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› Find signed collectible books: 'All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Amazing Spider-man: Until the Stars Turn Cold'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'And Now You Can Go'
The premise of Vendela Vida's terrific debut novel, And Now You Can Go, seems at first a tad depressing, in a Bernard Goetz, New-York-in-the-1980s kind of way. The narrator, a young woman named Ellis, is walking in Riverside Park when she is held up at gunpoint. The man assures her he doesn't want her money, and he doesn't push her into the bushes to rape her. Ellis notices the designer name on his glasses: Giorgio Armani; she begins to obsess on this detail. Then she starts to recite poetry to him to cheer him up about life. The encounter ends as abruptly as it began, when the man simply runs away down the street. Even though no blood has been shed, Ellis's life is utterly changed.
In fast, clean, funny prose, we find Ellis slipping adrift from her routine as Columbia grad student and falling into a series of mini-romances. When she goes home to San Francisco for winter break, her mom suggests Ellis join her on a medical mission to the Philippines. The work and the heat and the exhaustion settle her down for the first time since the attack, and she returns to New York a little refreshed. There's one more encounter with the gunman, which Vida plays more comic than tragic. In fact, the strength of this novel is in the way Vida toys with her priorities. The scenes that ought to be fraught and suspenseful have a goofy kind of oh-well voice to them; the scenes that ought to be dull--like Ellis's run-ins with her annoying roommate--exert a weirdly compelling narrative drive. Both the author and her protagonist charm us utterly. --Claire Dederer [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Animal Farm'
Collecting FABLES #6-10, the second story arc of the fan-favorite, critically acclaimed VERTIGO series. Travel to upstate New York, where the non-human Fable characters have found refuge on a farm, miles from mankind. But all is not well on the farm and a conspiracy to free them from the shackles of their perceived imprisonment may lead to a war that could wrest control of the Fables community away from Snow White. Starring Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Plus, a sketchbook section featuring art by Willingham, Buckingham and Jean. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Applause: New York's Guide to the Performing Arts'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ask Me No Questions'
Nadira and her family are illegal aliens, fleeing to the Canadian border -- running from the country they thought was their home. For years since emigrating from Bangladesh, they have lived on expired visas in New York City, hoping they could someday realize their dream of becoming legal citizens of the United States. But after 9/11, everything changes. Suddenly, being Muslim means being dangerous, a suspected terrorist. And when Nadira's father is arrested and detained at the border, Nadira and her older sister, Aisha, are sent back to Queens and told to carry on, as if everything is the same.
But of course nothing is the same. Nadira and Aisha live in fear they'll have to return to a Bangladesh they hardly know. Aisha, always the responsible one, falls apart. It's up to Nadira to find a way to bring her family back together again.
Critically acclaimed author Marina Budhos has given us a searing portrait of contemporary America in the days of terrorism, orange alerts, and the Patriot Act, and a moving and important story about something most people take for granted -- citizenship and acceptance in their country. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'At Sea in the City: New York from the Water's Edge'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aura'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bergdorf Blondes'
Plum Sykes's beguiling debut welcomes readers to the glamorous world of Park Avenue Princesses, the girls who careen through Manhattan in search of the perfect Fake Bake (tan acquired from Portofino Tanning Salon), a ride on a PJ (private jet) with the ATM (rich boyfriend), and the ever-elusive fianc.
With invitations to high-profile baby showers and benefits, more Marc Jacobs clothes than is decent, and a department store heiress for a best friend, our heroine known only as Moi is living at the peak of New York society. But what is Moi to do when her engagement falls apart? Can she ever find happiness in a city filled with the distractions of Front Row Girls, dermatologists, premieres, and eyebrow waxes? Is it possible to find love in a town where her friends think that the secret to happiness is getting invited to the Van Cleef and Arpels ber-private sample sale? And how is she going to deal with the endless phone calls from her mother in England demanding that she get married to the Earl next door?
With enormous wit and an insider's eye, Sykes captures the nuances of the rich and spoiled in a heartwarming social satire, featuring a loveable "champagne bubble of a girl" who's just looking for love (and maybe the perfect pair of Chlo jeans).
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Best Selling One-Story Home Designs'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Charmed Thirds'
Jessica Darlings in college!
Things are looking up for Jessica Darling. She has finally left her New Jersey hometown/hellhole for Columbia University in New York City; shes more into her boyfriend, Marcus Flutie, than ever (so what if hes at a Buddhist college in California?); and shes making new friends who just might qualify as stand-ins for her beloved best friend, Hope.
But Jessica soon realizes that her bliss might not last. She lands an internship at a snarky Brooklyn-based magazine, but will she fit in with the überhip staff (and will she even want to)? As she and Marcus hit the rocks, will she end up falling for her GOPunk, neoconservative RA . . . or the hot (and married!) Spanish grad student shes assisting on a summer project . . . or the oh-so-sensitive emo boy down the hall? Will she even make it through college now that her parents have cut her off financially? And what do the cryptic one-word postcards from Marcus really mean?
With hilarious insight, the hyperobservant Jessica Darling struggles through her college yearsand the summers in betweenwhile maintaining her usual mix of wit, cynicism, and candor.
From the Hardcover edition. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Chartreuse Clue'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cherries in the Snow: A Novel of Lust, Love, Loss, and Lipstick'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Configurations: New and Selected Poems 1958-1998'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Contract With God'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crystal Vision'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Daddy Was a Number Runner'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'de Kooning: An American Master'
Willem de Kooning is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, a true painters painter whose protean work continues to inspire many artists. In the thirties and forties, along with Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, he became a key figure in the revolutionary American movement of abstract expressionism. Of all the painters in that group, he worked the longest and was the most prolific, creating powerful, startling images well into the 1980s.
The first major biography of de Kooning captures both the life and work of this complex, romantic figure in American culture. Ten years in the making, and based on previously unseen letters and documents as well as on hundreds of interviews, this is a fresh, richly detailed, and masterful portrait. The young de Kooning overcame an unstable, impoverished, and often violent early family life to enter the Academie in Rotterdam, where he learned both classic art and guild techniques. Arriving in New York as a stowaway from Holland in 1926, he underwent a long struggle to become a painter and an American, developing a passionate friendship with his fellow immigrant Arshile Gorky, who was both a mentor and an inspiration. During the Depression, de Kooning emerged as a central figure in the bohemian world of downtown New York, surviving by doing commercial work and painting murals for the WPA. His first show at the Egan Gallery in 1948 was a revelation. Soon, the critics Harold Rosenberg and Thomas Hess were championing his work, and de Kooning took his place as the charismatic leader of the New York schooljust as American art began to dominate the international scene.
Dashingly handsome and treated like a movie star on the streets of downtown New York, de Kooning had a tumultuous marriage to Elaine de Kooning, herself a fascinating character of the period. At the height of his fame, he spent his days painting powerful abstractions and intense, disturbing pictures of the female figureand his nights living on the edge, drinking, womanizing, and talking at the Cedar bar with such friends as Franz Kline and Frank OHara. By the 1960s, exhausted by the feverish art world, he retreated to the Springs on Long Island, where he painted an extraordinary series of lush pastorals. In the 1980s, as he slowly declined into what was almost certainly Alzheimers, he created a vast body of haunting and ethereal late work.
This is an authoritative and brilliant exploration of the art, life, and world of an American master. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death: The High Cost of Living'
Teenager Sexton Furnival is contemplating suicide when he is befriended by death. Death herself is being hunted by evil forces which prey on her new vulnerability now that she is human. Meanwhile, Mad Hettie threatens to kill Death's suicidal friend if Death won't help her find her heart. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death: The High Cost of Living'
Written by Neil Gaiman; Art by Chris Bachalo, Mark Buckingham, and Dave McKean From the pages of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN comes the young, pale, perky, and genuinely likable Death. One day in every century, Death walks the Earth to better understand those to whom she will be the final visitor. Today is that day. As a young mortal girl named Didi, Death befriends a teenager and helps a 250-year old homeless woman find her missing heart. What follows is a sincere musing on love, life and (of course) death. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Debutante Divorcee: A Novel'
"Married girls in New York these days put almost as much effort into losing husbands as they once did into finding them."
In 2004, Plum Sykes jet-setted to bestsellerdom with Bergdorf Blondes, a playful debut novel that introduced readers to the glamorous world of PAPs (Park Avenue Princesses). Now the fabulous girls from the world of Bergdorf Blondes are back.
Lauren Blounts life is beautifully arranged: shes very rich, very young, very thin, very pretty -- and very, very divorced. She is the most reckless and glamorous of Manhattans Debutante Divorcée set. Lauren captivates Sylvia Mortimer, the groups token newlywed. But while Lauren sets out on a morality-lite, orgasm-heavy "Make Out Challenge," Sylvia discovers her marriage isnt exactly an Eternity ad -- especially when the citys most notorious Husband Huntress zeros in on her spouse.
Navigating a world of Divorce Showers and Power Christenings, Socialite Babies, Professional Friends, Gorgeous West Village Wives, and Un-Googleable Men, Sylvia fears her husband is straying and starts asking, as Lauren says, "Who needs a husband anyway?" With her delightful mix of charm, cheek, and satire, Sykes has written a second novel that promises to be every bit as beloved as her smash debut. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Diary Of A Mad Housewife'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Down Here'
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street'
A zesty memoir of the celebrated writer's travels to England where she meets the cherished friends from 84, Charing Cross Road. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ex Machina 3: Fact V. Fiction'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ex Machina,Tag book 2: Tag'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fodor's Flashmaps New York City'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'For Your Paws Only'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'For Your Paws Only'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Four Million'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'From The Velvets To The Voidoids: The Birth Of American Punk Rock'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Funerals for Friends'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gangsters And Gold Diggers'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir'
Just two hours ago, I had been heating up some lentil soup at my moms in Brooklyn, thinking Id eat it and maybe read some Edith Wharton before bed. Now here I was at a runaway shelter, staring at a nuns mustache and wondering where I was going to spend the rest of my adolescence.
At fifteen, sick of her moms spineless reactions to abusive menand afraid of her stepfathers unpredictable behaviorJanice Erlbaum walked out of her familys apartment and never returned. What followed that fateful decision is the heart of this amazing, fascinating, and disturbing memoir.
From her first frightening night at a shelter, trying to sleep in a large room filled with yelling girls, Janice knew she was in over her head. She was beaten up, shaken down, and nearly stabbed by a pregnant girl. But it was still better than living at home. Just like that, she was halfway homeless, always one step away from being sent upstate to Lockdown.
As Janice slipped further into street life, she nevertheless continued to attend high school, harbor crushes, even play the lead in the spring production of Guys and Dolls. She also roamed the streets, clubs, bars, and parks of New York City with her two best girlfriends, on the prowl for hard drugs and boys on skateboards. Together they scored coke at Danceteria, smoked angel dust in East Village squats, commiserated over their crazy mothers, and slept with one anothers boyfriends on a regular basis.
Janice Erlbaum paints a wry, mesmerizing portrait of being underprivileged, underage, and underdressed in the 1980s, bouncing from shelters to group homes, from tenement squats to legendary nightclubs. A moving and tremendously entertaining ride through the seediest parts of New York City, Girlbomb provides an unflinching look at street life, survival sex, female friendships, and first loves. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Givenchy Code'
A mind-bending code spawned from the mind of a madman...or maybe just a jealous ex.
A desperate race through the cathedrals and hotels of New York City...with a teeny bit of time for shopping, it's true.
An astonishing truth concealed for years, unveiled at last...with more than a little help from a supercute new guy.
As if a recent breakup, scrounging for rent money, and lusting after designer shoes weren't enough, Melanie Prescott starts receiving obscure codes and clues from a menacing stranger. She attempts to solve the mysteries -- enlisting the help of a tall, dark, and handsome new friend -- with high hopes for the multimillion-dollar reward guaranteed at the end (handbags, sunglasses, and shoes, oh my!). That is, if she can survive the deadly game. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Go: A Novel'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Hippie'

› Find signed collectible books: 'A History of Violence'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Home Designs: 259 Home Designs Featuring Master Suites and Baths'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Kill a Rock Star'
Written in her wonderfully honest, edgy, passionate and often hilarious voice, Tiffanie DeBartolo tells the story of Eliza Caelum, a young music journalist, and Paul Hudson, a talented songwriter and lead singer of the band Bananafish. Eliza's reverence for rock is equaled only by Paul's, and the two fall wildly in love.
When Bananafish is signed by a big corporate label, and Paul is on his way to becoming a major rock star, Eliza must make a heartbreaking decision that leads to Paul's sudden disappearance and a surprise knock-your-socks-off ending.
Praise for Tiffanie DeBartolo's God-Shaped Hole
"From highs to heartbreak, DeBartolo conjures an affair to remember."--People
"Honest, raw, and engaging."--Booklist
"This generation's Love Story."--Kirkus Reviews
God-Shaped Hole was a Book Sense Top 10 Paperback Selection. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Impressionist New York'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Search of Ancient Ireland : The Origins of the Irish from Neolithic Times to the Coming of the English'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Invitation Only'
Reed Brennan's future is looking as bright as the two-karat diamonds in her new housemates' ears. Being accepted to the most prestigious private boarding school in the country wasn't enough for Reed. She had to break every rule to do it, but she has accomplished the impossible:
Reed is a Billings Girl now.
And with her new status come respect, envy, and, most important, opportunity. Not to mention the parties. Unfortunately, at the next illicit party in the Easton campus woods, her roommate snaps some pictures of Reed in more than one compromising position. She uses the photos to blackmail Reed: Dig up dirt on the most powerful and popular Billings Girls or she will have Reed expelled.
And speaking of parties, the Legacy is coming up. It's the invitation-only Halloween party in NYC and it's rumored that Thomas -- Reed's MIA boyfriend -- will be making an appearance there. Too bad Reed isn't even close to invited.
Life as a Billings Girl is every bit as glamorous as Reed imagined. What she didn't bargain for is the tangled web of private lies these girls weave.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'King Kong'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Knickerbocker's History of New York'
This is a reissue of the two-volume satire subtitled A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Macdougal Alley'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Maggie'
First published in 1893, when Stephen Crane was only twenty-one years old, Maggie is the harrowing tale of a young woman s fall into prostitution and destitution in New York City's notorious Bowery slum. In dazzlingly vivid prose and with a sexual candour remarkable for his day, Crane depicts an urban sub-culture awash with alcohol and patrolled by the swaggering gangland "tough." Presented here with its companion piece George s Mother and a selection of Crane s other Bowery stories, this edition of Maggie includes a detailed introduction that places the novel in its social, cultural, and literary contexts. The appendices provide an unrivalled range of documentary sources covering such topics as religious and civic reform writing, slum fiction, the "new journalism," and literary realism and naturalism. An up-to-date bibliography of scholarly work on Crane is also included. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Maggie a Girl of the Streets'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mind Field'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Molto Agitato: The Mayhem Behind the Music at the Metropolitan Opera'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mr. Cheap's New York: Bargains, Factory Outlets, Off-Price Stores, Deep Discount Stores, Cheap Eats, Cheap Places to Stay, and Cheap Fun Things to D'
Indispensable tips on bargains, factory outlets, off-price stores, deep discount stores, cheap eats, cheap places to stay, and cheap fun things to do in the Big Apple. Learn where to get eight good bagels for a dollar, the 10 best restaurants that don't require tipping, and more. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'New York'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'New York Enclaves'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'New York Literary Lights: William Corbett'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New York School: Photographs, 1936-1963'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Newsday: A Candid History of the Respectable Tabloid'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Not for Tourists 2006 Guide to New York City'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Only Bread, Only Light'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Playing Easy to Get'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Preacher Proud Americans'
The Reverend Jesse Custer is a Texas minister who swears worse than a sailor and is not above killing people who get in his way. One might say he's lost his faith. No, he's just looking for God, and when he finds Him... Proud Americans is another sick and fun addition to the Preacher series. This book contains three story lines: One, a short tale about Custer's father in Vietnam. Two, a recounting of the transformation of Custer's Irish buddy Cassidy into a vampire and his coming to America. And three, the conclusion to the story begun in Preacher: Until the End of the World, the story of the angelic mafia (known as the Grail) who have come after Reverend Custer and the secret power inside him called "Genesis." --Jim Pascoe [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pride's Crossing'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prince of Tides'
PAT CONROY has created a huge, brash thunderstorm of a novel, stinging with honesty and resounding with drama. Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the dark and tragic legacy of the extraordinary family into which they were born.
Filled with the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina low country as well as the dusty glitter of New York City, The Prince of Tides is PAT CONROY at his very best. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Private'
Tradition, Honor, Excellence...and secrets so dark they're almost invisible
Fifteen-year-old Reed Brennan wins a scholarship to Easton Academy -- the golden ticket away from her pill-popping mother and run-of-the-mill suburban life. But when she arrives on the beautiful, tradition-steeped campus of Easton, everyone is just a bit more sophisticated, a bit more gorgeous, and a lot wealthier than she ever thought possible. Reed realizes that even though she has been accepted to Easton, Easton has not accepted her. She feels like she's on the outside, looking in.
Until she meets the Billings Girls.
They are the most beautiful, intelligent, and intensely confident girls on campus. And they know it. They hold all the power in a world where power is fleeting but means everything. Reed vows to do whatever it takes to be accepted into their inner circle.
Reed uses every part of herself -- the good, the bad, the beautiful -- to get closer to the Billings Girls. She quickly discovers that inside their secret parties and mountains of attitude, hanging in their designer clothing-packed closets the Billings Girls have skeletons. And they'll do anything to keep their secrets private. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Prodigal Days - the Untold Story of Evel'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Promise'
Reuven Malter lives in Brooklyn, hes in love, and hes studying to be a rabbi. He also keeps challenging the strict interpretations of his teachers, and if he keeps it up, his dream of becoming a rabbi may die.
One day, worried about a disturbed, unhappy boy named Michael, Reuven takes him sailing and cloud-watching. Reuven also introduces him to an old friend, Danny Saundersnow a psychologist with a growing reputation. Reconnected by their shared concern for Michael, Reuven and Danny each learns what it is to take on lifewhether sacred truths or a troubled childaccording to his own lights, not just established authority.
In a passionate, energetic narrative, The Promise brilliantly dramatizes what it is to master and use knowledge to make ones own way in the world [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Psmith Journalist'
When I gaze at your broad, bulging forehead, when I see the clear light of intelligence in your eyes, and hear the grey matter splashing restlessly about in your cerebellum, I say to myself without hesitation, 'Comrade Windsor must have more scope.'" He looked at Mike, who was turning over the leaves of his copy of Cosy Moments in a sort of dull despair. "Well, Comrade Jackson, and what is your verdict?" [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Quentins'
Maeve Binchy delivers a timely and topical tale on the fickle nature of docu-soaps in Quentins. In an age where everyday people are becoming overnight celebrities via the medium of television, Ella Brady is a documentary filmmaker who wants to bring the tale of the eponymous Dublin restaurant to the screen. Quentin's has had its fair share of ups and downs over the years and has become the meeting point for a lot of characters, including some familiar faces from previous Binchy novels. As Ella makes more and more headway with her documentary, the secrets, betrayals and stories of love that emerge make her question whether or not she wants to bring the tale of Quentin's to the screen after all; especially as she is also forced to confront a devastating dilemma from her own past.
Regarded by many as the true queen of the romantic Irish drama, Binchy has once again produced another fine page-turner that will please her army of loyal fans and hopefully win her many more. She has a real eye for character and exploring the often painful choices people are forced to make in their everyday lives. This is a tale of normal people, ordinary folk and the heartaches that have made them who they are. Fans will welcome the return of some familiar Binchy characters and Ella is a strong, likeable heroine, a woman who, in exploring the lives of these people, is forced to consider some choices she has made in her own life. So make a reservation at Quentin's, sit back and relax--you'll be in very good company. --Jane Warren [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Resident Alien: The New York Diaries'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Richard Wright's Native Son'
Bigger Thomas is doomed, trapped in a downward spiral that will lead to arrest, prison, or death, driven by despair, frustration, poverty, and incomprehension. As a young black man in the Chicago of the '30s, he has no way out of the walls of poverty and racism that surround him, and after he murders a young white woman in a moment of panic, these walls begin to close in. There is no help for him--not from his hapless family; not from liberal do-gooders or from his well-meaning yet naive friend Jan; certainly not from the police, prosecutors, or judges. Bigger is debased, aggressive, dangerous, and a violent criminal. As such, he has no claim upon our compassion or sympathy. And yet...
A more compelling story than Native Son has not been written in the 20th century by an American writer. That is not to say that Richard Wright created a novel free of flaws, but that he wrote the first novel that successfully told the most painful and unvarnished truth about American social and class relations. As Irving Howe asserted in 1963, "The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. It made impossible a repetition of the old lies [and] brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture."
Other books had focused on the experience of growing up black in America--including Wright's own highly successful Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of five stories that focused on the victimization of blacks who transgressed the code of racial segregation. But they suffered from what he saw as a kind of lyrical idealism, setting up sympathetic black characters in oppressive situations and evoking the reader's pity. In Native Son, Wright was aiming at something more. In Bigger, he created a character so damaged by racism and poverty, with dreams so perverted, and with human sensibilities so eroded, that he has no claim on the reader's compassion:
"I didn't want to kill," Bigger shouted. "But what I killed for, I am! It must've been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder.... What I killed for must've been good!" Bigger's voice was full of frenzied anguish. "It must have been good! When a man kills, it's for something... I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em. It's the truth..."Wright's genius was that, in preventing us from feeling pity for Bigger, he forced us to confront the hopelessness, misery, and injustice of the society that gave birth to him. --Andrew Himes [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rise of David Levinsky'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Scarlet Women'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Silver Palate Cookbook'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sister Carrie'
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser's revolutionary first novel, was published in 1900--sort of. The story of Carrie Meeber, an 18-year-old country girl who moves to Chicago and becomes a kept woman, was strong stuff at the turn of the century, and what Dreiser's wary publisher released was a highly expurgated version. Times change, and we now have a restored "author's cut" of Sister Carrie that shows how truly ahead of his time Dreiser was. First and foremost, he has written an astute, nonmoralizing account of a woman and her limited options in late-19th-century America. That's impressive in and of itself, but Dreiser doesn't stop there. Digging deeply into the psychological underpinnings of his characters, he gives us people who are often strangers to themselves, drifting numbly until fate pushes them on a path they can later neither defend nor even remember choosing.
Dreiser's story unfolds in the measured cadences of an earlier era. This sometimes works brilliantly as we follow the choices, small and large, that lead some characters to doom and others to glory. On the other hand, the middle chapters--of which there are many--do drag somewhat, even when one appreciates Dreiser's intentions. If you can make it through the sagging midsection, however, you'll be rewarded by Sister Carrie's last 150 pages, which depict the harrowing downward spiral of one of the book's central characters. Here Dreiser portrays with brutal power how the wrong decision--or lack of decision--can lay waste to a life. --Rebecca Gleason [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Small Wonder'
Readers familiar with Barbara Kingsolver will find that Small Wonder, a collection of 23 essays, shows the same sensitivity and thoughtfulness, the same rich knowledge of and love for the natural world, as her spellbinding novels. In "Knowing Our Place," she describes the two places in which she writes: a tin-roof cabin in Appalachia and her home in the Tucson desert. In "Setting Free the Crabs," she uses her daughter's decision not to take home a beautiful (and occupied) red conch shell from a Mexican beach to illustrate our own need to give up our sense of ownership of the earth, to resist "the hunger to possess all things bright and beautiful." Many of these pieces, like the lovely title essay, were written (or rewritten) in response to the events of September 11, which threw into relief the growing social and economic inequities that are so little remarked on in the American media. These are political essays, although Kingsolver is not a natural rhetorician; her prose is too supple and inclusive. She is more inclined to follow the turns of her mind, like water in a curving stream bed, than to hammer home a point or two. But she has a rare gift for apt allusion (from sources as wide-ranging as Robert Frost to Beanie Babies) and for the elegant use of facts and figures. And she is highly quotable. It is easy to imagine the speechwriters and activists of the next 10 years dipping into Small Wonder for inspiration and the perfect phrase. --Regina Marler [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sparky Fights Back: A Little Dog's Big Battle Against Cancer'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Speak of the Devil: A Novel'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Squid And the Whale: The Shooting Script'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Subways : The Tracks That Built New York City'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.'
John D. Rockefeller, Sr.--history's first billionaire and the patriarch of America's most famous dynasty--is an icon whose true nature has eluded three generations of historians. Now Ron Chernow, the National Book Award-winning biographer of the Morgan and Warburg banking families, gives us a history of the mogul "etched with uncommon objectivity and literary grace . . . as detailed, balanced, and psychologically insightful a portrait of the tycoon as we may ever have" (Kirkus Reviews). Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller's exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book will indelibly alter our image of this most enigmatic capitalist.
Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world's richest man by creating America's most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.
Rockefeller was likely the most controversial businessman in our nation's history. Critics charged that his empire was built on unscrupulous tactics: grand-scale collusion with the railroads, predatory pricing, industrial espionage, and wholesale bribery of political officials. The titan spent more than thirty years dodging investigations until Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters embarked on a marathon crusade to bring Standard Oil to bay.
While providing abundant new evidence of Rockefeller's misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the cold-blooded monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky, eccentric original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave money more generously--his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller University--than anyone before him. Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait of a fascinating, complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and disclosing numerous family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have never before come to light.
John D. Rockefeller's story captures a pivotal moment in American history, documenting the dramatic post-Civil War shift from small business to the rise of giant corporations that irrevocably transformed the nation. With cameos by Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, Ida Tarbell, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Jung, J. Pierpont Morgan, William James, Henry Clay Frick, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers, Titan turns Rockefeller's life into a vivid tapestry of American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is Ron Chernow's signal triumph that he narrates this monumental saga with all the sweep, drama, and insight that this giant subject deserves.
From the Hardcover edition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Titan's Curse'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Upper West Side Story : A History and Guide'
This work is both a biography and an architectural history of a city within a city spiced with lively anecdotes. Any estate agent or restauranteur will tell you that the Upper West Side is "hot"; but despite what recent urban trends suggest, it was not discovered by a band of Young Urban Professionals in the 1980s. Dutch farmers with names like Theunis Idens (he lived on what would be West End Avenue and 97th Street) and Egbert Woutersen settled it 300 years ago. The names of later residents are much more familiar: William Tecumseh Sherman, U.S. Grant, Flo Ziegfeld, Humphrey Bogart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arturo Toscanini, William Randolph Hearst, Gertrude Stein, Mae West, Leonard Bernstein and John Lennon. Peter Salwen tells the whole story, from the colonial merchants whose mansions commanded views of the lordly Hudson to the 19th century, when the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum at 116th and Broadway (now the site of Columbia University) was a prime tourist attraction; from the turn of the century, when "The West End" became synonymous with fashionable society through 50 years of decline to today's galloping renaissance. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Washington Square'
"Washington Square" is the story of Catherine Sloper, a young heiress who is wooed by Morris Townsend, a handsome gentleman who is more interested in Catherine's inheritance than he is in her. When the two get engaged against the wishes of her stubborn father Catherine must make a choice between the only man she will ever love and the wealth that she will inherit. Named for the upscale area of New York in which the novel is set, "Washington Square" is a classic examination of social class in mid-19th century New York. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Watchmen : The Absolute Edition'
Has any comic been as lauded as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns but Watchmen remains the critics' favourite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller's fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre's finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and recently From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to garner praise since.
The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore's characterisation is as sophisticated as any novel's. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling, rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control--indeed it was Watchmen, and to a lesser extent Dark Knight, that propelled the comic genre forward, making "adult" comics a reality. The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD's Rogue Trooper and DC's Green Lantern) is very fine too, echoing Moore's paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other "works" and "studies" on Moore's characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the fine pace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up--it retains its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. --Mark Thwaite [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Year of Magical Thinking'
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage-and a life, in good times and bad-that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later-the night before New Year's Eve-the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." [via]
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