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This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert.

It’s the classic American story that’s fueled everything from On the Town to Midnight Cowboy to SATC’s Carrie Bradshaw: a small-town kid heads to the Big City for sex, thrills, and fame. It’s an inherently exciting framework because it contains a lot of the elements we look for in escapist entertainment: a coming-of-age (and sometimes comeuppance) tale, a rags-to-riches plotline, and a vivid glimpse into the glam and grime of America’s most famous city; plus, Manhattan’s blend of seediness and glamor, and its diversity of bodies and personalities, positively radiates with sexual possibility. It might be a crowded, rat-infested island basically owned by foreign oligarchs, but New York’s literary appeal has remained essentially unchanged since Lily Bart graced its tea rooms...

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.

About a third of the way through poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, the narrator observes the protagonist watching his mother through the kitchen window: “Evening had turned the glass into a mirror and you couldn’t see him there, only the lines scored across your cheeks and brow, a face somehow ravaged by stillness. The boy, he watches his mother watch nothing, his entire self inside the phantom oval of her face, invisible.” The moment encapsulates the painful paradox of all mother-child relationships: Your child is of you and for you, indistinguishable from you; and then they are not — they grow up, and the distance that self-actualization brings is irrecoverable. Isolated, these two sentences allow for a sentimental reading, but by now the reader knows that the boy’s Vietnamese mother suffers from war-induced PTSD and is violently abusive. The narrator’s — and when the narrative shifts into first person, the boy’s — willingness to imaginatively close the distance between mother and son is a radical act of love...

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett.

Florida has long been the land of the weird, a place where humidity thickens the blood, strip clubs offer free flu shots, and an alarming number of zoo animals make the news. So it's the perfect setting for Kristen Arnett’s raucous debut novel, Mostly Dead Things, which follows a taxidermist in her late thirties as she tackles the messes left behind by her runaway lover — also her brother’s wife — and her father’s suicide.

Faced with a struggling family business, a grieving mom with a penchant for BDSM art, a pseudo-murderous nephew, and a diet of cheap, flat beer, Jessa-Lynn tries to be her family’s source of stability and reason, only to come up time and again against her own emotional demons and the jointly comforting and disturbing eccentricities of her family and home state...

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month Pok Pok Noodles by Andy Ricker and JJ Goode.

Do you love Thai noodles? Like, really, really love Thai noodles? And do you love to cook — we mean, really, really love to cook? And while we’re at it, do you love knowing exactly what goes into your favorite Thai noodle dishes, or are you more of a “what I don’t know is delicious!” kind of person?

Just checking. Because lifting the cover of Andy Ricker and JJ Goode’s comprehensive Pok Pok Noodles will deliver you to a land of meticulous instruction, extensive kitchen prep, and the occasional tablespoon of coagulated pig’s blood. With lengthy ingredient lists and beautifully staged photographs that highlight the many components of each recipe...

In the opening story of Karen Russell’s new collection, Orange World and Other Stories, two “prospectors” (read: Depression-era party girls with light fingers) crash a party at a mountain lodge populated by the dead. The premise is pure Russell, as is the story’s spooky, intoxicating execution, powered by the author’s sly, evocative prose: "I had a sharp memory of standing at a bay window, in Florida, and feeling the night sky change direction on me — no longer lapping at the horizon but rolling inland. Something was pouring toward me now, a nothingness exhaled by the floury membrane of the boy." One of the pleasures of reading Russell’s short fiction is being pulled into this kind of barely unlikely scenario, where the recognizable turns suddenly porous, allowing the eerie to seep in...

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month Cinderella Liberator by Rebecca Solnit.

We’re avid fans of Rebecca Solnit’s challenging, reference-rich essay collections, so it's exciting to find that same intelligence and empathy brought to bear in her retelling of the Cinderella story. In Cinderella Liberator, it is not just Cinderella who needs help: her stepsisters, who have been told that beauty equals happiness (and there is not enough for all), languish upstairs; Prince Nevermind, who, it turns out, is rather charming, would prefer to be a farmer; and even the mice, rats, and lizards swept up in the fairy godmother’s magic desire to take new form and have novel experiences. Under the fairy godmother’s tutelage, the story’s characters learn that it’s important to ask for help when you need it, give help where it’s needed, and live in a way that guarantees not just your own freedom, but that of the people and creatures around you. There are still spells and ball gowns and glass slippers in Cinderella Liberator, but true magic, the story instructs, is embedded in the acts of kindness and love between neighbors...

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month Furious Hours by Casey Cep.

In the space of eight years, the Reverend Willie Maxwell allegedly murdered two wives, a brother, a nephew, and a stepdaughter for life insurance money. His reign of terror, for which he was repeatedly arrested but never convicted, ended in 1977 at his step-daughter’s funeral, when the girl’s grief-stricken uncle shot the Reverend three times in the head. The uncle, too, was acquitted. Both men were defended by a dynamic, liberal white lawyer who was sure this was a story for the ages.

Harper Lee, the enigmatic author of To Kill a Mockingbird, agreed...

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month Salt and Straw Ice Cream Cookbook by Tyler Malek and JJ Goode.

Tyler Malek’s infectious enthusiasm for making ice cream infuses the Salt and Straw Ice Cream Cookbook with the perfect amounts of zest and sweetness. Great for ice cream amateurs and professionals alike — plus anyone who’s stood in the epic lines at one of Salt & Straw’s locations and thought, Couldn’t I just eat ice cream at home? — Malek’s cookbook features the company’s best-loved flavors, plus recipes for the extras like marshmallow fluff and gooey chocolate brownies that make Salt & Straw’s ice cream so good...

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities by Mady G and J. R. Zuckerberg.

A slim graphic novel, A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities features humorous, borderline psychedelic illustrations of people, snails, and fantastical forest creatures having intimate talks and cavorting with friends in safe, idyllic natural settings. It’s a gentle, joyously weird celebration of the many ways that people can identify in terms of sexuality and gender that emphasizes the beauty in self-acceptance and individual expression.

Guided by a perky, baseball cap-wearing pet snail named Iggy, A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities walks the reader (and a group of curious wild snails) through excellent tutorials on subjects like gender identity, asexuality, and relationship basics...

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month The Best Coast: A Road Trip Atlas by Chandler O'Leary.

We’re enthralled by artist Chandler O’Leary’s road trip guide to the West Coast, The Best Coast: A Road Trip Atlas. It’s not just that Portland gets its own mini-chapter featuring Powell’s (although we’re not immune to flattery). It’s that The Best Coast may be the quirkiest, prettiest, and most enthusiastic guide/love letter to the coast we call home to ever land on our desks.

O’Leary is a veteran road tripper, having logged over 100,000 road trip miles across the lower 48 states. This makes her not just an authoritative guide to sightseeing highlights throughout the U.S., but an expert in what to pack and prepare for. The early sections of The Best Coast are devoted to trip planning and safety, covering what to wear (the geographical and climatic diversity of our coast being vast), how to secure your belongings, how to maximize your budget, and how to take care of your vehicle, plus delightful, unexpected tips...