles, until his grown attachment to Clarissa and Teddy helps him rediscover the outside world, as well as love and life in the process. 250,000 first printing.
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Night
by Elie Wiesel (1956; 116 pages)
The narrative of a boy who lived through Auschwitz and Buchenwald provides a short and terrible indictment of modern humanity
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Off Keck Road
by Mona Simpson (2000; 167 pages)
Coming of age during the 1950s, Bea Maxwell journeys through life in a small Wisconsin town, having a profound influence on the lives of those around her as she discovers the world from her limited experience of her hometown, in a novel that explores the rewards and costs of remaining home. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.
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On Love by Alain De Botton (2006; 240 pages)In a novel that explores the realities of "being in love," two young people meet on a plane to Paris and embark on a love affair based on what they perceive as destiny. A first novel. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.
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The Body Artist by Don DeLillo (2001; 128 pages)A twelfth novel by the author of Underworld places readers in the world of artist Lauren Hartke, who meets near her rented coastal house a strange, ageless man with an uncanny knowledge of Lauren's life. (General Fiction)
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The 13 Clocks
by James Thurber (1950; 124 pages)
In a cold, gloomy castle where all the clocks have stopped, a wicked Duke amuses himself by finding new and fiendish ways of rejecting the suitors for his niece, the good and beautiful Princess Saralinda
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Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami (2020; 92 pages)Obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches, a young boy, who endlessly draws her portrait, finds his hopes dashed when a friend hears about his hesitant adoration, which changes everything. Original.
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The Old Man Who Read Love Stories
by
Luis Sepúlveda (1988; 144 pages)
Antonio Jose Boliva Proano, an old man who has lived in peace with the Shuar Indians in Ecuador's jungle for over 40 years, takes part in a hunt for an ocelot whose cubs were killed by a gringo and who now kills men
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Khirbet Khizeh
by
S. Yizhar (1949; 134 pages)
"Published just months after the end of the 1948 war that followed the establishment of the state of Israel, Khirbet Khizeh was an immediate sensation. Since then, the book has continued to challenge and disturb, and has even made it into the school curriculum in Israel."--Back cover
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Home
by
Toni Morrison (2012; 145 pages)
The Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sula presents the story of embittered Korean War veteran Frank Money, who struggles against trauma and racism to rescue his medically abused sister and work through identity-shattering memories. 250,000 first printing.
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The Last Brother
by
Nathacha Appanah-Mouriquand (2007; 164 pages)
Unaware of how World War II is impacting the world outside of his Indian Ocean island home, where oppression and survival are daily struggles, 9-year-old Raj meets a Jewish refugee with whom he flees into further danger. Original.
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Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants
by
Mathias Énard (2010; 144 pages)
This historical fiction novel tells the story of young Michelangelo being lured by the Sultan of Constantinople to design a bridge, with the promise of riches, glory and immortality, but soon finds himself ensnared in palace intrigue.
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A Meal in Winter
by
Hubert Mingarelli (2012; 138 pages)
Sent into the frozen Polish countryside to track down an escaped Jewish citizen and bring him back for execution, three German soldiers take shelter in an abandoned house, where their respective beliefs are challenged by a virulent anti-Semitic drifter. By the award-winning author of Quatre soldats.
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Dorothy L. Sayers’ 1923 debut mystery novel is a classic cozy mystery featuring the debonair aristocrat-sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. After a corpse wearing pince-nez glasses is found in a bathtub, Lord Peter undertakes to investigate the deed privately. But determining whether the corpse belongs to a well-known banker or a group of mischief-making medical students is just the beginning of this tangled mystery plot. This atmospheric novel put Dorothy L. Sayers in the ranks with Agatha Christie as a mystery writer nonpareil.
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Afternoon of a Faun
by
James Lasdun (2019; 160 pages)
When his expat journalist friend is accused of sexual assault in a former girlfriend's memoir, a man finds himself caught between loyalty and an urgent desire to uncover the truth. By the author of The Fall Guy
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The Dry Heart
by
Natalia Ginzburg (1946; 88 pages)
"Finally back in print, a frighteningly lucid feminist horror story about marriage The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement, 'I shot him between the eyes.' Everything in between is a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness,desperation, and bitterness, and as the tale proceeds, the narrator's murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability. In this powerful novella, Natalia Ginzburg's writing is white-hot, fueled by rage, stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality; she transforms an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that might pose the question: Why don't more wives kill their husbands?"
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The Loved One
by
Evelyn Waugh (1948; 127 pages)
Mr. Joyboy, the embalmer at a full-service funeral home for Hollywood's departed greats, and Aimee Thanatogenos, the crematorium cosmetician, find their romance complicated by the appearance of a young English poet
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The Final Solution
by Michael Chabon (2004; 131 pages)
Linus Steinman, a nine-year-old Jewish boy who escaped from Nazi Germany, wanders along railroad tracks in the English countryside with a parrot on his shoulder. A feeble old man, once a famous detective and now an eccentric beekeeper, becomes intrigued by the pair, for the boy is mute, while his bird emits a mysterious string of German numbers. Perhaps the numbers are an SS military code; perhaps they will lead to Swiss bank accounts. When a neighbor is murdered and the parrot goes missing, the old man comes out of retirement to help solve the crime.
Book Annotation
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We Have Always Lived in the Castle
by Shirley Jackson (1962; 146 pages)
Deeply unsettling, this novel about a perverse, isolated and possibly murderous family follows their dramatic struggle with the arrival of a unexpected visitor who interrupts their unusual way of life.
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Giovanni's Room
by James Baldwin (1956; 159 pages)
1950's Paris. After a homosexual experience in adolescence, David represses the impulses he finds unacceptable. In Paris he has an affair with Hella Lincoln, and proposes marriage. She considers his proposal on a trip to Spain, David has an affair lasting several months with Giovanni, an Italian bartender. Still unable to reconcile homosexuality with the life he envisions for himself, David travels with Hella, but is discovered by her in a gay bar with a sailor as he struggles to accept himself.
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Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano (1997; 123 pages)Dora Bruder is a biography, an autobiography and a detective novel by French writer Patrick Modiano about a Jewish teenage girl who went missing during the German occupation of Paris.
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The Trick of It
by Michael Frayn (1989; 171 pages)
He has devoted his life to studying and teaching them, even though he is four times as clever as she is. Now, as she steps off the train, arriving to do a lecture for his students, something about her in the flesh sets him thinking. Maybe he has a chance to resolve the one remaining mystery at the heart of things . . .
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A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell (2009; 228 pages)When a housekeeper carries out a modern "Valentine's Day Massacre" on the family that employs her, Detective Chief Superintendent William Vetch investigates to uncover evidence of a personal tragedy that precipitated the crime. Reprint.
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True Grit
by
Charles Portis (1968; 215 pages)
Pursuing a murderer who has escaped into Indian Territory, U.S. Marshal Rooster J. Cogburn teams up with a bounty-hunting Texas Ranger and Mattie Ross, a cantankerous young lady who is bent on revenge
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Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley (1918; 152 pages)Roger Mifflin is part pixie, part sage, part noble savage, and all God's creature. With his traveling book wagon named Parnassus, he moves through the New England countryside of 1915 on an itinerant mission of enlightenment. Mifflin's delight in books and authors is infectious--with his singular philosophy and bright eyes, he comes to represent the heart and soul of the book world.
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Signs Preceding the End of the World
by
Yuri Herrera (2009; 114 pages)
"Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially whenthere's no going back. Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the US carrying a pair of secret messages--one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld"--Publisher's description
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Everything in This Country Must
by
Colum McCann (2000; 160 pages)
In a fourth volume of short fiction, the author of This Side of Brightness and Songdogs captures the tragic implications of political upheaval and tragedy on the lives of individuals trapped amidst the internecine conflicts of Northern Ireland. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.
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And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer
by Fredrik Backman (2016; 96 pages)
A portrait of an elderly man's struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family's efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go. (From the New York Times best-selling author of A Man Called Ove)
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The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros (1983; 110 pages)
"... An intimate album of a literary legend's life and career. From the Chicago neighborhoods where she grew up and set her groundbreaking The House on Mango Street to her abode in Mexico, in a region where "my ancestors lived for centuries," the places Sandra Cisneros has lived have provided inspiration for her now-classic works of fiction and poetry. But a house of her own, where she could truly take root, has eluded her. With this collection--spanning nearly three decades, and including never-before-published work--Cisneros has come home at last. Ranging from the private (her parents' loving and tempestuous marriage) to the political (a rallying cry for one woman's liberty in Sarajevo) to the literary (a tribute to Marguerite Duras), and written with her trademark sensitivity and honesty, these poignant, unforgettable pieces give us not only her most transformative memories but also a revelation of her artistic and intellectual influences. "
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The Lifted Veil
by George Eliot (1959; 75 pages)
"The tale of a man who is incapacitated by visions of the future and the cacophony of overheard thoughts, and yet who can’t help trying to subvert his vividly glimpsed destiny, it is easy to read The Lifted Veil as being autobiographically revealing—of Eliot’s sensitivity to public opinion and her awareness that her days concealed behind a pseudonym were doomed to a tragic unveiling (as indeed came to pass soon after this novella’s publication). But it is easier still to read the story as the exciting and genuine precursor of a moody new form, as well as an absorbing early masterpiece of suspense."
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Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen (1934; 7 / 445 pages)Seven Gothic Tales is a collection of short stories by the Danish author Karen Blixen, first published in 1934.
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The 6:41 to Paris
by Jean-Philippe Blondel (2013; 146 pages)
When stylish 47-year-old Cécile returns from a weekend trip on an early train to Paris, a former lover from the distant past takes the seat next to her, kicking off ninety minutes of intimate introspection and reminiscence.
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Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift (2016; 132 pages)An intensely moving tale that begins with a secret lovers' assignation in the spring of 1924, then unfolds to reveal the whole of a remarkable life.
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Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie (2000; 184 pages)This book tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China's infamous Cultural Revolution.
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Ties
by Domenico Starnone (2014; 144 pages)
When her husband, who left her for a younger woman, returns home for the sake of the children, a woman, forced to carry on as if nothing ever came between them, wonders if she has the strength to overcome the betrayal or the courage to start over. Original.
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Last Night at the Lobster
by Stewart O'Nan (2007; 160 pages)
Managing a failed seafood restaurant in a run-down New England mall just before Christmas, Manny DeLeon coordinates a challenging final shift of mutinous staff members, an effort that is complicated by his love for a waitress, a pregnant girlfriend, and an elusive holiday gift. Reprint.
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The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes (2012; 163 pages)
Follows a middle-aged man as he reflects on a past he thought was behind him, until he is presented with a legacy that forces him to reconsider different decisions, and to revise his place in the world, in a story that inspired the forthcoming film. Reissue. A Man Booker Prize winner. Movie tie-in.
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The Nick Adams Stories
("The Northern Woods & On His Own")
by Ernest Hemingway (1972; 272 pages)
The Nick Adams Stories, published a decade after Hemingway's death, is a volume of short stories featuring Nick Adams - two dozen in all, grouped together according to the major time periods in the protagonist's life. They are based on Hemingway's own experiences as a boy and as a member of the Red Cross ambulance corps in World War I.
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The Unfinished World: And Other Stories
by Amber Sparks (2016; 226 pages)
This collection of imaginative short stories describes the tale of two orphans who take up taxidermy to deal with their grief and an unexpected love story between a free spirit and a glamorous filmmaker with a strange, secretive family.
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A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
by David Gates (2015; 336 pages)
A collection of stories, along with a novella, is filled with well-educated, broadly knowledgeable, often creative and variously accomplished characters each who carry a full supply of the human condition as they are pulled away from comfort into distraction—or catastrophe.
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Every Day is for the Thief
by Teju Cole (2007; 128 pages)
Returning to Lagos after several years in New York City, a young Nigerian writer rediscovers his hometown as both a foreigner and a local while reconnecting with old friends, comparing Lagos to the home of his memory and realizing how he himself has changed. 25,000 first printing.
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Bloodshed (and Three Novellas)
"Usurpation")
by Cynthia Ozick (1976; 178 pages)
Introduces a New York hasidic fund raiser at tether's end, a small African nation's Polish-born international mouthpiece, a young scholar enslaved to her ideal, and a charlatan miracle worker who turns the tables on his mockers.
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Shopgirl
by Steve Martin (2000; 130 pages)
Working as a salesgirl at the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus, Mirabelle, a beautiful aspiring artist, embarks on a love affair with Ray Porter, a wealthy, lonely businessman she meets at the store.
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A Sleep and a Forgetting
by William Dean Howells (1907; 80 pages)
Catriona is a well-respected academic, specializing in the Romantic Poets at a prestigious London college. Everything revolves around her work, leaving no space for personal relationships. She’s the exact opposite of her sister Flora, who enjoys a rural existence in the Cotswolds with her scientist husband and teenage daughter. Then Catriona receives Flora’s suicide letter.
Catriona races to the picturesque village, but there is no body to be found. Has Flora really killed herself, or is this an excuse to vanish -and if so, why? The sisters have spent their adult lives trying to bury what happened in their childhood, but Catriona must now face a very different kind of oblivion before the truth comes out.
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Everything Belongs to the Future
by Laurie Penny (2016; 128 pages)
The ultrarich have vastly extended life spans, while everyone else must struggle for another day's food and shelter, but the rich are in for a few surprises from anarchists and the scientists responsible for their longevity treatment.
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The Girls of Slender Means
by Muriel Spark (1963; 176 pages)
The last months of World War II bring unforgettable experiences to the residents of a young spinsters' club in Londons' West End
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Normal
by Warren Ellis (2016; 148 pages)
In a world dominated by strategists who would safeguard and prepare against a vague and imminent apocalypse, burned-out strategist Adam Dearden is swept up by the mysterious disappearance of a locked-in patient and a conspiracy that challenges his society's entire way of life. Original.
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The Clothes They Stood Up In
by Alan Bennett (1997; 161 pages)
Returning home from the opera, Mr. and Mrs. Ransome discover that their Notting Hill flat has been stripped bare of everything--even the casserole in the oven and the toilet paper on the roll--and are forced to adjust to the possibilities of life without the possessions that define them--until their things mysteriously return.
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The Bookshop
by Penelope Fitzgerald (1978; 118 pages)
In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop—the only bookshop—in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors’ lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence’s warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted.
Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn’t always a town that wants one.
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Brown Dog
by Jim Harrison (2013; 525 pages/Novellas)
An anthology of all of the Brown Dog novellas includes a previously unpublished story and follows the down-on-his-luck Michigan Native American's misadventures with an overindulgent lifestyle, his two adopted children and an ersatz activist who steals his bearskin.
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The Love of a Good Woman
by Alice Munro (1998; 75 pages)
A new collection of short stories by the celebrated writer introduces a rich cast of characters--including a stroke victim who will help a young bride identify the problem at the core of her marriage, a daughter who confronts her father about the open secret of his life, a nurse tending a dying patient, and many others.
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Your Fathers, Where Are They? And The Prophets, Do They Live Forever?
by Dave Eggers (2014; 212 pages)
One man struggles to make sense of his country, seeking answers the only way he knows how.
If you’re Thomas, a young man nursing migraines and a lack of direction, this calls for drastic action. To find some answers, Thomas kidnaps a NASA astronaut and brings him to an abandoned military base on the edge of the California coast. Then the questioning begins. The answers must be honest. The back and forth might even hurt. It might get uncomfortable. But eventually the truth will emerge.
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The Man Who Would Be King
by Rudyard Kipling (1888; 96 pages)
A story of two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. The story was inspired by the exploits of James Brooke, an Englishman who became the first White Rajah of Sarawak in Borneo; and by the travels of American adventurer Josiah Harlan, who was granted the title Prince of Ghor in perpetuity for himself and his descendants. It incorporates a number of other factual elements such as locating the story in eastern Afghanistan's Kafiristan and the European-like appearance of many of Kafiristan's Nuristani people, and an ending modelled on the return of the head of the explorer Adolf Schlagintweit to colonial administrators.
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Learning to Die in the Anthropocene : Reflections on the End of a Civilization by Roy Scranton (2015; 142 pages)Coming home from the war in Iraq, US Army private Roy Scranton thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than ISIS or Al Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, megadrought--the shock and awe of global warming. Scranton lucidly articulates the depth of the climate crisis with an honesty that is all too rare, then calls for a reimagined humanism that will help us meet our stormy future with as much decency as we can muster. |
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Ordinary Love & Good Will (2 novellas)by Jane Smiley (1989; 90 pages - Ordinary Love)From Jane Smiley, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres: a pair of novellas chronicling difficult choices that reshape the dynamics of two very different families.
In Ordinary Love, Smiley focuses on a woman’s infidelity and the lasting, indelible effects it leaves on her children long after her departure. Good Will describes a father who realizes how his son has been affected by his decision to lead a counterculture life and move his family to a farm. As both stories unfold, Smiley gracefully raises the questions that confront all families with the characteristic style and insight that has marked all of her work.
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The Meursault Investigation
by Kamel Daoud (2015; 160 pages)
"This response to Camus's The Stranger is at once a love story and a political manifesto about post-colonial Algeria, Islam, and the irrelevance of Arab lives. He was the brother of "the Arab" killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus's classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling's memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: he gives his brother a story and a name--Musa--and describes the events that led to Musa's casual murder on a dazzlingly sunny beach. Harun is an old man tormented by frustration. In a bar in Oran, night after night, he ruminates on his solitude, on his anger with men desperate for a god, and on his disarray when faced with a country that has so disappointed him. A stranger among his own people, he wants to be granted, finally, the right to die. The Stranger is of course central to Daoud's novel, in which he both endorses and criticizes one of the most famous novels in the world. A worthy complement to its great predecessor, The Mersault Investigation is not only a profound meditation on Arab identity and the disastrous effects of colonialism in Algeria, but also a stunning work of literature in its own right, told in a unique and affecting voice."
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Pastoralia (Stories)by George Saunders (2000; 188 pages)A collection of stories by the author of Civil War Land in Bad Decline focuses on a somewhat skewed version of America and includes the misadventures of a male exotic dancer who is haunted by a departed maiden aunt and a self-help guru given to colorful metaphors. |
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Some Fun (Stories and a Novella)
by Antonya Nelson (2006; 256 pages)
Seven stories and a novella by the award-winning author of Female Trouble follows the experiences of teenagers and their middle-aged parents from western-U.S. states who struggle to cope in a post-September 11 world. Original.
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My life by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1896; 150 pages) Renowned as the greatest short story writer ever, Anton Chekhov was also a master of the novella, and perhaps his most overlooked is this gem, My Life—the tale of a rebellious young man so disgusted with bourgeois society that he drops out to live amongst the working classes, only to find himself confronted by the morally and mentally deadening effects of provincialism.
The 1896 tale is partly a commentary on Tolstoyan philosophy, and partly an autobiographical reflection on Chekhov's own small-town background. But it is, more importantly, Chekhov in his prime, displaying all his famous strengths—vivid characters, restrained but telling details, and brilliant psychological observation—and one of his most stirring themes: the youthful struggle to maintain idealism against growing isolation. |
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Badenheim 1939 by Aron Appelfeld (1979; 148 pages)
A sampling of Jewish middle class life arrives at a resort town near Vienna in 1939 along with the bland inspectors from the "Sanitation department." |
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Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick (1979; 128 pages)In Sleepless Nights a woman looks back on her life—the parade of people, the shifting background of place—and assembles a scrapbook of memories, reflections, portraits, letters, wishes, and dreams.
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Mr. Tall (a novella and stories)
by ;Tony Earley (2014; 224 pages)
A new collection of short stories from the author of Jim the Boy includes tales about a grieving widow who has been visited by Bigfoot and an elderly woman who is plagued by the ghost of Jesse James.
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The Ballad of the Sad Café (and other stories)by Carson McCullers (1951; 58 pages)Six stories including "Wunderkind," "A Domestic Dilemma," and "The Sojourner" accompany The Ballad of the Sad Café, a novella about shattered dreams in a small Southern town.
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A Little Lumpen Novelita
by Roberto Bolaño (2002; 128 Pages))
A woman describes her hardscrabble life as an orphaned teenager on the streets of Rome, after dropping out of school and drifting into a bad crowd, in a novel from the acclaimed Chilean author of 2666.
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Night
by Elie Wiesel (1956; 116 pages)
The narrative of a boy who lived through Auschwitz and Buchenwald provides a short and terrible indictment of modern humanity
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This I Believe: Life Lessons
by Dan Gediman (2013; 208 pages)
The popular This I Believe series, which has aired on NPR and on Bob Edwards' shows on Sirius XM Satellite and public radio, explores the personal beliefs and guiding principles by which Americans live today. This book brings together treasured life lessons of people from all walks of life. Whether it's learning the power of saying hello or how courage comes with practice, their intimate reflections will inspire, move, and encourage you.
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey
by Thornton Wilder (1928; 132 pages)
When a rope bridge near Lima, Peru breaks in 1714, a Franciscan who witnesses the accident feels compelled to learn about the lives of the five people who were killed
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The Nobel laureate weaves a story of a fantastic wedding, the return of the bride to her parents in disgrace, her brothers' resolve to seek revenge on her corruptor, and the towns peoples' refusal to depart from routine.
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A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens (1843; 184 pages)
Ebenezer Scrooge goes on a transformative journey through Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come as he rediscovers the meaning of kindness, generosity, and joy. Set in the heart of Victorian London, A Christmas Carol captures the essence of the holiday season, with its themes of redemption, compassion, and the spirit of giving.
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The Buddha in the Attic
by Julie Otsuka (2012; 144 pages)
The author of When the Emperor Was Divine presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early 20th century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage and the prospect of wartime internment. (historical fiction).
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The Loverby Marguerite Duras (1998; 128 pages)Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras’s childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover.
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My Face for The World to See
by Alfred Hayes (2013; 152 pages)
A man rescues a woman when she staggers into the Pacific and the two begin a relationship that starts out as casual, but quickly moves to troubling and destructive
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Ellis Island, and other stories
by Mark Helprin (2017; 226 pages)
A novella and ten stories cover an extensive geographical range, from the German Alps to the Indian Ocean, the title novella pertaining to an immigrant whose over-active imagination gets him in and out of trouble. Reissue.
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Servants of the Map
by Andrea Barrett (2003; 280 pages)
Spanning two centuries, an intricately woven collection of stories and novellas journeys across landscapes of yearning, awakening, loss, and unexpected discovery, as a mapper of the highest mountain peaks discovers his true calling, a young woman must come to terms with a romantic fantasy, and the lives of many other extraordinary characters unfold in a borderland between science and passion.
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Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy (1912; 144 pages)The protagonist is Hadji Murat, an Avar rebel commander who, for reasons of personal revenge, forges an uneasy alliance with the Russians he has been fighting.
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The Uncommon Reader
by Alan Bennett (2007; 120 pages)
Obliged to borrow a book when her corgis stray into a mobile library, the Queen discovers a passion for reading, setting the palace upon its head and causing the royal head of Great Britain to question her role in the monarchy. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
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Too Loud a Solitude
by Bohumil Hrabal (1976; 112 pages)
This parable of censorship and the modern state centers on Hanta, a trash collector whose habit of salvaging and reading discarded books has brought him both the richness of the classics and the ridicule of his boss
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Ordinary Love & Good Will (two novellas)
by Jane Smiley (1989; 103 pages)
"Smiley's stories lucidly explore the complexities of contemporary sexual and domestic life...the emotional and moral complexity that she uncovers in the characters of these resonant novellas confirms Jane Smiley's singular talent. ORDINARY LOVE AND GOOD WILL is an extraordinary achievement."
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The Driver's Seat
by Muriel Spark (1970; 103 pages)
Driven mad by an office job, Lise flies south on holiday ― in search of passionate adventure and sex. In this metaphysical shocker, infinity and eternity attend Lise’s last terrible day in the unnamed southern city that is her final destination.
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The Actual
by Saul Bellow (1997; 104 pages)
Introduces Harry Trellman, an aging businessman and lifelong outsider whose forty years of longing for an interior decorator is fulfilled, thanks to a billionaire friend.
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