Emma's Picks

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The Expectant Detectives: A Mystery (Expectant Detectives Mystery) By Kat Ailes Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9781250322708
Availability: On Our Shelves in the last 24 hours. Click to see a specific store location's stock.
Published: Minotaur Books - January 9th, 2024

What eighth-month pregnant ex-Londoner wouldn’t distract themselves from moving and impending parenthood with a little amateur sleuthing? And snacks! Alice and her beautiful goofball of a dog are festively funny, surprisingly thoughtful, and remarkably insightful. Making friends in a new place is hard, even without murder and parenthood all at stake, but Alice’s fantastic voice makes this a mystery to savor. A perfect debut, especially for fans of Richard Osman and anyone who appreciates a shoutout to Morse or Death in Paradise. I love this book, and am already looking forward to the sequel!


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The Last Murder at the End of the World: A Novel By Stuart Turton Cover Image
$27.99
ISBN: 9781728254654
Availability: Coming Soon! Pre-Order this now and we will contact you on publication date!
Published: Sourcebooks Landmark - May 21st, 2024

I loved this book! Shades of The Tempest haunt this intriguing tale of people in the last remaining community after a (man-made) apocalypse. On an island where everyone survives together, Emory must use her so-far-unnecessary curiosity and observational skills to determine who committed a terrible murder before the colony collapses and humanity is doomed. What rough magic must we abjure to remake the world? I couldn’t put this puzzle down, even after I finished the book. 


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This Afterlife: Selected Poems By A. E. Stallings Cover Image
$24.00
ISBN: 9780374607838
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Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - December 5th, 2023

From Persephone’s letter to her mother, written from the underworld, to an homage to the plurality of scissors, Stallings’s fluency of meter and form make these poems sing. These are the stories we tell ourselves, ancient and daily, and every one reveals another layer of the world. An excellent collection by one of my favorite poets.


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Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies: A Novel (The Vacation Mysteries #1) By Catherine Mack Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9781250325853
Availability: Coming Soon! Pre-Order this now and we will contact you on publication date!
Published: Minotaur Books - April 30th, 2024

This rollicking mystery, perfect for fans of Benjamin Stevenson, finds writer Eleanor Dash hoping to kill off her much-loved series detective in her upcoming book. If only he weren’t on this trip with her! Italy is lovely, but Dash’s life and her next novel are both in shambles. Read this before it hits the TV—it’s the book to take with you on vacation, for sure!


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Allow Me to Introduce Myself By Onyi Nwabineli Cover Image
$28.99
ISBN: 9781525896033
Availability: Coming Soon! Pre-Order this now and we will contact you on publication date!
Published: Graydon House - May 28th, 2024

The price of growing up in the public eye is high, and Aṅuṛị is done paying it. But when her young sister is dragged into the spotlight in her place, it’s not enough to simply step away. A powerful story about grief, love, and the ways that money can’t buy people sense opens a disturbing window onto a life lived on social media.


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Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate: Poems (Ecco Essentials) By James Tate, Terrance Hayes (Introduction by) Cover Image
By James Tate, Terrance Hayes (Introduction by)
$17.99
ISBN: 9780063306073
Availability: On Our Shelves in the last 24 hours. Click to see a specific store location's stock.
Published: Ecco - November 7th, 2023

This sampler of Tate’s work is amazing. Tate builds little worlds of intimate insight and heartbreaking joy. Each page destroys and rebuilds itself anew, like a savior woken up from a fading nightmare, only to drink a cup of coffee and get lost again in how much he loves the world.


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The Hollow Tree (A Shona Sandison Investigation) By Philip Miller Cover Image
$27.95
ISBN: 9781641295581
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Published: Soho Crime - April 2nd, 2024

Shona is on the trail of a story she didn’t want to pursue—death, Ouija boards, and an MP’s most secret secret. And the Coine Tree has seen more stories than Shona can imagine. But power corrupts, and the dead only talk for so long. Miller’s spooky, gripping story is a great read.


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The Penny Dropping By Helen Farish Cover Image
$17.95
ISBN: 9781852249960
Availability: Coming Soon! Pre-Order this now and we will contact you on publication date!
Published: Bloodaxe Books - July 2nd, 2024

Another spectacular collection from Bloodaxe Books. The past is another country, all memory and missed revelations. These poems are eulogy for a lost relationship and a lost lifetime, but also a foundation for the new life since, the one where one might learn to stop “saving things for later, saving things for best.”


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Ricky By Whitney Collins Cover Image
$18.95
ISBN: 9781956046236
Availability: Coming Soon! Pre-Order this now and we will contact you on publication date!
Published: Sarabande Books - June 25th, 2024

A woman selling rocks from her front yard, a seed snuck out of another realm, a brain tumor that could rewrite history—Collins finds love hidden in more guises than we can imagine. These stories are scary and scandalous, ridiculous and real. After my time in Collins’s worlds, I see our world, with all its strange love and hopeful despair, in brighter, bolder light.


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Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect: A Novel By Benjamin Stevenson Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9780063279070
Availability: On Our Shelves in the last 24 hours. Click to see a specific store location's stock.
Published: Mariner Books - January 30th, 2024

What if you wrote a bestselling mystery, but it was based on your murderous family? How would you write another mystery without another event to inspire you? Ernest embodies all the nervous writers and hapless boyfriends you can imagine, while trying to figure out who is killing all these people on this train! Another diverting adventure and riveting mystery from Stevenson.


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A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories By Terry Pratchett Cover Image
$26.99
ISBN: 9780063376199
Availability: On Our Shelves in the last 24 hours. Click to see a specific store location's stock.
Published: Harper - October 10th, 2023

A treasure trove of newly discovered stories by the much-mourned Terry Pratchett, written under a pseudonym as he learned his craft. Published before his career took off, these little stories from a small-British newspaper are full of all the invention, humor, and care of Pratchett’s later work. Perfect to dip into and fun for all ages—these stories are perfect for everyone looking for a moment of light in the world.


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Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America By Michael Harriot Cover Image
$32.50
ISBN: 9780358439165
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Published: Dey Street Books - September 19th, 2023

Harriot teaches us the history we should have been learning all along. His compelling stories, thoroughly researched and fantastically told, reveal a more accurate picture of America—its history and its present. This book is an education too important to miss.


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The Secret Hours By Mick Herron Cover Image
$27.95
ISBN: 9781641295215
Availability: On Our Shelves in the last 24 hours. Click to see a specific store location's stock.
Published: Soho Crime - September 12th, 2023

This new stand-alone spy novel is a fantastic addition to Herron’s work, perfect for fans and newcomers alike. Herron’s spies are grubby, smart, jaded, foolishly compliant, and fiendishly cunning. His writing is brilliant, whether his characters are in nondescript London offices or in copses riddled with the scent of decaying badgers.


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I Must Be Dreaming By Roz Chast Cover Image
$27.99
ISBN: 9781620403228
Availability: On Our Shelves in the last 24 hours. Click to see a specific store location's stock.
Published: Bloomsbury Publishing - October 24th, 2023

Chast has done the impossible—she’s made other people’s dreams absolutely riveting! From a talking mango that keeps its own counsel to her dad’s skeleton making itself at home to an overview of dream-theory itself, Chast’s exploration of the many dream districts of life is a fantastic and hilarious picture of the absurdities of our collective unconscious.


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The Fraud: A Novel By Zadie Smith Cover Image
$29.00
ISBN: 9780525558965
Availability: On Our Shelves in the last 24 hours. Click to see a specific store location's stock.
Published: Penguin Press - September 5th, 2023

This is my book of the year! History is full of all the lies we tell ourselves and the world, but this book is the real thing. 
Set in the 1800s against the rise and fall of popular author William Ainsworth, the success of Charles Dickens, the trial of the Tichbourne heir, and Britain’s abolition of slavery, The Fraud exposes our history and our present through the intimate observations of Ainsworth’s cousin, Mrs. Touchet, as she watches the lives around her, and her own, unfold. Once again, Zadie Smith reveals new ways to see our complex, brutal, often funny, and so often flawed world.


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Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution By Elie Mystal Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9781620977637
Availability: On Our Shelves in the last 24 hours. Click to see a specific store location's stock.
Published: New Press - May 9th, 2023

The best, clearest breakdown of strengths & failures of the US Constitution, & a fantastic guide to key points of constitutional law that we must grapple with, now, to make a better union. A crucial, illuminating, & brutally honest read!


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