Every second-hand book tells two stories: one within its pages and another of the life it lived before changing hands. Whether mundane or extraordinary, on a grand scale or intensely personal, every second-hand book conceals the story of its past life. Lives filled with love, loss, scandal and conflict, these are the intimate and incredible stories that author Josh Spero uncovered after tracking down the previous owners of twelve of his second-hand books... Tom Dunbabin, a Classics scholar who became a spy, leading the resistance against the Germans in Crete in the Second World War. Peter Levi, a priest who fell in love with his friend’s wife. Belinda Dennis, a contrary Latin teacher, and Emilie Vleminckx, an equally contrary Latin student. And James Naylor, a boy the author once loved. Combined with stories from the author's own life – from growing up in London as a poor boy at a public school to becoming a scholar Oxford and later a tutor in Hampstead – and his lifelong love and pursuit of classical education, Second-Hand Stories is a unique memoir that celebrates not just one life, but all the lives connected through second-hand books. It will make you reconsider your own second-hand books, the people who owned them and what stories they have to tell.

Opal has been planning to go to Chicago and join the Midwest's superhero team, the Sentinels, since she was a little kid. That dream took on a more urgent tone when her superpowered dad was unjustly arrested for protecting a neighbor from an abusive situation. Now, she wants to be a superhero not only to protect people, but to get a platform to tell the world about the injustices of the Altered Persons Bureau, the government agency for everything relating to superpowers. But just after Opal's high school graduation, a supervillain with a jet and unclear motives attacks the downtown home of the Sentinels, and when Opal arrives, she finds a family on the brink of breaking apart. She meets a boy who's been developing secret (and illegal) brain-altering nanites right under the Sentinel's noses, another teenage superhero-hopeful who looks suspiciously like a long-dead supervillain, and the completely un-superpowered daughter of the Sentinels' leader. Can four teens on the fringes of the superhero world handle the corruption, danger, and family secrets they've unearthed?

"'Second-Hand Stories : 15 Portraits of Louisville' is a cultural, political and social snapshot of Kentucky's largest city. Written between 1993 and 2005, the articles in this book highlight major figurers and movements in Louisville history."--Back cover.

'This book is a not-so-small joy in itself.' NIGELLA LAWSON 'Parkinson has the gift of making you look with new eyes at everyday things. The perfect daily diversion.' JOJO MOYES 'Always funny and frank and full of insight, I absolutely love Parkinson's writing.' DAVID NICHOLLS 'I loved this book . . . Parkinson's writing transports you to unexpected places of joy and comfort . . . these pages contain happiness.' MARINA HYDE 'The twenty-first century feels a lot more bearable in Parkinson's company.' CHARLOTTE MENDELSON Drawn from the successful Guardian column, these everyday exultations and inspirations will get you through dismal days. Hannah Jane Parkinson is a specialist in savouring the small pleasures of life. She revels in her fluffy dressing gown ('like bathing in marshmallow'), finds calm in solo cinema trips, is charmed by the personalities of fonts ('you'll never see Comic Sans on a funeral notice'), celebrates pockets and gleefully abandons a book she isn't enjoying. Parkinson's everyday exaltations - selected from her immensely successful Guardian column - will utterly delight. FEATURES BRAND NEW MATERIAL 'A compendium of delights.' OBSERVER 'Delightful . . . a love letter to those little moments of bliss that get us through the daily grind.' RED

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia, from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions—a history of the soul.” Alexievich’s distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation. In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it’s like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres—but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world. A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. “Through the voices of those who confided in her,” The Nation writes, “Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil—in a word, about ourselves.” A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Financial Times, Kirkus Reviews

The owner of a secondhand store (Satori Junk) just outside Detroit, finds his life changing all at once when his mother dies and he rummages in her basement for treasures. He meets Theresa, a thrift-attired junk goddess who shares his feelings for castaways, and he falls for her--hard.

Utterly captivating in its madness (Baltimore Sun), this debut work follows a young man's attempt to get a life. With each passing night, Malcolm Cicchio is losing one minute of sleep. At this rate, he figures, his heart will explode in about 16 months.

Drawing on six years of original research, this book explores what happens when the often contradictory motivations behind style and survival strategies are brought together in the second hand trade. What does second hand buying and selling tell us about the state of contemporary consumption?

Books are amongst the most personal of gifts. The book we choose to give a loved one is informed by our intimate knowledge of their personal histories and their tastes. Often, when we gift books, we love to explain the meaning behind our present by writing an inscription within its pages. Ordinarily, we hope the gift and its message will be enjoyed, placed lovingly on its new owner's bookshelf and treasured forever. This is not always the case, though ... W B Gooderham is fascinated by second-hand books and curates a growing collection of those featuring intriguing inscriptions. The messages he finds range from the awkward scratchings of adolescent infatuation, to the resentful recriminations of a love affair gone sour and offer illuminating glimpses into their books' own secret histories. This beautifully presented book will feature the very best from the author's collection of dedications alongside the covers of the works in which they were found. From Animal Farm to Pride and Prejudice, there's something here to please every book lover's taste.