The books we sell for your other seven tentacles.
We were so excited by the release of Shadow of Night, the sequel to this book, that we decided to feature both for the fall of 2012. Whether you are a paranormal fantasy fan or not, this story is just plain fun!
Diana Bishop, a young scholar and the descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript deep in Oxford’s Boeleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.
Monument 14, by Emmy Laybourne. Look no further for the next action-packed dystopian teen novel! Chestnut Ridge homegirl Emmy Laybourne’s first novel has already received a starred review and a recommended release from Publisher’s Weekly. They don’t just hand out those red stars.
“Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not—you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.
Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.
But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.”
In Emmy Laybourne’s debut novel, six high school kids, two eighth graders, and six little kids are trapped together in a chain superstore. Outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, are tearing the world apart.
Note: When we say “dystopian,” we mean it. Monument 14 is not for children under 14.
Hardcover
Cuppa Pulp Extra: Check out Dress Your Marines In White, the short prequel to Monument 14, on Tor.com!
Welcome to Cuppa Pulp Booksellers’ first season of featured reading! Each season, we will recommend four exceptional titles, lovingly culled from our exceptional list. Whether you come to shop Meadowlark/Sunbridge for your children or your students, why don’t you take a moment to browse our seasonal features for yourself?
Summer is our favorite season, partly because long days, late nights, and fewer obligations permit enjoyment of the thickest books of the year! We’re featuring local authors Emmy Laybourne and Lauren Groff; their respective dystopian and utopian spellbinders were published this year. We also offer a surprise hit by Chad Harbach, featuring summer’s other great pastime, baseball. Finally, veteran Ann Patchett brings you a dizzying epic fusing thrills in the Amazon, sci-fi speculation, and love.
Rain or shine (and never neglecting 30 SPF, minimum, on the back of your neck), always have one hand on a book.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. Oscar is an underdog for whom you will root and weep, even while you laugh out the other side of your mouth, and his tale is one of the best novels with footnotes you’ll ever read. The asides will take you from the gritty sidewalks of Paterson, New Jersey, to Middle Earth; and from the troubled and beautiful Dominican Republic to the Death Star.
Born in Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, Junot Diaz is became one of our most exciting contemporary authors by exercising his storyteller’s power to soothe and heal. He learned to love writing in childhood, composing long letters to amuse his hospitalized brother. Over the years, he refined his natural storytelling muscle to the point of winning a Pulitzer Prize with Oscar Wao, a Cuppa Pulp favorite.
Olive is the dowdy, unpleasantly sharp, middle-aged schoolteacher that everyone loves to hate. But Elizabeth Strout’s mighty pen renders her achingly human and, in fact, indispensable to every character portrayed in this truly flawless book: Henry Kitteridge, Olive’s mild-mannered husband, who understands and forgives her when no one else will; a suicidal ex-student, who finds in her the teacher that always believed in him; a perfect stranger, whose anorexia contrasts so starkly with Olive’s well-fed bulk.
A rare literary novel that is also funny, wise, and moving.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. In the wake of the Twin Towers disaster, Colum McCann had the wisdom and the boldness to tell a story evoking nostalgia for the Towers’ glory, and enflesh it with 1970s New York City grit.
Let The Great World Spin interweaves the lives of New Yorkers from different corners of the city, brought together by Philippe Petit’s legendary 1974 tightrope-walk across the space between the Tower rooftops—in much the same way that New York City was brought together in 2001.
Winner of the 2009 National Book Award for Fiction.
A Visit From The Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. Kleptomania, rock and roll, and the madness of modern American childrearing all bubble up into Jennifer Egan’s edgy, street-smart series of stories depicting Generation X as it enters middle-age.
Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
“If Jennifer Egan is our reward for living through the self-conscious gimmicks and ironic claptrap of postmodernism, then it was all worthwhile.” –The Washington Post