Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles
10 best books like Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles (Ron Currie Jr.): Middle Men: Stories, In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, America the Beautiful: Together We Stand, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, Pacific, The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, Swimming Sweet Arrow, The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets, Little Known Facts, The Facades
| Author | Jim Gavin |
| ISBN | 1451649312 |
In Middle Men, Stegner Fellow and New Yorker contributor Jim Gavin delivers a hilarious and panoramic vision of California, portraying a group of men, from young dreamers to old vets, as they make valiant forays into middle-class respectability. In "Play the Man" a high-school basketball player...
| Author | Matt Bell |
| ISBN | 1616952539 |
In this epic, mythical debut novel, a newly-wed couple escapes the busy confusion of their homeland for a distant and almost-uninhabited lakeshore. They plan to live there simply, to fish the lake, to trap the nearby woods, and build a house upon the dirt between where they can raise a family. But as their...
| Author | Katharine Lee Bates |
| ISBN | 0545492076 |
A moving celebration of "America the Beautiful" featuring artwork from ten distinguished artists and inspiring presidential quotes!
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL: PRESIDENTIAL QUOTATIONS AND NATIONAL SYMBOLS, ILLUSTRATED BY 10 AMERICAN ARTISTS
Each of our presidents has had a unique...
| Author | Teddy Wayne |
| ISBN | 1476705852 |
Megastar Jonny Valentine, eleven-year-old icon of bubblegum pop, knows that the fans don’t love him for who he is. The talented singer’s image, voice, and even hairdo have been relentlessly packaged—by his L.A. label and his hard-partying manager-mother, Jane—into bite-size pabulum....
| Author | Tom Drury |
| ISBN | 0802119999 |
In a triumphant return to the characters that launched his career two decades ago, Tom Drury travels back to Grouse County, the setting of his landmark debut, The End of Vandalism. Drury’s depictions of the stark beauty of the Midwest and the futility of American wanderlust have earned him comparisons...
| Author | Patrick Somerville |
| ISBN | 0982580819 |
In this genre-busting book from award-winning novelist Patrick Somerville characters, stories, and stray thoughts revolve around the “The Machine of Understanding Other People,” the story of a Chicago man who is bequeathed a supernatural helmet that allows him to experience the inner...
| Author | Maureen Gibbon |
| ISBN | 0316355569 |
Evangeline Starr Raybuck -- plain-spoken, lusty, and hardworking -- and June Keel are high school seniors, best friends going out with best friends, working together at Noecker's chicken farm after school. Vangie and June make out with their boyfriends together in the same car; they pass dirty notes...
The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets
| Author | Diana Wagman |
| ISBN | 1935439642 |
Winnie Parker, mother to an angst-ridden teenage daughter and ex-wife to a successful game show host who left her for a twenty-something contestant, begins a normal day in her hum-drum existence by dropping her car off at the repair shop. After accepting what she believes is a ride to pick up her rental...
| Author | Christine Sneed |
| ISBN | 1608199584 |
The people who orbit around Renn Ivins, an actor of Harrison Ford-like stature--his girlfriends, his children, his ex-wives, those on the periphery--long to experience the glow of his flame. Anna and Will are Renn's grown children, struggling to be authentic versions of themselves in a world where...
| Author | Eric Lundgren |
| ISBN | 1468306871 |
Along the streets of the once-great Midwestern city of Trude, the ornate old buildings lie in ruin. Shrouded in disappointment and nostalgia, Trude has become a place to “lose yourself,” as one tourist brochure puts it: a treacherous maze of convoluted shopping malls, barricaded libraries,...
| Author | Katie Roiphe |
| ISBN | 0812992822 |
This powerful collection of essays ranges from pop culture to politics, from Hillary Clinton to Susan Sontag, from Facebook to Mad Men, from Joan Didion to David Foster Wallace to—most strikingly—the author’s own life. For fans of the essays of John Jeremiah Sullivan and Jonathan Lethem.
Named...
| Author | Adam Langer |
| ISBN | 1453297944 |
An enthralling literary mystery that connects some of the world’s most famous authors—from Norman Mailer and Truman Capote to B. Traven and J. D. Salinger—to a sinister collector in Chicago.
Adam Langer, the narrator of this deft and wide-ranging novel by the author of the same name,...
| Author | Joshua Mohr |
| ISBN | 1593765088 |
When his bicycle is intentionally run off the road by a neighbor's SUV, something snaps in Bob Coffen. Modern suburban life has been getting him down and this is the last straw. To avoid following in his own father’s missteps, Bob is suddenly desperate to reconnect with his wife and his distant, distracted...
| Author | Adam Mansbach |
| ISBN | 0670026123 |
A fearless novel about the price of revenge from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Go the F*** to Sleep
Kilroy Dondi Vance is an eighteen-year-old mixed-race Brooklynite who deals pot and goes to prep school on scholarship, all while growing up in the shadow of his absentee father,...
The Morels─Arthur, Penny, and Will─are a happy family of three living in New York City. So why would Arthur choose to publish a book that brutally rips his tightly knit family unit apart at the seams? Arthur's old schoolmate Chris, who narrates the book, is fascinated with this very question as he...
| Author | Jeanine Cummins |
| ISBN | 0451239245 |
From the national bestselling and highly acclaimed author of The Outside Boy comes the deeply moving story of two mothers—witty, self-deprecating Majella, who is shocked by her entry into motherhood in modern-day New York, and her ancestor, tough and terrified Ginny Doyle, whose battles are more...
| Author | Ashley Prentice Norton |
| ISBN | 0547840047 |
As addictive, decadent and delicious as chocolate itself
Set in 1980s Chicago and on the East Coast, this electric novel chronicles the relationship between an impossibly rich chocolate heiress, Babs Ballentyne, and her sensitive and bookish young daughter, Bettina. Babs plays by no one’s...
| Author | Lenore Zion |
| ISBN | 0983693269 |
Jane lived happily in Miami Beach with her father until his failed suicide attempt and relocation to a mental hospital forced her into the foster care system. By chance, Jane is assigned to foster parents in central Florida who are deeply involved in the Second Day Believers&mdasha cult focused...
| Author | Stephanie LaCava |
| ISBN | 0061963895 |
It's Girl Interrupted meets Miranda July—with a touch of Joan Didion—in this captivating collection of original essays revolving around a young American girl's coming of age in Paris. As an adolescent in a foreign country, Stephanie LaCava found an unconventional way to deal with her social...
| Author | Rolf Bauerdick |
| ISBN | 0307594122 |
An award-winning journalist transforms his lifelong fascination with the world of the Gypsies into fiction with this exuberant, deeply enchanting debut novel--both whimsical and suspenseful--winner of the European Book Prize, and translated into more than a dozen languages worldwide.
...
| Author | Anne Swärd |
| ISBN | 0670026549 |
In the tradition of Housekeeping and Tinkers, award-winning Swedish author Anne Swärd’s American debut blends the lyricism of youth with the darker desires of age.
Lo was just six when she met thirteen-year-old Lukas the night a brushfire threatened their community. Both the children...
| Author | Karen E. Bender |
| ISBN | 1619020696 |
Karen E. Bender burst on to the literary scene a decade ago with her luminous first novel, Like Normal People, which garnered remarkable acclaim.
A Town of Empty Rooms presents the story of Serena and Dan Shine, estranged from one another as they separately grieve over the recent loss of Serena’s...
| Author | Brian Andreas |
| ISBN | 0964266091 |
This is a book I read all the time. it is a book of short poems and sayings that are enlightening and quixotic and utterly delightful. You will find yourself laughing at how they describe people you know. My favorite one that describes my husband:
"I like animals in the abstract," he said.
"What...
Answers from the Heart: Practical Responses to Life's Burning Questions
| Author | Thich Nhat Hanh |
| ISBN | 1888375825 |
For many people, one key question prevents them from taking the next step in their personal development, the development of their spiritual practice, or their journey toward self-knowledge. Answers from the Heart collects 50 of these important and heartfelt questions posed to Thich Nhat Hanh by...
| Author | Alexandra Aldrich |
| ISBN | 0062207938 |
AN ASTOR DESCENDANT,
RICH ONLY IN NAME AND HISTORY . . .
The Astor Orphan is an unflinching memoir by a direct descendant of John Jacob Astor, Alexandra Aldrich.
She brilliantly tells the story of her eccentric, fractured family; her 1980s childhood of bohemian neglect in the...
