Bookshop.org's Monthly Favorites!
Our friends at Bookshop.org give us a list of their favorite books each month! They're hot off the press, so read them before everyone else.
Lost Lambs
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"Lost Lambs follows a suburban family of five unspooling at the seams, navigating a disastrous open marriage, teenage rebellion, and an unexpected human trafficking/body-hacking crime conspiracy"-- Provided by publisher.
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FIC Cas
The Hitch
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"From the author of the cult classic Treasure Island!!!, a seductively outlandish novel following a woman as she attempts to exorcise the spirit of a dead corgi from her nephew and renegotiate the borders of her previously rational world. As an antiracist, Jewish secular feminist eco-warrior, Rose Cutler knows the right way to do everything, including parent her six-year-old nephew Nathan. But while she's looking after him in his parents' absence, things veer disastrously off course-Rose's Newfoundland attacks and kills a corgi at the park, and Nathan starts acting strangely: barking, overeating, talking to himself. Rose mistakes this for repressed grief over the corgi's death, but Nathan insists he isn't grieving, and the corgi isn't dead. Her soul leaped into his body, and she's living inside him. Now, Rose must banish the corgi from her nephew before his parents return. From the outrageously original mind of Sara Levine, The Hitch is a delightfully raucous comedy about loneliness, bad boundaries, and the ill-fated ambition of micromanaging everything and everyone around you"-- Provided by publisher.
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FIC Lev
I Could Be Famous: Stories
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From a magnetic new voice in fiction "made for this moment and for those coming of age within it" (Jonathan Dee), a debut story collection following ten ambitious women and one male superstar as they pursue their desires--however deluded--for more.
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FIC Ren
Scavengers
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After being fired for taking an uncharacteristic risk at her commodities trading job, Bea Macon sublets her New York apartment and books a one-way ticket to stay with her mother, Christy, a free spirit who has been living in Salt Lake City on Bea's dime.
Usually the responsible one, Bea isn't about to admit exactly why she's suddenly decided to visit, but she isn’t the only one keeping secrets: Christy has a man. She has a map. She has . . . a username on a forum devoted to unearthing $1 million in buried treasure that an antiquities dealer claims to have hidden somewhere in the western U.S.?
Bea is convinced this is just another one of her mother’s wild larks, an elaborate way to refuse, as she has for Bea’s entire life, to finally grow up. But Christy believes she’s onto something—and she’s arranged a rendezvous in a rural town called Mercy with the guy she’s been obsessively trading theories with online to prove it. Out in the desert that one woman believes to be a promised land, the other a wasteland, they find themselves barreling toward a more high-stakes, transformative escapade than either of them could have imagined.
Populated with unforgettable characters and set against one of the world’s most oddly enrapturing landscapes, Scavengers is a funny and heartbreaking novel about old injuries, new beginnings, and the lengths to which we’ll go to find, escape, and reinvent ourselves.
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FIC Bol
On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right - A Personal History
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Exvangelical journalist Josiah Hesse grew up in the stifling working-class town of Mason City, Iowa, raised in the institutions of fundamentalist Christianity: a toxic mixture of schools, ministries, and religious camps that taught creationism, instilled sexual shame, and foretold horrific tales of the rapture. In the churches where he worshipped, pastors siphoned their flocks’ wealth while preaching a doctrine of prosperity. Meanwhile, as economic struggles grew in the community, Hesse's fellow believers lambasted organized labor and shunned the social safety net, becoming an army for God against the evils of progressivism. Only upon escaping Iowa in search of something more would he consider the possibility that the world wasn’t about to end and that he was woefully unprepared for a future he’d never believed would arrive.
Written in vivid prose, On Fire for God is both an unflinching memoir of religious trauma and survival and a stirring examination of the emotional, political, and sociological effects of the Christian right. Returning to his hometown in search of answers about his upbringing and the political forces at work in the region, Hesse calls into question prevailing theories about the disappearing working class that point to opioids, automation, or globalism as the culprits. His story of awakening and escape exposes how conservative Christian con men have, over generations, trapped working-class believers in an isolated bubble of racism, xenophobia, and self-imposed martyrdom, while stripping communities like his of their wealth and self-esteem. In On Fire for God, Hesse plumbs the depths of his own experience to illuminate, with deep feeling and piercing immediacy, what he describes as the socioeconomic tragedy of the American working class.
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Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage
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It was a great love story, one for the ages. The speed of our beginning and the speed of our ending felt like matching bookends. They both came out of nowhere. He wanted it, he wanted me. And then he didn’t.
In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together—building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume.
In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was—someone nicknamed “Belle the Good”—gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice.
With unflinching honesty and profound grace, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love. Strangers is a stunning, deeply moving, compulsively readable memoir heralding the arrival of a thrilling new literary talent.
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Sheer
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An Indie Next Pick Told over nine charged days, Sheer is the gripping tale of a controversial beauty mogul's insatiable ambition and the slippery ground between empowerment and abuse of power. It's 2015 and Maxine Thomas, the founder and creative director of the cult makeup company Reveal, has just been suspended by her own Board for a scandalous transgression. Housebound in her New York City apartment, where she awaits the verdict on her future, Max recounts her version of the events that have brought her to this moment. From her start as a precocious suburban child in the eighties to her decades as a workaholic visionary, Max proselytizes a sheer, dewy look--cosmetics through a female gaze--all while battling sexist investors, the whiplash of cultural change, and the mounting pressure to keep her sexuality a secret. But when Max's story catches up to her present, she must contend with the cost of true transparency. Who has she become in her relentless pursuit of success? And what will happen if she loses it all?
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FIC Law
The Moon Without Stars
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What's the deal with middle school, anyway? Newbery Honor-winning author and artist Chanel Miller explores the glorious mess that is middle school--and the way growing up, finding friends, and discovering who you are can be both awkward and empowering. At the beginning of seventh grade, Luna knows who she is: an observant, quiet girl who loves writing and making zines with her best friend, Scott. But when one of their zines takes off, somehow Luna is swept up into the popular group and learns just how much of herself she's going to have to compromise to stay there. Will she give up her writing? Her best friend? What about her own beliefs about who she is and what she stands for? In a contemporary novel that feels like today's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Newbery Honor winner and bestselling author Chanel Miller explores what it means to lose and then find yourself again in the middle of middle school.
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J FIC Mil
The Lust Crusade
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Daniela Guiterrez has been in love with her brother’s best friend for as long as she can remember—until he went missing a year ago during an archaeological expedition. But on a solo trip to Greece, the intrepid librarian discovers that Theo is very much alive, although judging by the criminals holding him hostage, he is not doing well.
An expert in Ancient Greek archaeology, Dr. Theo Galanis has been abducted by artifact smugglers in search of a priceless gemstone—the Eye of the Minotaur. This ridiculous assignment was supposed to get Dani out of his system, not keep her tied up next to him. But when a little white lie spirals into his captors believing Theo and Dani are engaged, they must utilize her research skills and his expertise to solve the centuries’ old Minoan mystery, all while feigning a romance to keep each other alive.
Now with less than six days to find the jewel, underground societies, mythological beings, and pesky abductors are only half the battle. Because among the ancient ruins and temples they explore is an even bigger danger: falling in love for rea
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FIC Seg
Beth Is Dead
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Told in multiple perspectives, the March sisters discover Beth's body in the woods and work together to identify her killer, until they start to suspect each other.
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YA FIC Ber
The Last of Earth
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1869. Tibet is closed to Europeans, an infuriating obstruction for the rapidly expanding British Empire. In response, Britain begins training Indians—permitted to cross borders that white men may not—to undertake illicit, dangerous surveying expeditions into Tibet.
Balram is one such surveyor-spy, an Indian schoolteacher who, for several years, has worked for the British, often alongside his dearest friend, Gyan. But Gyan went missing on his last expedition and is rumored to be imprisoned within Tibet. Desperate to rescue his friend, Balram agrees to guide an English captain on a foolhardy mission: After years of paying others to do the exploring, the captain, disguised as a monk, wants to personally chart a river that runs through southern Tibet. Their path will cross fatefully with that of another Westerner in disguise, fifty-year-old Katherine. Denied a fellowship in the all-male Royal Geographical Society in London, she intends to be the first European woman to reach Lhasa.
As Balram and Katherine make their way into Tibet, they will face storms and bandits, snow leopards and soldiers, fevers and frostbite. What’s more, they will have to battle their own doubts, ambitions, grief, and pasts in order to survive the treacherous landscape.
A polyphonic novel about the various ways humans try to leave a mark on the world—from the enduring nature of family and friendship to the egomania and obsessions of the colonial enterprise—The Last of Earth confirms Deepa Anappara as one of our greatest and most ambitious storytellers.
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FIC Ana
How to Be a Rich Old Lady: Your Guide to Easy Investing, Building Wealth, and Creating the Wild, Beautiful Life You Want
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Amanda Holden spent years working in investment management, where she saw exactly who gets access to the power, ease, and opportunity money can bring—and it wasn’t people like her friends. She also saw how the financial system is designed to feel exclusive and confusing, and how it blames individuals for economic problems they didn’t create. So, Amanda left her finance job to launch Invested Development, a financial education company where she has taught more than twenty-five thousand students how to invest with radical clarity, accessibility, and joy.
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The Bookbinder's Secret
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Lilian ("Lily") Delaney, apprentice to a master bookbinder in Oxford in 1901, chafes at the confines of her life. She is trapped between the oppressiveness of her father’s failing bookshop and still being an apprentice in a man’s profession. But when she’s given a burned book during a visit to a collector, she finds, hidden beneath the binding, a fifty-year-old letter speaking of love, fortune, and murder.
Lily is pulled into the mystery of the young lovers, a story of forbidden love, and discovers there are more books and more hidden pages telling their story. Lilian becomes obsessed with the story but she is not the only one looking for the remaining books and what began as a diverting intrigue quickly becomes a very dangerous pursuit.
Lily's search leads her from the eccentric booksellers of London to the private libraries of unscrupulous collectors and the dusty archives of society papers, deep into the heart of the mystery. But with sinister forces closing in, willing to do anything for the books, Lilian’s world begins to fall apart and she must decide if uncovering the truth is worth the risk to her own life.
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FIC Bel
The Book of Blood and Roses
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"In the mists of the Scottish Highlands is a university where vampire students study alongside humans. Rebecca Charity is a vampire hunter undercover at the university, searching for the mysterious Book of Blood and Roses, a lost compendium of ways to kill vampires. If she finds it, she'll be one step closer to avenging her parents, who were slain by those creatures of the night. But when Rebecca arrives, she finds something unexpected--a coffin. Her new roommate is Aliz Astra, scion of one of the most powerful vampire families--and the most beautiful woman Rebecca has ever met. The maddeningly gorgeous Aliz is everything that Rebecca has always hated, but also everything she ever wanted, and now Rebecca doesn't know if she wants to kiss or kill her. When one moonlit night Aliz rescues her from a vampire attack, she accidentally makes Rebecca her familiar. And now they must work together to break the curse, but as they get closer to solving the mystery, Rebecca and Aliz get closer too. But can a vampire hunter ever fall in love with a vampire?"--Provided by publisher.
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FIC Sum
Graceless Heart
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"As a sculptress, Ravenna Maffei has always shaped beauty from stone but she has a terrible secret. Desperate to save her brother, she enters a competition hosted by Florence's most feared immortal family, revealing a dark power in a city where magic is forbidden. Now a captive in the cutthroat city of Florence, Ravenna is forced into a dangerous task where failure meets certain death at the hands of Saturnino dei Luni, the immortal family's mesmerizing but merciless heir. But as he draws her closer, Ravenna realizes the true threat lies beyond Florence's walls. The Pope's war against magic is closing in, and Ravenna is no longer just a prisoner but a prize to be claimed. As trusting the wrong person becomes lethal, Ravenna must survive the treacherous line between a pope's obsession and the seductive immortal who might be the end of her--or surrender her power to a city on the brink of war"--Provided by publisher.
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FIC Iba
Don't Think about Dinner: Save Time and Money with 125+ Easy, Nourishing, Delicious Recipes for Every Meal
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Whether you want to improve your health, cut down food waste (and spending), reduce your mental load, or build new kitchen skills, Don’t Think About Dinner provides everything you need to confidently approach every meal of the day—from shopping and stocking the pantry to storing and reheating leftovers, and everything in between.
As a college student, Jenn was struggling with health problems and tired of quick-fix “healthy” recipes that relied on obscure, expensive ingredients that often spoiled before she could finish them. Overwhelmed and frustrated, she felt further from her health goals. So, she made a plan. Or rather, a list—filled with plants and proteins, plus simple recipes to make the most of them. This became the framework for her hugely successful business—and transformed her life.
In this engaging, cleverly organized book, Jenn expands on the content that has captivated millions of devoted follows. Unlike a typical cookbook, this comprehensive handbook offers strategies, tools, tips, meal plans, and more, plus over 125 delicious recipes. Jenn includes a wide range of adaptable dishes that suit any vibe, budget, or dietary need, from breakfast and lunch to appetizers, dinner, drinks, snacks, and desserts, including:
Goat Cheese and Kale High-Protein Egg Muffins, a quick, satisfying reheatable breakfast
Barbecue Chicken Chopped Salad, more filling and budget-friendly than the one from your favorite food chain
Street Corn-Inspired Shrimp Skillet, a high-protein dinner done in 30 minutes
Sheet Pan Butternut Squash Mac and “Cheese,” a delicious, plant-powered wonder
Fudgy Sweet Potato Brownies—so good you’ll forget about the box mix
Don’t Think About Dinner is designed to streamline the way you cook and think about your meals. With a fully stocked kitchen and plan in place, you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to cook nourishing, budget-conscious, standout meals.
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Darkrooms
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"Two unforgettable women investigate the disappearance of a missing girl in a small Irish town brimming with secrets in this haunting debut from a new crime writing talent, perfect for fans of Tana French and Flynn Berry"--
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FIC Han
Eat Yourself Healthy: Food to Change Your Life [American Measurements]
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"For more than two decades, Jamie Oliver has been leading the charge on a global food revolution, aiming to improve everyone's health and happiness through food. Now, in response to the changing food environment and industry that is working against us, Jamie puts to use his nutrition diploma and chef experience to help us wrestle back control and build a celebratory relationship with good food, embracing its power to make us healthier and happier. In [this book], he's back with 120 ... recipes sure to energize, satisfy, and nourish. Jamie proves that healthy eating can be joyful, generous, and abundant: this is all about what you can have, not what you can't. Teamed with 50 helpful healthy hacks and a nutrition-packed 2-week meal plan to kickstart your health journey, it's never been easier to make choices that support your well-being"--
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