The Drunken Spelunker’s Guide to Plato is based on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from The Republic. In this novel, the Cave is a dank basement bar in the small Southern town of Waterville, overflowing with cheap beer, good blues, and local oddballs. There’s Vera, the tough but tender owner; Pancho, the philosophical piano tuner; Billy Joe, the former rising star back home after a stop in Memphis; and Commie Tom, the exceedingly generous proprietor of the Hammer and Sickle Bookstore.
The newest bartender is whip-smart tomboy Josie, who hopped a bus from the Appalachian backwoods on a quest to discover who she is and where she belongs.
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• Short-listed for the 2015 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
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“A Brooklyn-by-way-of-Bangladesh Royal Tenenbaums.”—The Denver Post
A vibrant debut novel, set in Brooklyn and Bangladesh, follows three young women and one family struggling to make peace with secrets and their past
For as long as she can remember, Ella has longed to feel at home. Orphaned as a child after her parents’ murder, and afflicted with hallucinations at dusk, she’s always felt more at ease in nature than with people.
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This witty, refreshing treatise from a celebrated author and seasoned teacher is a passionate defense of reading—just for the joy of it. Drawing on his experiences as a child, a parent, and an inner-city teacher in Paris, Daniel Pennac reflects on the power of story and reminds us of our right to read anything, anywhere, anytime, so long as we are enjoying ourselves. Foreword and illustrations by Quentin Blake.
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In her first novel since winning the Newbery Medal, Katherine Applegate delivers an unforgettable and magical story about family, friendship, and resilience.
Jackson and his family have fallen on hard times. There’s no more money for rent. And not much for food, either. His parents, his little sister, and their dog may have to live in their minivan. Again. Crenshaw is a cat. He’s large, he’s outspoken, and he’s imaginary. He has come back into Jackson’s life to help him. But is an imaginary friend enough to save this family from losing everything?
Crenshaw proves in unexpected ways that friends matter,
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Madam, Will You Talk blends biting description with sheer terror as only Mary Stewart can. Charity Selborne, a lovely war widow, and her irreverent artist friend, Louise Cray, arrive in the South of France expecting a conventional holiday. The vistas of Provence delight them, and Charity is pleased to meet a young man of thirteen who is having trouble with his dog. He introduces himself and Charity is charmed—until she senses a terrible maturity behind his grave eyes, and shortly hears the rumors about his father. From this point on the tension mounts steadily until it reaches the breaking point.
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Kit Noonan is an unemployed art historian with
twins to help support and a mortgage to pay—
and a wife frustrated by his inertia. Raised by a
strong-willed, secretive single mother, Kit has
never known the identity of his father—a mystery
that his wife insists he must solve to move forward
with his life. Out of desperation, Kit goes to the
mountain retreat of his mother’s former husband,
Jasper, a take-no-prisoners outdoorsman. There,
in the midst of a fierce blizzard, Kit and Jasper confront memories of the
bittersweet decade when their families were joined.
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