Affordable Books Under $15

A “formally daring, emotionally devastating, and deeply political” (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of personal grief through the prism of the color white, from the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian.

Set in New York just after WWII, the story follows a young carefree socialite, Grady McNeil, whose parents leave her alone in their Fifth Avenue penthouse for the summer. Left to her own devices, Grady turns up the heat on the secret affair she’s been having with a Brooklyn-born Jewish war veteran who works as a parking lot attendant. As the season passes, the romance turns more serious and morally ambiguous, and Grady must eventually make a series of decisions that will forever affect her life and the lives of everyone around her. A lost treasure only recently found, Truman Capote’s Summer Crossing is a precocious, confident first novel from one of the greatest writers.

Alongside meditations on warlords, cat heaven, and orphans, the bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments offers a sly pep talk to the ambitious young, laments the proliferation of photos of oneself, imagines an apocalypse of worms, and recalls Helen of Troy’s childhood Kool-Aid stand.

Sonia Sanchez’s collection of haiku celebrates the gifts of life and mourns the deaths of revered African American figures in the worlds of music, literature, art, and activism. With its touching portraits and by turns uplifting and heartbreaking lyrics, Morning Haiku contains some of Sanchez’s freshest, most poignant work.

The villagers of King’s Abbot are shocked when a wealthy local widow commits suicide and the very next day her fiancé, Roger Ackroyd, is stabbed to death … One of Agatha Christie’s most famous novels, featuring her beloved detective Hercule Poirot — and her most surprising twist.

First published in 1930, Langston Hughes’s award-winning debut novel draws from the author’s childhood in the rural Midwest to paint a moving account of the trials and joys of life in Black communities that, until the novel’s publication, had not seen themselves reflected in American literature. A groundbreaking work, Not Without Laughter established Langston Hughes as a gifted novelist as well as a beloved poet.

The ideal introduction to the novels, stories, and essays of fabulist, realist, critic, and Booker Prize-winning author of Possession. A. S. Byatt has boundless intellectual and literary gifts and a fathomless imagination on which to nourish them. Her novels, stories, and essays allow us to see both our own and other worlds and times and, perhaps most brilliantly, the connections between them.

When Thorin Oakenshield and his band of dwarves embark upon a dangerous quest to reclaim the hoard of gold stolen from them by the evil dragon Smaug, Gandalf the wizard suggests an unlikely accomplice: Bilbo Baggins, an unassuming Hobbit dwelling in peaceful Hobbiton … the stirring adventure that begins The Lord of the Rings, the greatest fantasy epic of all time.

One of Thomas Hardy’s most famous novels is the story of an innocent young woman victimized by the double standards of her day. Tess of the D’Urbervilles is unique among his great novels for the intense feeling that he lavished upon his heroine, Tess, a pure woman betrayed by love. Hardy poured all of his profound empathy for both humanity and the rhythms of natural life into this story of her beauty, goodness, and tragic fate. In doing so, he created a character who, like Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, has achieved classic stature.

A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a childhood friend, a new mother who wanted to know how to raise her baby girl to be a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie’s letter of response: Fifteen invaluable suggestions — direct, wryly funny, and perceptive — for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. Filled with compassionate guidance and advice, it gets right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century and starts a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.

He was beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white-hot. I was drawn to him as I’d never been to anything or anyone in my life. I craved his touch like a drug, even knowing it would weaken me. I was flawed and damaged, and he opened those cracks in me so easily … From #1 New York Times bestselling author Sylvia Day comes the first novel in the Crossfire series — a provocative masterstroke of abandon and obsession that redefined the meaning of desire, and became a global phenomenon.