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Beautyland: A Novel
Marie-Helene Bertino
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Posts about this title from Elsewhen
Elsewhen\ \ Emma Gardner\ \ • Feb 26 2025
Vote for March's Book Club Pick
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4 books
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Posts about this book from across Bindery
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Jun 30
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your friend really, really needs to read these books …
your friend really, really needs to read these books …
📚 books mentioned: - Our Sister’s Keeper by Jasmine Holmes - Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado - Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine - Girls Who Play Dead by Joelle Wellington - Canon by Paige Lewis - You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom by Vincent Tirado - Sick Kids in Love by Hannah Moskowitz - The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar - Open Throat by Henry Hoke - Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier - Until the Clock Strikes Midnight by Alechia Dow - Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson - Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino - The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter - Fury by Shirley Marr
👗💄: - shirt is from Hill House Home - eyeshadow is The Lord of the Rings Middle Earth Palette from Glamlite and In A Trance from Colourpop - eyeliner is Vegan Longwear Eyeliner (Ocean) from Pacifica Beauty - shimmer is a single (Enchanted) from Adriana Nichole Cosmetics - mascara is Clean Volume from Merit - lip combo is Suede Matte Lip Liner (Moonwalk) from NYX Cosmetics and Wonder Blading Top Gloss (Holographic) from Wonderskin
thank you to Bindery Books, Sourcebooks Landmark, Simon Teen, Viking Books, William Morrow, Tordotcom, and Tin House for the gifted copies!
#fantasybooks #horrorbooks #scifibooks #nycinfluencer #bookstagram @bindery_books @graywolfpress @sourcebooks @bookmarked @simonteen @vikingbooks @williammorrowbooks @entangledteen @tordotcompub @mcdbooks @tin_house @fiercereads @groveatlantic @fsgbooks @orbitbooks_us @hillhouse @glamlite @adriananicholecosmetics @merit @wonderskin @colourpopcosmetics @nyxcosmetics
15 books
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Jun 20
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🏳️🌈🔮look into my eyes …. i know what you want to read.
🏳️🌈🔮look into my eyes …. i know what you want to read.
here are some mind reader queer book recs for pride!
📚 books mentioned: - Pet by Akwaeke Emezi - Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White - Fawn’s Blood by Hal Schrieve - The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson - Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir - Station Six by S.J. Klapecki - An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon - The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez - Somadina by Akwaeke Emezi - Dauntless by Elisa A. Bonnin - On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah-Yah Scholfield - This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado - The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez - Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino - Blood Orange by Yaffa As - Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir by Walela Nehanda - Death’s Country by R.M. Romero - Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories by GennaRose Nethercott - Transmogrify!: 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic: An LGBTQ+ Young Adult Fantasy Anthology of Unforgettable Adventures edited by g. haron davis - Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction edit by Joshua Whitehead
#pridemonth #pridemonthbookrecs #lgbtqbooks #nycinfluencer #bookstagram . queer books • queer book stack • Pride Month 2026 • books to read for pride • trans books • nonbinary books • sapphic books • achillean books • memoir book recs • literary fiction books recs • fantasy book recs • fantasy book recs • horror book recs • sci fi book recs • unique books • diverse books
21 books
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what could be more fun than pairing some book covers with outfits? 💕
what could be more fun than pairing some book covers with outfits? 💕 here are some books and looks!
📚 books mentioned: - The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo - Beasts of Carnaval by Rosália Rodrigo - Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White - Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino - Warm-Blooded by J Greene - The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez - Canon by Paige Lewis - A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang
#fantasybooks #horrorbooks #scifibooks #nycinfluencer #bookstagram @henryholtbooks @readmirabooks @htp_hive @peachtreeteen @fsgbooks @ingramsparkbooks @delreybooks @vikingbooks @williammorrowbooks
8 books
Mareas\ \ Marines\ \ • Dec 13 2025
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books for your mid-twenties
4 books
30
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Nov 21 2025
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it’s Wicked: For Good day!!! watch out world, I’m about to be super annoying!
here’s a little treat for the theatre kids.
📚 books mentioned: - The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar - Son of the Morning by Akwaeke Emezi - Island Witch by Amanda Jayatissa - Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino - Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko
👗💄: - dress is from For Love & Lemons, rented from Nuuly - eyeliner is from Kaleidos - eyeshadow is the Wicked: For Good Ozian Forest Palette from r.e.m. beauty - (also if you have a question about my makeup or something i’m wearing, most of it is curated in my shopmy!)
thank you to Tordotcom, Avon, and Berkley for the gifted copies!
#bookrecsfrommusicals #ifyoulikethismusicalreadthisbook #wicked #wickedforgood #fantasybooks #horrorbooks #romancebooks #scifibooks #starrysteph #nycinfluencer #diversebookstagram #nycbookstagram #bookstagram #TorPartner #AvonPartner #BerkleyPartner @wickedmovie @wicked_musical @tordotcompub @avonbooks @harpercollins @berkleypub @fsgbooks @abramsbooks @forloveandlemons @nuuly @kaleidosmakeup @r.e.m.beauty
5 books
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Aug 23 2025
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fragrances can 100% immerse me more in stories!!
fragrances can 100% immerse me more in stories!! disney rides have got this down pat lol. and scent is also SUPER connected to memories, so if I read a book and associate a scent with it, that’s bonus cool.
(tbh i could also do this with candles/diffuser oils that i burn while reading, but maybe that’s too niche???)
📚 books mentioned: - Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino (Soft Spot - @phlur) - The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas (Percy - @olfactorynyc) - The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong (Crumb Couture - @snif.co) - Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas (Missing Person - Phlur) - Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger (7 Summers - @dimebeautyco)
👗💄: - fragrances listed above!! - dress is from @anthropologie (@bhldn), rented from @nuuly - (also if you have a question about my makeup or something i’m wearing, most of it is curated in my shopmy!)
thank you to Fierce Reads, ACE, and Berkley for the gifted copies!
#fantasybooks #literaryfiction #bestperfume #perfumereviews #AcePartner #BerkleyPartner #fiercereads #starrysteph #nycinfluencer #diversebookstagram #nycbookstagram #bookstagram #nycbookstagram @fsgbooks @fiercereads @acebookspub @berkleypub @levinequerido
5 books
Sunny's Book Truck\ \ CJ\ \ • Jul 29 2025
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\ \ In her newest novel, Bertino parses through themes of alienation by writing from the point of view of an alien protagonist named Adina. I found this spin on the coming-of-age genre truly effecting and Adina’s search for community while feeling other relatable and heart wrenching. Wry, deadpan, and somehow full of wisdom, this is perhaps the best book I’ve read all year. It’s not out until January but I highly recommend you preorder it. For fans of: watching Challenger disaster footage, staring at yourself in the mirror while on psychadelics, and The Seas by Samantha Hunt .\ \ \ \ In my opinion, poets make for good novelists. Akbar is no exception to this, I really enjoyed his debut novel. Martyr! is untraditional in structure, it flashes between dreams and reality, narrators living and dead, poetry and manuscript samples. Our main character, Cyrus, is figuring out his grief of being parentless while navigating being both queer and early in his sobriety journey. It skillfully interrogates the role art plays in our lives, inherited mythologies, and is deeply invested in finding lightness within the dark. For fans of: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, diner coffee, and Marina Abramović.\ \ \ \ State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg doesn’t come out until July, but I strongly suggest you pre-order it! This speculative novel is set in the underbelly of Florida, and follows a ghostwriter who is stuck in her family home during the pandemic. The plot takes on every twist imaginable and features themes of technology addiction, cults, and dying parents. It’s weird, it’s otherworldly — it’s classic van den Berg. For fans of: hurricane weather, Weather by Jenny Offill, and holding a conch shell to your ear.](https://sunnysbooktruck.binderybooks.com/item/uLuMSdv70j2gf47JN4tO/)
Aliens! Art! Florida!
3 books
Sunny's Book Truck\ \ CJ\ \ • Jul 29 2025
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[Hi nerds \
\
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you may have seen the New York Times latest interactive piece compiling the Top 100 Book of the 21st Century. I, along with some of my bookish peers, immediately noticed a few authors who were snubbed, so I got to work on compiling my personal top 100.\
\
I gave myself a few restrictions, so the below list is made up of only women and queer authors. Translated works post 2001 count, but I also let a few books in that were repackaged recently (re: McNally Editions) that I would argue truly found their readership for the first time in the past 20 years, despite their earlier pub dates. I also limited myself to just one title per author, which was probably the hardest part of this list making.\
\
I also want to note that this isn’t necessarily my favorite top 100 books, nor what I am deeming the greatest. Some I’ve included simply for the cultural phenomenons they’ve become in my realm of the bookish internet.\
\
Finally, I am not a genre or poetry reader unfortunately, so this list leans literary and is restricted to titles I’ve already read. All books have been compiled on Bookshop.org here if you’d like to purchase any of them. The below list is not ranked, I’m not doing that to myself! I’d love to see your own if you make one. Let me know what you think I left off in the comments, I’m ready to fight.\
\
The Top 100 \
\
- Just Kids: the only romanticizing of 1970’s New York I can stand for.\ \
- Boy Parts: finally an American Psycho but for the girlie pops.\ \
- Dancing On My Own: a brand new essay collection I think everyone should read.\ \
- Hunger: my introduction to fat phobia and diet culture.\ \
- Commonwealth: this wouldn’t be a list by me without an Ann Patchett.\ \
- A Room Called Earth: neurodivergent rep at it’s finest.\ \
- The Night Circus: my carney ass loves this fantasy novel.\ \
- The New Me: satirical workplace culture, classic “women vs. the void”.\ \
- The Idiot: a perfect campus novel.\ \
- A Field Guide to Getting Lost: this broke my brain in college.\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
- Dept. of Speculation: vignette perfection!!!!\ \
- Circe: greek myths and witches for grown ups.\ \
- Little Weirds: a tender and perfect essay collection.\ \
- Assembly: a perfect execution of restraint.\ \
- Calypso: again, this wouldn’t be a list by me without Sedaris. I love him.\ \
- White Teeth: what can be said about Zadie Smith that hasn’t already been said?\ \
- The Doloriad: literally the most evil book I’ve read to date.\ \
- Nevada: trans roadtrip narrative, a queer cornerstone.\ \
- Birnam Wood: a perfect sprawling character driven thriller.\ \
- Beautyland: the most earnest novel on this list.\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
- No One Is Talk About This: perhaps the great Twitter novel?\ \
- Sisters: a modern gothic ghost story.\ \
- Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl: queer smut!!!\ \
- Detransition, Baby: queer questioning of what it means to make a family.\ \
- Infinite Country: border politics and big family dramas.\ \
- Bunny: do we think this was the first TikTok book for lit fic? Horror lite.\ \
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: misanthrope representation.\ \
- Real Life: bad friends and bad sex in the Midwest!!!\ \
- The Undocumented Americans: I loved this personal exploration of citizenship.\ \
- Pond: one of a kind, shimmering.\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
- The Glass Castle: one of my favorite memoirs of all time.\ \
- The Friend: dog freaks unite.\ \
- Land of Milk and Honey: food writing!!!\ \
- Martyr!: sad sack artist, diaspora, hidden identities.\ \
- The Rabbit Hutch: Blandine is one of the most memorable narrators ever.\ \
- White on White: an excellent art novel.\ \
- I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness: maybe my favorite desert novel?\ \
- The Performance: climate change, a book in acts, I loved it.\ \
- Lapvona: this is my favorite Moshfegh, fight me!\ \
- The Life of the Mind: academia woes.\ \ \ \ \
- The Wall: dystopian adventure novel excellence!\ \
- Cold Enough for Snow: what claim do we have to know another's inner world?\ \
- The English Understand Wool: I could have read 1000 pages more of this.\ \
- Hurricane Season: one of kind, relentless, harrowing.\ \
- A Little Life: some call it trauma porn, some call it the book of our generation.\ \
- Girl, Woman, Other: a polyphonic modern classic.\ \
- Convenience Store Woman: lonely and charming.\ \
- Freshwater: a completely effective depiction of dysphoria.\ \
- The Sluts: cursed!!!! I loved it.\ \
- No One Belongs Here More Than You: this changed my teenage brain chemistry.\ \ \ \ \
- I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: surreal, eerie, perfect.\ \
- Luster: women on the verge, art, race, open marriages.\ \
- Indelicacy: I loved this tiny novel. Labor, class, women.\ \
- Pew: hysteria and mass psychosis build in this creepy little gothic story.\ \
- Open Throat: we need to be reading more about gay mountain lions.\ \
- Severance: our great apocalypse novel.\ \
- Motherhood: Heti went inside of my brain to write this.\ \
- Tonight I’m Someone Else: this book reminds me of a heatwave. Desire, youth!\ \
- The Employees: an incredibly singular look at work and consumption.\ \
- A Manual for Cleaning Women: this book smells like cigarettes and windex.\ \ \ \ \ \ \
- The Body Is Not an Apology: an actually helpful guide to radical self-love.\ \
- Pachinko: an intergenerational family epic.\ \
- Burnt Sugar: THE mommy issues novel!\ \
- The Year of Magical Thinking: loss and charting the unknown waters of grief.\ \
- A Minor Chorus: queer Indigenous survival.\ \
- Strangers to Ourselves: I really loved this deep dive into mental health.\ \
- Second Place: my favorite Cusk. Art, marriage, family.\ \
- The Copenhagen Trilogy: a masterful piece of confessional writing.\ \
- Painting Time: for everyone with art school trauma.\ \
- Mona: the third act of this short novel is incredible.\ \ \ \ \ \ \
- Monstrilio: literary horror with a monster metaphor.\ \
- In the Dream House: the most original memoir I’ve ever read.\ \
- Hot Milk: rage, myth, modernity!\ \
- Monarch: cryptic and weird, Jungian and eccentric.\ \
- Death by Landscape: an incredible essay collection about the age of extinction.\ \
- Vanishing Twins: marriage, queerness, LA.\ \
- The Shame: internet obsession and envy.\ \
- Braiding Sweetgrass: sacred Indigenous nature wisdom.\ \
- Sarahland: maybe my favorite short story collection ever.\ \
- The Pisces: classic Broder, still her most memorable to me.\ \ \ \ \ \ \
- Bluets: there’s no one like Nelson, a genre busting legend.\ \
- The Days of Abandonment: unhinged Ferrante is my favorite Ferrante.\ \
- Boulder: motherhood, thankless identities, freedom.\ \
- Emergent Strategy: society-help to craft the collective future we deserve.\ \
- Paradise Rot: horror and wonder, hyper-sensual.\ \
- Dogs of Summer: 90’s queer girlhood expertly depicted.\ \
- The Book of Ayn: radical selfishness and ego-death in our modern age.\ \
- Y/N: the extremities of fan culture, a lucid fever dream.\ \
- Fake Accounts: a precise skewering of internet culture.\ \
- Brutes: girlhood is horror!!!\ \ \ \ \
- Tender is the Flesh: we love a cannibalism plot.\ \
- Something New Under the Sun: a darkly satirical take on our ecological reality.\ \
- Normal People: it was a cultural reset.\ \
- The Hard Crowd: Kushner is one of my favorite thinkers, I love this collection.\ \
- Hamnet: transportive, the only book that could get me to care about Shakespeare.\ \
- Revenge of the Scapegoat: familial trauma, chronic illness, academic labor.\ \
- The Goodby People: post-Manson, pre-Disney Los Angeles.\ \
- The Seas: a perfect, sparkling coming of age novel.\ \
- They: an uncanny depiction of artistic suppression and its consequences.\ \
- The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish: sisters, abuse, mental illness.\ \ \ \ That's all for today! Love you, mean it!](https://sunnysbooktruck.binderybooks.com/item/JJficBy182vkmlZBITvZ/)
Sunny's Top 100 Books of the 21st Century
Girls and gays edition
27 books
16
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Jun 28 2025
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please don’t forget about a-spec books this pride month!!
please don’t forget about aro/ace books this pride month!!
📚 books mentioned: - Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger - Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino - Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
thank you to Peachtree Teen for the free copy!
#acebooks #asexualbooks #arobooks #aromanticbooks #aroace #aroacebooks #pridemonthbooks #horrorbooks #scifibooks #fantasybooks #starrysteph #nycinfluencer #bookstagram @levinequerido @fsgbooks @peachtreeteen
3 books
1
Madisoncanread\ \ Madison\ \ • May 22 2025
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Books I’d sell my soul to read for the first time ✨
Books I’d sell my soul to read for the first time ✨ #madisoncanread #horrorbooks #thrillerbooks #booksiwishicouldreadforthefirsttimeagain #booksidsellmysoultoreadagain #favoritebooks #Inverted
7 books
Madisoncanread\ \ Madison\ \ • May 22 2025
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My favorite books of 2025 so far!
My favorite books of 2025 so far! #madisoncanread #horrorbooks #thrillerbooks #favoritebooks #bestbooks #bestbooks2025 #Inverted
10 books
Elsewhen\ \ Emma Gardner\ \ • Feb 26 2025
Vote for March's Book Club Pick
Click this post to vote for March's book club read!
4 books
2
Mood Reads\ \ Hannah\ \ • Feb 12 2025
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January (and then some): A Moodreads Newsletter
A monthly(ish) newsletter.
21 books
2
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Jan 25 2025
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books for all my fellow outcasts! because sometimes we read to feel less alone.
📚 books mentioned: - The Grimmer by Naben Ruthnum - May a Divine Awaken by Michael Tinsley - Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
#fantasybooks #horrorbooks #literaryfiction #bookrecommendations #starrysteph #nycinfluencer #bookstagram @ecwpress @fsgbooks
3 books
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Jan 5 2025
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my favorite reads of 2024 eeeeep!! ⬇️ drop yours below.
📚 books mentioned: - Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi - The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson - Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson - Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino - Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kyle Lee Baker
#bestbooksof2024 #favoritebooks #fivestarbooks #favoritebooksof2024 #2024bestbooks #readingwrapup #annualreadingwrapup #starrysteph #nycinfluencer #bookstagram @riverheadbooks @delreybooks @spiegelandgrau @fsgbooks @_mira_books_ @htpbooks @htp_hive
4 books
The Black Bird Commons\ \ Tim\ \ • Jan 2 2025
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My Little Book Nook: The Best Literary Novels of 2024!
My Little Book Nook: The Best Literary Novels of 2024! #booktok #authorsoftiktok #bestbooksof2024 #literarytok #top10 #topten
10 books
1
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Dec 21 2024
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second annual StarrySteph Book Awards!
drum roll please … welcome to the second annual StarrySteph Book Awards! they’re not even the most biased book awards out there!
📚 books mentioned: - Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino - I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones - The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong - The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei - Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi - Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart by GennaRose Nethercott - The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark - Death’s Country by R. M. Romero - The Unfinished by Cheryl Isaacs - Sheine Lende by Darcie Little Badger - Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
#bestbooksof2024 #goodreadschoiceawards #starrystephbookawards #bestbooksoftheyear #2024books #horrorbooks #fantasybooks #scifibooks #starrysteph #nycinfluencer #booktok #IGShareYourPassion @fsgbooks @sagapressbooks @acebookspub @berkleypub @flatiron_books @riverheadbooks @vintageanchorbooks @tordotcompub @peachtreeteen @theshelfstuff @harpercollins @levinequerido
11 books
1
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Nov 16 2024
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happy birthday to me; read these books because i said so (or face my wrath).
17 books
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Nov 8 2024
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it’s a super speedy october reading wrap up!!
6 books
Mareas\ \ Marines\ \ • Mar 31 2024
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some reading highlights and lowlights #books #booktok #bookreview
some reading highlights and lowlights #books #booktok #bookreview
5 books
Mareas\ \ Marines\ \ • Feb 7 2024
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\ \ Upgrade for $5 or login](https://mareas.binderybooks.com/item/eykYGOjUEefJUZkSJXiv/)
Not a lot of movement in January, but I'm starting from the bottom so I can make an awesome comeback.
5 books
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