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Captivating storyteller Nicolette Heavey will be weaving stories for your kids and you at The Book Rack every Wednesday morning . Read all about it »
Check out our line-up for the coming weeks!
Introducing Our Frequent Buyer Program!
We know you’re good customers! This is our way of rewarding you for that. For every $150 worth of books, kids’ books or calendars you purchase, you will get a $10 gift card to the store. It takes only a minute to sign up, and there’s no cost and no card for you to keep track of. Ask a staff member about it!
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
For readers of the bestsellers Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love — a stunning new novel from Lisa See about two sisters who leave Shanghai to find new lives in 1930s Los Angeles. May and Pearl, two sisters living in Shanghai in the mid-1930s, are beautiful, sophisticated, and well-educated, but their family is on the verge of bankruptcy. Hoping to improve their social standing, May and Pearl’s parents arrange for their daughters to marry “Gold Mountain men” who have come from Los Angeles to find brides.
When the sisters leave China and arrive at Angel’s Island (the Ellis Island of the West) — where they are detained, interrogated, and humiliated for months — they feel the harsh reality of leaving home. And when May discovers she’s pregnant the situation becomes even more desperate. The sisters make a pact that no one can ever know.
A novel about two sisters, two cultures, and the struggle to find a new life in America while bound to the old, Shanghai Girls is a fresh, fascinating adventure from beloved and bestselling author Lisa See.
The Last Child by John Hart
A year after 12-year-old Alyssa Merrimon disappeared on her way home from the library in an unnamed rural North Carolina town, her twin brother, Johnny, continues to search the town, street by street, even visiting the homes of known sex offenders, in this chilling novel from Edgar-winner Hart. Det. Clyde Hunt, the lead cop on Alyssa’s case, keeps a watchful eye on Johnny and his mother, who has deteriorated since Alyssa’s abduction and her husband’s departure soon afterward. When a second girl is snatched, Johnny is even more determined to find his sister, convinced that the perpetrator is the same person who took Alyssa. What he unearths is more sinister than anyone imagined, sending shock waves through the community and putting Johnny’s own life in danger. Despite a tendency to dip into melodrama, Hart spins an impressively layered tale of broken families and secrets that can kill.
How It Ended by Jay McInerney
McInerney’s name is most associated with his splashy first novel, Bright Lights, Big City, which helped define contemporary urban-chic fiction. Other novels followed, and it may come as a surprise to readers of such trendy fiction as McInerney’s that he is a splendid short-story writer. He writes about the same people and places as in his novels; on the other hand, he certainly understands the special qualities of the short story, saying in the preface to this career-spanning collection of 26 stories that “a good one requires perfect pitch and a precise sense of form; it has to burn with a hard, gem-like flame.” His stories are reminiscent of those of F. Scott Fitzgerald, John O’Hara, and Irwin Shaw. This collection is not to be missed!
A Prayer For The Dying by Stewart O’Nan
When his town’s sleepy summer tranquility is shattered by an outbreak of diphtheria, Jacob Hansen — constable, deacon, and undertaker—stares at an impossible dilemma: save both himself and his family or observe his many duties? Although he’s nearly convinced that it’s possible to do both, the inexorable and crushing horror of Stewart O’Nan’s fifth novel, A Prayer for the Dying, is that evil doesn’t flinch, that its insistence can obliterate goodness, corrupt humility. “When won’t faith save you?” Jacob wonders; the silence soon deafens him. An ostensibly inured Civil War veteran, Jacob watches helplessly as his neighbors in tiny Friendship, Wisconsin, are stricken with disease: simply hearing a mother say of her daughter, “She’s sick,” becomes chilling. Yet even as his wife and baby fall ill, Jacob patiently, dutifully tends to the helpless and buries the dead. When panic erupts, however, and he grapples with the tragedies accumulating before him, he feels the prick of spiritual doubt, even succumbs to violence. “Is this the devil’s work?” Jacob asks as he struggles to discern the good in a world without order, watches those he serves turn against him, and disregards his own moral outrage.
Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk
Palahniuk’s tenth novel is a potent if cartoonish cultural satire that succeeds despite its stridently confounding prose. A gang of adolescent terrorists trained by an unspecified totalitarian state (the boys and girls are guided by quotations attributed to Marx, Hitler, Augusto Pinochet, Idi Amin, etc.) infiltrate America as foreign exchange students. Their mission: to bring the nation to its knees through Operation Havoc, an act of mass destruction disguised as a science project. Narrated by skinny 13-year-old Pgymy, the propulsive plot deconstructs American fixtures, among them church (religion propaganda distribution outlet), spelling bees (forced battle to list English alphabet letters) and TV news reporters (Horde scavenger feast at overflowing anus of world history), before moving on to a Columbine-like shooting spree by a closeted kid who has fallen in love with the teenage terrorist who raped him in a shopping mall bathroom. Decoding Palahniuk’s characteristically scathing observations is a challenge, as Pygmy’s narrative voice is unbound by rules of grammar or structure (a typical sentence: Host father mount altar so stance beside bin empty of water), but perseverance is its own perverse reward in this singular, comic accomplishment.
Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox
There are many words to describe Michael J. Fox: Actor. Husband. Father. Activist. But readers of Always Looking Up will soon add another to the list: Optimist. Michael writes about the hard-won perspective that helped him see challenges as opportunities. Instead of building walls around himself, he developed a personal policy of engagement and discovery: an emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual outlook that has served him throughout his struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Michael’s exit from a very demanding, very public arena offered him the time-and the inspiration-to open up new doors leading to unexpected places. One door even led him to the center of his own family, the greatest destination of all.
The last ten years, which is really the stuff of this book, began with such a loss: my retirement from Spin City. I found myself struggling with a strange new dynamic: the shifting of public and private personas. I had been Mike the actor, then Mike the actor with PD. Now was I just Mike with PD? Parkinson’s had consumed my career and, in a sense, had become my career. But where did all of this leave Me? I had to build a new life when I was already pretty happy with the old one.
Always Looking Up is a memoir of this last decade, told through the critical themes of Michael’s life: work, politics, faith, and family. The book is a journey of self-discovery and reinvention, and a testament to the consolations that protect him from the ravages of Parkinson’s.
Resilience by Elizabeth Edwards
She’s one of the most beloved political figures in the country, and on the surface, seems to have led a charmed life. In many ways, she has. Beautiful family. Thriving career. Supportive friendship. Loving marriage. But she’s no stranger to adversity. Many know of the strength she had shown after her son, Wade, was killed in a freak car accident when he was only sixteen years old. She would exhibit this remarkable grace and courage again when the very private matter of her husband’s infidelity became public fodder. And her own life has been on the line. Days before the 2004 presidential election — when her husband John was running for vice president — she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After rounds of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation the cancer went away — only to return in 2007.
While on the campaign trail, Elizabeth met many others who have had to contend with serious adversity in their lives, and in Resilience, she draws on their experiences as well as her own, crafting an unsentimental and ultimately inspirational meditation on the gifts we can find among life’s biggest challenges. This short, powerful, pocket-sized inspirational book makes an ideal gift for anyone dealing with difficulties in their life, who can find peace in knowing they are not alone, and the promise that things can get better.
When The Rivers Ran Red by Vivienne Sosnowski
Sosnowski’s fascinating account of how Napa and Sonoma winemakers struggled to survive during the national insanity known as Prohibition fills a giant hole in the history of American wine. Wine lovers everywhere should thank her for tracking down survivors, many now in their 90s, who provided rich accounts of what it was like to live through that terrible nightmare. Sosnowski’s exquisite writing brings to life a chapter of American history that has largely been forgotten. Anyone who enjoys California’s legendary wines will absolutely adore When the Rivers Ran Red. This is a book to be savored.
Fordlandia by Greg Grandin
Proving that truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, Fordlandia is the story of Henry Ford’s ill-advised attempt to transform raw Brazilian rainforest into homespun slices of Americana. With sales of his Model-T booming, the automotive tycoon saw an opportunity to expand his reach further by exploiting a downtrodden Brazilian rubber industry. His vision, the laughably-named Amazonian outpost of Fordlandia, would become an enviable symbol of efficiency and mark the Ford Motor Company as a player on the global stage. . . . Or so he thought. With thoughtful and meticulous research, author Greg Grandin explores the astounding oversights (no botanists were consulted to confirm the colony’s agricultural viability) and painful arrogance (little thought was paid to how native Brazilians would react to an American way of life) that hamstrung the project from the start. Instead of ushering in a new era of commerce, Fordlandia became a cautionary tale of a dream destroyed by hubris.
We Two by Gillian Gill
It was the most influential marriage of the nineteenth century — and one of history’s most enduring love stories. Traditional biographies tell us that Queen Victoria inherited the throne as a naïve teenager, when the British Empire was at the height of its power, and seemed doomed to find failure as a monarch and misery as a woman until she married her German cousin Albert and accepted him as her lord and master. Now renowned chronicler Gillian Gill turns this familiar story on its head, revealing a strong, feisty queen and a brilliant, fragile prince working together to build a family based on support, trust, and fidelity, qualities neither had seen much of as children. The love affair that emerges is far more captivating, complex, and relevant than that depicted in any previous account.
As Gill shows, the marriage of Victoria and Albert was great not because it was perfect but because it was passionate and complicated. Wonderfully nuanced, surprising, often acerbic — and informed by revealing excerpts from the pair’s journals and letters — We Two is a revolutionary portrait of a queen and her prince, a fascinating modern perspective on a couple who have become a legend.
