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Rare Find
When an aspiring archaeologist teams up with her childhood enemy for a treasure hunt, they find it impossible to bury their growing feelings, in a charming queer historical romance from the author of A Shore Thing. Elfreda Marsden has finally made a major discovery--an ancient amulet proving the Viking army camped on her family's estate. Too bad her nemesis is back from London, freshly exiled after a scandal and ready to wreak havoc on her life. Georgie Redmayne is everything Elfreda isn't--charming, popular, carefree, distractingly attractive, and bored to death by the countryside. When the two collide (literally), the amulet is lost, and with it, Elfreda's big chance to lead a proper excavation. Now Elfreda needs new evidence of medieval activity, and Georgie needs money to escape the doldrums of Derbyshire. Joining forces to locate a hidden hoard of Viking gold is the best chance for them both. Marsdens and Redmaynes don't get along, and that's the least of the reasons these enemies can't dream of something more. But as the quest takes them on unexpected adventures, sparks of attraction ignite a feeling increasingly difficult to identify as hatred. It's far too risky to explore. And far too tempting to resist. Elfreda and Georgie soon find that the real treasure comes with a steep price... and the promise of a happiness beyond all measure. -
Parallel Lines
From the bestselling and award-winning author of the Patrick Melrose novels, a hilarious and moving story about a group of wildly different characters whose fates are improbably yet inextricably linked--a novel about extinction and survival, inheritance and loss, written with St. Aubyn's trademark wit and inimitable style It's the summer, and Sebastian is in treatment following a breakdown that has left him grappling with his fragile grip on reality and his persistent hunger to connect with the biological mother who abandoned him as a child. His therapist, Martin, is facing challenges of his own, including his adopted daughter's tenuous relationship with her own biological mother--a predicament that makes Sebastian's struggle feel uncannily proximate to her own. Olivia is producing a radio series on catastrophic natural disasters, which itself seems to be running parallel to the events unfolding in her personal life, as her best friend, Lucy, faces a grave diagnosis, and her husband, Francis, pursues his mission of re-wilding the world. Over the course of the next year their fates collide in outrageous and poignant ways, as each of their destinies is revealed in a marvelous new light. With characteristic brilliance and humor, Parallel Lines investigates themes of dualism, determinism, connection, and love. St. Aubyn captures the life of the spirit as vibrantly as the life of the mind, in a novel that wrestles with moral and psychic anguish and the cascading consequences of our choices at every stage of life. A thrilling, wholly captivating novel from one of the most gifted writers at work today. -
Gone for Good
NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES - "Gone for Good contains more plot twists than you can count, with a jarring revelation in nearly every chapter. . . . [Harlan] Coben has crafted a taut thriller with a slew of compelling characters. . . . As subtle as a shotgun, and just as effective."--San Francisco Chronicle As a boy, Will Klein had a hero: his older brother, Ken. Then, on a warm suburban night in the Kleins' affluent New Jersey neighborhood, a young woman--a girl Will had once loved--was found brutally murdered in her family's basement. The prime suspect: Ken Klein. With the evidence against him overwhelming, Ken simply vanished. And when his shattered family never heard from Ken again, they were sure he was gone for good. Now eleven years have passed. Will has found proof that Ken is alive. And this is just the first in a series of stunning revelations as Will is forced to confront startling truths about his brother--and himself. As a violent mystery unwinds around him, Will knows he must press his search all the way to the end. Because the most powerful surprises are yet to come. "Coben stands on the accelerator and never lets up. . . . The action is seamless, clear, and riveting."--People (Page-turner of the Week) -
Toni Morrison Box Set: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved
A box set of Toni Morrison's principal works, featuring The Bluest Eye (her first novel), Beloved (Pulitzer Prize winner), and Song of Solomon (National Book Critics Award winner). Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, Beloved transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. This spellbinding novel tells the story of Sethe, a former slave who escapes to Ohio, but eighteen years later is still not free. In The New York Times bestselling novel, The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty and yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes, that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. With Song of Solomon, Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as she follows Milkman Dead from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, introducing an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world. This beautifully designed slipcase will make the perfect holiday and perennial gift. -
Tibetan Book of the Dead: Liberation Through Understanding in the Between
The most accessible and informative version of the Buddhist classic available in English, with instruction in meditation, illuminating commentary, and guidance in the practical use of the prayers
The so-called "Tibetan Book of the Dead" has been renowned for centuries as a cornerstone of Buddhist wisdom and religious thought. More recently, it has become highly influential in the Western world for its psychological insights into the processes of death and dying--and what they can teach us about the ways we live our lives. It has also been found to be helpful in the grieving process by people who have recently lost their loved ones. Composed in the eighth century C.E., it is intended to prepare the soul for the trials and transformations of the afterworld. Its profound message is that the art of dying is as important as the art of living. Drawing on Tibetan spiritual traditions, it shows us the workings of the mind in its various manifestations--terrifying and comforting, wrathful and beautiful--which appear more clearly after death in the consciousness of the deceased. By recognizing these manifestations, we can attain a state of enlightenment, both in this existence and in the existence to come. This authoritative translation preserves the form and spirit of the original and was prepared especially for Western readers by Robert A. F. Thurman, one of the most prominent Tibetan scholars in America and a close associate of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's. -
Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley
Instant National Bestseller A PBS NewsHour-New York Times Book Club Pick "Excellent." --San Francisco Chronicle Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you're a woman. It's time to break up the boys' club. Incisive, powerful, and a fierce rallying cry, Emily Chang shows us how to fix Silicon Valley's toxic culture--to bring down Brotopia, once and for all. Silicon Valley is not a fantasyland of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops for women in tech. Instead, it's a "Brotopia," where men hold the cards and make the rules. While millions of dollars may seem to grow on trees in this land of innovation, tech's aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world. Brotopia reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures even as its companies claim the moral high ground, and how women are speaking out and fighting back. Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao's high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they "won't lower their standards" just to hire women. Exposing the flawed logic in common excuses for why tech has long suffered the "pipeline" problem and invests in the delusion of meritocracy, Brotopia also shows how bias coded into AI, internet troll culture, and the reliance on pattern recognition harms not just women in tech but us all, and at unprecedented scale. -
Crooked Staircase: A Jane Hawk Novel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Jane Hawk--who dazzled readers in The Silent Corner and The Whispering Room--faces the fight of her life, against the threat of a lifetime, in this electrifying thriller by #1 New York Times bestselling suspense master Dean Koontz. "I could be dead tomorrow. Or something worse than dead." Jane Hawk knows she may be living on borrowed time. But as long as she's breathing, she'll never cease her one-woman war against the terrifying conspiracy that threatens the freedom--and free will--of millions. Battling the strange epidemic of murder-suicides that claimed Jane's husband, and is escalating across the country, has made the rogue FBI agent a wanted fugitive, relentlessly hunted not only by the government but by the secret cabal behind the plot. Deploying every resource their malign nexus of power and technology commands, Jane's enemies are determined to see her dead . . . or make her wish she was. Jane's ruthless pursuers can't stop her from drawing a bead on her prey: a cunning man with connections in high places, a twisted soul of unspeakable depths with an army of professional killers on call. Propelled by her righteous fury and implacable insistence on justice, Jane will make her way from southern Southern California to the snow-swept slopes of Lake Tahoe to confront head-on the lethal forces arrayed against her. But nothing can prepare her for the chilling truth that awaits when she descends the crooked staircase to the dark and dreadful place where her long nightmare was born. Don't miss any of Dean Koontz's gripping Jane Hawk thrillers:
THE SILENT CORNER - THE WHISPERING ROOM - THE CROOKED STAIRCASE - THE FORBIDDEN DOOR - THE NIGHT WINDOW
Praise for The Crooked Staircase "An absorbing thriller full of fresh touches . . . Writing his unusual heroine, Koontz keeps the pages alive with attitude as well as action. . . . For Hawk, who is as fearless as she is beautiful, no obstacle is too great, especially with the well-being of her hidden-away five-year-old son on her mind."--Kirkus Reviews "Spellbinding . . . Beautifully plotted and written with notable care and flare . . . The Hawk series . . . is among [Koontz's] best work."--Booklist (starred review) "Unrelenting . . . [Jane] rivets readers' attention. . . . Michael Crichton fans and thriller aficionados who appreciate a fierce female protagonist . . . should be urged to meet Jane Hawk."--Library Journal -
Queer Slashers
From Norman Bates dressed as "Mother" in Psycho to the rouged cheeks of Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, many slasher icons have borne traces of queer and gender nonconforming behavior since the subgenre's very beginning.
Queer Slashers presents the first book-length study of how and why the slasher subgenre of horror films appeals to queer audiences. In it, Peter Marra constructs a reparative history of the slasher that affirms its queer lineage extending back as early as the 1920s. It also articulates the queer aspects of the slasher formula that forge an unlikely kinship between queer audiences and these retrograde depictions of queer killers. Marra establishes a queer history and function for the slasher, analyzing several key contemporary "queer slashers"-that is, slashers that are made by queer filmmakers-to better understand how queer artists take up the slasher iconography and put it toward modern queer aims.
Featuring analysis of films such as John Waters's Serial Mom, Peaches Christ's All About Evil, and Alain Guiraudie's Stranger by the Lake, Queer Slashers illuminates the queer meanings of slashers, their foundations, and their future possibilities. -
Lessons from Cruising
Joyful, wild, gay stories from award winning Martin Goodman.
Meet his cast of characters:
New York designer Arnold, whose lovely life blossoms from age 7. We watch him grow famous then learn from the bumps of life.
A young priest who leaves uptight England to lose and find himself in Turkey.
Queenie, scarred from her time as a beautiful boy, meets young Tom, who loves the fact that she's a wreck.
A young Indian teacher meets an older London billionaire who's not yet out.
And the stunning finale is a gay version of Melville's classic Billy Budd, the tale of a beautiful doomed sailor.
"A ravishing collection, remarkably wide-ranging in subject, mood and tone, each story exquisitely crafted."
- Paul Russell, author of Immaculate Blue -
Vaccines and Your Family: Separating Fact from Fiction
This book is a go-to guide for all families seeking trustworthy information about the science and safety of vaccines. Paul A. Offit and Charlotte A. Moser--scientists and parents with decades of experience--equip readers with the facts they need to navigate vaccine decisions for the whole family, from babies to elders. In straightforward prose, they offer accessible and authoritative answers to today's most common vaccine-related questions.
Offit and Moser explain how vaccines work, how they are made, and how they are tested. Chapters examine vaccine safety, ingredients, the workings of the immune system, and practical considerations from the implications of different medical conditions to missed doses. The book covers vaccines that have been available for decades as well as newer vaccines for illnesses such as RSV, COVID-19, and mpox, including both traditional and mRNA vaccines. The second half of the book is a guide to individual vaccines organized by age groups, including the first and second year of life, ages three to six, older children and teenagers, and adults. A timely resource for all families, this book allays unfounded fears and provides a clear, easy-to-understand picture of vaccines and vaccination. Vaccines and Your Family is a revised and updated edition of Vaccines and Your Child (2011) that expands coverage to include all ages and addresses recent scientific progress. It explores the new recommendations and new questions regarding vaccines that have arisen in the intervening years. -
Woman on the Edge of Time
Connie Ramos, a woman in her mid-thirties, has been declared insane. But Connie is overwhelmingly sane, merely tuned to the future, and able to communicate with the year 2137. As her doctors persuade her to agree to an operation, Connie struggles to force herself to listen to the future and its lessons for today.... -
History of the World in 100 Objects
"An enthralling and profoundly humane book that every civilized person should read."
--The Wall Street Journal The blockbuster New York Times bestseller and the companion volume to the wildly popular radio seriesWhen did people first start to wear jewelry or play music? When were cows domesticated, and why do we feed their milk to our children? Where were the first cities, and what made them succeed? Who developed math--or invented money?
The history of humanity is one of invention and innovation, as we have continually created new things to use, to admire, or leave our mark on the world. In this groundbreaking book, Neil MacGregor turns to objects that previous civilizations have left behind to paint a portrait of mankind's evolution, focusing on unexpected turning points. Beginning with a chopping tool from the Olduvai Gorge in Africa and ending with a recent innovation that is transforming the way we power our world, he urges us to see history as a kaleidoscope--shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising. A landmark bestseller, A History of the World in 100 Objects is one f the most unusual and engrossing history books to be published in years. "None could have imagined quite how the radio series would permeate the national consciousness. Well over 12.5 million podcasts have been downloaded since the first programme and more than 550 museums around Britain have launched similar series featuring local history. . . . MacGregor's voice comes through as distinctively as it did on radio and his arguments about the interconnectedness of disparate societies through the ages are all the stronger for the detail afforded by extra space. A book to savour and start over."
--The Economist -
You Are Simply Perfect! a Mindfulness and Self-Awareness Guide for Tweens and Teens: (Includes Exercises and Journal Pages!)
A self-help guide-cum-journal for self-exploration
Jealousy. Bullying. Anger. Anxiety. Body image issues. Selfies and social media addiction . . . Are you grappling with any of these? Let's be honest, juggling school, extra classes, home, friendships and new relationships can be hard. It's difficult to find balance and really, really tough not to get affected by the 'happy' content we see online. But what is genuine happiness vis-à-vis short-term pleasure? Are we even looking for it in the right place? Written by a renowned psychologist, this beautifully illustrated book is divided into five parts that will help in easing the everyday anxieties. Learn to make friends with yourself, your body, mind and feelings, and how to deal with specific emotions and situations. You Are Simply Perfect! will equip you with life-changing tools to find contentment-in school and outside. Find your own quiet spaces inside this book with journal pages left for you to write and reflect. CREATE YOUR OWN POTION OF CALM - Guided step-by-step wisdom solutions
- Empowering prompts and meditation practices
- Interesting anecdotes
- Plenty of mindfulness exercises to encourage self-reflection
- A perfect gift and keepsakeSold out -
Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women
An anthology of verse by women poets writing in Persian, most of whom have never been translated into English before, from acclaimed scholar and translator Dick Davis. A Penguin Classic The Mirror of My Heart is a unique and captivating collection of eighty-three Persian women poets, many of whom wrote anonymously or were punished for their outspokenness. One of the very first Persian poets was a woman (Rabe'eh, who lived over a thousand years ago) and there have been women poets writing in Persian in virtually every generation since that time until the present. Before the twentieth century they tended to come from society's social extremes--many were princesses, some were entertainers, but many were wives and daughters who wrote simply for their own entertainment, and they were active in many different countries - Iran, India, Afghanistan, and areas of central Asia that are now Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. From Rabe'eh in the tenth century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the twenty-first, the women poets found in The Mirror of My Heart write across the millennium on such universal topics as marriage, children, political climate, death, and emancipation, recreating life from hundreds of years ago that is strikingly similar to our own today and giving insight into their experiences as women throughout different points of Persian history. The volume is introduced and translated by Dick Davis, a scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right. -
Well of Lost Plots
The third novel in the New York Times bestselling Thursday Next series is "great fun--especially for those with a literary turn of mind and a taste for offbeat comedy" (The Washington Post Book World).
"Delightful . . . the well of Fforde's imagination is bottomless."--People
"Fforde creates a literary reality that is somewhere amid a triangulation of Douglas Adams, Monty Python, and Miss Marple."--The Denver Post With the 923rd Annual Bookworld Awards just around the corner and an unknown villain wreaking havoc in Jurisfiction, what could possibly be next for Detective Thursday Next? Protecting the world's greatest literature--not to mention keeping up with Miss Havisham--is tiring work for an expectant mother. And Thursday can definitely use a respite. So what better hideaway than inside the unread and unreadable Caversham Heights, a cliché-ridden pulp mystery in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well itself is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books--like Caversham Heights--are scrapped for salvage. To top it off, a murderer is stalking Jurisfiction personnel and nobody is safe--least of all Thursday. Don't miss any of Jasper Fforde's delightfully entertaining Thursday Next novels:
THE EYRE AFFAIR - LOST IN A GOOD BOOK - THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS - SOMETHING ROTTEN - FIRST AMONG SEQUELS - ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING - THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT -
Hundred-Year House
The acclaimed author of The Borrower returns with a dazzlingly original, mordantly witty novel about the secrets of an old-money family and their turn-of-the-century estate, Laurelfield.
Meet the Devohrs: Zee, a Marxist literary scholar who detests her parents' wealth but nevertheless finds herself living in their carriage house; Gracie, her mother, who claims she can tell your lot in life by looking at your teeth; and Bruce, her step-father, stockpiling supplies for the Y2K apocalypse and perpetually late for his tee time. Then there's Violet Devohr, Zee's great-grandmother, who they say took her own life somewhere in the vast house, and whose massive oil portrait still hangs in the dining room. Violet's portrait was known to terrify the artists who resided at the house from the 1920s to the 1950s, when it served as the Laurelfield Arts Colony - and this is exactly the period Zee's husband, Doug, is interested in. An out-of-work academic whose only hope of a future position is securing a book deal, Doug is stalled on his biography of the poet Edwin Parfitt, once in residence at the colony. All he needs to get the book back on track - besides some motivation and self-esteem - is access to the colony records, rotting away in the attic for decades. But when Doug begins to poke around where he shouldn't, he finds Gracie guards the files with a strange ferocity, raising questions about what she might be hiding. The secrets of the hundred-year house would turn everything Doug and Zee think they know about her family on its head - that is, if they were to ever uncover them. In this brilliantly conceived, ambitious, and deeply rewarding novel, Rebecca Makkai unfolds a generational saga in reverse, leading the reader back in time on a literary scavenger hunt as we seek to uncover the truth about these strange people and this mysterious house. With intelligence and humor, a daring narrative approach, and a lovingly satirical voice, Rebecca Makkai has crafted an unforgettable novel about family, fate and the incredible surprises life can offer.