New Staff Picks


 

Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life: A Memoir By Delia Ephron Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9780316267755
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Back Bay Books - January 31st, 2023

Yes, Delia is Nora’s sister and shares her humor, insight, linguistic gifts and the genetic marker which led to Nora’s cancer and death. LEFT ON TENTH is that rare memoir which recounts the highs and lows of love, grief and renewal. Scary, poignant, yet hopeful and uplifting. 

— Cheryl


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Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory By Janet Malcolm, Ian Frazier (Introduction by), Anne Malcolm (Afterword by) Cover Image
By Janet Malcolm, Ian Frazier (Introduction by), Anne Malcolm (Afterword by)
$26.00
ISBN: 9780374605131
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - January 10th, 2023


 

Janet Malcolm's talent is so gargantuan that I imagined she emerged, fully formed at her desk crafting perfect, scathing sentences, so it was an unexpected delight to read this series of essays about her childhood. They are as enchanting as they are fascinating investigations into memory, family, and time itself.

— Mikaela


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Big Swiss: A Novel By Jen Beagin Cover Image
$27.00
ISBN: 9781982153083
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Scribner - February 7th, 2023

I love Jen Beagin’s freak brain. Greta and Flavia worked their way into my heart and mind just like the bees in Greta’s kitchen, and I built a glass box to preserve them there. Weird, dark, painfully lovable, sometimes tender, and often hilarious, there’s no one in this book I wouldn’t want to bum a ciggie from.

— kathryn


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Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India By Suchitra Vijayan Cover Image
$29.99
ISBN: 9781612198583
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Melville House - May 25th, 2021

A searing, intensely moving journalistic and photographic investigation into the lives and societies destroyed by the partition of India and the brutality of the modern system of nation states and militarized borders.

— Daniel


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Seven Empty Houses By Samanta Schweblin, Megan McDowell (Translated by) Cover Image
By Samanta Schweblin, Megan McDowell (Translated by)
$25.00
ISBN: 9780525541394
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Riverhead Books - October 18th, 2022

The seven houses in this short story collection are certainly haunted, but there are no ghosts in the attic, or ghouls under the stairs. The inhabitants of Schweblin's houses are instead haunted by domestic horrors and everyday worries. The result is unsettling and astoundingly beautiful.

— Mikaela


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People from My Neighborhood: Stories By Hiromi Kawakami, Ted Goossen (Translated by) Cover Image
By Hiromi Kawakami, Ted Goossen (Translated by)
$15.95
ISBN: 9781593767112
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Soft Skull - November 30th, 2021

A strange and weird collection of stories about the inhabitants of a particular neighborhood. The stories begin a little oddly but are grounded in reality before taking a turn into the realm of the surreal. But it's so much fun reading about the slice of life activities of the truly bizarre inhabitants!

— Morgan


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When We Lost Our Heads: A Novel By Heather O'Neill Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780593422915
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Riverhead Books - February 7th, 2023

I support women's rights but more importantly I support women's wrongs. <3

— Melanie


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The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War By Nicholas Mulder Cover Image
$32.50
ISBN: 9780300259360
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Yale University Press - January 25th, 2022

This excellent work of economic history traces how the blockade - an act of total war and systematic starvation of entire societies - was reformulated as standard peacetime diplomacy. Granular economic history that never loses contact with the political personalities or the lived consequences of their choices.

— Daniel


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Our Share of Night: A Novel By Mariana Enriquez, Megan McDowell (Translated by), Pablo Gerardo Camacho (Illustrator) Cover Image
By Mariana Enriquez, Megan McDowell (Translated by), Pablo Gerardo Camacho (Illustrator)
$28.99
ISBN: 9780451495143
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Hogarth - February 7th, 2023

If you thought your family had issues, wait until you meet this one... A masterpiece in horror and translation, unsettling as it is intriguing, Mariana Enriquez's sweeping debut novel spans decades, combining Argentina's dark military history with the darkest kinds of magic and sacrifice.

— Melanie


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The School for Good Mothers: A Novel By Jessamine Chan Cover Image
$17.99
ISBN: 9781982156138
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books - February 7th, 2023

A miracle any of us make it, truly.

— Genay


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The Dinner List: A Novel By Rebecca Serle Cover Image
$17.99
ISBN: 9781250295194
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Flatiron Books - June 4th, 2019

Books don't make me cry. But something about Serle's work makes me tear up every time. She finds the perfect way to show how platonic, familial & romantic love affects us while intertwining the past & the present. I don't know how she does it, but she succeeds in capturing the raw human experience.

— Asia


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My Manservant and Me By Hervé Guibert, Jeffrey Zuckerman (Translator), Shiv Kotecha (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Hervé Guibert, Jeffrey Zuckerman (Translator), Shiv Kotecha (Foreword by)
$15.95
ISBN: 9781643621524
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Nightboat Books - October 25th, 2022

Twisted, depraved, and thoroughly delicious, Guibert's "My Manservant and Me" limns an uncanny portrait of a sadomasochistic relationship. Told with disarming humor and startling frankness, at its center lies an intriguing philosophical question: to what extent do our desires destroy us?

— Enzo


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The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches By Matsuo Basho, Nobuyuki Yuasa (Translated by), Nobuyuki Yuasa (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Matsuo Basho, Nobuyuki Yuasa (Translated by), Nobuyuki Yuasa (Introduction by)
$16.00
ISBN: 9780140441857
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Penguin Classics -

Basho chronicles his travels across Japan, interspersing poems he and his friends write along the way. Though this classic (and actually pretty hilarious) book is less travel diary and more friendship diary. In one scene, Basho and his friends sit around watching the moon and writing poems. True modern-day softbois.

— Maslen


Rikers: An Oral History By Graham Rayman, Reuven Blau Cover Image
$28.99
ISBN: 9780593134214
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Random House - January 17th, 2023

Although everyone should be aware that Riker's is a terrible place and it's namesake is infamously known for abusing the fugitive slave act, this book is still needed! It was disheartening to read first hand accounts from detainees to correctional officers that stem back decades. Must read!

— Aneesah


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Run: Book One By John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, L. Fury (Illustrator), Nate Powell (Illustrator) Cover Image
By John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, L. Fury (Illustrator), Nate Powell (Illustrator)
$24.99
ISBN: 9781419730696
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Abrams ComicArts - August 3rd, 2021

Run is a poignant non-fiction resource that follows the life of former Congressman John Lewis and his vital role during the civil rights movement. Through the evocative illustrations, Lewis shares the often-overlooked moments after the marches to inspire future generations: "First you March, then you Run."

— Darline


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Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today By Carla Acevedo-Yates (Editor), Madeleine Grynsztejn (Foreword by), Carlos Garrido Castellano (Text by (Art/Photo Books)) Cover Image
By Carla Acevedo-Yates (Editor), Madeleine Grynsztejn (Foreword by), Carlos Garrido Castellano (Text by (Art/Photo Books))
$65.00
ISBN: 9781636810614
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Delmonico Books - January 10th, 2023

Forecast Form, currently on view at Chicago's MCA, is the first major group exhibition in the U.S. featuring contemporary artists from the Caribbean. The catalog includes full color plates of exhibition artworks, essays and a discussion with the curator and featured artists. This is a collector's item!

— S.D.


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Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern By Jing Tsu Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780735214729
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Riverhead Books - January 18th, 2022

A beautiful account of the development of modern Chinese, shifting seamlessly between accounts of linguistic theory, high politics, mass cultural shifts, the bickering of international communication forums, and generations of brilliant engineers working to allow for global communication between billions.

— Daniel


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Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia By David Graeber Cover Image
$27.00
ISBN: 9780374610197
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - January 24th, 2023

Radically experimental political actions connect Malagasy social traditions and the democratic economic model of pirate ships. Conmen, liars, and braggarts make fools of the evilest Europeans, keeping away the imperialists for nearly a century. Funny and thrilling and utterly fascinating.

— Daniel


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The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965 By Dawn Powell, Tim Page (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Dawn Powell, Tim Page (Introduction by)
$34.99
ISBN: 9781883642259
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Steerforth - August 1st, 1998

In January of 2023, I spent 35 years with Dawn Powell. At the end, yesterday and half a century ago, she died. I said goodbye to my subway book, and to the private world of America’s great forgotten novelist. These are precious pages for writers, readers, New Yorkers, and all defenders of wit in a humorless world.

- Jack