Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry

The BELOVED STAR OF FRIENDS takes us behind the scenes of the hit sitcom and his struggles with addiction in this “CANDID, DARKLY FUNNY…POIGNANT” memoir (The New York Times)

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK by Time, Associated Press, Goodreads, USA Today, and more!

“Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.”

So begins the riveting story of acclaimed actor Matthew Perry, taking us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was five-year-old Matthew, who traveled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; fourteen-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; twenty-four-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us. . . and so much more.

In an extraordinary story that only he could tell—and in the heartfelt, hilarious, and warmly familiar way only he could tell it—Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true. But he also details the peace he’s found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humor, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fueled it despite seemingly having it all.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is an unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening—as well as a hand extended to anyone struggling with sobriety. Unflinchingly honest, moving, and uproariously funny, this is the book fans have been waiting for.

Foster by Claire Keegan

An international bestseller and one of The Times’ “Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century,” Claire Keegan’s piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US.

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household–where everything is so well tended to–and this summer must soon come to an end.Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan’s great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono

Bono—artist, activist, and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2—has written a memoir: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he’s lived, the challenges he’s faced, and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him.
 
“When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I’d previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim’s lack of progress … With a fair amount of fun along the way.” —Bono
 
 As one of the music world’s most iconic artists and the cofounder of the organizations ONE and (RED), Bono’s career has been written about extensively. But in Surrender, it’s Bono who picks up the pen, writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was fourteen, to U2’s unlikely journey to become one of the world’s most influential rock bands, to his more than twenty years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. Writing with candor, self-reflection, and humor, Bono opens the aperture on his life—and the family, friends, and faith that have sustained, challenged, and shaped him.
 
Surrender’s subtitle, 40 Songs, One Story, is a nod to the book’s forty chapters, which are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created forty original drawings for Surrender, which appear throughout the book.

Florida Keys & Key West Chef’s Table by Victoria Shearer

Surrounded by water, the Florida Keys yields a bounty that easily could qualify as the eighth wonder of the world. The Keys can confidently boast that nowhere else in the continental US will you find fresher, more innovatively prepared fish and seafood. Special natural resources, from stone crabs and yellowtail snapper to cracked conch and key limes, are served any way you like and the relaxed atmosphere of the restaurants is reflected in the cuisine. Be it a roadside cafe or a resort dining room, the cuisine is all “Keys casual.” With recipes for the home cook from Florida’s most celebrated eateries and showcasing over 200 full-color photos featuring mouth-watering dishes, famous chefs, and lots of local flavor, Florida Keys & Key West Chef’s Table is the ultimate gift and keepsake cookbook for both tourists and residents of the Keys.

Gift cards = happy choices

Not sure if your gift recipient would enjoy The Marriage Portrait or Ina Garten’s Go-To Dinners? Give a Books & Books @ The Studios of Key West gift card and let your loved ones pick out their own #nextfavoriteread.

Call the store or order online. Individual gift cards are mailed First Class mail for free. Gift cards are good for books, art supplies and holiday gifts, and your recipient can shop online or in store.

We have several ways to make your gift card stand out. For $4.99 (plus shipping), add a fun pouch that makes a great gift card presentation and then can be used for coins or other small knickknacks.

For $2.00 extra (First Class shipping included free) have the gift card mailed in a festive holiday card. For any of these gift card options, upgrade to tracked, 3-day expected Priority mail for $9.00. Note your upgrade choices in the comments section if ordering online.

Courtesy of the American Booksellers Association

November Staff Pick: A Minor Chorus

A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt (W. W. Norton & Company), picked by Assistant Manager Allison

From November 2022: The first thing we ask when we meet a new bookseller is: What are you reading and recommending?

Allison Rand, our new assistant manager, hit her answer out of the park, offering up this month’s featured staff pick, A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt. Read her review below.

Allison is an experienced bookseller, having worked at RJ Julia in Madison, CT, The Harvard Coop in Cambridge, MA, and Collected Works in Santa Fe, NM.

Her favorite genre is literary fiction. She recently read Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout and The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell, and is currently reading Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux.

***

A gorgeously written debut novel that poses the question, how can I write a novel, how can I expose myself to life and love through the lens of queer indigenous authenticity.

Growing up Cree in Northern Alberta, Billy-Ray Belcourt’s narrator knows he has to leave the rez. Now, living in Edmonton as a grad student and meeting men on Tinder, he starts slipping into a depression.  He begins to ask, what of love, of excess, of finding the loudness, the bigness of one’s own voice and expression?  He poses these questions and more to his people from the past and academic present. 

In a stream of conversations, Belcourt uses the language of academia and literature to find a path to the heart. If you loved Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous, and Tomasz Jedrowski’s Swimming in the Dark, you won’t want to miss A Minor Chorus

~ Allison, Assistant Manager

    

Shop Books & Books for the Holidays

In addition to books for all ages and a wide range of interests and tastes, we have lots of fun gifts – some you can only find in store during the lead up to the holiday season. Come see what’s new!

There are art supplies and tarot cards, puzzles and games, socks and crafts and swag with our name on it. We’re happy to help you find just the right gift for everyone on your list, and wrap it for you! Or add a Books & Books tote bag to your gift for instant eco-minded wrapping.

And, if you’re just not sure, a gift card is always a perfect fit!

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

The best-selling, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Road returns with the first of a two-volume masterpiece: The Passenger is the story of a salvage diver, haunted by loss, afraid of the watery deep, pursued for a conspiracy beyond his understanding, and longing for a death he cannot reconcile with God.

Look for Stella Maris, the second volume in The Passenger series, on sale December 6th, 2022

1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.

Traversing the American South, from the garrulous barrooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtaking novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.

The Revolutionary Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff

A revelatory biography from a Pulitzer Prize-winner about the most essential Founding Father— the one who stood behind the change in thinking that produced the American Revolution.

“A glorious book that is as entertaining as it is vitally important.” —Ron Chernow

“A beautifully crafted, invaluable biography…Schiff ingeniously connects the past to our present and future, underscoring the lessons of Adams while reclaiming our nation’s self-evident truths at a moment when we seemed to have forgotten them.” —Oprah Daily

Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, “Samuel Adams was the man.” With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history.

Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd and eloquent man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution. A singular figure at a singular moment, Adams amplified the Boston Massacre. He helped to mastermind the Boston Tea Party. He employed every tool available to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. For his efforts he became the most wanted man in America: When Paul Revere rode to Lexington in 1775, it was to warn Samuel Adams that he was about to be arrested for treason.

In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Schiff brings her masterful skills to Adams’s improbable life, illuminating his transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, beguiling radical who mobilized the colonies. Arresting, original, and deliriously dramatic, this is a long-overdue chapter in the history of our nation.

No Plan B by Jack Reacher

The gripping new Jack Reacher thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling authors Lee Child and Andrew Child

No Plan B is not to be missed. A perfectly plotted, fast-paced thriller, with bigger twists than ever before. It’s no wonder Jack Reacher is everyone’s favorite rebel hero.”—Karin Slaughter

In Gerrardsville, Colorado, a woman dies under the wheels of a moving bus. The death is ruled a suicide. But Jack Reacher saw what really happened: A man in a gray hoodie and jeans, moving stealthily, pushed the victim to her demise—before swiftly grabbing the dead woman’s purse and strolling away.

When another homicide is ruled an accident, Reacher knows this is no coincidence. With a killer on the loose, Reacher has no time to waste to track down those responsible. 

But Reacher is unaware that these crimes are part of something much larger and more far-reaching: an arsonist out for revenge, a foster kid on the run, a cabal of powerful people involved in a secret conspiracy with many moving parts. There is no room for error, but they make a grave one. They don’t consider Reacher a threat. “There’s too much at stake to start running from shadows.” But Reacher isn’t a shadow. He is flesh and blood. And relentless when it comes to making things right.

For when the threat is Reacher, there is No Plan B.