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Moonlight in Odessa: A Novel by Janet Skeslien Charles is $1.97

Product Description
Odessa, Ukraine, is the humor capital of the former Soviet Union, but in an upside-down world where waiters earn more than doctors and Odessans depend on the Mafia for basics like phone service and medical supplies, no one is laughing. After months of job hunting, Daria, a young engineer, finds a plum position at a foreign firm as a secretary. But every plum has a pit. In this case, it's Mr. Harmon, who makes it clear that sleeping with him is job one. Daria evades Harmon's advances by recruiting her neighbor, the slippery Olga, to be his mistress. But soon Olga sets her sights on Daria's job.

Daria begins to moonlight as an interpreter at Soviet Unions(TM), a matchmaking agency that organizes "socials" where lonely American men can meet desperate Odessan women. Her grandmother wants Daria to leave Ukraine for good and pushes her to marry one of the men she meets, but Daria already has feelings for a local. She must choose between her world and America, between Vlad, a sexy, irresponsible mobster, and Tristan, a teacher nearly twice her age. Daria chooses security and America. Only it's not exactly what she thought it would be…

A wry, tender, and darkly funny look at marriage, the desires we don't acknowledge, and the aftermath of communism, Moonlight in Odessa is a novel about the choices and sacrifices that people make in the pursuit of love and stability.

The Holy City by Patrick McCabe is $1.79

Product Description
A compelling, disturbing and darkly funny new novel from the author of Breakfast on Pluto, The Butcher Boy and Winterwood. As Chris McCool looks back on the glory days of his youth, the swinging sixties of rural Ireland, he can honestly say he had it all. He had the moves, he had the car, and he had Dolly, a woman who called him -Mr Wonderful-. But there was another Mr Wonderful in town, a young Nigerian named Marcus whose dazzling devoutness was all but irresistible. Of course Chris was interested in Marcus only because of their mutual appreciation of the finer things. That was all. But Chris was always a hopeless romantic - perhaps even occasionally obsessive. Spiked with macabre humour and disquieting revelations, The Holy City is brilliant, disturbing and compelling.

The Pindar Diamond by Katie Hickman is $1.86

Product Description
A tale of lust, greed, and danger set in seventeenth-century Venice, The Pindar Diamond is a gripping and superbly told historical novel. Venice, 1604. When rumours of a rare and priceless diamond begin to circulate amongst the gamblers and courtesans of the Venetian demi-monde, the Levant Company merchant Paul Pindar becomes convinced that the jewel is linked to the fate of his former love, Celia Lamprey. As his obsession with the mysterious stone grows it becomes clear that there are other, more sinister forces at play. Is the diamond real, or is it just a trick to lure him to his ruin?

Season of Ice by Diane Les Becquets is $1.98

Product Description
Seventeen-year-old Genesis's father ventures out on a lake in Northern Maine for one last catch of the season-and never returns. As the lake freezes over, so, too, do the lives and hopes of her family. Because with no body, and no hope of finding one until the lake thaws, the family is denied access to insurance money. As the long winter drags on, Genesis begins to unravel the truth behind the rumors-of an affair, and possibly worse-and for the first time, questions how well she, or anyone, really knew her dad. Her odyssey will take her into the thick woods along the Canadian border where her father worked at a logging camp . . . and into a romance she isn't sure she wants. Taut, dark, and compelling, Season of Ice perfectly captures the complex, interior life of a young woman bracing for truth, inadvertently finding love, and waiting for answers that only the thaw can bring.

The Truth About Santa by Gregory Mone is $2.04

Product Description
We all know Santa Claus: fat, jolly, omniscient, swift. Lives in a nice home in the Arctic, with the missus and a pack of elves. Well, forget what you know. Santa Claus is from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, as it turns out, and he’s not as fat as he used to be. Here’s something else you didn’t know: he’s been dabbling in some futuristic technology, and has found myriad ways to make his job possible. How can Santa know who’s been naughty and nice? Simple: implant listening devices into your ornaments. How can he make it to every house Christmas Eve? That’s nothing a little cloning and some wormholes can’t solve. And he has plenty of other tactics: quantum entanglement, organ replacement, drug-induced hibernation, and unmanned aerial vehicles, to name just a few. In this fantastically illustrated, affectionate, and hilarious book, Gregory Mone uses science and technology to overturn the assumption that Santa can’t be real. Drawing on the work of accomplished scientists and researchers, Mone gives us a whole new portrait of this remarkable man and the miracles he makes happen every year. With imaginative artwork and an eye-catching package, this book makes an outstanding Christmas gift for just about anyone.

50 Days Worse Than Yours by Justin Racz is $2.26

Product Description
We've all had bad days: lost our keys, broken a nail, missed a train. Some days, however, are much worse than others, as Justin Racz proves in this hilarious new addition to the smash hit Worse Than Yours series. Collecting fifty of the most memorable "bad days," this outrageous book catalogs everything from the daily ("First gray hair noticed") to the legendary ("Eve eats apple"), from the public ("New York City sanitation strike") to the painfully private ("Ricky gets atomic wedgie, 1976"). An inspired and fully illustrated testament to schadenfreude, 50 Days Worse than Yours proves that nothing is as universal as suffering.
Whether you're a kid ("Picked last in gym-again"), a new parent ("Barney invented"), or facing down middle age ("AARP card arrives"), you can be sure to find some comfort in this riotous compilation of things gone wrong. After all, it could have been much, much worse…

The Perfect Stranger: The Truth About Mothers and Nannies by Lucy Kaylin is $2.36

Product Description
Lucy Kaylin has written a book that begins with the watershed moment in a mother's life-when she decides to hire a proxy to care for her children. Given that it's not only affluent women who turn to nannies anymore, this arrangement is also a watershed in the history of women's rights. Women now have choices. And therein lies the problem. Having choices has forced women to confront their feelings about motherhood and work, and to make difficult decisions requiring wrenching sacrifice. It's a murky, ambivalent time, and nowhere is that ambivalence more acutely expressed than in a working mother's relationships with her children's nanny, who serves such a precious function in the private space that is the family home. Lucy Kaylin, an experienced journalist who has interviewed prominent newsmakers of every stripe, isn't afraid to ask the tough questions to get to the heart of this complex relationship. She looks at the nanny/mother relationship from both sides. As a working mother who hired a babysitter of her own, she knows the process intimately. Kaylin exposes both the great joys and the difficult emotional issues that play out when working women invite perfect strangers into their homes to help care for their children.

A Pint of Plain by Bill Barich is $2.36

Product Description
After meeting and marrying an Irish woman and moving to Dublin, celebrated New Yorker writer Bill Barich found himself looking for a traditional Irish pub to become his local. Pubs have always been at the heart of Irish life and culture, proliferating in cities and towns alike, so Barich had no shortage of choices. But to his surprise, he could not find what he considered a classic pub; each had developed fatal flaws, be they flat screen televisions, touristy souvenirs, kitschy décor, or other accommodations to modernity. Even the pubs that looked authentic and old were often not what they appeared. All of which signalled to one of our sharpest chroniclers of culture that something deeper was at play--an erosion of the essence of Ireland, perhaps without the Irish even being aware. A Pint of Plain became a quest to chronicle the state of the Irish pub today, and by extension to examine Irish culture at a time of extraordinary change across the country. From the famed watering holes of Dublin to the pubs and shebeens (small bars within houses) in the country, Barich introduces a colorful array of personalities--from publicans to customers--whose observations are as tasty as the pints they serve and drink. He blends the history of Guinness into his story, and also explores the impact of the IPC (Irish Pub Company), which, for a fee, will help anyone create an ”authentic” pub anywhere in the world. Weaving tradition and lore, literary and film references, into his narrative, Barich has written a book that will be irresistible to anyone who is Irish or who appreciates the finer points of Irish culture.

Working IX to V by Vicki León is $2.63

Product Description
Vicki Leon, the popular author of the Uppity Women series (more than 335,000 in print), has turned her impressive writing and research skills to the entertaining and unusual array of the peculiar jobs, prized careers and passionate pursuits of ancient Greece and Rome. From Architect to Vicarius (a deputy or stand-in)-and everything in between-Working IX to V introduces readers to the most unique (dream incubator), most courageous (elephant commander), and even the most ordinary (postal worker) jobs of the ancient world. Vicki Leon brought a light and thoughtful touch to women-s history in her earlier books, and she brings the same joy and singular voice to the daily work of the ancient world. You-ll be surprised to learn how bloody an editor-s job used to be, how even a slave could purchase a vicarius to carry out his duties and that early Greeks had their own ghost-busters with the apt title of psychopompus. In addition to stand-alone profiles on callings, trades, and professions, Leon offers numerous sidebar entries about actual people who performed these jobs, giving a human face to the ancient workplace. Combining wit and rich scholarship, Working IX to V is filled with anecdotes, insights, and little-known facts that will inform and amuse readers of all ages. For anyone captivated by the ancient past, Working IX to V brings a unique insight into the daily grind of the classical world. You may never look at your day-to-day work in the same way!

Pastworld by Ian Beck is $2.61

Product Description
What if Victorian London were an amusement park where the inhabitants were actors hired to entertain visitors from the twenty-first century? Now imagine if Jack the Ripper was a planned attraction gone horribly wrong. Life inside the park, Pastworld, is all Eve has ever known. But then she meets a tourist in terrible trouble. Their adventure through this dark and dangerous theme park is sure to grab teens.

Then Came the Evening: A Novel by Brian Hart is $2.77

Product Description
Bandy Dorner, home from Vietnam, awakes with his car mired in a canal, his cabin reduced to ashes, and his pregnant wife preparing to leave town with her lover. Within moments, a cop lies bleeding in the road.

Eighteen years later, Bandy's son -- a stranger bearing his name -- returns to the town, where the memory of his father's crime still hangs thick. When an accident brings the family -- paroled father, widowed mother, injured son -- back together, the three must confront their past, and struggle against their fate.

Like a traditional Greek tragedy, suffused with the mud, ice, and rock of the raw Idaho landscape, Then Came the Evening is tautly plotted and emotionally complex -- a stunning debut.

Color Blind by Precious Williams is $2.80

Product Description
Born in Africa to a Nigerian princess, Precious Williams was less than one year old when her mother put an ad in Nursery World: "Pretty Nigerian baby girl needs new home." Precious's mother had flown to London in search of a new life--a life in which there was no space for a daughter. The first response came rom a 60-year-old white woman, Nan, who prided herself for being "color blind." Correspondence were exchanged, no questions asked, and Precious left her mother for Nan's home in rural England. Nan may have been color blind, but others in their small town were not. Precious grew up in an entirely white household, attending all-white schools, where she remained for her entire childhood. She was taunted by her peers and misunderstood by Nan. Precious's mother occasionally made fleeting, magical visits until she was nine, but would often critisize her for being "too white." Finding it impossible to related to any family members--biological or surragoate--she became disillusioned and self-destructive. She retreated to her imagination, forging an identity from characters she'd seen on TV, in movies, and read about in books. Color Blind is a powerful coming-of-age memoir exploring themes of motherhood and race.