Here is a list of the most popular books sold last month at Books Inc. in the Marina:
HARDCOVER FICTION
1. The Women, by Kristin Hannah
2. James, by Percival Everett
3. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Story, by James McBride
HARDCOVER NON-FICTION
1. The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin
2. The Wide, Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, by Hampton Sides
3. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt
PAPERBACK FICTION
1. Dune, by Frank Herbert
2. Before We Were Innocent, by Ella Berman
3. Birnam Wood, by Eleanor Catton
PAPERBACK NON-FICTION
1. The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine: From Zionism to Intifadas and the Struggle for Peace, by Michael Scott-Baumann
2. The Way Forward, by Pueblo Yung
3. Solito: a Memoir, by Javier Zamora
YOUNG READERS
Young Adult: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, by Holly Jackson
Picture Book: Claude: The True Story of a White Alligator, by Emma Bland Smith & Jennifer M. Potter
Graphic Novel: Dog Man vol. 12: The Scarlet Shedder, by Dav Pilkey
NEW AND NOTABLE RELEASES
Lies and Weddings, by Kevin Kwan
Kwan (Crazy Rich Asians) returns with another irresistible comedy of manners driven by marriage plots. Lady Augusta Gresham, daughter of the “self-absorbed” Arabella Gresham, is slated to marry Prince Maximillian zu Liechtenburg at a luxe Hawaiian resort. The ceremony is briefly delayed by a volcano eruption, then marred by each family’s discovery of the other’s mountainous debt. Most distressing to Arabella, however, is the unwelcome news that her son, Rufus, has fallen in love with the comparatively modest Eden Tong, a doctor, rather than wealthy Solène de Courcy, whom Arabella had invited to her daughter’s wedding in hopes of matching Rufus with Solène and thus securing her family’s welfare. Kwan delivers on his reputation for breezy prose, encyclopedic references to art and haute couture, and quick-witted dialogue laced with Cantonese. The author’s fans will devour this.
Long Island, by Colm Toibin
The quietly devastating sequel to Brooklyn picks up two decades later with Eilis Lacey, now in her 40s, hemmed in by her overbearing in-laws on Long Island in 1976. First Eilis discovers that her husband, Tony, has been unfaithful, then she learns his family has decided without her consent to raise the child of his illicit affair. Furious, Eilis returns to Enniscorthy, the small town in Ireland she left in the 1950s, and arranges for her and Tony’s teenaged daughter and son to join her there to celebrate her mother’s birthday. Eilis hasn’t been back since the death of her sister, Rose, many years earlier. On that trip, though she was already married to Tony without her family’s knowledge, she fell in love with pub owner Jim Farrell. Jim has never married but is soon to become engaged to the widow Nancy Sheridan, Eilis’s dear old friend. Now, Eilis’s second homecoming upends life in the village as she and Nancy each stumble toward what they believe they deserve, and Jim considers what’s more important: his commitments or his desires. Tóibín is brilliant at tallying the weight of what goes unsaid between people (“They could do everything except say out loud what it was they were thinking”), and at using quotidian situations to illuminate longing as a universal and often-inescapable aspect of the human condition. Tóibín’s mastery is on full display here.
Sailing Alone: A Surprising History of Isolation and Survival at Sea, by Richard King
“What makes Richard King’s Sailing Alone work so wonderfully well is how deftly he has interwoven his own transatlantic voyage into a masterfully curated collection of other singlehanded adventures — all told with great brio, wit and charm. I couldn’t put this book down. Not only did I want to know what was going to happen to the author aboard his 28-foot cockleshell Fox, I wanted to know what fellow voyager was going to join him next on his perilous passage across the storm-tossed sea. You don’t have to be a sailor to be blown away by this fascinating, bighearted book.”
—Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea, Travels with George, and Second Wind.
Chris Hsiang can help you find your next book at Books Inc., 2251 Chestnut St., 415-931-3633, booksinc.net.
