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“Popularity is a state of mind. Feel nerdy. Think uncool thoughts. It also helps to use the word vaginal a lot.” Sugar Magnolia Dempsey, the daughter of free spirit “hippie” parents is moving once again, this time from her home in Portland to Austin, Texas. Broken hearted, she leaves behind friends and a boyfriend, “Maggie” vows that this time she will go out of her way to become the most unpopular student at Lakewood High School.  Arriving in Austin, she launches Operation Avoid Friends (OAF) deciding  that she is not going to fit in and will do anything to prevent people from liking her. FromRead More →

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Darkhenge by Catherine Fisher, opens on the hills above Avebury, England, famous for its prehistoric stone henges.  Rob, a talented teenage artist, sees his family disintegrating as his younger sister lies in a coma. Looking for an outlet to escape the grief and guilt he feels, he takes a job with a local archaeological dig where a new and mysterious henge has been discovered. Having spent his life surrounded by the mythology of stone circles, Rob initially pays little attention to the bizarre events that surround the dig until he realizes that this new revelation and the mystifying people attracted to it are somehow related to his sister. The novel plays outRead More →

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Madapple, the debut novel by Christina Meldrum, is a spellbinding exploration of the correlations among nature, religion, mythology and the human condition.  Meldrum weaves a complex story, full of mystery, about a sixteen-year-old girl, Aslaug. Raised in an isolated and restrictive environment by her eccentric Danish mother, Aslaug learns languages, botany, mythology and science, but very little about the outside world. When her mother dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances, Aslaug leaves home in search of her absent father, but instead finds her estranged aunt and cousins, who run a Pentecostal church in a nearby town. As dark family secrets are revealed, including the mystery of Aslaug’s birth, the tension inRead More →

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If I Die In Juarez, Arizona author Stella Pope Duarte’s most recent novel is a compelling fictionalization of the grotesque and inhumane murders of young women in Juarez, Mexico.  The interwoven stories of three young women caught up in the gritty, desperately poor, and corrupt world of Juarez evoke feelings of helplessness, anger, and ultimately resignation in the reader.  I was captivated by the story because it felt so real. Forced out of the house by her alcoholic mother, 13-year-old Evita takes to the streets and struggles to survive, falling into prostitution and drug trafficking. Petra, Evita’s beautiful 19-year-old cousin, moves with her family from a mountainous region of MexicoRead More →

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Right Behind You, by Gail Giles, tells the story of Kip, who when he was nine years old, he set his seven-year-old neighbor on fire because he was jealous of the baseball glove the boy received for his birthday. Three days later the boy died and Kip was committed to a facility for criminally insane juveniles, where he spends the next four years in rehabilitation. At the age of 14, Kip is released and moves with his father and stepmother to a new town, with a new name, to begin a new life. But the past is not so far behind and Kip, now knownRead More →

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We have survived our move! Only a few hitches and headaches – overall a better experience than we’d hoped.  We’ve had folks in to shop already and the comments have ranged from “Wow! It’s so big!” to “I could get lost in here”.  We were able to expand all of the sections and are in the process of ordering more books to fill all this new space.  We were very fortunate to have a great group of people able to help us with this whole process. Hope you enjoy the pictures and that you’ll come visit us in person soon. Posted by CoriRead More →

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Thanks to everyone who checked in with us over the last few weeks – we survived the move although we temporarily lost connection to our Blog.  We got the server situation figured out and now I can update you on the move status.  We’re 95% unpacked and the place looks fantastic! We’re all so excited about the SPACE and the growth potential! We’ve had customers come in to look around and shop and everyone’s been blown away by the new place.  We couldn’t be happier!  I’ll get some photos up soon.  Hope that you will be able to come by and check out our newRead More →

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Lots of progress has been made in the last few days – the carpet was installed on 1/4 and we moved our front room and offices on Saturday, 1/5.  Our hard-working crew moved the last of the shelving units from our old space on Saturday and on Monday we started the fun process of unpacking.  A few sections are almost all unpacked as of today – Early Chapter, Picture Books, and Leveled Readers – and they look fantastic! Tomorrow we should get many of the pallets moved into the open spaces so we can have access to unpack Chapter Books and Non-fiction. It’s amazing howRead More →

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The crew knocked themselves out in the days leading up to the New Year’s holiday.  The main room in our old space was cleared out, with all the shelving, books and overstock moved into the new warehouse and many of the cases were stocked with boxes.  Everyone enjoyed a few days off to rest and recover (and welcome in 2008!) and we’re at it again today building pallets of books from our non-fiction/hardback fiction room to move as soon as the space is ready for us.  Tomorrow will including moving the offices and the front room.  It’s been a busy week again and there’s stillRead More →