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The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas. In September 1913, Mieczyslaw, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort in what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior? Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone--or something--seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczyslaw realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target. A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling. -
Sold outThe History of Sound: Stories
"Exquisitely crafted, deeply imagined, exhilaratingly diverse, The History of Sound places Ben Shattuck firmly among the very finest of our storytellers."
--Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author of Horse A stunning collection of interconnected stories, set in New England, exploring how the past is often misunderstood and how history, family, heartache, and desire can echo over centuries In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations. In Ben Shattuck's ingenious collection, each story has a companion story, which contains a revelation about the previous, paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed, history is refracted, and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families. The haunting title story recalls the journey of two men who meet around a piano in a smoky, dim bar, only to spend a summer walking the Maine woods collecting folk songs in the shadow of the First World War, forever marked by the odyssey. Decades later, in another story, a woman discovers the wax cylinders recorded that fateful summer while cleaning out her new house in Maine. Shattuck's inventive, exquisite stories transport readers from 1700s Nantucket to the contemporary woods of New Hampshire and beyond--into landscapes both enduring and unmistakably modern. Memories, artifacts, paintings, and journals resurface in surprising and poignant ways among evocative beaches, forests, and orchards, revealing the secrets, misunderstandings, and love that linger across centuries. Written with breathtaking humanity and humor, The History of Sound is a love letter to New England, a radiant conversation between past and present, and a moving meditation on the abiding search for home.Sold out -
Other Rivers: A Chinese Education
An intimate and revelatory eyewitness account of two generations of students in China's heartland, chronicling a country in the midst of tumultuous change through the prism of its education system More than twenty years after teaching English to China's first boom generation at a small college in Sichuan Province, Peter Hessler returned to Sichuan to teach the next generation. At the same time, Hessler and his wife enrolled their twin daughters in a local state-run elementary school, where they were the only Westerners in a student body of about two thousand. Over the years, Hessler had kept in close contact with more than a hundred of his former students, who were now in their forties. By reconnecting with these individuals--members of China's "Reform generation" --while teaching current undergrads, Hessler was able to gain a unique perspective on China's incredible transformation over the past quarter-century. In the late 1990s, almost all of Hessler's students were the first member of their extended families to become educated. Their parents were subsistence farmers who could offer little guidance as their children entered a brand-new world. By 2019, when Hessler arrived at Sichuan University, he found a very different China and a new kind of student--an only child whose schooling was the object of intense focus from a much more ambitious and sophisticated cohort of parents. Hessler's new students have a sense of irony about the regime but mostly navigate its restrictions with equanimity, and embrace the astonishing new opportunities China's boom affords. But the pressures of this system of extreme "meritocracy" at scale can be gruesome, even for much younger children, including his own daughters, who give him and his wife an intimate view into the experience at their local school. In Peter Hessler's hands, China's education system is the perfect vehicle for examining what's happened to the country, where it's going, and what we can learn from it, for good and ill. At a time when anti-Chinese rhetoric in America has grown blunter and uglier, Other Rivers is a tremendous, indeed an essential gift, a work of enormous human empathy that rejects cheap stereotypes and shows us China from the inside out and the bottom up, using as a measuring stick this most universally relatable set of experiences. As both a window onto China and a distant mirror onto America and its own education system, Other Rivers is a classic, a book of tremendous value and compelling human interest. -
The Thirteenth Child
Drawing on the Grimm Brothers' dark fairytale, "Godfather Death," this new novel by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows is a sweeping, fantastical saga of actions and consequences. This is the story of Hazel, a young healer navigating a ruthless court to save the life of the king, grappling with a pantheon of gods with questionable agendas as she fights for agency and true love in her own life as the goddaughter of none other than Death himself. All gifts come with a price.
Hazel Trépas has always known she wasn't like the rest of her siblings. A thirteenth child, promised away to one of the gods, she spends her childhood waiting for her godfather--Merrick, the Dreaded End--to arrive. When he does, he lays out exactly how he's planned Hazel's future. She will become a great healer, known throughout the kingdom for her precision and skill. To aid her endeavors, Merrick blesses Hazel with a gift, the ability to instantly deduce the exact cure needed to treat the sick. But all gifts come with a price. Hazel can see when Death has claimed a patient--when all hope is gone--and is tasked to end their suffering, permanently. Haunted by the ghosts of those she's killed, Hazel longs to run. But destiny brings her to the royal court, where she meets Leo, a rakish prince with a disdain for everything and everyone. And it's where Hazel faces her biggest dilemma yet--to save the life of a king marked to die. Hazel knows what she is meant to do and knows what her heart is urging her toward, but what will happen if she goes against the will of Death? From the astonishing mind of Erin A. Craig comes the breathtaking fairy tale retelling readers have been waiting for-- what does a life well-lived mean, and how do we justify the impossible choices we make for the ones we love? The Thirteenth Child is a must-read for fans of dark fairy tales, romantasy, and epic fantasy alike. -
Who Is Billie Jean King?
Learn about the amazing life of the former world No. 1 tennis player who fought for gender equality in sports! Billie Jean King's legacy as a tennis star, a feminist, and an LGBTQ+ trailblazer shines through in this addition to the #1 New York Times Best-Selling Series. Billie Jean King grew up in a family of athletes. It was no surprise when she quickly began to excel at tennis. She became the top female singles player in the world and won 129 career singles titles, including Wimbledon and the US Open. Beyond being an excellent athlete, Billie Jean King used her voice to stand up for other women playing tennis who were not paid nearly as much as male players. In 1973, Billie Jean captured the world's attention when she beat Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the Sexes," proving women were just as good at tennis as men. She went on to found the Women's Tennis Association, and thanks to her efforts, women athletes worldwide were finally able to be taken seriously and paid fairly. -
Sold outThe Worst Perfect Moment
Equal parts tender and edgy, this inventive queer romance imagines what it might feel like to come of age in the afterlife. Tegan Masters is dead. She's sixteen and she's dead and she's standing in the parking lot of the Marybelle Motor Lodge, the single most depressing motel in all of New Jersey and the place where Tegan spent what she remembers as the worst weekend of her life. In the front office, she meets Zelda, a cute and sarcastic girl Tegan's age who is, in fact, an angel (wings and all). According to Zelda, Tegan is officially in heaven, where every person inhabits an exact replica of their happiest memory. For Tegan, Zelda insists, that place is the Marybelle--creepy minigolf course, revolting breakfast buffet, broken TV, and all. Tegan has a few complaints about this. As Zelda takes Tegan on a whirlwind tour through Tegan's past to help her understand what mattered most to her in life, the stakes couldn't be higher. If Zelda fails to convince Tegan that the Marybelle was the site of Tegan's perfect moment, both girls face eternal consequences too dire to consider. But if she succeeds...they just might get their happily-ever-afterlife. Full of humor and heartbreak, The Worst Perfect Moment asks what it means to be truly happy.Sold out -
The Stone Witch of Florence
"A feast of a novel, The Stone Witch of Florence is erudite, transportive, and addicting. Magical in every sense of the word." --Katy Hays, New York Times bestselling author of The Cloisters
Ancient sorcery. Magic gemstones. Only one woman can save a city in ruins...
1348. As the Black Plague ravages Italy, Ginevra di Gasparo is summoned to Florence after nearly a decade of lonely exile. Ginevra has a gift--harnessing the hidden powers of gemstones, she can heal the sick. But when word spread of her unusual abilities, she was condemned as a witch and banished. Now the same men who expelled Ginevra are begging for her return.
Ginevra obliges, assuming the city's leaders are finally ready to accept her unorthodox cures amid a pandemic. But upon arrival, she is tasked with a much different mission: she must use her collection of jewels to track down a ruthless thief who is ransacking Florence's churches for priceless relics--the city's only hope for protection. If she succeeds, she'll be a recognized physician and never accused of witchcraft again.
But as her investigation progresses, Ginevra discovers she's merely a pawn in a much larger scheme than the one she's been hired to solve. And the dangerous men behind this conspiracy won't think twice about killing a stone witch to get what they want...
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The Fallen Fruit
Combining history and fantasy, a sweeping multi-generational epic in the vein of Kindred and The Time Traveler's Wife about a woman who travels through time to end a family curse that has plagued her ancestors for generations.
On a rainy day in May 1964, history professor Cecily Bridge-Davis begins to search for the sixty-five acres of land she inherited from her father's family. The quest leads her to uncover a dark secret: In every generation, one offspring from each Bridge family unit vanishes--and is mysteriously whisked back in time. Rules have been established that must be followed to prevent dire consequences:
Never interfere with past events.
Always carry your free Negro papers.
Search for the survival family packs in the orchard and surrounding forest. The ribbon on the pack designates the decade the pack was made to orient you in time.
Do not speak to strangers unless absolutely necessary.
With only a family Bible and a map marked with the locations of mysterious containers to aid her, Cecily heads to the library, hoping to discover the truth of how this curse began, and how it might be ended. As she moves through time, she encounters a circle of ancestors, including Sabrina Humbles, a free Black woman who must find the courage to seize an opportunity--or lose her heart; Luke Bridge, who traverses battlefields, slavery, and time itself to reunite with his family; Rebecca Bridge, a mother tested by an ominous threat; and Amelia Bridge, a young woman burdened with survivor's guilt who will face the challenge of a lifetime--and change Cecily's life forever. It is a race through time and against the clock to find the answers that will free her family forever.
Shawntelle Madison's historical fiction debut is an enthralling, page-turning family saga about the inevitability of fate, the invincibility of love, and the indelible bonds of family.
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Storybook Ending
From the author of The Littlest Library--a heartwarming novel about a widowed children's book author who moves into a cottage in the English countryside and finds herself face-to-face with the handsome and brooding blacksmith who lives next door.
In her books she can write "happily ever after"--but real life? That's another matter...
For children's book author Imogen, an idyllic life in the English countryside seems like the perfect fit for her and her husband. But when tragedy strikes, Imogen is left widowed, and finds herself moving into Storybook Cottage alone with only her monstrously narcissistic cat for company.
After discovering she is pregnant, Imogen grows determined to embrace a new start in Middlemass, with its duckpond, cricket matches and village fêtes. The only thing Imogen can't seem to shake is her neighbor--a brooding, artisan blacksmith named Zach--who she can't quite decide is friend or foe. That is until she realizes, thanks to an arcane clause in her deeds, that Zach is not just an artist, but lord of the local manor house.
He has the power to take her home and leave her completely broke. Devastatingly--he seems keen to do exactly that. Yet, Imogen finds herself drawn to him nonetheless. And in her darkest hour, Zach may just be the bright spot to save Imogen in more ways than one.
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Sold outEnnead Vol. 3 [Paperback]
The full-color Boys' Love webtoon hit inspired by ancient Egyptian mythology! (Paperback Edition) Nine powerful gods of ancient Egypt form the Ennead. When the god of war, Seth, kills his brother Osiris and takes over Egypt, he ushers in an era of chaos and cruelty. Centuries later, a new challenger appears: Horus, the child of Isis. Horus is not yet a full god, but he has the support of other deities to dethrone Seth. The conflict between Seth and Horus that begins as a series of trials warps into a complex web of deceit, obsession...and desire. This hit Boys' Love webtoon-a dramatic fantasy epic-is a reimagining of one of the oldest myths in human civilization. Already available in multiple languages to fans around the world, this is the very first time the graphic novel series will be printed in English, presented in beautiful full-color editions in an oversized trim! Seven Seas will release two versions of the series, which were originally drawn for different audiences: a paperback version rated Older Teen, and a deluxe hardcover version rated Mature. (Each version is standalone but has alternate depictions of some adult material.)Sold out -
Gachiakuta 3
In this highly-anticipated new action manga, a young boy is framed for murder and cast off the edge of a floating city into the abyss, where he grapples with the monsters that the elite high above would rather forget. The more the rich glitter, the higher the price paid by the poor... With a premise that recalls Battle Angel Alita and kinetic battles reminiscent of Attack on Titan, Gachiakuta is a must-read for fans of dark, dystopian fantasies like Deadman Wonderland! Rudo lives in the slums of a floating town, where the poor scrape by under the shadow of the rich who live a sumptuous life, simply casting their garbage off the side, into the abyss. Then one day, he's falsely accused of murder, and his wrongful conviction leads to an unimaginable punishment--exile off the edge, with the rest of the trash. Down on the surface, the cast-off waste of humanity has bred vicious monsters, and if Rudo wants to have any hope of discovering the truth and seeking vengeance against those who cast him into Hell, he will have to master a new power and join a group known as the Cleaners who battle the hulking trash beasts of the Pit! -
Blurred Lines
I've been in love with my best friend for years.
The problem?
He thinks I'm straight.
And now that I share a dorm with him, his insistent need to cuddle -and lack of clothes- are blurring the careful lines I've drawn.
I'm struggling to keep my defenses up.
I love him but I'm afraid.
Afraid I'm not enough to make him stay.
Afraid he'll rip my heart out.
Afraid he won't love me back.
But I see a side of him no one else does.
In the security of our room, he lets his mask fall.
Lets me hold him.
Something lurks in the dark recesses of his mind that keeps him from going all in.
He's just as hesitant about this as I am, but I don't understand why.
Can I convince him to let me love him the way he deserves...
or will he take my heart and run away with it?
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Sold outAnd My Blood Sang
This collection is a story about the perseverance of the self and the strength of the community; the inevitability of becoming broken and beaten; the reminder that we are connected and we are exquisite; that our scars show where we did not die: and that when we are underestimated, bloodied, and battered, we will rise again.
Both personal and communal, drawing strength specifically from the Yazidi people through her time in Iraq - Maia tries to make sense of the utterly unimaginable and the all too common, so that the reader may take solace in exploring the beauty and depth of their own sheer strength in the face of pain and anguish.
The universe will always promise brutality and struggle.
Individuals will always possess the power of resilience.
Humanity will always offer a future.Sold out -
The Sunforge
Sascha Stronach's queer, Maori-inspired Endsong trilogy reopens on a city in flames, where a magic-wielding pirate crew uncovers an age-old fight between the gods that threatens their world. The steel city of Radovan is consumed by fire between. Stranded in its harbor is the crew of the Kopek, the survivors of a bioterror attack overseas. But they bear scars: their captain, Sibbi, has gone missing; Yat, their newest Weaver, is fighting for control of her own mind; and their Weaving powers are in a badly weakened state. To disable the technology that prevents the group from escaping, Sen and Kiada must plot their way through the ruins of the foreign capital, which is patrolled by a hostile militia, using wits alone. But to navigate through Radovan, Kiada will have to rely on her own history with the city--one she shares with a band of misfits dubbed Fort Tomorrow and their leader, Ari, a charismatic thief. Ari may hold the key not only to saving Radovan from complete annihilation, but the history of their world, which will come into play as the gods begin to unleash destruction on humanity and one another. -
The Croaking Volume 2
The Roost - the world's most prestigious military academy - has never accepted a Crow into its ranks. Until now. However, the conditions surrounding Scra's acceptance are shrouded in conspiracy, and his new roommate Ky won't rest until he finds out just where he goes every night. Between flight tests, classes, and Murders, Scra, Ky and Ree must band together to uncover the truth about their utopia and the whispers of a superweapon - "The Croaking" - that are seeping from the cracks. Volume 1 of The Croaking is a YALSA Best Book for Teens. The Croaking was nominated for the 2020 Ringo Award for Best Webcomic. The Roost - the world's most prestigious military academy - has never accepted a Crow into its ranks. Until now. However, the conditions surrounding Scra's acceptance are shrouded in conspiracy, and his new roommate Ky won't rest until he finds out just where he goes every night. Between flight tests, classes, and Murders, Scra, Ky and Ree must band together to uncover the truth about their utopia and the whispers of a superweapon - "The Croaking" - that are seeping from the cracks. -
Jeza's Jesus Juice: A Drag Queen's Christian Devotional
LGBTQ+ people are under constant attack, especially by those who claim the mantle of Christ. It's not popular or easy to be a Christian and a member of this marginalized community. On the right are conservatives who claim to speak for God and try to block the path of LGBTQ+ Christians. On the left are those who have been harmed by the church and balk in the face of their continued belief. LGBTQ+ Christians are left in the middle to try to reconcile a religion that appears to demonize them and a God who loves them unconditionally. Jeza's Jesus Juice is a rare safe space for those who are committed to their faith but do not know where to go to deepen it. It is also a place for those searching for meaning in Christianity that does not negate their queer identity. This devotional provides personal stories, biblical apologetics, and damning indictments of today's evangelical movement, all served up frothy over ice by one of America's premier and unique drag talents.