Mary B. Recommends

Mary B.Mary B. is our Travel Buyer & First Editions Club Coordinator. She is always ten steps ahead when it comes to authors and books about to make a big splash. Join our First Editions Club, and you will thank her for it!






Nothing Right: Short Stories (Paperback)

By Antonya Nelson
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781608190430
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Bloomsbury USA, 2/2010
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The characters in Antonya Nelson’s stories are slightly out-of-sync, decent but flawed, trying to cope with their messy lives. They use bad judgment, drink too much, choose the wrong mates, are bound to their families for better or worse. We recognize these people and their frailties, which Nelson exposes unsparingly--but not unkindly--with empathy and wit. The Midwestern landscapes which they inhabit are beautifully rendered.

Away (Paperback)

By Amy Bloom
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780812977790
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 6/2008
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A glorious, heartbreaking and often funny story of a young Russian Immigrant’s quixotic journey across America, in hopes of crossing the Bering Straits to find her lost daughter in Siberia. Penniless, she makes her way from New York to Alaska, fueled only by a mother’s fierce love and determination.

Be Near Me (Paperback)

By Andrew O'Hagan
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780156033961
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Mariner Books, 4/2008
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An Oxford educated Catholic priest is assigned to a working class parish in Scotland, where he forms an uneasy friendship with a pair of rebellious, amoral teenagers, with disastrous results. This complex, gorgeously written story explores the moral contradictions of a life of faith.

Paula Spencer (Paperback)

By Roddy Doyle
$14.70
ISBN-13: 9780143112730
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Penguin Books, 1/2008
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With profound empathy for his subject, Roddy Doyle chronicles a year in the life of Paula Spencer (whom we first met in Doyle's 1996 The Woman Who Walked Into Doors), a newly sober, formerly abused, middle-aged Irish woman, as she struggles to rebuild her life, reconnect with her grown children and create some semblance of normalcy out of the dysfunctional wreckage of her past. As she moves through her daily life, the most ordinary tasks require acts of courage, and through her humiliations and small triumphs Paula achieves a kind of rough-edged nobility. The distinctive working-class Irish voice and wit make this an entertaining, as well as a deeply moving, story.

The Shadow Catcher (Paperback)

By Marianne Wiggins
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780743265218
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Simon & Schuster, 6/2008
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Based on the life of legendary photographer Edward Curtis, this brilliant tour de force moves seamlessly back and forth between the photographer’s life and the life of a contemporary author researching Curtis’s life for a novel she is writing (and soon to be a major motion picture). You’re not always sure where Wiggins is taking you, but because she is such a fearless and original writer you just have to trust her and go along for the ride, hanging on for dear life. (This sent me back to her previous book, Evidence of Things Unseen, which very different but equally amazing).

Shining at the Bottom of the Sea (Paperback)

By Stephen Marche
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781594483158
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Riverhead Trade, 8/2008
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A brilliant and hilarious fictional “literary anthology” of the imagined island of Sanjania. Starting with a scholarly introduction, complete with footnotes, Marche creates an entire culture, history and geography through the island’s literature, arranged in chronological order and ending with biographical sketches of the authors. By the time you’re finished you’ll be looking for Sanjania on the map.

Alligator (Paperback)

By Lisa Moore
$13.00
ISBN-13: 9780802170255
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Grove Press, Black Cat, 9/2006
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Lisa Moore's quirky novel features an idiosyncratic cast of characters living in St. John's, Newfoundland, each one flawed and deeply human, whose lives intersect in unexpected ways. Moore's gorgeous writing and imagery create a vivid sense of place, of melancholy and regret, and brief flashes of breathtaking beauty.

Finn (Paperback)

By Jon Clinch
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780812977141
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 3/2008
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Finn is a compelling, harrowing novel about one of American literature's most unsympathetic characters, Huckleberry Finn's abusive, alcoholic father. In revisiting Twain's classic, Clinch also illuminates a dark chapter of our nation's racist past. What keeps the reader going through this bleak terrain is Clinch's writing--from the very first page, with the description of a corpse floating down the Mississippi River, the writing has a lyric power which pulls the reader along. I know that the adjectives "luminous", "astonishing" and "stunning" are greatly over-used, but they are definitely appropriate here. I haven't read anything like this since Cold Mountain.

The Secret River (Paperback)

By Kate Grenville
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781841959146
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Canongate U.S., 4/2007
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In 1806, William Thornhill, living a life of poverty in the slums of London and desperate to feed his young wife and child, is caught stealing and sentenced to the penal colony of New South Wales. Working his way through the system, he eventually gains his freedom and stakes out a plot of land to call his own. As his business prospers, William and his growing family share an uneasy coexistence with the native aborigines, whose constant, shadowy presence is a cloud over William's dream of a better life. This is a haunting, lyrical novel which confronts a dark chapter of history without judgment.
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