If someone had told her at some point that a supermarket would change her life, she wouldn't have believed them. She hated going to supermarkets. And she hated "life-changing experiences". Still does, actually. Yet there had been this rainy, gloomy afternoon. And the child. She didnt like children very much, either. They were loud, sweaty, and they ate with their mouths open. And they were creepy. Not this child, though. No, something about that child was truly fascinating. In a positive way. She just didn't know what it was. And what she certainly didn't anticipate was that, very soon, she'd be meeting this child again...
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The stunning debut novel from one of the most creative artists of our generation, Bobby Hall, a.k.a. Logic. “Bobby Hall has crafted a mind-bending first novel, with prose that is just as fierce and moving as his lyrics. Supermarket is like Naked Lunch meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest—if they met at Fight Club.”—Ernest Cline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ready Player One Flynn is stuck—depressed, recently dumped, and living at his mom’s house. The supermarket was supposed to change all that. An ordinary job and a steady check. Work isn’t work when it’s saving you from yourself. But things aren’t quite as they seem in these aisles. Arriving to work one day to a crime scene, Flynn’s world collapses as the secrets of his tortured mind are revealed. And Flynn doesn’t want to go looking for answers at the supermarket. Because something there seems to be looking for him. A darkly funny psychological thriller, Supermarket is a gripping exploration into madness and creativity. Who knew you could find sex, drugs, and murder all in aisle nine?
"A deeply curious and evenhanded report on our national appetites." --The New York Times In the tradition of Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, an extraordinary investigation into the human lives at the heart of the American grocery store The miracle of the supermarket has never been more apparent. Like the doctors and nurses who care for the sick, suddenly the men and women who stock our shelves and operate our warehouses are understood as 'essential' workers, providing a quality of life we all too easily take for granted. But the sad truth is that the grocery industry has been failing these workers for decades. In this page-turning expose, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on the highly secretive grocery industry. Combining deep sourcing, immersive reporting, and sharp, often laugh-out-loud prose, Lorr leads a wild investigation, asking what does it take to run a supermarket? How does our food get on the shelves? And who suffers for our increasing demands for convenience and efficiency? In this journey: We learn the secrets of Trader Joe's success from Trader Joe himself Drive with truckers caught in a job they call "sharecropping on wheels" Break into industrial farms with activists to learn what it takes for a product to earn certification labels like "fair trade" and "free range" Follow entrepreneurs as they fight for shelf space, learning essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business Journey with migrants to examine shocking forced labor practices through their eyes The product of five years of research and hundreds of interviews across every level of the business, The Secret Life of Groceries is essential reading for those who want to understand our food system--delivering powerful social commentary on the inherently American quest for more and compassionate insight into the lives that provide it.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). • CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
Enter the disturbing psyche of a man who sees obsession as the definition of love that most others perceive as madness. In a world like ours, this man becomes fascinated by one specific person. Michelle Carter. In search of real love, he records every moment, every fault, and every heartbeat by painstaking observation and activities clearly unethical. The line separating appreciation from obsession fades as he gets closer to his "perfect" subject. Is this the love in its essence, or a dangerous descent into madness? Enter a terrifying story where only one's limitations limit the boundaries of love.
A TIME 'New Books You Should Read' A People magazine 'Book of the Week' A New York Times Editors' Choice With a foreword by Elizabeth Strout 'Electric: with wit, with rage, with grief, with the kind of prose that makes you both laugh and thrill to the darker, spikier emotions just barely visible under the bright surface. What a wonderful collection of stories' Lauren Groff Another day! And then another and another and another. It seemed as if it would all go on forever in that exquisitely boring and beautiful way. But of course it wouldn't; everyone knows that. In this collection, Hilma Wolitzer invites us inside the private world of domestic bliss, seen mostly through the lens of Paulie and Howard's gloriously ordinary marriage. From hasty weddings to meddlesome neighbours, ex-wives who just won't leave, to sleepless nights spent worrying about unanswered chainmail, Wolitzer captures the tensions, contradictions and unexpected detours of daily life with wit, candour and an acutely observant eye. Including stories first published in magazines in the 1960s and 1970s – alongside new writing from Wolitzer, now in her nineties – Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket reintroduces a beloved writer to be embraced by a new generation of readers. 'A fascinating time capsule of womanhood, marriage and motherhood over the last century ... A fabulous book' Emma Straub 'Immensely gratifying, poignant, funny ... Breathtaking' Elizabeth Strout, from the foreword
Hungry for change? Put the power of food co-ops on your plate and grow your local food economy. Food has become ground-zero in our efforts to increase awareness of how our choices impact the world. Yet while we have begun to transform our communities and dinner plates, the most authoritative strand of the food web has received surprisingly little attention: the grocery store—the epicenter of our food-gathering ritual. Through penetrating analysis and inspiring stories and examples of American and Canadian food co-ops, Grocery Story makes a compelling case for the transformation of the grocery store aisles as the emerging frontier in the local and good food movements. Author Jon Steinman: Deconstructs the food retail sector and the shadows cast by corporate giants Makes the case for food co-ops as an alternative Shows how co-ops spur the creation of local food-based economies and enhance low-income food access. Grocery Story is for everyone who eats. Whether you strive to eat more local and sustainable food, or are in support of community economic development, Grocery Story will leave you hungry to join the food co-op movement in your own community.
"Oracle carefully explores the dangers and benefits of diet and exercise books, sex manuals, and self-actualization schemes. It is a timely and fascinating work, and will be of great interest to health-care providers and thoughtful consumers." --Joseph D. Matarazzo,American Psychological Association