Shelfology Book Pairing

Travels in Small-town America

by Bill Bryson

"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of smiling village where the movies from his youth were set. Instead he drove through a series of horrific burgs, which he renamed Smellville, Fartville, Coleslaw, Coma, and Doldrum. At best his search led him to Anywhere, USA, a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by obese and slow-witted hicks with a partiality for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost: lost to itself because he found it blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a foreigner in his own country.

The Stunning New Special Edition of the Iconic Weird Girl Book

by Mona Awad

THE TIKTOK SENSATION, NOW REISSUED AS A BEAUTIFUL SPECIAL EDITION FEATURING BUNNY SPRAYED EDGES Meet BUNNY: the darkly funny, spellbinding trip of a novel that EVERYONE is talking about 'No punches pulled, no hilarities dodged, no meme unmangled. O Bunny you are sooo genius!' MARGARET ATWOOD 'We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously. Bunny.' Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA programme at Warren University. In fact, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort - a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other 'Bunny.' But when the Bunnies issue her with an invitation, Samantha finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door, across the threshold, and down their rabbit hole. Hallucinogenic trip, cult classic, TikTok sensation: Bunny has cast its spell. Read it now, published as a collectible special edition, with a new foreword by the author. 'The Secret History meets Jennifer's Body. Brilliant, sharp, weird... I loved it and I couldn't put it down.' KRISTEN ROUPENIAN 'Made me nod and cackle in terrified recognition.' LENA DUNHAM 'Hilarious, hallucinogenic freakery.' DAILY MAIL 'Cerebral and complusively readable.' VANITY FAIR