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Sold outYield Under Great Persuasion
A cozy M/M romantasy from the author of A TASTE OF GOLD AND IRON:
"Alongside the sexiness and absurdity (and the sexy absurdity) in Yield Under Great Persuasion is a tender, resonant story of second and third chances and being loved when we need it most and feel we deserve it least. Evocative, emotional, and endlessly entertaining." -Jules Arbeaux, author of Lord of the Empty Isles
Tam Becket has hated Lord Lyford since they were boys. The fact that he's also been sleeping with the man for the last ten years is irrelevant.
When they were both nine years old, Lyford smashed Tam's entry into the village's vegetable competition. Nearly twenty years later, Tam hasn't forgiven him. No one understands how deeply he was hurt that day, how it set a pattern of disappointments and small misfortunes that would run through the rest of his life. Now Tam has reconciled himself to the fact that love and affection are for other people, that the gods don't care and won't answer any of his prayers (not even the one about afflicting Lyford with a case of flesh-eating spiders to chew off his privates), and that life is inherently mundane, joyless, and drab.
And then, the very last straw: Tam discovers that Lyford (of all people!) bears the divine favor of Angarat, the goddess Tam feels most betrayed and abandoned by. In his hurt and anger, Tam packs up and prepares to leave the village for good.
But the journey doesn't take him far, and Tam soon finds himself set on a quest for the most difficult of all possible prizes: Self care, forgiveness, a second chance... and somehow the unbelievably precious knowledge that there is at least one person who loves Tam for exactly who he is-and always has.
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On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A groundbreaking exploration of the ancient rules women unwittingly follow in order to be considered "good," revealing how the Seven Deadly Sins still control and distort our lives and illuminating a path toward a more balanced, spiritually complete way to live Why do women equate self-denial with being good? We congratulate ourselves when we resist the donut in the office breakroom. We celebrate our restraint when we hold back from sending an email in anger. We feel virtuous when we wake up at dawn to get a jump on the day. We put others' needs ahead of our own and believe this makes us exemplary. In On Our Best Behavior, journalist Elise Loehnen explains that these impulses--often lauded as unselfish, distinctly feminine instincts--are actually ingrained in us by a culture that reaps the benefits, via an extraordinarily effective collection of mores known as the Seven Deadly Sins. Since being codified by the Christian church in the fourth century, the Seven Deadly Sins--pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth--have exerted insidious power. Even today, in our largely secular, patriarchal society, they continue to circumscribe women's behavior. For example, seeing sloth as sinful leads women to deny themselves rest; a fear of gluttony drives them to ignore their appetites; and an aversion to greed prevents them from negotiating for themselves and contributes to the 55 percent gender wealth gap. In On Our Best Behavior, Loehnen reveals how we've been programmed to obey the rules represented by these sins and how doing so qualifies us as "good." This probing analysis of contemporary culture and thoroughly researched history explains how women have internalized the patriarchy, and how they unwittingly reinforce it. By sharing her own story and the spiritual wisdom of other traditions, Loehnen shows how we can break free and discover the integrity and wholeness we seek.Sold out -
1984: 75th Anniversary
Written 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever... This 75th Anniversary Edition includes:
- A New Introduction by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Take My Hand, winner of the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work--Fiction
- A New Afterword by Sandra Newman, author of Julia: A Retelling of George Orwell's 1984 "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thoughtcrimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can't escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching... A startling and haunting novel, 1984 creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the novel's hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions--a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time. - Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read - -
The Bee Sting
One of The New York Times Top 10 Books of 2023
One of The New Yorker's Essential Reads of 2023. One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2023. One of TIME's 10 Best Fiction Books of the Year. Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Guardian, The Economist, New York Public Library, BBC, and more. From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart. The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's once-lucrative car business is going under--but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he's on the brink of running away. If you wanted to change this story, how far back would you have to go? To the infamous bee sting that ruined Imelda's wedding day? To the car crash one year before Cass was born? All the way back to Dickie at ten years old, standing in the summer garden with his father, learning how to be a real man? The Bee Sting, Paul Murray's exuberantly entertaining new novel, is a tour de force: a portrait of postcrash Ireland, a tragicomic family saga, and a dazzling story about the struggle to be good at the end of the world.
Winner of the An Post Irish Book of the Year 2023 and the 2023 Nero Book Award for Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize and the 2024 Writers' Prize for Fiction
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - Sam and Sadie--two college friends, often in love, but never lovers--become creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have read before.
"Delightful and absorbing." --The New York Times - "Utterly brilliant." --John Green One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, TIME, GoodReads, Oprah Daily
From the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. -
Perfume and Pain
A controversial LA author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Having recently moved both herself and her formidable perfume bottle collection into a tiny bungalow in Los Angeles, mid-list author Astrid Dahl finds herself back in the Zoom writer's group she cofounded, Sapphic Scribes, after an incident that leaves her and her career lightly canceled. But she temporarily forgets all that by throwing herself into a few sexy distractions--like Ivy, a grad student researching 1950s lesbian pulp who smells like metallic orchids, or her new neighbor, Penelope, who smells like patchouli. Penelope, a painter living off Urban Outfitters settlement money, immediately ingratiates herself in Astrid's life, bonding with her best friends and family, just as Astrid and Ivy begin to date in person. Astrid feels judged and threatened by Penelope, a responsible older vegan, but also finds her irresistibly sexy. When Astrid receives an unexpected call from her agent with the news that actress and influencer Kat Gold wants to adapt her previous novel for TV, Astrid finally has a chance to resurrect her waning career. But the pressure causes Astrid's worst vice to rear its head--the Patricia Highsmith, a blend of Adderall, alcohol, and cigarettes--and results in blackouts and a disturbing series of events. Unapologetically feminine yet ribald, steamy yet hilarious, Anna Dorn has crafted an exquisite homage to the lesbian pulp of yore, reclaiming it for our internet and celebrity-obsessed world. With notes of Southern California citrus and sultry smokiness, Perfume and Pain is a satirical romp through Hollywood and lesbian melodrama. -
A Choir of Lies
The follow-up to the fan-favorite A Conspiracy of Truths "reveals the author's stunning prose, beautiful worldbuilding, and emotional detail," (Library Journal, starred review) and serves as a timely reminder that the words we wield can bring destruction--or salvation. Three years ago, Yfling watched his master-Chant tear a nation apart with nothing but the words on his tongue. Now Ylfing is all alone in a new realm, brokenhearted and grieving--but a Chant in his own right, employed as a translator to a wealthy merchant of luxury goods, Sterre de Waeyer. But Ylfing has been struggling to come to terms with what his master did, with the audiences he's been alienated from, and with the stories he can no longer trust himself to tell. That is, until Ylfing's employer finds out what he is, what he does, and what he knows. At Sterre's command, Ylfing begins telling stories once more, fanning the city into a mania for a few shipments of an exotic flower. The prices skyrocket, but when disaster looms, Ylfing must face what he has done and decide who he wants to be: a man who walks away and lets the city shatter, as his master did? Or will he embrace the power of stories to save ten thousand lives? In this "wise, moving, and captivating adventure" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), a young storyteller must embrace his own skills and discover that a story can be powerful enough to bring a nation to its knees, certainly. But in the right hands, a story can rebuild a broken dam, keep the floodwaters back, and save a life--or thousands of lives. -
The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True, Life-And-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps
Finally back in print, the classic, powerful first-hand account of Nazi persecution of gay people.
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Blackwater
Riverdale meets Stranger Things in this debut queer YA graphic novel, developed from a hit webcomic. Set in the haunted town of Blackwater, Maine, two boys fall for each other as they dig for clues to a paranormal mystery.
Tony Price is a popular high school track star and occasional delinquent aching for his dad's attention and approval. Eli Hirsch is a quiet boy with a chronic autoimmune disorder that has ravaged his health and social life. What happens when these two become unlikely friends (and a whole lot more . . .) in the spooky town of Blackwater, Maine? Werewolf curses, unsavory interactions with the quarterback of the football team, a ghostly fisherman haunting the harbor, and tons of high school drama. Co-illustrated by Jeannette Arroyo and Ren Graham, who alternate drawing chapters in their own unique and dynamic styles, Blackwater combines the spookiness of Anya's Ghost with the irreverent humor of Nimona.
"For fans of Heartstopper and Teen Wolf." --School Library Journal -
Husband Material
Wanted:
One (very real) husband
Nowhere near perfect but desperately trying his best
In BOYFRIEND MATERIAL, Luc and Oliver met, pretended to fall in love, fell in love for real, dealt with heartbreak and disappointment and family and friends...and somehow figured out a way to make it work. Now it seems like everyone around them is getting married, and Luc's feeling the social pressure to propose. But it'll take more than four weddings, a funeral, and a bowl full of special curry to get these two from I don't know what I'm doing to I do.
Good thing Oliver is such perfect HUSBAND MATERIAL.
Brilliance on every single page.--Christina Lauren, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, for Boyfriend Material
The apotheosis of the rom-com.--Entertainment Weekly, A+ Review, for Boyfriend Material
Every once in a while you read a book that you want to SCREAM FROM ROOFTOPS about. I'm screaming, people!--Sonali Dev, award-winning author, for Boyfriend Material
FAKE DATING, REAL FEELINGS, BEST JOKES.--Olivia Waite, award-winning author, for Boyfriend Material
Fresh and vibrant.--Annie Carl, The Neverending Bookshop (Edmonds, WA), for Boyfriend Material
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My Fair Brady
My Fair Lady meets the classic teen film She's All That in this charming and swoony new rom-com from Brian D. Kennedy, author of A Little Bit Country. Perfect for fans of What If It's Us and She Gets the Girl.
Wade Westmore is used to being in the spotlight. So when he's passed over for the lead in the spring musical, it comes as a major blow--especially when the role goes to his ex-boyfriend, Reese, who dumped him for being too self-involved.
Shy sophomore Elijah Brady is used to being overlooked. Forget not knowing his name--most of his classmates don't even know he exists. So when he joins the stage crew for the musical, he seems destined to blend into the scenery.
When the two have a disastrous backstage run-in, Elijah proposes an arrangement that could solve both boys' problems: If Wade teaches Elijah how to be popular, Wade can prove that he cares about more than just himself. Seeing a chance to win Reese back, Wade dives headfirst into helping Elijah become the new and improved "Brady."
Soon their plan puts Brady center stage--and he's a surprising smash hit. So why is Wade suddenly less worried about winning over his ex and more worried about losing Elijah?
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Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
"Extraordinary . . . a profound reflection on one of the great paradoxes of American life--and a tribute to the astonishing indomitability of the human spirit." --Patrick Radden Keefe "A searing, gut-wrenching, and masterfully reported account." --Jill Lepore An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate, by New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. An overwhelming share of them come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, although many migrants come from farther away. Some are fleeing persecution, others crime or hunger. Very often it will not be their first attempt to cross. They may have already been deported from the United States, but it remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. Their homes have become uninhabitable. They will take their chances. This vast and unremitting crisis did not spring up overnight. Indeed, as Blitzer dramatizes with forensic, unprecedented reporting, it is the result of decades of misguided policy and sweeping corruption. Brilliantly weaving the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists, government officials, and the politicians responsible for the country's tragically tangled immigration policy, Blitzer reveals the full, layered picture for the first time. Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is an odyssey of struggle and resilience. With astonishing nuance and detail, Blitzer tells an epic story about the people whose lives ebb and flow across the border, and in doing so, he delves into the heart of American life itself. This vital and remarkable story has shaped the nation's turbulent politics and culture in countless ways--and will almost certainly determine its future. -
Earthlings
From the beloved author of cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, which has now sold more than one million copies worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages, comes a spellbinding and otherworldly novel about a woman who believes she is an alien
Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman was one of the most unusual and refreshing bestsellers of recent years, depicting the life of a thirty-six-year-old clerk in a Tokyo convenience store. Now, in Earthlings, Sayaka Murata pushes at the boundaries of our ideas of social conformity in this brilliantly imaginative, intense, and absolutely unforgettable novel.
As a child, Natsuki doesn't fit in with her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut, who talks to her. He tells her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. One summer, on vacation with her family and her cousin Yuu in her grandparents' ramshackle wooden house in the mountains of Nagano, Natsuki decides that she must be an alien, which would explain why she can't seem to fit in like everyone else. Later, as a grown woman, living a quiet life with her asexual husband, Natsuki is still pursued by dark shadows from her childhood, and decides to flee the "baby factory" of society for good, searching for answers about the vast and frightening mysteries of the universe-answers only Natsuki has the power to uncover.
Dreamlike, sometimes shocking, and always strange and wonderful, Earthlings asks what it means to be happy in a stifling world, and cements Sayaka Murata's status as a master chronicler of the outsider experience and our own uncanny universe.
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Passengers on the Hankyu Line
Welcome aboard the Hankyu Line train! Come along on a heartwarming, funny, and perfectly cozy voyage with the charming and relatable passengers--including one dashing dachshund--whose lives intersect and affect each other on one of Japan's most romantic railway lines from international bestselling author Hiro Arikawa. Between the two beautiful towns of Takarazuka and Nishinomiya, in a stunning mountainous area of Japan, rattles the Hankyu Line train. Passengers step on and off, lost in thought, contemplating the tiny knots of their existence. On the outward journey, we are introduced to the emotional dilemmas of five characters, and on the return journey six months later, we watch them find resolutions. A young man meets the young woman who always happens to borrow a library book just before he can check it out himself, a woman in a white bridal dress boards looking inexplicably sad, a university student heads home after class, a girl prepares to leave her abusive boyfriend, and an old lady discusses adopting a dog with her granddaughter. With stories that crisscross like the railway lines, the Hankyu train trundles on, propelling the lives and loves of its passengers ever forward. -
Hot Chocolate on Thursday (Original)
Across a bridge in a quiet neighborhood in Tokyo, a seasonal cherry blossom sits on the river. Nearby is the Marble Cafe, where a woman writes in a notebook and a young waiter prepares her favorite hot drink. Both wonder about each other and about the other lives of the clientele who frequent this charming little cafe behind the trees...
Without even realizing it, we may touch and change someone else's life.
Taking a walk along the river, cooking the best tamagoyaki, ordering hot chocolate, forgetting to remove our nail polish... The small, everyday acts that we do can lead to unexpected encounters, reverberate far beyond our own circle, and ultimately make a difference in the world around us.
Hot Chocolate on Thursday is a tapestry of slice-of-life moments that each open and close with a woman ordering her regular hot chocolate at the mysterious Marble Cafe. What happens in between will touch and swell your heart, as we connect with a community of untold unfolding lives. -
Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith
2023 Eisner Award Winner for Best Reality-Based Work
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE
NAMED A BOOK WE LOVED BY NPR
Flung Out of Space is a graphic fictionalized account of infamous author Patricia Highsmith caught up in the longing and obsession that would inspire her groundbreaking work of queer fiction, The Price of Salt. New York Times bestselling author Grace Ellis and illustrator Hannah Templer have teamed up to tell Patricia Highsmith's story through the author's eyes--reimagining the events that inspired her to write The Price of Salt, the book that would become a foundational piece of queer literature. Flung Out of Space opens with Pat begrudgingly writing low-brow comics. A drinker, a smoker, and a hater of life, Pat knows she can do better. Her brain churns with images of the great novel she could and should be writing, what will eventually be Strangers on a Train, which would later be adapted into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. At the same time, Pat, a lesbian consumed with self-loathing, is in and out of conversion therapy, leaving a trail of sexual conquests and broken hearts in her wake. However, one of those very affairs--and a chance encounter in a department store--give Pat the idea for her soon-to-be beloved tale of homosexual love that was the first of its kind: it gave the lesbian protagonists a happy ending. This is not just the story behind a classic queer book but also of a queer artist who was deeply flawed. It's a comic about what it was like to write comics in the 1950s, but also about what it means to be a writer at any time in history, struggling to find your voice. Author Grace Ellis contextualizes Patricia Highsmith as both an unintentional queer icon and a figure whose problematic views and noted antisemitism have cemented her controversial legacy. Highsmith's life imitated her art with results as devastating as the plot twists that brought her fame and fortune. This updated paperback edition of Flung Out of Space includes sixteen pages of bonus content with in-depth visual development materials and a teaching guide.Sold out