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Allstora: Reading Is Fundamental Tote Bag
13"x14" Canvas Tote
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Best Woman
The "best woman" in her brother's wedding tells a little white lie in her quest to get the girl--her lifelong crush and the maid of honor--in this wildly entertaining debut novel about bad decisions and life's messiest transitions. Julia Rosenberg loves her brother. Really loves him. Enough to: be the "best woman" at his wedding; leave behind her hard-won New York life, brilliant best friends, and drag brunches for Boca Raton, Florida; entertain the uptight bride-to-be and her vicious cronies; try (and fail) to dodge the hometown hookup buddy she can't resist; and navigate the tricky dynamics with her divorced parents. She's not that nervous. Her family stood by her when she came out as a woman a few years ago. And it's just one week in Florida--a week of old memories and sisterly duties that will force Julia to confront the tensions that have been bubbling beneath the surface of her closest relationships. No big deal. When it turns out that Kim Cameron, the gorgeous, self-assured girl that she crushed on hard in high school, is the maid of honor, Julia panics. She tells a teensy little lie to win Kim's favor--a lie that snowballs out of control and threatens to undermine the blossoming attraction between them and complicate an already challenging relationship with her family. Using her wit, charm, and a suitcase full of couture "borrowed" from a pop star, Julia just might survive the horde of clone-like bridesmaids, go-kart racing bachelor parties, and alcohol-fueled speeches. But she won't make it out unscathed. As best woman, she's making the worst decisions of her life. An utterly contemporary send-up of My Best Friend's Wedding and a riotous coming-of-age novel, Best Woman is rife with crackling wit and devastating poignancy and announces Rose Dommu as an exciting voice in fiction. -
Fire in Every Direction: A Memoir
LitHub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 "I am forever changed after reading this book." --Javier Zamora, author of Solito From the renowned Palestinian scholar, a memoir of political and queer awakening, of impossible love amidst generations of displacement, and what it means to return home. Both a love story and a coming-of-age tale that spans countries and continents, Fire in Every Direction balances humor and loss, nostalgia and hope, as it takes us from the Middle East to London, and from 1948 to the present. Tareq Baconi crafts a deeply intimate, unforgettable portrait of how a political consciousness--desire and resistance--is passed down through generations. In 1948, Tareq's grandmother, Eva, would flee Haifa as Zionist militias seized the city. In the late 1970s, she would flee Beirut with her daughter, Rima, as the country was in the throes of a civil war. In Amman, the family would eventually obtain the comfort of middle-class life--still, a young Tareq would feel trapped: by cultures of silence, by a sense of not belonging, by his own growing awareness that he is in love with his childhood best friend, Ramzi. After relocating to London for college, Tareq hopes to put aside his past, and begins to work through an understanding of self as a queer man. Yet as the Iraq War radicalizes young people around the world towards anti-war protest, history comes back to him: hushed whispers overheard, stories of his mother's years as an activist in Beirut and her return to Palestine during a moment of calm. Living between the region and London, Tareq fits in neither and feels alienated from both. Queerness is policed back in Amman, just as his Palestinian-ness is abroad. These gradual estrangements escalate, forcing him to grapple with what it means to live in liminal spaces, and rethink the meaning of home. Eventually, tracing the journey of his family before him, Tareq returns to Palestine. This is an account of finding oneself through histories of dispossession and reclaiming what has been silenced. -
Death of Us
"A page-turner par excellence, written with unobtrusive brilliance, [and] full of sharply observed lines.... The Death of Us lives up to the hype."
--Stephen King "The Death of Us is astonishingly good--Abigail Dean's the real thing."
--Mick Herron, bestselling author of Slow Horses A CrimeReads and Brit + Co Most Anticipated Book of 2025 It's the night we never talk about.
It's the story the world wants to hear.
But this isn't the story of that night. This is the story of us. Together, Edward and Isabel move to London. They are young and in love, occupied by friends, work and fun. But late on a spring evening when they are thirty years old, their home is invaded by a serial killer. In the wake of this violation, each tries to come to terms with a night that changed everything -- and their marriage begins to crumble. Twenty-five years later, their tormentor is caught, and Edward and Isabel reunite for his sentencing. Isabel has waited years for the man who nearly ended her life to be brought to justice. Edward has tried to think about anything else. As they prepare to deliver impact statements in the public eye, it is time to revisit their love story. Will they finally be able to confront the secrets, longings and lies that tore them apart? Or will the horror of that night be the death of them? A captivating portrait of a marriage and its implosion, The Death of Us digs into the stories we tell ourselves about love -- and everything love can bear. -
The Great Believers
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER
ALA CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER
THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler "A page turner . . . An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it's like to live during times of crisis." --The New York Times Book Review
A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster. Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, The Seattle Times, Bustle, Newsday, AM New York, BookPage, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lit Hub, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library and Chicago Public Library -
Casanova 20: Or, Hot World
A novel about art, desire, and mortality, Casanova 20: Or, Hot World follows a young man isolated by his extraordinary beauty and his strange friendship with an older painter Cursed by an extreme and unrelenting beauty, Adrian has drawn the frenzied attention of adoring strangers since childhood. As a twenty-nine-year-old in New York City, he spends his days drifting between affairs with women (and occasionally men) who provide him with everything he needs, from spending money to luxurious vacations to even, once, a mini yacht. With this generosity comes a dangerous possessiveness that often puts him at risk of much worse than heartbreak. But as people begin removing their masks in the spring of 2021, Adrian's aimless sexual availability is interrupted by a shocking discovery: He is no longer beautiful. Across the country, Adrian's best friend and companion, Mark, a world-famous painter, has returned to the family home in rural Northern California. He's faced with his own horrible revelation: He's dying from the same mysterious disease that will soon take his mother and sister. Despite the depth of their platonic romance, neither man reveals his fate to the other. Feeling as if he's disappearing from sight, Adrian searches for answers among his thousands of lovers. In a race against his failing body, Mark becomes obsessed with watching fifty-two VHS tapes of unknown origin, left to him by his sister, before it's too late. "An astounding writer, seemingly unconstrained by taboos and waist-deep down in the maw of life" (Torrey Peters), Davey Davis presents a modern-day Casanova figure grappling with what it means to find true intimacy when his very existence means constant exposure to the world's violent desire. -
Fruit of the Flesh
Behind the glamour of Gilded Age New York, a marriage of convenience between an artisan and a ballerina masks their shared appetite for revenge in this darkly seductive gothic romance.
In early 1900s New York, former ballerina Petronille De Villier makes an unconventional choice: Marry struggling sculptor Arkady Kamenev. For her, it's an escape from her family's unsavory legacy. For him, the De Villier name promises the patronage his art desperately needs. It should be a simple arrangement.
But beneath their marriage of convenience lurks a darker recognition. In each other, they see a reflection of their own dangerous appetites. As buried secrets surface and bodies begin disappearing, Petronille and Arkady discover their union runs deeper than social advantage. Their shared obsessions draw them into an intoxicating dance of predator and prey, though it's never quite clear who is which.
Bound by law, God, and blood, they must decide if their monstrous natures will tear them apart or forge them into something terribly wonderful together. In a world where nothing is quite what it seems, two creatures of shadow learn that true love requires a taste for the macabre.
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James
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, NPR, THE SEATTLE TIMES, ELLE, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, AND OPRAH DAILY A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view - From the "literary icon" (Oprah Daily) and Pulitzer Prize Finalist whose novel Erasure is the basis for Cord Jefferson's critically acclaimed film American Fiction "If you liked Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, read James, by Percival Everett" --The Washington Post When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river's banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin...), Jim's agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a "literary icon" (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature. -
Necessary Fiction
From the acclaimed author of Vagabonds! an audacious and eye-opening exploration of cross-generational queer life in Nigeria. What makes a family? How is it defined and by whom? Is freedom for everyone? In Necessary Fiction, Eloghosa Osunde poses these provocative questions and many more while exploring the paths and dreams, hopes and fears of more than two dozen characters who are staking out lives for themselves in contemporary Nigeria. Across Lagos, one of Africa's largest urban areas and one of the world's most dynamic cities, Osunde's characters seek out love for self and their chosen partners, even as they risk ruining relationships with parents, spouses, family, and friends. As the novel unfolds, a rolling cast emerges: vibrantly active, stubbornly alive, brazenly flawed. These characters grapple with desire, fear, time, death, and God, forming and breaking unexpected connections; in the process unveiling how they know each other, have loved each other, and had their hearts broken in that pursuit. As they work to establish themselves in the city's lively worlds of art, music, entertainment, and creative commerce, we meet their collective and individual attempts to reckon with the necessary fiction they carry for survival. -
Faggots
Graphically sexual and one of the best-selling gay novels of all time, Faggots is the story of Fred Lemish, who at thirty-nine has built up his body into a fatless state of being in Great Shape. Finally he is ready to find Mr. Right. But from the Everhard Baths, to the Pines on Fire Island, to that place of myth and legend, The Meat Rack, Lemish is looking for his dream lover in all the wrong places. Faggots is a fierce satire of the gay ghetto and a touching story of one man's desperate search for permanence, commitment, and love. -
Palaver
A life-affirming novel of family, mending, and how we learn to love, from the award-winning Bryan Washington.
In Tokyo, the son works as an English tutor, drinking his nights away with friends at a gay bar. He's entangled in a sexual relationship with a married man, and while he has built a chosen family in Japan, he is estranged from his family in Houston, particularly his mother, whose preference for the son's oft-troubled homophobic brother, Chris, pushed him to leave home. Then, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, ten years since they've last seen each other, the mother arrives uninvited on his doorstep. Separated only by the son's cat, Taro, the two of them bristle against each other immediately. The mother, wrestling with memories of her youth in Jamaica and her own complicated brother, works to reconcile her good intentions with her missteps. The son struggles to forgive. But as life begins to steer them in unexpected directions-- the mother to a tentative friendship with a local bistro owner, and the son to cautiously getting to know a new patron of the bar--the two of them begin to see each other more clearly. Sharing meals and conversations and an eventful trip to Nara, both mother and son try the best they can to define where "home" really is--and whether they can find it even in each other. Written with understated humor and an open heart, moving through past and present and across Houston, Jamaica, and Japan, Bryan Washington's Palaver is an intricate story of family, love, and the beauty of a life among others. -
Sold outGood Things Come To Those Who Read
Reading is what? FUNdamental. This sticker says it all.
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Hombrecito
A novel by a brilliant new voice, Hombrecito is a queer coming-of-age story about a young immigrant's complex relationships with his mother and his motherland
In this groundbreaking novel, Santiago Jose Sanchez plunges us into the heart of one boy's life. His mother takes him and his brother from Colombia to America, leaving their absent father behind but essentially disappearing herself once they get to Miami.
In America, his mother works as a waitress when she was once a doctor. The boy embraces his queer identity as wholeheartedly as he embraces his new home, but not without a sense of loss. As he grows, his relationship with his mother becomes fraught, tangled, a love so intense that it borders on vivid pain but is also the axis around which his every decision revolves. She may have once forgotten him, disappeared, but she is always on his mind.
He moves to New York, ducking in and out of bed with different men as he seeks out something, someone, to make him whole again. When his mother invites him to visit family in Colombia with her, he returns to the country as a young man, trying to find peace with his father, with his homeland, with who he's become since he left, and with who his mother is: finally we come to know her and her secrets, her complex ambivalence and fierce love.
Hombrecito--"little man"--is a moving portrait of a young person between cultures, between different ideas of himself. From an extraordinary new talent, this is a story told with startling beauty and intensity, a story for anyone searching for home, searching for a way to love.