The Borrower - Rebecca Makkai

The Borrower (Penguin, $15), by Rebecca Makkai, is a charming tale of the cockamamie road trip of a librarian and her favorite ten-year-old patron. Librarian Lucy Hull is both kidnapper and kidnapped when Ian, precocious and stifled by his family, blackmails Lucy into driving him across the country. This humorous novel has children’s story elements and a cast of characters that includes Russian mobsters, ferrets, and the ghosts of the Green Mountain Boys. Makkai’s debut novel is smartly written and wise as Lucy considers the many moral and legal conundrums she has gotten herself into. In this, the season of road trips, The Borrower is a novel not to be missed by anyone who has ever wished to run away with books—or maybe with their favorite librarian or bookseller.

The Borrower: A Novel By Rebecca Makkai Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780143120957
Availability: Not On Our Shelves—Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Penguin Books - May 29th, 2012

The Last Hero - Howard Bryant

It takes a writer of Howard Bryant’s ability to produce The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron (Anchor, $16.95). Bryant explains the forces that shaped Aaron’s life, from his childhood and youth in the segregated South, to his national recognition in baseball, to his political maturation after he retired from the game. Bryant describes Aaron both as a human being and as the different symbols he came to represent for different Americans. Perhaps the sport’s greatest player, Aaron comes across in this biography as a man with many, heretofore unexplored, dimensions.

The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron By Howard Bryant Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780307279927
Availability: Not On Our Shelves—Ships in 1-5 Days
(This book cannot be returned.)
Published: Anchor - May 3rd, 2011

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender

In Aimee Bender’s second novel, Rose Edelstein discovers, on her ninth birthday, that she can taste emotions in what she eats. She must then navigate a strange world where feelings she does not yet understand shape how she views her family, friends, and countless strangers. The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake (Anchor, $15) is a lovely and haunting story; Bender’s characters are endearingly human in the face of abnormal circumstances.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake By Aimee Bender Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780385720960
Availability: Special Order—Subject to Availability
Published: Anchor - April 19th, 2011

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