By Líllia
Summer has arrived with scorching days and some showers, and books are still being consumed left and right.
But not only books! As June proved – and we see that again this month! – not only books become bestsellers. In July we sold A LOT of card game boosters of Pokémon Mega Evolution Pitch Black, GD05 Freedom Ascension and Fifa WorldCup 2026. We certainly don’t have the Fifa boosters anymore, but we might still have some of the Pokémon and Gundam cards…
Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey has been making great waves, with its “fresh, authoritative translation” and “written in iambic pentameter verse and a vivid, contemporary idiom”. No matter it was the movie that brought that up (what are movies for, if not to show the book is better?), it’s her translation that most customers ask for in all our stores.
Besides many repeats from months past – East of Eden, I Who Have Never Known Men, White Nights, Yesteryear and Dungeon Crawler Carl among others -, we have the newest Heartstopper, the last one in Nick and Charlie’s story. Not surprisingly it was a bestseller in all our three stores. What is really surprising is the success the new trend of puzzle books are having, with Murdoku still leading the way and Murdle keeping right behind it.
It might be puzzling, but who does not want to solve a couple of murders from a sunny beach or a mountain retreat?
Before I Knew I Loved You by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Toshikazu Kawaguchi takes us back to the warm heart of the mysterious Funiculi Funicula Cafe, with another four guests whose luminous stories of love, lost and won again, will reaffirm your belief in its eternal potential.
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman
Join Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they fight fantastical creatures and deadly mobs to make it to the next level and build the kind of fan following the dungeon masters can’t ignore in the second book in the smash-hit Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman—now with bonus material exclusive to this print edition.
Death Note Black Edition Vol. 1 by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
Light Yagami is an ace student with great prospects–and he’s bored out of his mind. But all that changes when he finds the Death Note, a notebook dropped by a rogue Shinigami death god. Any human whose name is written in the notebook dies, and now Light has vowed to use the power of the Death Note to rid the world of evil. Will Light’s noble goal succeed, or will the Death Note turn him into the very thing he fights against?
Includes volumes 1 & 2 of the original manga
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
In the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality.
David is a young American expatriate who has just proposed marriage to his girlfriend, Hella. While she is away on a trip, David meets a bartender named Giovanni to whom he is drawn in spite of himself. Soon the two are spending the night in Giovanni’s curtainless room, which he keeps dark to protect their privacy. But Hella’s return to Paris brings the affair to a crisis, one that rapidly spirals into tragedy.
Heartstopper Volume 6 by Alice Oseman
Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love.
The final installment in the bestselling LGBTQ+ graphic novel series about life, love, and everything that happens in between.
Everyone in school knows Nick and Charlie. Everyone knows they’re going to be together forever.
But Charlie’s busy with his bid to become head boy. And while Nick is preparing to leave for uni, he’s starting to wonder who he’ll be… without Charlie.
Kitchen Confidential: 25th Anniversary Edition by Anthony Bourdain
After twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine, chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain decided to tell all – and he meant all. From his first oyster in the Gironde as a child, to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown; from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop the Rockefeller Center to drug dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain’s tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable, as shocking as they are funny.
Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water and your belly ache with laughter and leave you wanting more.
Murdle Volume 1: 100 Elementary to Impossible Mysteries to Solve Using Logic, Skill, and the Power of Deduction by G. T. Karber
Winner of the 2024 British Book Award for Overall Book of the Year.
The first collection of original murder mystery logic puzzles from the creator of the popular online daily mystery game Murdle.
The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
Composed at the rosy-fingered dawn of world literature almost three millennia ago, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home.
This fresh, authoritative translation captures the beauty of this ancient poem as well as the drama of its narrative. Its characters are unforgettable, none more so than the “complicated” hero himself, a man of many disguises, many tricks, and many moods, who emerges in this version as a more fully rounded human being than ever before.
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Darrow is a Helldiver, one of a thousand men and women who live in the vast caves beneath the surface of Mars, generations of people who spend their lives toiling to mine the precious elements that will allow the planet to be terraformed. Just knowing that, one day, people will be able to walk the surface of the planet is enough to justify their sacrifice. The Earth is dying, and Darrow and his people are the only hope humanity has left.
The Score by Elle Kennedy
Elle Kennedy keeps scoring with her Off Campus series.
Allie Hayes is in crisis mode. With graduation looming, she still doesn’t have the first clue about what she’s going to do after college. To make matters worse, she’s nursing a broken heart thanks to the end of her longtime relationship. Wild rebound sex is definitely not the solution to her problems, but gorgeous hockey star Dean Di Laurentis is impossible to resist. Just once, though, because even if her future is uncertain, it sure as heck won’t include the king of one-night stands.
The Stranger (a.k.a. The Outsider) by Albert Camus
The masterpiece of Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus now in a striking American English translation. The Stranger remains vital for its unsettling insights into the impossibility of moral certainty in the face of violence.
