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Staff Recommendations A listing of current favorites, recommended by the bookstore staff. Check back for new recommendations each month as we bring you the best of what we're reading. Browse by title, author or staff member!   Andy   |  Chris   |  Don   |  Elaine   |  Garrett   |  Gent   |  Jackson   |  Jeff   |  Lawrence   |  Layla   |  Linda   |  Matt   |  Michael   |  Nancy   |  Paul   |  Peter   |  Scott   |  Stacey   |  Tân   |  Vanessa

<<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 >>>     sort list by title | author | publication date Dust A Novel Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor From a breathtaking new voice, a novel about a splintered family in Kenya—a story of power and deceit, unrequited love, survival and sacrifice. Odidi Oganda, running for his life, is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi. His grief-stricken sister, Ajany, just returned from Brazil, and their father bring his body back to their crumbling home in... Piano Stories Felisberto Hernández One of the strangest things I have ever read. It is wonderful. —Recommended by Tân, City Lights Books The Book of Other People Zadie Smith If "hell is other people" (as Sartre once said), then this book affirms just the opposite. To raise money for 826 New York, Zadie Smith commissioned 22 of today's most provocative contemporary writers to "make somebody up." The result? A diverse collection of fantastic character sketches that both entertain and arouse the imagination. An Unnecessary Woman A Novel Rabih Alameddine One of the Middle East's most celebrated voices, Rabih Alameddine follows his international bestseller, The Hakawati, with an enchanting story of a book-loving, obsessive, seventy-two-year-old "unnecessary" woman. Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced... To Die in Mexico Dispatches from Inside the Drug War John Gibler On-the-ground reporting and behind-the-scene stories from Mexico's drug war by Mexico-based journalist, John Gibler. Chicken Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent David Henry Sterry I've never read anything quite like this memoir. David Henry Sterry performs a high-wire act in his vaudevilliain telling of life as a prostitute in 70s Hollywood. Alternately sad and hilarious, Sterry provokes serious thinking about family, sexuality, and addiction. —Recommended by Stacey, City Lights Books The Trip to Echo Spring On Writers and Drinking Olivia Laing Olivia Laing took an epic road trip across the states, to various spots that were previously associated with famous alcoholic writers, in an effort to understand all the ways that booze affected them - their lives, their loved ones, and ultimately, their writing. Laing is a fantastic writer, having successfully dissected a tragic illness that is.. Tenth of December Stories George Saunders George saunders has this ability to pair the grim with the quirky, the brutal with the bizarrely hopeful, so that his stories never tip over completely into darkness. He captures the nastiness of violence, consumerism and sexism while keeping the tone satirical—but not light—and creating that uncanny feeling of the familiar gone strange. It's... The Flamethrowers A Novel Rachel Kushner Kushner's writing is authoritative and vivid, as exciting to read as the worlds she writes about. I could not put this down; it was intoxicating reading about a young woman making her way in worlds in which women don't usually get to exist, even in fiction. A cinematic, unstoppable, alienated and kick-fueled adventure. The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas David Almond David Almond strikes again with yet another crazily-inventive, oddly off-kilter, and utterly and bafflingly English fable about how we all really do fit in... somewhere. A must-read. (For ages 9-12) —Recommended by Jeff, City Lights Books Nina's Book of Little Things! Keith Haring Really fun art activity book. —Recommended by Tân, City Lights Books A book of imagination for the little Nina in all of us. Make a little mess, collect some little snowflakes, and draw the things a little bird might say in this book that asks its owner to make his or her mark on every page. Young Man with a Horn A Novel Dorothy Baker Rick Martin loved music and the music loved him. He could pick up a tune so quickly that it didn't matter to the Cotton Club boss that he was underage, or to the guys in the band that he was just a white kid. He started out in the slums of LA with nothing, and he ended up on top of the game in the speakeasies and nightclubs of New York. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie A Novel Ayana Mathis The arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction. A debut of extraordinary distinction: Ayana Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the trials of one unforgettable family. In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses Roger Corman: King of the B Movie Chris Nashawaty An excellent history of Corman, told by those who worked for him and with him and became the generation which liberated American film in the 1970s: Scorsese, Coppola, Nicholson, et al. Beautifully presented with color stills and posters blaring from every page! —Recommended by Don, City Lights Books <<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 >>>