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Rachel Watkins

Rachel is the operations and events director at Avid Bookshop. She also manages the widely popular Avid Snail Mail subscriptions program featured in the New York Times Wirecutter's Gifts We Want to Give for 2020 and 2022! She's a fig farmer who listens to audiobooks via Libro.fm while tending to her chicken flock. Reading in the hammock with her dog, Dolly Parton, is pretty great too.

My Staff Picks: 
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The Wishing Game: A Novel By Meg Shaffer Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780593598832
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Ballantine Books - May 30th, 2023

The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer is an absolute reading delight from start to finish. Reclusive children's book author Jack Masterson hasn't added a book to his Clock Island series in years. His fans (both young and old) collectively lose their minds when he launches a competition in announcing his latest book. The stakes are highest for teacher Lucy and the child she longs to adopt, Christopher. The Wishing Game is book of puzzles,mysteries, and enchantments centered around the wonder of books. Five of five stars!


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Unlikely Animals: A Novel By Annie Hartnett Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780593160244
Availability: May be on our shelves (or available in 5-10 business days)
Published: Ballantine Books - February 28th, 2023

Emma Starling comes home to a small village in New Hampshire because her father Clive is dying and she really should check on her brother Auggie after his second stay in rehab. She's been astray for a while and living back in Everton with her family seems wise. Once there she finds that her high school best friend is missing and the only person looking for her is her retired poetry professor father. Because of the opioid crisis, the two police officers don't feel it's worth their time. The book's narrators in the Maple Street Cemetery are practically omniscient and their commentary lets you in on the village's secrets while also witnessing the longings of the dead. In Unlikely Animals, Harnett has done what she does best: create a brilliant cast of messy human beings that you don't want to leave. With a hand-drawn map, a menagerie of animals (a fox, a dog, a goat), and beautiful prose, this book is perfect.


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O Beautiful: A Novel By Jung Yun Cover Image
$17.99
ISBN: 9781250853585
Availability: May be on our shelves (or available in 5-10 business days)
Published: St. Martin's Griffin - February 28th, 2023

This beautiful character-driven book set in the American Midwest covers many contemporary topics like racism, fracking, sexual harassment, and the immigrant experience. I loved the messy protagonist Elinor Hanson, a Korean American who grew up in South Dakota. A former model with a new career later in life as a journalist, Elinor has baggage that needs unpacking so badly her clothes are spilling out of her metaphorical suitcase at a rapid pace. Korean American author Jung Yun has written a fantastic novel in O Beautiful that surprised me over and over, especially by book's end.


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You Are Here: A Novel By Karin Lin-Greenberg Cover Image
$27.00
ISBN: 9781640095434
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Counterpoint - May 2nd, 2023

A dying mall in upstate New York is the through line for the characters in Karin Lin-Greenberg’s You Are Here. Cranky elderly Rosalie visits Tina’s hair salon once a week for a haircut. The school bus lets Tina’s son Jackson off at the mall every weekday after school. The bookshop manager doesn’t want to finish his Ph.D. and teach as his wife expects. You Are Here is a book that addresses family, expectations, and prejudices in accessible and entertaining ways.


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Brutes: A Novel By Dizz Tate Cover Image
$27.00
ISBN: 9781646221677
Availability: May be on our shelves (or available in 5-10 business days)
Published: Catapult - February 7th, 2023

Brutes is a messy, prickly book featuring a mob of middle school girls dodging drunk mothers and dreaming of escaping the swamp. The preacher's kid Sammy goes missing and the girls' obsession with her only intensifies. Dizz Tate clearly captures prepubescence's angst, meanness, and longing in this debut.


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The Faraway World: Stories By Patricia Engel Cover Image
$26.00
ISBN: 9781982159528
Availability: May be on our shelves (or available in 5-10 business days)
Published: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster - January 24th, 2023

Colombian-American writer Patricia Engel's The Faraway World is a tremendous collection of short stories featuring immigration, heartbreak, and sacrifice. The stories are based in the Americas, from Cuba, to Ecuador, to Miami and what they have in common is love, community, and the search for a better life.


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My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food and Feelings By Zosia Mamet (Editor) Cover Image
By Zosia Mamet (Editor)
$26.00
ISBN: 9780143137290
Availability: In our warehouse - should arrive/ship in 5-10 business days. (Currently not on our shelves.)
Published: Penguin Books - November 1st, 2022

I have a very special fondness for essays on food and this new collection edited by actress Zosia Mamet is exceptional. Reading My First Popsicle is extremely comforting and the twenty recipes inside are fun! Contributors include Tony Hale, Busy Phillips, Rosie Perez, Michelle Buteau, among many other greats. This is yet another book to bring as a host gift the next time you're invited to a dinner party. Enjoy!


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Motherthing By Ainslie Hogarth Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780593467022
Availability: May be on our shelves (or available in 5-10 business days)
Published: Vintage - September 27th, 2022

Motherthing is a feminist horror story featuring a motherless daughter haunted by her mother-in-law. Ainslie Hogarth has written a love story that is funny, bizarre, and bloody featuring guidance from a couch, cookbook, and soothsayer.


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Now Is Not the Time to Panic: A Novel By Kevin Wilson Cover Image
$27.99
ISBN: 9780062913500
Availability: May be on our shelves (or available in 5-10 business days)
Published: Ecco - November 8th, 2022

Having myself been a teenager in a small insular southern town that felt a few years behind the times, Kevin Wilson's protagonist Frankie felt familiar. Now is Not the Time to Panic uncovers the mystery of a moral panic that starts small but becomes a world-famous cultural event. Frankie's dad has left, her triplet brothers are a whirlwind, and Frankie wants something (anything) to happen this summer. Making friends with a new kid in town who also has a father issue is life-changing as they recognize themselves in each other: friendless socially awkward creatives who are desperate just to be seen. This is a story with a great big heart that will not disappoint.


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It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror By Joe Vallese (Editor), Carmen Maria Machado (Contribution by), Bruce Owens Grimm (Contribution by) Cover Image
By Joe Vallese (Editor), Carmen Maria Machado (Contribution by), Bruce Owens Grimm (Contribution by)
$25.95
ISBN: 9781952177798
Availability: In our warehouse - should arrive/ship in 5-10 business days. (Currently not on our shelves.)
Published: Feminist Press - October 4th, 2022

It's human nature to look for validation of oneself in the art we consume, and It Came From the Closet is a collection of essays by queer and trans authors on their interpretations and interactions with horror films. Edited by Joe Vallese, these essays are tender and funny, vulnerable and courageous. It Came From the Closet will make you see movies you've watched numerous times in a different light and that is a spectacular point of view.


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The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays By CJ Hauser Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780385547079
Availability: May be on our shelves (or available in 5-10 business days)
Published: Doubleday - July 12th, 2022

CJ Hauser's The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays is unlike anything I've read and it blew my mind. At its core, the interconnected essays are about love. Hauser uses both personal and family history to dissect parts of her life that give her pause. Hauser's technique for performing autopsies on her previous loves include deep introspection of the impact of specific works on her analysis such as du Maurier's Rebecca and Baum's Oz. Deep inquiry into Mulder and Scully's relationship or the gender dynamics in the 1940 film adaptation of The Philadelphia Story provides a very relatable setting for a reader to also scrutinize romantic choices. Hauser's writing is smart and razor-honest as she peels back layers. What a brilliant process to witness. Nineteen different passages sung so clearly to me, they are underlined, highlighted, dog-eared.


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A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance By Hanif Abdurraqib Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9781984801203
Availability: May be on our shelves (or available in 5-10 business days)
Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks - March 8th, 2022

Hanif Abdurraqib's exploration of Black performance in America is a cultural keystone that is chillingly relevant. Whether discussing the fact that a knowing look or advice on a route from a cashier is a form of a living Green Book that still exists because there are places Black people are not safe, to the origin of the card game spades or the difference between showing out or showing off, at the heart A Little Devil in America circles back to the fact that Black Americans have been forced to survive in places they were not welcome. The section on Black funerals pierced my heart. This book needs to be read, taught, underlined and discussed.


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Fresh Water for Flowers By Valérie Perrin, Hildegarde Serle (Translator) Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9781609456764
Availability: May be on our shelves (or available in 5-10 business days)
Published: Europa Editions - May 4th, 2021

Fresh Water for Flowers encompasses so much in each lovely short chapter. Valérie Perrin has written what could be called the perfect novel. At first glance, Violette Toussaint lives an uncomplicated life as the caretaker of a cemetery in a small town in Burgundy. Just as you relax into the luscious descriptions of the gardens, of the tombstone inscriptions, of the fascinating visitors, several love stories hidden in a mystery or two reveal that there are more than funerals at the heart of this book. Perfection!