member
Captivating storyteller Nicolette Heavey will be weaving stories for your kids and you at The Book Rack every Wednesday morning . Read all about it »
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!
NEW TITLES – Fiction
The Garden of Last Days
by Andre Dubus III
From local author Andre Dubus III (#1 bestseller House of Sand and Fog) comes a riveting new novel. Early one September night in Florida, a young mother brings her daughter to work. April’s usual babysitter is unavailable and April thinks it best if she take her three year old daughter with her. She can keep her close by, watching videos in the office, while she works — as a stripper at the Puma Club for Men. On this night she has an unusual client, a foreigner who is both remote and too personal, and very free with lots of money. Meanwhile, another man, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favorite stripper, and he’s drunk and angry and lonely. From this seedy beginning this story about sex, parenthood, honor and masculinity unfolds.
The Other by David Guterson
From the author of the best-selling Snow Falling on Cedars, comes a new novel about youth and idealism, adulthood and its compromises, and two powerfully different visions of what it means to live a good life.
John William Barry has inherited wealth and standing in the community; Neil Countryman is blue-collar Irish. When the two boys meet in 1972 at age sixteen, they’re drawn to each other by what they have in common: a fierce intensity and a love of the outdoors that takes them into Washington’s remote backcountry, where they must rely on their wits-and each other-to survive.
Soon after graduating from college, Neil sets out on a path toward a life as a devoted schoolteacher and family man. John William makes a completely different choice, dropping out of college and moving deep into the woods. When John William enlists Neil to help him disappear completely, Neil finds himself drawn into a web of secrets, deceit, and tragedy.
Skeletons at the Feast
by Chris Bohjalian
In January 1945, in the waning months of WWII, a small group begins the longest journey of their lives: an attempt to reach the British and American lines and ultimately freedom. Among the group is eighteen year old Anna, her lover Callum, a twenty-two year old Scottish POW who was brought to Anna’s family farm as forced labor, and a twenty-six year old Wehrmacht corporal who is, in reality, a Jew from Germany who managed to escape from a train bound for Auschwitz. As they work their way toward freedom the love of Anna and Collum is tested as well as their friendship with Uri.
Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey
From the author of A Million Little Pieces comes a first novel. The reader encounters lots of quirky characters — some never to be seen again — but Frey spotlights a few of LA’s lost souls and their disparate lives: a bright, ambitious young Mexican-American woman who allows her future to be undone by a moment of searing humiliation; a narcissistic action-movie star whose passion for the unattainable object of his affection nearly destroys him; a couple, both nineteen years old, who flee their suffocating hometown and struggle to survive on the fringes of LA; and an aging Venice Beach alcoholic whose life is turned upside down when a meth-addicted teenage girl shows up half-dead outside the restroom he calls home.
Non-Fiction
Touching History by Lynn Spencer
Who can forget that beautiful blue morning of 9/11? This is a gripping moment-to-moment narrative bringing the reader inside the control towers, the cockpits of the ill-fated airliners and the fighter jets sent to intercept those airliners. The author herself is a commercial pilot who knew the true scope of what was happening on that fateful morning. This book is the culmination of hundreds of interviews, untold hours of tapes and volumes of transcripts which intimately tells the story of a day which changed our nation forever.
The Last Fish Tale by Mark Kurlansky
A new look at a disappearing way of life: fishing — and how it has thrived in and defined Gloucester, Massachusetts for centuries.
The once thriving fishing communities of Rockport, Nantucket, Newport, Mystic, and many other coastal towns from Newfoundland to Florida and along the West Coast have been forced to abandon their roots and become tourist destinations instead. Gloucester, Massachusetts, however, is a rare survivor. The livelihood of America’s oldest fishing port has always been rooted in the life and culture of commercial fishing. Captain John Smith championed the bountiful waters off the coast of Gloucester, convincing new settlers to come to the area. The city became the most productive fishery in New England. With the introduction of a faster fishing boat — the schooner — the industry flourished. In the twentieth century, the arrival of Portuguese, Jews, and Sicilians turned the bustling center into a melting pot. Artists and writers such as Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, and T. S. Eliot came to the fishing town and found inspiration. Today overfishing, along with climate change and pollution, warns of the possible extinction of the very species that fishermen depend on to survive.
Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall
The author’s own story of growing up in a polygamous sect. In 2007 the author was the star witness against sect leader Warren Jeffs. She detailed how she was forced to marry her first cousin at age fourteen and submit to her husband in “mind, body, and soul.” For years she was forced to endure the pain and abuse of her loveless marriage and it eventually pushed her to spend nights sleeping in her truck rather than face her abuser in her bed. One night a chance encounter with a stranger named Lamont Barlow set in motion the events that would give her the strength to break free from her church. This is a story of survival, hope and freedom for one woman who stood up to reclaim her life.
A Wolf at the Table
by Augusten Burroughs
Growing up Augusten Burroughs’s father was a shadow of a presence in his life. As he grew older something darker began to emerge within his father. In this latest work Burroughs begins to explore the complex relationship between love and hate and the terrifying relationship between him and his father. Although this harrowing at times and brutal in its honesty it will ultimately leave the reader with a sense of the power of hope.
