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Simone

Simone
Most recent staff pick: The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon
Hemon's first nonfiction work is a memoir of leaving war-ravaged Sarajevo to resettle in Canada. Hemon emigrated as a young man but his memories of the experience and his life since are sharp and clever and make for an excellent read.

Vegan Secret Supper: Bold & Elegant Menus from a Rogue Kitchen (Paperback)

By Merida Anderson

$26.95

ISBN-13: 9781551524962
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Arsenal Pulp Press, 4/2013

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This new cookbook is absolutely brimming with imaginative dinners, desserts, and treats. It is a welcome addition that inspires you to go beyond basics with vegetables and vegan cooking. Also, the author is the chef and host of actual secret suppers, and who doesn't want in on a secret?

The Polyglots (Paperback)

By William Gerhardie

$17.00

ISBN-13: 9781612191881
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Melville House, 2/2013

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Funny, quirky novel just reissued by Melville House. I am really enjoying the 1925 humor. A young twentysomething gent comes to visit a host of relatives who are down on their luck following the Russian revolution. Hilarity ensues.

The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My (Hardcover)

By Tove Jansson

$16.95

ISBN-13: 9781897299951
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Enfant, 10/2009

A beautiful new format has been given to a classic Moomin rhyming story of lost and found. Laser cut pages lead us on a hide-and-seek through dark woods full of wacky colorful characters. Fun for the little ones and all Moomin fans.

Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories (Paperback)

By Megan Mayhew Bergman

$15.00

ISBN-13: 9781451643367
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Scribner, 11/2012

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These short stories find women in rural towns who relate better to animals, both stray and exotic, than they do their peers. Women who find their strength passed down from mothers and grandmothers. Women wondering what's become of themselves. I looked forward each day to spending time with this book and these women and tried to make it last despite each tale seeming to fly through my fingers.

The Secret of the Stone Frog (Hardcover)

By David Nytra, David Nytra

$14.95

ISBN-13: 9781935179184
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Toon Books, 9/2012

This graphic novel for young readers follows a young sister and brother on a hallucinatory dream escapade. The black and white pen and ink images are thrillingly sinister. Get ready to be pleasantly disturbed.

Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality (Hardcover)

By Jacob Tomsky

$25.95

ISBN-13: 9780385535632
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Doubleday, 11/2012

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A gossipy, tell-all behind the scenes (or front desk, as it were) memoir of hotel work. A slice of life caught with an observant eye and lived with irreverence. It will be especially enjoyed by all of us who've ever worked in the service industry.

Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame (Hardcover)

By Franklin Foer, Marc Tracy

$26.99

ISBN-13: 9781455516131
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: Twelve, 11/2012

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In bursts of a couple to a handful of pages we are introduced to famous, infamous, and little known characters from the late 1800s through present day, each subject discussed by a different author. Highly engaging and informative, often quite witty and surprising, this is a fun and unusual collection.

Boot & Shoe (Hardcover)

By Marla Frazee, Marla Frazee

$16.99

ISBN-13: 9781442422476
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Beach Lane Books, 10/2012

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Twin fluffy dogs spend their days restfully until a squirrel stirs up some trouble. Illustrated and hand lettered by the author, the drawings are energetic and adorable.

The Yellow Birds (Hardcover)

By Kevin Powers

$24.99

ISBN-13: 9780316219365
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Little, Brown and Company, 9/2012

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A powerful work of fiction set in the Iraq war and penned by an Iraq war veteran, The Yellow Birds renders the shattering experience of soldiering with great beauty and deep emotion.

Stories 1,2,3,4 (Hardcover)

By Eugene Ionesco, Etienne Delessert

$19.95

ISBN-13: 9781936365517
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: McSweeney's McMullens, 9/2012

Originally published three decades ago and now reprinted by McSweeney's, these silly strange stories are unlike anything else you're likely to find. The strong 1970s aesthetic of the illustrations suits the imaginative quality of the tales to a T.

Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems: 1960-2010 (Hardcover)

By Ursula K. Le Guin

$22.00

ISBN-13: 9780547858203
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), 9/2012

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This collection spanning Le Guin's writing life thus far roams far and wide. There are mystical poems conjuring gods and personal demons, meditations on the end of life, and lyrical dreams of the natural world. All well crafted and evocative.

Mortality (Hardcover)

By Christopher Hitchens

$22.99

ISBN-13: 9781455502752
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: Twelve, 9/2012

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This collection of essays, written for Vanity Fair during Hitchens' last two years of struggling with terminal cancer, offers the unflinching, clear-eyed meditations on living and dying that we'd expect from this straight shooter. The collection's small size belies the breadth of topics and weight of thoughts within.

Giving Up the Ghost: A Story About Friendship, 80s Rock, a Lost Scrap of Paper, and What It Means to Be Haunted (Paperback)

$15.00

ISBN-13: 9780385342438
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Dial Press Trade Paperback, 8/2012

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This new memoir centers on Eric's drug-addled, disconnected, and otherwise dangerous teenage years. The details and characters he pulls from his memories summon up a vivid sense of his troubled times. It is told from the vantage point of a gentle adult coming to terms with the facts of his life thus far, including the fact that he has not made it through unscathed.

Benny's Brigade (Hardcover)

By Arthur Bradford, Lisa Hanawalt

$19.95

ISBN-13: 9781936365616
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: McSweeney's McMullens, 8/2012

Two sisters discover a pocket-sized walrus who longs to return to the sea. With the sisters' help, and that of some swarthy slugs, he just might make it there...or somewhere even better?? Another stellar McSweeneys/McMullens release.

Crossing the Borders of Time: A True Story of War, Exile, and Love Reclaimed (Hardcover)

By Leslie Maitland

$27.95

ISBN-13: 9781590514962
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: Other Press, 4/2012

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This family history follows the author's mother when, as a young girl, she fled across Europe with her family while the Nazis conquered country after country. Maitland portrays, in visceral prose, the confusion on the ground and the terrifying consequences of not making the right half-informed decisions. After the family eventually lands in the U.S., the fallout from their war-torn lives and choices continues to echo for generations.

Symphony City (Hardcover)

$17.95

ISBN-13: 9781936365395
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: McSweeney's McMullens, 7/2011

This is an epically gorgeous picture book, and an instant classic for me. Chronicling a lone girls wanderings through Seattle's city streets as she follows the threads of music all the way home, you are invited on a full color kinetic journey where the music is surely audible if you listen closely enough.

Here Comes the Cat! (Hardcover)

By Frank Asch, Vladimir Vagin

$12.95

ISBN-13: 9781936365418
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: McSweeney's McMullens, 7/2011

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A picture book in both Russian and English, the graphics are lovely and reminiscent on older time. The familiar travails of the lives of mice who attend school and visit the barber, with a sweet twist on cat/mouse relations. I'm sure little ones will delight in learning "Here comes the Cat!" in Russian as much as I did.

On My Way to Buy Eggs (Paperback)

By Chih-Yuan Chen

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ISBN-13: 9781933605418
Availability: Out of Print
Published: Kane/Miller Book Publishers, 3/2007

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Familiar tale of a young child sent on on errand and the city's goings on through her eyes. But thanks to the author/illustrator the world through her eyes is beautiful and full of fetching detail - iron work and shadows, rough walls and spectacles. It's a pleasure to go on an errand with Shau-yu.

The Happy Lion (Paperback)

By Louise Fatio, Roger Duvoisin

$6.99

ISBN-13: 9780553113648
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: Dragonfly Books, 12/2010

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On the shelves since 1954, this french comedy shows a day in the life of the towns favorite zoo resident, the happy lion, when he goes unexpectedly a-visiting. Kids will think it's really silly in a giggly wiggly way. I ended up wanting more for the lion than he wanted for himself.

Queen of the Black Black (Paperback)

$19.99

ISBN-13: 9781606994597
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: Fantagraphics Books, 7/2011

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This is a great collection. Megan works with several distinct styles of cartooning, and the stories shared span autobiographical to fairy tale. They are intimate, emotional, and dear.

Stitches (Paperback)

$16.95

ISBN-13: 9780393338966
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 8/2010

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This graphic novel is beautiful in its black ink drawings, but the story it tells is full of pain. The images depict with great skill the intensity of suffering and misery in a family unit as experienced by its most vulnerable member, the author himself as a young boy.

The Violent Bear It Away (Paperback)

By Flannery O'Connor

$14.00

ISBN-13: 9780374530877
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 6/2007

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Oh this is SUCH a sharp, dark tale. It is great to be with O'Connor for longer than a short story. Religion raw and twisted as wreckage, family ties and lies, and in the end no redemption for anyone.

Los Angeles Stories (Paperback)

$15.95

ISBN-13: 9780872865198
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: City Lights Publishers, 10/2011

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I am delighted with this collection. Ry's storytelling works as naturally on the page as in his songwriting for which he is more widely known. The stories are set in the 40's and 50's and it's the struggling and the underbelly who people the pages.The picture Ry paints of the lives and times felt very much of that time and place, these are L.A.'s stories and nowhere else's, and they are in good hands.

Among Righteous Men: A Tale of Vigilantes and Vindication in Hasidic Crown Heights (Hardcover)

By Matthew Shaer

$25.95

ISBN-13: 9780470608272
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Wiley (TP), 10/2011

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Shaer uses the dramatic events in a yehiva dormitory, and following fallout and legal battle, as the spring board for this look into the Hasidic community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The lineage of the Hasidic rabbis and how Crown Heights came to figure into the story of the Hasidic Jews of New York is a curious piece of the fabric of our city.

Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy (Paperback)

By Bruce Watson

$17.00

ISBN-13: 9780143119432
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: Penguin Books, 5/2011

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Although I was familiar in a general way with the voter registration drives and freedom schools of Freedom Summer, this book was an eye opener. The violence and tension the volunteers and black citizens of Mississippi withstood those months came roaring off the page. So too did the enormity of bridging the worlds of isolated southern black communities and the outside world though personal connections. Important history.

Great Granny Webster (Paperback)

By Caroline Blackwood, Honor Moore

$14.00

ISBN-13: 9781590170076
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: NYRB Classics, 8/2002

Read and be delighted. A young orphan arrives to live at her grandmothers house, a brittle matriarch unsparing in her judgements and fixed in her way of life. We proceed from there into one of the most clever, wickedly entertaining reads. Just writing this makes me excited to read it again.

A Confederacy of Dunces (Paperback)

By John Kennedy Toole, Walker Percy

$15.00

ISBN-13: 9780802130204
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Grove Press, 1/1994

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This has been a hit since it was published in 1980 and I am so glad to now know why. Set in New Orleans, Ignatius, our protagonist and disaster of a man, gets himself into trouble so far out and convoluted it makes you suspect genius. Of Toole, that is.

It Chooses You (Hardcover)

By Miranda July

$24.00

ISBN-13: 9781936365012
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: McSweeney's, Irregulars, 11/2011

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It's always exciting for me when Miranda July comes out with something new. From back in Olympia Washington days when she was performing downtown making music or presenting slide-shows incorporating herself in curious ways, I appreciate her idiosyncratic view of how things work and what's possible. This new collection puts faces and stories to ads in the Pennysaver. What would have been perhaps too far out in fiction is delicious as a slice of life.

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (Paperback)

By Timothy Egan

$15.95

ISBN-13: 9780547394602
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: Mariner Books, 9/2010

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I like my history books on a human level but big in scope. In the Big Burn we're ostensibly learning about a wild fire in the mountainous west. But through this story we get at the roots of the conservation movement in the U.S., and look in to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.

Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography (Hardcover)

By Errol Morris

$40.00

ISBN-13: 9781594203015
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: Penguin Press HC, The, 9/2011

A startling look and meditation on the power of photographs and photographers to shape and manipulate our understanding of truth.

Foreskin's Lament (Paperback)

By Shalom Auslander

$15.00

ISBN-13: 9781594483332
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: Riverhead Trade, 10/2008

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A memoir of growing up in an occasionally violent, somewhat miserable Orthodox Jewish family and, eventually, rejecting that community as an adult. Auslander tells a tough story with so much humor it almost doesn't hurt.

How My Parents Learned to Eat (Paperback)

By Ina R. Friedman, Allen Say

$6.99

ISBN-13: 9780395442357
Availability: Not On Our Shelves, Usually Arrives In 1-5 Days
Published: Sandpiper, 4/1987

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This picture book tells the story of a young Japanese woman and her courtship with an American sailor in lively, stylized watercolors.