Staff Pick

#1 New York Times Bestseller
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

"Extraordinary."
--Stephen King

"This book is not simply the great American novel; it's the great novel of las Americas. It's the great world novel! This is the international story of our times. Masterful."
--Sandra Cisneros

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.

Even though she knows they'll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy--two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia's husband's tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia--trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier's reach doesn't extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?

American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed. It is a literary achievement filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page. It is one of the most important books for our times.

Already being hailed as a Grapes of Wrath for our times and a new American classic, Jeanine Cummins's American Dirt is a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope.

"Compact, haunting, and lovely ... it is unhurried and assured; no word is wasted ... In both its rich and unapologetic descriptions of domesticity and frank attitude toward sex ... the book is a treatise on one individual's womanhood."
--Kirkus Reviews

A woman gets up in the middle of a wintry night and starts baking a Bundt cake while her lover sleeps upstairs. When it's time for her to take the cake out of the oven, we have read a tale of romance and death. The narrator of this novel was widowed years ago and is trying to find new passion. But the memory of her deceased husband and a shameful incident still holds her in its grasp. Why did he do it? Margriet de Moor, master storyteller and one of Europe's foremost novelists, recounts a gripping love story about endings and demise, rage and jealousy, knowledge and ambiguity--and the possibility of a fresh start.

Reading group guide is available at newvesselpress.com.

Nora says: Beautiful and mysterious, an elegiac study of love and loss. European best seller.

Soon to be a Major Motion Picture Starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges, directed by Azazael Jacobs

A Recommended Read from:
Vanity Fair * Entertainment Weekly * Vulture * The Millions * Publishers Weekly * Esquire

From bestselling author Patrick deWitt, a brilliant and darkly comic novel about a wealthy widow and her adult son who flee New York for Paris in the wake of scandal and financial disintegration.

Frances Price - tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature - is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there's the Price's aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.

Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self destruction and economical ruin - to riotous effect. A number of singular characters serve to round out the cast: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic proposing a seance, and a doctor who makes house calls with his wine merchant in tow, to name a few.

Brimming with pathos, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind 'tragedy of manners, ' a send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute.

Roxanne says: French Exit is a novel for any Paris lover with gorgeous descriptive passages (a bike outing to Butte-Chaumont for example).  In a motion picture adaptation Michelle Pfeiffer was nominated for a Golden Globe, I was dying to know 'who wore it better'?  DeWitt's narrative and engaging characters are much more fun and far, far more entertaining than the movie.   

These twelve pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure. They showcase Joan Didion's incisive reporting, her empathetic gaze, and her role as an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time (The New York Times Book Review).

Here, Didion touches on topics ranging from newspapers (the problem is not so much whether one trusts the news as to whether one finds it), to the fantasy of San Simeon, to not getting into Stanford. In Why I Write, Didion ponders the act of writing: I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. From her admiration for Hemingway's sentences to her acknowledgment that Martha Stewart's story is one that has historically encouraged women in this country, even as it has threatened men, these essays are acutely and brilliantly observed. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive, bemused, and stunningly prescient.

Both Doug and Elsie loved this book. Doug says: Classic Didion, as if the essays  were held in casks and distilled to single-malt maturity. The flavors are ginger-rich like a potion in the hands of a  shaman. Do not miss these previously  uncollected essays from 1968-2000.