Greetings from Three Lives & Company!

The bookshop turns 45 this year. Some of you have been coming to the shop from the first years it opened its doors, which means you have seen us come and go: while we certainly have less turnover than your average retail establishment, this place has seen dozens of booksellers stock its shelves and sweep its floors.

Well, it’s a common notion here that nobody ever really leaves Three Lives. Many of our past booksellers have kept in close contact over the years, even as they have moved on to new cities and new jobs, opened their own bookstores, written their own books, started families, and, occasionally, come back home again. We’ve asked some of our alumni to update us on their lives since they worked here, and we think you’ll enjoy seeing what the greater Three Lives family has been up to in past years. See below for their responses. This is, of course, only a small sampling of the folks who have provided you with books since 1978: there are many more with their own stories, and we’d love to hear from them in a future newsletter.

Though our current staff is taking a break from their usual writeups this month, we’d be remiss not to mention some of the books we have been loving lately. Ryan has been on a nonfiction roll, with David Grann’s The Wager, Lynne Olson’s Empress of the Nile and Patrick Radden Keefe’s The Snakehead filling his subway rides. Miriam’s recent fiction favorites include the recently reissued New York City classic The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe and Cheon Myeong-kwan’s novel Whale (translated by Chi-Young Kim). Lucas has traveled to various corners of the world with international fiction from Thomas Bernhard (The Loser, translated by Jack Dawson) and Javier Marías (The Man of Feeling, translated by Margaret Jull Costa), Vatican art history in Jeannie Marshall’s All Things Move, and Dutch painting in Mark Doty’s memoir-in-art-appreciation Still Life with Oysters and Lemon. Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, a recent Pulitzer recipient, has been Sarah’s most recent great read, and Joyce is nearing the end of Michael Frank’s “profoundingly moving” One Hundred Saturdays. And Troy has been knee-deep in cookbooks – the result being a mid-year Cookbook Corner, which you can browse below to ensure a most delicious summer.

~ Alumni Updates ~

Retired and loving it – and there’s still not enough time to read! We’ve lived in Missoula, Montana these past three years, with lots of road trips throughout the western states. Winter is finally, finally over and the weather’s gorgeous. But it’s time to come back to NYC this September, and it’ll be wonderful to see folks again and browse the shelves of my favorite bookstore of all time (hint: it’s in the West Village)! Of course, I have books to recommend – too many to mention here, but… we’ll talk! Here are a few.

In fiction, The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier (Transit, translated by Daniel Levin Becker) is a thriller like no other – a character study that’ll have you on the edge of your seat despite its long sentences and interiority. Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These (Grove) is a perfect small gem of a book, as are Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro (Charco, translated by Frances Riddle), My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley (New York Review Books) and Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth (Verso, translated by Charlotte Barslund).

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (Grove), The Promise by Damon Galgut (Europa), The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan (Viking), In Memoriam by Alice Winn (Knopf), and Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) are great reading. Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (Orbit) is a fascinating and essential read for anyone interested in the climate crisis. Sara Davis’s The Scapegoat (Picador) is a fever dream of a novel, brilliant. Hermione Hoby’s novel Virtue (Riverhead) is wonderfully entertaining, as is Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo (Penguin). (I recommend this last one on audio. You’ll feel like you’ve had a night of great theater – Chipo Chung is an extraordinary reader.)

For those who like graphic novels, Acting Class by Nick Drnaso (Drawn & Quarterly) is psychologically sophisticated and highly recommended, as are A Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum), Save It for Later by Nate Powell (Harry N. Abrams), and Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe (Oni). On the regular nonfiction side, Martha Nussbaum’s Anger and Forgiveness (Oxford University Press) was a real eye-opener. On Repentance and Repair by Danya Ruttenberg (Beacon) should be required reading. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb (Harper) is well-written and wise. Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria (W.W. Norton) is another important book for us all, and A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders (Random House) is an extraordinary look at how great stories are written – and includes Tolstoy’s “Master and Man,” a short story I’d always wanted to read. Just a smattering of juicy reads for now, and I’ll see you in September! – Carol Wald (1997-2017)

Three Lives will always be my bookstore home and Jill, Jenny, and Toby my bookselling parents! Thanks to them, I discovered my life’s work at 154 West 10th, and went on to become a manager at Book Culture (then Labyrinth) on the Upper West Side and events coordinator at McNally Jackson in SoHo, before launching my own shop, Greenlight Bookstore, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn in 2009. I’m grateful for many collegial/commiserating coffees with Toby through the ups and downs of bookstore ownership, and I try to visit the shop with cookies every Christmas. I married that nice man I was dating when I worked my last stint at Three Lives, and we have a daughter about to start middle school (!!) who is, of course, a voracious reader.

For my own reading, I’ve built my personal canon over the years, starting with the incomparable novelist (and lovely human) David Mitchell – whom I first saw read from Cloud Atlas (Random House) at Three Lives – and other literary fantasists like Jennifer Egan (our brilliant Fort Greene neighbor), Colson Whitehead (his forthcoming Crook Manifesto, from Doubleday, is a treat), and Ursula K. LeGuin (still working my way through the back catalog); essayists and poets like Ross Gay (Inciting Joy, published by Algonquin, is a revelation) and Amy Leach (The Everybody Ensemble from Picador, so wild and witty); and novelists of ideas like Richard Powers (everything!), Jim Shepard (the self-deprecating genius of You Think That’s Bad, from Vintage), and Joan Silber (I think her novels-in-stories like Fools and Ideas of Heaven, from W.W. Norton and Counterpoint respectively, are some of the greatest American literature). My most recent favorite novel is The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera, coming from Tor in July; it reminds me a bit of Peter Cameron and other mysterious journey-takers and scene-setters, but infused with Sri Lankan mythology and magic, and I think is something a Three Lives reader might enjoy. – Jessica Stockton Bagnulo (2000-2005)

It is shocking to think about how much time has ribboned by since leaving NYC (though I feel like I’ve never left Three Lives, bookshop of my heart, always and forever). I miss the shop, the corner (even sweeping the corner, every day, as Toby made me do), the nights when it was just me and Jess or Carol or Joyce with drop-ins from Chris and Abel and Michael (and even once, a story I still tell any chance I get, a walk-in by David Bowie, who is to this day the only person I’ve ever seen reach for A Dance to the Music of Time in its entirety). I miss the last circuit before closing, running my fingers over the paperbacks, adjusting, arranging, wondering if it would be possible to get the shop in such shipshape that Toby wouldn’t feel compelled to move a bunch of stuff around in the morning (it never was!). I miss talking to strangers the way strangers always talked to each other in that store, as though we were all old friends. Doing inventory was us writing down every title we sold, as we sold them – is that still the inventory system? [Editor’s Note: Yes, it is. Always and forever.] And oh, man, the basement! I loved that little basement. One of my favorite pictures ever is Toby dancing at my wedding. I knew no one when I moved to New York, and I came to think of Toby, Carol, Joyce, and Jess as my family (I still think of them that way). 

I left the shop in 2006 to make a loop through the Midwest (graduate school, music, cheesemonger, bookseller, again, at a store out there), and am now up in Hartford, Connecticut with my family: Maryhope, Llewellyn (11), and Alistair (9). I teach creative writing at Trinity College and have published books of my own (with a new one, a whaling novel, on the way). And one of the great joys of my life has been getting this newsletter and checking out the recommendations of the folks now in the shop and receiving the occasional mystery title in the mail, directly from Toby. The last book he recommended, and found a terrific edition of, was The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas (Peter Owen, translated by Elizabeth Rokkan), because he remembered how much I loved Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter (New York Review Books). The books I used to put on the Staff Favorites table, and still would: The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje (Vintage), Silk by Alessandro Baricco (Vintage, translated by Ann Goldstein), Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin (New Directions), Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (who came by the store back then and was the sweetest, best person), A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes (New York Review Books), Muriel Spark, Jim Shepard, Joan Didion, Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata (Vintage, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker), The Lover by Marguerite Duras (Pantheon, translated by Barbara Bray). Anything by shop-pals Sloane Crosley, Paul Yoon, Chris Bram, Michael Cunningham. Recently, I’ve loved Stay True by Hua Hsu (Doubleday; best book of 2022?), A Heart So White by Javier Marías (Vintage, translated by Margaret Jull Costa), and The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (Vintage, translated by Stephen Snyder). Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy (Picador) carried me through one of the more difficult pandemic years. And See You on Sunday by Sam Sifton (Random House), a cookbook recommendation from Troy, is still in heavy rotation up here in the land of steady habits.

Good lord, I could go on. Can you tell I miss this? I miss talking to all the wonderful folks who would walk into the store and sort of go, My god, as if they’d finally found the perfect bookshop. Because it is the perfect bookshop, in a perfect place, staffed by wonderful people, and it always will be. – Ethan Rutherford (2002-2006)

I left Three Lives (and NYC) shortly after the birth of my first son, Miles, and he’s going to be 12 in September. Which. Is. Crazy. Those first six years, post-Three Lives, were a blur of diapers, sleepless nights, and board books, and – especially after my second son, Quincy, was born in July 2014 – I didn’t find much time to read. There is one book that stands out, however, in my memory of that period: The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCollough (William Morrow). I was so totally absorbed in that book that I would actually not mind (as much) waking up in the middle of the night to feed Quincy, because it meant I could sneak in a few pages while he ate. It has been around a while and was made into a miniseries in the ‘80s, but if you haven’t picked it up yet, I recommend you do! 

Once the boys were both in school, my reading picked up and I began a quest to read all of Agatha Christie’s books in order. (I’m not even halfway!) Her books were what hooked me onto reading as a kid and I’m just now realizing the full extent of her brilliance. (I also recommend her autobiography, which I found fascinating.) Between Agatha books I discovered the delights of Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton series and engrossing reads by modern day mystery writers like Richard Osman, Anthony Horowitz, and Ashley Weaver. One of my favorite books from the last few years is Once More Upon a Time by Roshani Chokshi (Sourcebooks). If you’re a fan of the movie The Princess Bride, I think you’ll love it. I’ve also been thoroughly appreciating all the engaging, multi-genre books of Fiona Davis. Both of Mary Laura Philpott’s books made me laugh and cry. Tabitha Carvan’s This Is Not a Book about Benedict Cumberbatch (G.P. Putnam) stuck with me for weeks after I finished it. Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) completely changed how I think about time and my relationship to it, and Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy (Harper Wave) continues to influence how I parent and maybe just how I exist in the world. 

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how special Three Lives is, and while I could never recreate the time I spent working there, I’m hoping to bring a little bit of that magical Three Lives feeling to Harrisonburg, Virginia by opening a bookstore here. It’s called Parentheses and will open sometime this summer. (Get updates on our website, parenthesesbooks.com, or our Instagram account, @parentheses.books.) A huge thanks to Toby, who has been one of my biggest cheerleaders since I told him my idea a couple of years ago. Three Lives has also inspired my brilliant historian husband, Evan Friss, to write a history of bookshops in the U.S., which I’ve read and highly recommend (when it comes out) to anyone who appreciates the wonder of a bookstore. (It’s being published by Viking, and longtime Three Lives customer Rick Kot is his editor!)

Hope you all have a wonderful summer! – Amanda Cohen Friss (2004-2012)

Sheesh, I thought the six years I’d spent at Three Lives constituted a forever, but somehow, I have now not worked there for even longer! Not a week goes by that I don’t think of you, our TL&Co. community, and find myself pondering, “I wonder how so-and-so is.” The last eleven years have been a whirlwind, but I’m happy to share some highlights, both personal and literary.

I left the shop to pursue a Master of Architecture degree at The City College, graduating in 2015, while also teaching architectural history and theory to undergraduates; living with my now-husband Deegan on the sea in Barcelona; and winning a fellowship to document significant sites of urban slavery in Savannah, Charleston, and New Orleans that have been (or should be) memorialized.

I received another master’s degree, this time in historic preservation, from Columbia in 2019. While there, I served as Managing Editor of Future Anterior, the preeminent scholarly journal of preservation history, theory, and criticism, and had a sojourn in Sevilla working with the Factum Foundation recording the historic azulejos at the Casa de Pilatos.

Deegan and I were married in his hometown of New Orleans in January 2019; I started ballet dancing again; and I’ve worked for some of the finest architectural firms in NYC. We spent seven months of the pandemic at our place on Long Beach Island, where we swam, surfed, biked, and fished every day, but eventually got homesick for New York, so we moved back and founded a small culinary business, Le Rémouleur (leremouleur.com). I’m a member and assistant secretary of my local community board, CB6, and am (finally) attempting to properly learn Korean.

These days I’ve been spending a lot of time with family, most importantly with my mother, who is at home in Princeton on hospice, and Deegan and I await the arrival of our first kiddo this August, so the last several months (well, years, really) have been a true lesson in the beauty, joy, and pain of life and all its vicissitudes.

I’ve also remained a passionate reader. It’s impossible to recall everything I’ve dug into over the years (unlike Toby, I only recently started keeping a proper record), but my highlights certainly include finishing Javier Marías’s Your Face Tomorrow trilogy (New Directions, translated by Margaret Jull Costa) and mourning the author’s recent passing; completing Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle hexalogy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, translated by Don Bartlett and Martin Aitkin); becoming obsessed with Jane Gardam; finally reading Nancy Mitford and Annie Dillard; revisiting with pleasure Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, Graham Greene, John McPhee, Paul Theroux, Fran Lebowitz, and Lisel Mueller; discovering (later than all of y’all) Sally Rooney; and getting closer to my roots with a panoply of Irish and Korean titles, notably Patrick Radden Keeffe’s Say Nothing (Anchor) and Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy (Random House). And for good measure, some more recent enjoyable reads include Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove (Washington Square), Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born (W.W. Norton), and Terry Teachout’s Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Mariner). Next up: re-reads of James Joyce and E.B. White.

I sincerely miss swapping tales of all kinds with you, and hope our paths will cross again. – Maura Whang (2006-2012)

Hi, amazing Three Lives community! A quick hello from San Jose, California, where I have been living and teaching high school English for the past seven years. I teach primarily tenth grade and love getting to choose texts for my students and recommend new books to them, much like in my days at Three Lives. While I don’t know how much longer I’ll be in the classroom, as it might soon be time to move on to something new, I love living out here, and over the years have discovered an unexpected passion for minor league baseball (go San Jose Giants!) and even ice hockey (go Sharks!). Over spring break this year I hiked Angels Landing at Zion National Park in Utah, which was exciting and nerve-wracking. Oh – and I’m in the process of adopting a thirteen-year-old dachshund named Holly.

I am grateful that I’ve been able to get to NYC and visit Three Lives often, since my sister still lives there, and running into some of you at the shop is always a highlight. My reading habits look a little different these days, but one book that I have reread many times since leaving Three Lives is the short story collection Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Cinco Puntos). He is mostly known for his young adult titles, but this collection is beautifully written. And speaking of YA literature, some of my picks from the past few years are Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay (Penguin) and Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (Square Fish) – complex stories that capture a lot of the challenges, joys, and delicate nuances of mixed and biracial identity. 

I’ll be swinging by the shop in late June and hope to see you there! – Natalia Fadul (2012-2014)

Wow, I don’t know if I’ve ever missed something as much as I miss seeing you all at Three Lives! It was such a source of community for me during my first years in New York, and even though I moved to Philly a year ago with my partner (we had a ten-person COVID wedding in fall 2020!), I’m still scheming ways to resume my post. I come back to NYC at least once a week for my full-time job in book publishing, so why not just pop over to Three Lives for the evening? I suppose one reason might be that later this summer I’ll have a little baby to care for...

Which leads me to the most recent theme in my reading: memoirs and novels about motherhood. Surprisingly to me, I’ve had little desire to dive into detailed research about taking care of babies; instead I’ve been reading books about women who were hesitant to have children, who don’t like being mothers, who question the way society talks about motherhood. (It’s true that I’ve always gravitated toward complicated endings.) I’ve appreciated And Now We Have Everything by Meaghan O’Connell (Back Bay) and Like a Mother by Angela Garbes (Harper Wave), and on deck are The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar (Pantheon), A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk (Picador), and Motherhood by Sheila Heti (Picador). Let me know if you have any recs!

One other very fruitful trend defined my reading last year: modern classics. I just couldn’t get into anything new, and so I turned to the 1970s-90s and fell in love with so many books I’d been meaning to read: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster), Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (Picador), Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (Grove, translated by Megan Backus), Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux (Seven Stories, translated by Tanya Leslie). Some of them I read while on my first-ever solo vacation to New Mexico, surrounded by Georgia O’Keeffe’s inspiration on a hike at Ghost Ranch or relaxing in my earthship in Taos. It was a real joy for the soul, and I hope to keep finding that feeling after motherhood arrives. – Emily (2014-2020)

I miss the little shop on the corner! I left Three Lives back in 2020 to work in publishing. During the pandemic I lived and worked out of my childhood bedroom in Washington, D.C. before returning to New York and starting a new job at a production company. I still live a stone’s throw from the shop and visit often to stock up on books and chat with my favorite people. Reading still takes up a ton of my time, and I’m thrilled to be returning to this newsletter to share some of my favorite recent books with you all.

Some regulars might remember my fervent love of Curtis Sittenfeld, and her new novel, Romantic Comedy (Random House), is one of her best. It is a sophisticated send-up of Saturday Night Live and an unputdownable summer read full of heart and humor. I also recently loved Henry Hoke’s Open Throat (MCD), a novel in verse from the perspective of the celebrity mountain lion P-22. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked it up but was struck by its original voice and inventive premise. My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin (Henry Holt) was the best debut I’ve read in a long time. It is at once an engrossing campus novel, a nuanced coming-of-age story, and an incisive look at privilege and power in the late ‘90s. Rebecca Makkai’s latest, I Have Some Questions for You (Viking), is another campus novel I cannot stop thinking about. It’s a modern whodunit mystery that one review aptly described as “Secret History meets Serial.” Last, I’ll recommend the amazing graphic memoir Ducks by Kate Beaton (Drawn & Quarterly). Beaton grew up in Nova Scotia and moved west with the express goal of paying off her student loans by working in the harsh conditions of the Alberta oil sands. Her memoir is a singular look into a world I knew nothing about and an honest portrait of what it means to be a woman in a male-dominated field. I can’t recommend it enough! – Ruby Smith (2017-2020)

Life is different in Colorado. More sunshine and mountains, more climbing and wildlife, more snow and space. My partner and I have jumped into gardening with no prior experience. So far, there are no disasters to report. We have kale, spinach, carrots, lettuce, and plenty of native plants for our helpful pollinators. We also adopted a stout, three-year-old tabby cat named Boris Karloff, and I now work at Carter Lake, a beautiful park in Loveland known for its wild turkeys and elk herd.

Some things have remained the same, specifically my appetite for books! I’ve devoured fantastic new(er) novels like Agatha of Little Neon by Claire Luchette (Picador) – thanks for the rec, Miriam! – Catherine Lacey’s gorgeous and propulsive Biography of X (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Percival Everett’s timely and timeless Deep South mystery The Trees (Graywolf), and Kim Addonizio’s poetry collection Now We’re Getting Somewhere (W.W. Norton – a complete gem!). But the real highlights have been older works by authors on my unending to-be-read list. I read Vivian Gornick’s memoir The Odd Woman and the City (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) during a time when I missed the city so much it hurt. I loved reading about her fleeting interactions with New Yorkers, often chaotic and funny but always meaningful. Helen Garner’s The Spare Room (St. Martin’s), a novel that honors female friendship and explores the many faces of grief, comforted me as I dealt with the loss of my own best friend. But it’s Seamus Heaney’s Nobel lecture, “Crediting Poetry,” that I can’t seem to shake. It transported me to rural Ireland during a tumultuous, violent time when the collective mood was, understandably, hopeless. Heaney makes the point, however, that poetry is powerful not only because of what it says but because of what it can do for us. Poetry exposes darkness and pain but, just as crucially, the need for compassion and trust. Toward the end of the lecture, Heaney says of a Yeats poem: “It knows that the massacre will happen again on the roadside, that the workers in the minibus are going to be lined up and shot down just after quitting time; but it also credits as a reality the squeeze of the hand, the actuality of sympathy and protectiveness between living creatures.” – Nora Shychuk (2017-2022)

~ Troy’s Cookbook Corner ~

Summer is in sight, strawberries have miraculously appeared, and we are in the midst of asparagus season, my favorite season of all. The energy at the market has shifted with the arrival of greens, sugar snap peas, fresh herbs (!!), and buckets of flowers.

Suddenly, all these ingredients inspire us to make new dishes and old favorites – and to dream of dinner parties and picnics in the park. What could be more exciting than a new cookbook to guide and inspire us through the season ahead?!

I’ve chosen ten new cookbooks from the spring and summer seasons and decided to share a dish or two from each that will hopefully intrigue or ignite excitement.

There’s a bountiful season ahead, and a bounty of cookbooks await your perusal. May it be a season of more daydreaming, more gatherings, more baking, and more time with fruits and vegetables. Here’s to more life.

Cucina Povera by Giulia Scarpaleggia (Artisan)
Dish: Potato-and-Mushroom-Stuffed Zucchini. A Ligurian summer dish. This cookbook has sold itself at TL&Co.

Sweet Enough by Alison Roman (Clarkson Potter)
Dish: Semolina Cake with Lemon and Fennel, or Alison’s Old-Fashioned Strawberry Cake – both perfect for a picnic!

Food of the Italian Islands by Katie Parla (Parla Publishing)
Dish: Impepata di Cozze (Mussels with Black Pepper). “A classic of Procida and Ischia in the Bay of Naples.” This would be my go-to Italian islands cookbook and guidebook.

Cooking with Mushrooms by Andrea Gentl (Artisan)
Dish: Mushroom Mint Summer Rolls with Gentl’s version of a Green Goddess Dressing. This book is a marvel for those who love and appreciate mushrooms.

Love Is a Pink Cake by Claire Ptak (W.W. Norton)
Dish: Huckleberry Basil Sugar Scones. Ptak grew up in California and lives in England, and this book is her magical mix of both sensibilities, plus an ode to Andy Warhol. Fun fact: huckleberries are a type of North American wild blueberry!

Wildcrafted Vinegars by Pascal Baudar (Chelsea Green)
Dish: Less about dishes than lessons, this book will teach you how to make your own vinegars and will explain (and prove) why it is worth the effort. I’ve got my copy!

A Cook’s Book by Nigel Slater (Ten Speed)
Dish: Chicken Thighs with Coconut and Coriander. And, because it sounds too tantalizingly delicious not to share, Mint Frozen Yogurt with Dark Chocolate. I refer to this book as A Cook’s Bible because Nigel knows all.

Vegetable Revelations by Steven Satterfield (Harper Wave)
Dish: Greens Grilled Cheese. Hardy greens, cheddar, and Gouda with red onion on a thick slice of toasted sourdough. Satterfield is a thoughtful and inspired cook, and his first cookbook, Root to Leaf, is one of my all-time favorites.

Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook by Nancy Singleton Hachisu (Phaidon)
Dish: Corn Rice. “Cooking the rice with a couple pieces of corncob imparts a slightly nutty background note to the rice and is a bit genius.” A cookbook for a lifetime.

The Everlasting Meal Cookbook by Tamar Adler (Scribner)
Dish: Iceberg lettuce cores that Adler recommends using in a Grace Young stir-fry recipe. It is actually fun and surprising to see what Adler comes up with for the leftovers in our fridges and cupboards that often go to waste. This book is ingeniously useful and an important feat. Waste no more!

And finally, an Honorable Mention from last fall: Delectable: Sweet & Savory Baking by Claudia Fleming (Random House). This book’s season has truly begun, and I’ll be making and baking as many recipes from these pages as I can, from Fleming’s Peach and Raspberry Crostata to Sweet Corn Puddings with Blueberries and on to her end-of-summer Squash Blossom Tart.

~ Staff Favorites Now in Paperback ~

Fiction

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson (Anchor)

Trust by Hernan Diaz (Riverhead)

All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami (Europa, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd)

Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour (Flatiron)

True Biz by Sara Nović (Random House)

Nonfiction

The Naked Don’t Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins (Harper)

All In by Billie Jean King (Vintage)

Who Killed My Father by Édouard Louis (New Directions, translated by Lorin Stein)

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris (Back Bay)

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (Vintage)

~ Signed Editions ~

Fiction

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Pantheon)

Ashton Hall by Lauren Belfer (Ballantine)

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley (Picador)

I Don’t Smoke Enough to Quit by Robert Dreesen (Paul Dry)

The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller (Tin House)

Life and Other Love Songs by Anissa Gray (Berkley)

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata (Grove, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)

Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata (Grove, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)

Take What You Need by Idra Novey (Viking)

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub (Riverhead)

The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor (Riverhead)

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Penguin)

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (Penguin)

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (Penguin)

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Knopf)

Nonfiction

Dinner in One by Melissa Clark (Clarkson Potter)

Delectable by Claudia Fleming (Random House)

Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman (Harper Design)

Walk with Me: New York by Susan Kaufman (Harry N. Abrams)

Growing Up Getty by James Reginato (Gallery)

Dining In by Alison Roman (Clarkson Potter)

Nothing Fancy by Alison Roman (Clarkson Potter)

Sweet Enough by Alison Roman (Clarkson Potter)

Hello, Molly! by Molly Shannon (Ecco)

Via Carota by Jody Williams, Rita Sodi and Anna Kovel (Knopf)

Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams (Crown)

~ The Three Lives & Company Bestseller List ~

1. The Daddy Diaries by Andy Cohen (Henry Holt)

2. Trust by Hernan Diaz (Riverhead)

3. The Guest by Emma Cline (Random House)

4. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Knopf)

5. Happy Place by Emily Henry (Berkley)

6. The Creative Act by Rick Rubin (Penguin Press)

7. The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley (William Morrow)

8. Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson (Pamela Dorman)

9. The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (Grove)

10. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper)

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

SPECIAL ORDERS:

A reminder that we specialize in special orders. In our small shop it’s always a challenge to find room for all the new, notable, and exciting books; if you’d like a book that we don’t have on hand, we are always happy to order it for you. We place orders almost daily and the usual turnaround time for a special order is two business days. For some books it may take longer, but we’ll be sure to discuss the particulars with you before we place an order. Additionally, we can ship books to you anywhere within the United States. Give us a call, send us an email, or stop in any time.

PREORDERS:

We are happy to take preorders for forthcoming titles, and we will let you know as soon as the book arrives. We are all too familiar with the fervid desire to possess a new book at the first possible moment, and we will do everything in our power to make sure the book lands in your hands hot off the presses.

GIFT CERTIFICATES:

We offer gift certificates, which you may purchase in any amount.  

Three Lives & Company, Booksellers

154 W. 10th St.

New York  NY 10014

212.741.2069

threelives.com

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