Visit us:
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20008
Directions
Click the book covers to read our booksellers' recommendations and buy these and other recommended books.
Click here to meet our booksellers and see even more of their recommendations.
 Fans of excellent memoirs (and of Levantine Jewish history) will remember Lucette Lagnado from her bestseller, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. In The Arrogant Years, Lagnado turns to her mother, Edith—the beautiful prodigy who read all of Proust by age 15, who grew up in the twisting alleyways of Cairo’s poorest Jewish ghetto. >> >> more Recommended by Elizabeth Sher |
|
Recommended by Adam Waterreus |
 In the eight stories in You Know When the Men are Gone, Siobhan Fallon takes us into the world of Fort Hood during wartime: a place where families struggle, wives miss their husbands and children rebel. For most of us, the sacrifice of war is left to others, but in this collection we’re allowed to peek in the windows of the people who give up the most.>> >> more Recommended by Jennifer Close |
I’m a huge fan of stories within stories, especially those with a surrealistic twist. Centuries of June by Keith Donohue delivers this and more. Jack, our unreliable narrator, hits his head in his bathroom and begins what seems an elaborate series of hallucinations involving an ever-evolving character of an old man and eight women, each with a fantastic tale to tell.
|
|
|
|
|
We've all read a stack of books with a preternaturally intelligent young person as the protagonist, perfect kids capable of greater depth of insight, genius, or understanding than most grown-ups. These wunderkinder of the literary world can be a bit hard to take at times—they're peaking at 8? 10? 12? Then I met Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet. >> >> more |
|
3:15 a.m., a Tangier beach: A group of Moroccans crowd onto a raft bound illegally for Spain. From this uncertain, anonymous departure, Laila Lalami spins utterly captivating tales. The travelers represent every social stratum and hail from the city, suburb, countryside, and slum.>> >> more |
When I need a pick-me-up, I flip through NOBODY'S PERFECT and am instantly cheered. Whether he’s pondering high art or gleefully skewering pop culture, Anthony Lane—whom John Updike called the world's "fizziest critic”—is an irresistible companion. >> >> more |
Dorothea Brooke swooned in Rome. Stendhal fainted in Florence. Jeffrey Atman, the protagonist of JEFF IN VENICE, DEATH IN VARANASI, is sotted and besotted in Venice. The novel is first, a rushing tale of carnal serendipity and bacchanalian excess at the Venice Biennale, the ultimate junket for a hack arts reporter. >> >> more |
 AN IMPERFECT OFFERING by Dr. James Orbinski might be called a “testament” bearing witness to the best and worst of humanity. If the topics it treats were that simple, it could be broken down into digestible bits for learned discussion and forgotten . . . but there is nothing digestible about this book. >> >> more Recommended by Nicole Martin |
 THE INVENTION OF AIR is so much more than an intellectual biography of Joseph Priestley, one of the brightest stars in the 18th Century political, religious and scientific firmament. It is a spectacular demonstration of that virtue Priestley possessed in superabundance, intellectual curiosity. >> >> more Recommended by Michael Allen |
One of the highlights of my trip to Paris was visiting Victor Hugo’s
house. It was beautiful and mysterious and decorated in a style that
even in his time must have been unusual. For those of us who are
fascinated not with lives of movies stars but authors, now there is a
guidebook to their homes and haunts. NOVEL DESTINATIONS takes you to Zora Neale Hurston’s Eatonville.>> >> more |
