Reading Slump Busters - Books You Can Read In A Day

Pandemic Brain Fog is real. Have you been moving the same book from room to room in your home for the last month? Try these slump-busters!

We Have Always Lived in the Castle: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) By Shirley Jackson, Jonathan Lethem (Afterword by), Thomas Ott (Illustrator) Cover Image
By Shirley Jackson, Jonathan Lethem (Afterword by), Thomas Ott (Illustrator)
$18.00
ISBN: 9780143039976
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Penguin Classics - October 31st, 2006

Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret


The Reluctant Fundamentalist By Mohsin Hamid Cover Image
$15.99
ISBN: 9780156034029
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Harper Perennial - April 14th, 2008

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SHORT-LISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE

The elegant and compelling novel about a Pakistani man’s abandonment of his high-flying life in New York—an extraordinary portrait of a divided and yet ultimately indivisible world in America post-9/11.

At a café table in Lahore, a beard


Things Fall Apart: A Novel By Chinua Achebe Cover Image
$14.00
ISBN: 9780385474542
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Penguin Books - September 1st, 1994

“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” Barack Obama 

“African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison


The Giver: A Newbery Award Winner (Giver Quartet #1) By Lois Lowry Cover Image
$11.99
ISBN: 9780544336261
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Clarion Books - July 1st, 2014

In Lois Lowry’s Newbery Medal–winning classic, twelve-year-old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind his fragile community.


The Sense of an Ending (Vintage International) By Julian Barnes Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780307947727
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage - May 29th, 2012

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present.


Old Man and the Sea By Ernest Hemingway Cover Image
$13.99
ISBN: 9780684801223
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Scribner - May 5th, 1995

*Winner of the Pulitzer Prize*
“A beautiful tale, awash in the seasalt and sweat, bait and beer of the Havana coast.


The Passion By Jeanette Winterson Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780802135223
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Grove Press - August 7th, 1997

"Winterson is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent deeply abides." -- Vanity FairFirst published to great acclaim in 1987, this arresting, elegant novel from Jeanette Winterson uses Napolean's Europe as the setting for a tantalizing surrealistic romance between an observer of history and a creature of fantasy.Jeanette Winterson's novels have established her


Annihilation: A Novel (The Southern Reach Trilogy #1) By Jeff VanderMeer Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780374104092
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: FSG Originals - February 4th, 2014

A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM ALEX GARLAND, STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC

The Southern Reach Trilogy begins with Annihilation, the Nebula Award-winning novel that "reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world" (Kim Stanley Robinson).


Breakfast at Tiffany's (Vintage International) By Truman Capote Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780679745655
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage - September 28th, 1993

Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's. In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape—her poignancy, wit, and naïveté continue to charm.


A Room Of One's Own By Virginia Woolf Cover Image
$15.99
ISBN: 9780156787338
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Mariner Books Classics - December 27th, 1989

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”

In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister—a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different.


Surfacing By Margaret Atwood Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780385491051
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Anchor - March 16th, 1998

From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments—this story of an artist who goes in search of her missing father on a remote island in northern Quebec is a provocative blend of literary mystery, psychological thriller, and spiritual journey.


The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus (Myths) By Margaret Atwood Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9781841957982
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Canongate Us - September 14th, 2006

Margaret Atwood returns with a shrewd, funny, and insightful retelling of the myth of Odysseus from the point of view of Penelope. Describing her own remarkable vision, the author writes in the foreword, "I've chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and to the twelve hanged maids.


They Came Like Swallows (Vintage International) By William Maxwell Cover Image
$14.95
ISBN: 9780679772576
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage - March 25th, 1997

     To eight-year old Bunny Morison, his mother is an angelic comforter in whose absence nothing is real or alive.  To his older brother, Robert, his mother is someone he must protect, especially since the deadly, influenza epidemic of 1918 is ravaging their small Midwestern town.  To James Morison, his wife, Elizabeth, is the center of a life that would disi


So Long, See You Tomorrow: National Book Award Winner (Vintage International) By William Maxwell Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780679767206
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage - January 3rd, 1996

In this magically evocative novel, William Maxwell explores the enigmatic gravity of the past, which compels us to keep explaining it even as it makes liars out of us every time we try. On a winter morning in the 1920s, a shot rings out on a farm in rural Illinois. A man named Lloyd Wilson has been killed.


And Then There Were None By Agatha Christie Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9780062073471
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: William Morrow Paperbacks - January 18th, 2011

"If you’re one of the few who haven’t experienced the genius of Agatha Christie, this novel is a stellar starting point." — DAVID BALDACCI, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

An exclusive authorized edition of the most famous and beloved stories from the Queen of Mystery.


Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot Mysteries #10) By Agatha Christie Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9780062073495
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: William Morrow Paperbacks - January 18th, 2011

THE MOST WIDELY READ MYSTERY OF ALL TIME—NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY KENNETH BRANAGH AND PRODUCED BY RIDLEY SCOTT!

“The murderer is with us—on the train now . . .”


Turbulence: A Novel By David Szalay Cover Image
$25.00
Likely available, but must be ordered by email/phone
ISBN: 9781982122737
Published: Scribner - July 16th, 2019

**A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice**

From the acclaimed, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of All That Man Is, a stunning, virtuosic novel about twelve people, mostly strangers, and the surprising ripple effect each one has on the life of the next as they cross paths while in transit around the world.

A woman strikes up a conve


The House on Mango Street (Vintage Contemporaries) By Sandra Cisneros Cover Image
$12.95
ISBN: 9780679734772
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage - April 3rd, 1991

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.


Birds of America: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries) By Lorrie Moore Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9780307474964
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage - January 12th, 2010

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the bestselling author of A Gate at the Stairs: A collection of twelve stories that’s “one of our funniest, most telling anatomies of human love and vulnerability" (The New York Times Book Review).


The Great Gatsby: The Only Authorized Edition By F. Scott Fitzgerald Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780743273565
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Scribner - September 30th, 2004

The only authorized edition of the twentieth-century classic, featuring F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

The Great Gatsby, F.


Dept. of Speculation (Vintage Contemporaries) By Jenny Offill Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780345806871
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage - October 7th, 2014

From the acclaimed author of Weather comes a slim, stunning portrait of a marriage--a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all.

ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR - THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW


Weather: A novel By Jenny Offill Cover Image
$23.95
ISBN: 9780385351102
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Knopf - February 11th, 2020

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER 

From the beloved author of the nationwide best seller Dept. of Speculationone of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Yeara “darkly funny and urgent” (NPR) tour de force about a family, and a nation, in crisis