Avenue of Mysteries - John Irving

With Avenue of Mysteries (Simon & Schuster, $28) John Irving introduces brother and sister Diego and Lupe, denizens of the massive garbage dump in Oaxaca, Mexico. Each sibling is remarkable—Lupe can intuit people’s thoughts and Diego, though uneducated, reads everything he can lay his hands on. Their childhood is recalled by the adult Diego as he travels in the Philippines, trying to fulfill a dying wish from an acquaintance of his youth. Avenue of Mysteries contains all the things we love about Irving’s writing: masterful storytelling, unforgettable characters, and a renewed sense of magic in everyday events.

 

 

Avenue of Mysteries By John Irving Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9781451664164
Availability: Special Order—Subject to Availability
Published: Simon & Schuster - November 3rd, 2015

Avenue of Mysteries By John Irving Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9781451664171
Availability: Not On Our Shelves—Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Simon & Schuster - June 7th, 2016

Purity - Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen’s Purity (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28) introduces Purity Tyler, known to all as Pip, an under-employed young woman with a staggering student-loan burden living with roommates in a house in Oakland.  When she meets a group of German peace activists, her world is touched by the mysterious Andreas Wolf and his “Sunlight Project,” which promises to expose national and corporate treachery by releasing leaked data.  Pip, who grew up as the child of a single mother, sees in Wolf not just a glamorous opportunity to make a difference in the world but also a way to identify her unknown father. Franzen’s story is filled with twists and turns and unforgettable characters; as always the author of The Corrections and Freedom takes on big subjects—such as privacy and identity—in smart and entertaining ways.

Purity: A Novel By Jonathan Franzen Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780374239213
Availability: Special Order—Subject to Availability
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - September 1st, 2015

Purity: A Novel By Jonathan Franzen Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9781250097101
Availability: Special Order—Subject to Availability
Published: Picador - August 2nd, 2016

Hotels of North America - Rick Moody

Endearingly hilarious and devastatingly human, Rick Moody’s new novel, Hotels of North America (Little, Brown, $25), will touch your heart as often as it will make you laugh.  Reginald Edward Morse is a motivational speaker whose life is coming unglued when he takes on the pittance-paying role of online hotel reviewer. The novel is a compilation of those reviews, which not only take the reader from Iowa to Italy, but slowly reveal the man behind the incisive observations.  Morse reflects on themes of love and loneliness—both in his own and in the lives of people he encounters on his prosaic journeys.  He laments not only vermin-infested hotel rooms with inadequate ventilation; he ponders the plight of truck-stop prostitutes, night watchmen, and various surly managers.  He also recalls the many accommodations where momentous occasions in his own life have occurred—the gothic campground where he stays with his first girlfriend; the opulent Vermont hotel where he meets a mistress; the flop house where he goes simply because it’s the cheapest, most convenient place near his estranged daughter; the Italian villa where he realizes that his marriage is collapsing, and the irritatingly quaint bed-and-breakfast where he first spends the night with the mysterious woman who becomes the love of his life.

Hotels of North America By Rick Moody Cover Image
$15.99
ISBN: 9780316178563
Availability: Special Order—Subject to Availability
Published: Back Bay Books - November 15th, 2016

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