She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good

Recognition: Oprah's Book Club
Price: RM15

In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years.

Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.

While I Was Gone by Sue Miller

 
Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good

Recognition: Oprah's Book Club
Price: RM15

A decade ago she put a face on every mother's worst nightmare with her phenomenal best-seller The Good Mother. Now, Sue Miller delivers a spellbinding novel of love and betrayal that explores what it means to be a good wife.

In the summer of 1968, Jo Becker ran out on the marriage and the life her parents wanted for her, and escaped--for one beautiful, idyllic year--into a life that was bohemian and romantic, living under an assumed name in a rambling group house in Cambridge. It was a time of limitless possibility, but it ended in a single instant when Jo returned home one night to find her best friend lying dead in a pool of blood on the living room floor.  

Now Jo has everything she's ever wanted: a veterinary practice she loves, a devoted husband, three grown daughters, a beautiful Massachusetts farmhouse. And if occasionally she feels a stranger to herself and wonders what happened to the freedom she once felt, or how she came to be the wife, mother, and doctor her neighbors know and trust--if at times she feels as if her whole life is vanishing behind her as she's living it--she need only look at her daughters or her husband, Daniel, to recall the satisfactions of family and community and marriage.

But when an old housemate settles in her small town, the fabric of Jo's life begins to unravel: seduced again by the enticing possibility of another self and another life, she begins a dangerous flirtation that returns her to the darkest moment of her past and imperils all she loves.

While I Was Gone is an exquisitely suspenseful novel about how quickly and casually a marriage can be destroyed, how a good wife can find herself placing all she holds dear at risk. In expert strokes, Sue Miller captures the precariousness of even the strongest ties, the ease with which we abandon each other, and our need to be forgiven. An extraordinary book, her best, from a beloved American writer.

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Fold line on front cover, slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good

Recognition: Oprah's Book Club
Price: RM15

In this riveting novel of almost unbearable suspense, three fragile yet determined people become dangerously entangled in a relentlessly escalating crisis. Colonel Behrani, once a wealthy man in Iran, is now a struggling immigrant willing to bet everything he has to restore his family's dignity. Kathy Nicolo is a troubled young woman whose house is all she has left, and who refuses to let her hard-won stability slip away from her. Sheriff Lester Burdon, a married man who finds himself falling in love with Kathy, becomes obsessed with helping her fight for justice.

Drawn by their competing desires to the same small house in the California hills and doomed by their tragic inability to understand one another, the three converge in an explosive collision course. Combining unadorned realism with profound empathy, House of Sand and Fog marks the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction.

Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Sticker mark on front cover, otherwise good

Recognition: National Bestseller, Oprah's Book Club
Price: RM15

The bestselling author of Turtle Moon and Practical Magic tells her most seductive and mesmerizing tale yet--the story of March Murray, who returns to her small Massachusetts hometown after nineteen years, encountering her childhood sweetheart...and discovering the heartbreaking and complex truth about their reckless and romantic love.

Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende

Category: Fiction
Type: Hardcover
Condition: Frayed sleeve cover, slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good
Price: RM20

Irene Beltran, the unconventional daughter of a wealthy family, and Francisco Leal, son of Spanish exiles, are reporter and photographer for a women's magazine in an unnamed Latin American dictatorship. They stumble onto a mass grave where the bodies of people tortured and murdered by the police have been dumped. As their love grows in the shadow of death, Irene and Francisco struggle to bring the men responsible to justice. They win a qualified victory when public outcry and international condemnation, sparked by photographs and tape recordings smuggled out of the country, force the authorities to allow a trial and conviction. But the lovers must flee the continent to avoid reprisals from an enraged government that has no intention of truly altering its policies.

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good

Recognition: National Book Award Winner, National Bestseller
Price: RM15

 In 1997, Charles Frazier’s debut novel Cold Mountain made publishing history when it sailed to the top of The New York Times best-seller list for sixty-one weeks, won numerous literary awards, including the National Book Award, and went on to sell over three million copies. Now, the beloved American epic returns, reissued by Grove Press to coincide with the publication of Frazier’s eagerly-anticipated second novel, Thirteen Moons. Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves. His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign. At the same time, the intrepid Ada is trying to revive her father’s derelict farm and learning to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away. As it interweaves their stories, Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic odyssey, hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.

The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Fold line on front and back cover, slightly yellowed pages, sticker mark/tear on back cover

Recognition: Oprah's Book Club, New York Times Bestseller
Price: RM15

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. 

Hotel Pastis: A Novel of Provence by Peter Mayle

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Fold line on front and back cover, slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good
Price: RM15

Having delighted millions of Americans with A Year in Provence and Toujours Provence, Peter Mayle treats us to a wonderfully entertaining novel of escape, romance and adventure. played in the landscape he has made so irresistible.

Simon Shaw, a forty-two-year-old advertising tycoon, worn down by insatiable clients and a rapacious ex-wife, wants to get away from it all. On impulse he drives to the south of France. When an accident leaves him stranded in a small village in the Luberon, an enchanting Frenchwoman, who is between husbands, comes to his rescue and soon lures him into buying the local gendarmerie. Together they transform it into a little jewel of a hotel. And life seems idyllic. 

But at the same time, a crook, recently released from the Marseilles prison, is plotting to rob the bank in the nearby town. Paths cross. schemes go awry -- and through it all Peter Mayle delights us with the intrigues of the haut monde that descends on the Hotel Pastis and the machinations of the bad guys, as everything conspires to threaten the heaven on earth that Simon Shaw has envisioned.

A Trip To The Stars by Nicholas Christopher

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Sticker mark on front cover, otherwise good
Price: RM15

At a Manhattan planetarium in 1965, ten-year-old Enzo and his young aunt, Mala, are separated, an event that profoundly alters the rest of their lives. In an epic tale of love and destiny, A Trip to the Stars charts their paths over the next fifteen years as they search for each other and, in the process, discover themselves.

As Enzo and Mala cross continents and seas on their separate journeys, they encounter a dizzying array of people: an arachnologist in New Orleans, an asteroid specialist, a wounded B-52 navigator in Vietnam, a professional mind reader, a maverick NASA astronomer, and countless others. All of them are searching for things they have lost -- loved ones, opportunities, enlightenment. Through them Mala and Enzo discover a world steeped in mystery, romance, and intellectual adventure.

A Trip to the Stars is both a love story and a coming-of-age story that shows us what happens when we lose what matters most. Fusing imagination and suspense with remarkable narrative skill, Nicholas Christopher builds a story of tremendous scope that lingers in detail and sensation long after the last page has been turned.

Summer Sisters by Judy Blume

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No writer captures the seasons of our lives better than Judy Blume.  Now, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wifey and Smart Women, comes an extraordinary novel of reminiscence and awakening--an unforgettable story of two women, two families, and the friendships that shape a lifetime.

When Victoria Leonard answers the phone in her Manhattan office, Caitlin's voice catches her by surprise.  Vix hasn't talked to her oldest friend in months.  Caitlin's news takes her breath away--and Vix is transported back in time, back to the moment she and Caitlin Somers first met, back to the casual betrayals and whispered confessions of their long, complicated friendship, back to the magical island where two friends became summer sisters.

Caitlin dazzled Vix from the start, sweeping her into the heart of the unruly Somers family, into a world of privilege, adventure, and sexual daring.  Vix's bond with her summer family forever reshapes her ties to her own, opening doors to opportunities she had never imagined--until the summer she falls passionately in love.  Then, in one shattering moment on a moonswept Vineyard beach, everything changes, exposing a dark undercurrent in her extraordinary friendship with Caitlin that will haunt them through the years.

As their story carries us from Santa Fe to Martha's Vineyard, from New York to Venice, we come to know the men and women who shape their lives.  And as we follow the two women on the paths they each choose, we wait for the inevitable reckoning to be made in the fine spaces between friendship and betrayal, between love and freedom.

A Gathering of Angels by Katherine Valentine

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good
Price: RM10

In A Miracle for St. Cecilia’s, Katherine Valentine created a charming Connecticut town where ordinary people experience extraordinary things. Now in A Gathering of Angels the citizens of Dorsetville continue to discover the daily wonders of faith. 

While Father Flaherty toys with taking up kickboxing to trim his growing waistline, another town expansion proves more ominous: Barry Hornibrook, driven to build a riverfront hotel, turns to questionable sources for desperately needed money. But this is Dorsetville, where anything is possible—and by the time this beguiling tale is over, a tragic fire, a German shepherd, and an influx of dentists will all play a role in changing the community forever.

Full of delightful surprises, A Gathering of Angels proves to be another heart- warming tale of hope.

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good

Recognition: National Book Award Winner and National Bestseller
Price: RM15

When Quoyle's two-timing wife meets her just deserts, he retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters and family members all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As Quoyle confronts his private demons -- and the unpredictable forces of nature and society -- he begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.

A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family, The Shipping News shows why Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.

Babycakes (Tales of the City Series, Volume 4) by Armistead Maupin

 Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good
Price: RM15

When an ordinary househusband and his ambitious wife decide to start a family, they discover there's more to making a baby then meets the eye. Help arrives in the form of a grieving gay neighbor, a visiting monarch, and the dashing young lieutenant who defects from her yacht. Bittersweet and profoundly affecting, Babycakes was the first work of fiction to acknowledge the arrival of AIDS. 

Further Tales of the City (Volume 3) by Armistead Maupin

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Slightly yellowed pages, price sticker mark/tear on back cover
Price: RM15

The calamity-prone residents of 28 Barbary Lane are at it again in this deliciously dark novel of romance and betrayal. While Anna Madrigal imprisons an anchorwoman in her basement, Michael Tolliver looks for love at the National Gay Rodeo, DeDe Halcyon Day and Mary Ann Singleton track a charismatic psychopath across Alaska, and society columnist Prue Giroux loses her heart to a derelict living in San Francisco park. 

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good
Price: RM15

Greeted as "an amazement of riches . . . few readers will be able to resist" by The New York Times, Chocolat is an enchanting novel about temptation, pleasure, and the ultimate folly of self-denial. The town of Lansquenet, solemnly preparing for Lent, is set astir when Vianne Rocher and her spirited daughter arrive on the heels of the carnival and open a chocolate shop across the square from the church. Vianne's uncanny ability to perceive her customers' private discontents and alleviate them with just the right chocolate treats quickly charms the villagers--and enrages Pere Reynaud, the conservative local priest. Certain that only a witch could create such magical cures, Reynaud vows to block the chocolate festival Vianne plans for Easter Sunday and to run her out of town forever. Witch or not (she'll never tell), Vianne soon sparks a dramatic confrontation between those who prefer the cold comforts of the church and those who revel in their newly discovered taste for pleasure.

The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve

Category: Fiction
Type: Harcover
Condition: Slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good
Recognition: Oprah's Book Club
Price: RM20

Oprah Book Club- Selection, March 1999: With five novels to her credit, including the acclaimed The Weight of Water, Anita Shreve now offers a skillfully crafted exploration of the long reach of tragedy in The Pilot's Wife. News of Jack Lyons's fatal crash sends his wife into shock and emotional numbness: Kathryn wished she could manage a coma. Instead, it seemed that quite the opposite had happened: She felt herself to be inside of a private weather system, one in which she was continuously tossed and buffeted by bits of news and information, sometimes chilled by thoughts of what lay immediately ahead, thawed by the kindness of others ... frequently drenched by memories that seemed to have no regard for circumstance or place, and then subjected to the nearly intolerable heat of reporters, photographers and curious on-lookers. It was a weather system with no logic, she had decided, no pattern, no progression, no form.The situation becomes even more dire when the plane's black box is recovered, pinning responsibility for the crash on Jack. In an attempt to clear his name, Kathryn searches for any and all clues to the hours before the flight. Yet each discovery forces her to realize that she didn't know her husband of 16 years at all.

A Noble Radiance by Donna Leon

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Slightly yellowed pages, otherwise good
Price: RM15

Donna Leon has topped European bestseller lists for more than a decade with a series of mysteries featuring clever Commissario Guido Brunetti. Always ready to bend the rules to uncover the threads of a crime, Brunetti manages to maintain his integrity while maneuvering through a city rife with politics, corruption, and intrigue.

In A Noble Radiance a new landowner is summoned urgently to his house not far from Venice when workmen accidentally unearth a macabre grave. The human corpse is badly decomposed, but a ring found nearby proves to be a first clue that reopens an infamous case of kidnapping involving one of Venice's most aristocratic families. Only Commissario Brunetti can unravel the clues and find his way into both the heart of patrician Venice and that of a family grieving for their abducted son.

French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes, and Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano

Category: Non-Fiction
Type: Hardcover
Condition: As good as new
Price: RM25

By letter, e-mail, and in person, readers of Mireille Guiliano’s phenomenal best seller, French Women Don’t Get Fat, have inundated her with requests for more of her cunning but simple secrets to living the good life, the ways French women manage to enjoy wine, chocolate, and many other seductive pleasures without gaining weight. Mireille’s answer? This buoyant book brimming with fresh advice and seasonal stories—on food bien sûr (more than 100 delicious new recipes) but also on many other aspects of living that should bring us pleasure, such as picking a wine, dressing well, even arranging flowers.

French women not only stay slim while relishing life to the fullest, they also have the longest life expectancy in the Western world. And now Mireille shows us how they attune themselves to the rhythms of the year. Together with a bounty of new dining ideas and menus, she offers us a treasury of tips on style, grooming, and entertaining, all designed to focus the mind on sensory pleasure for maximum enjoyment. Here are four seasons’ worth of strategies for shopping, cooking, and exercising, as well as some pointers for looking effortlessly chic. Whether your aim is finding two scoopfuls of pleasure in one of crème brûlée or entertaining beautifully when time is short and expectations are high, the inspiration you need is here. Taking us from her childhood in Alsace-Lorraine to her summers in Provence and her busy life in New York and Paris, this book of scrumptious Gallic wisdom and wit shows how anyone anywhere can develop a healthy, holistic lifestyle.

In the voice that entranced more than a million honorary French women, Mireille demonstrates that there is indeed an art to joyful living, and that equilibrium—being bien dans sa peau and true to one’s individual nature—is the key to a long and healthy life. Full of sage, irresistible advice on everything from decanting to detoxing, from yogurt to yoga, French Women for All Seasons is an essential guide to savoring all life’s moments—in moderation, in season, and, above all, with pleasure.

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: As good as new
Price: RM10

In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop - the only bookshop - in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors' lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence's warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: As good as new
Price: RM15

Early responses to Jane Eyre, first published in 1847, were mixed. Some held the book to be anti-Christian, others were disturbed by a heroine so proud, self-willed, and essentially unfeminine. The modern reader may well have trouble understanding what all the fuss was about. On the surface a fairly conventional Gothic romance (poor orphan governess is hired by rich, brooding Byronic hero-type), Jane Eyre hardly seems the stuff from which revolutions are made. But the story is very much about the nature of human freedom and equality, and if Jane was seen as something of a renegade in nineteenth-century England, it is because her story is that of a woman who struggles for self-definition and determination in a society that too often denies her that right. But self-determination does not mean untrammeled freedom for men or women. Rochester, that thorny masculine beast whom Jane eventually falls for, is a man who sets his own laws and manipulates the lives of those around him; before he can enter into a marriage of equals with Jane he must undergo a spiritual transformation. Should the lesson sound dry, it's not. Jane Eyre is full of drama: fires, storms, attempted murder, and a mad wife conveniently stashed away in the attic. This is very sexy stuff - another reason Victorian critics weren't quite sure what to make of it.