Displaying books 193-240 of 5011 in total

Victim

2024

by Andrew Boryga

Victim is a fearless satire about Javier Perez, a hustler from the Bronx who manipulates his life story for gain. With the bite of Paul Beatty and the subversive wit of Danzy Senna, this debut novel explores the lengths to which one man will go to make his story resonate.

Javier, from a family of hustlers, learns early how to turn his background—murdered drug dealer dad, single cash-strapped mom, best friend in prison for gang activity—into opportunities. His tailored story secures a full scholarship to a prestigious university, bringing him closer to his dream of becoming a famous writer.

As a college student, Javier embellishes his life story beyond recognition. The only real tie to his past is his correspondence with his childhood best friend, Gio, who's unconcerned with Javier's newfound insights into white privilege and the school-to-prison pipeline. After graduation, a viral essay catapults Javier to journalist status at a legendary magazine, where his "unique perspective" is celebrated.

But Gio knows the truth behind Javier's facade. Once out of prison, will Gio join in on Javier's ruse, or will the deceit unravel? Victim humorously critiques virtue signaling and trauma narratives, questioning the authenticity of diversity and the extremes one might pursue for a compelling story.

You Get What You Pay For

2024

by Morgan Parker

Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to her battle with depression.

She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyper-awareness stemming from the effects of slavery. In this collection of essays as intimate as being in the room with Morgan and her therapist, Morgan examines America's cultural history and relationship to Black Americans through the ages, through such topics as the ubiquity of a beauty culture that excludes Black women, the implications of Bill Cosby's fall from grace in a culture predicated on acceptance through respectability, and the pitfalls of visibility as seen through the mischaracterizations of Serena Williams as alternately iconic and too ambitious.

With piercing wit and incisive observations, You Get What You Pay For is ultimately a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness and its effects on mental well-being in America today. Weaving unflinching criticism with intimate anecdotes, this devastating memoir-in-essays paints a portrait of one Black woman's psyche—and of the writer's search to both tell the truth and deconstruct it.

36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem

2024

by Nam Le

An explosive, devastating debut book of poetry from the acclaimed author of The Boat. In his first international release since the award-winning, best-selling The Boat, Nam Le delivers a shot across the bow with a book-length poem that honors every convention of diasporic literature—in a virtuosic array of forms and registers—before shattering the form itself.

In line with the works of Claudia Rankine, Cathy Park Hong, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, this book is an urgent, unsettling reckoning with identity—and the violence of identity. For Le, a Vietnamese refugee in the West, this means the assumed violence of racism, oppression, and historical trauma.

But it also means the violence of that assumption. Of being always assumed to be outside one's home, country, culture, or language. And the complex violence—for the diasporic writer who wants to address any of this—of language itself.

Making use of multiple tones, moods, masks, and camouflages, Le's poetic debut moves with unpredictable and destabilizing energy between the personal and political. As self-indicting as it is scathing, hilarious as it is desperately moving, this is a singular, breakthrough book.

American Spirits

2024

by Russell Banks

American Spirits, penned by one of America's most celebrated storytellers, Russell Banks, weaves together three dark, interlocking tales set against the backdrop of a rural New York town. These stories become the shocking headlines and local mythologies that resonate within the community.

A husband's decision to sell property to a mysterious and temperamental stranger leads to an onslaught of hounding on social media when he publicly questions the man's character. Nearby, a couple's sense of security is shaken when an enigmatic family moves in next door, prompting their children to start sneaking over to beg for help. In a more dire turn of events, two dangerous criminals kidnap an elderly couple and resort to blackmailing their grandson, insisting he settle his debts with them.

Each narrative thread in American Spirits is suspenseful and thrilling, showcasing Banks' expertise in crafting stories that explore the hostile undercurrents of our communities and the expansive landscape of American politics. At the same time, the novel delves into the concept of how local tragedies can be both overwhelmingly devastating and yet, somehow, a part of everyday life. Banks guides readers through the town of Sam Dent, solidifying his reputation as a masterful contributor to the bedrock of American fiction.

Anita de Monte Laughs Last

New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death.

Who gets to leave a legacy? 1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn't. By 1998 Anita's name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student, is preparing her final thesis.

On College Hill, surrounded by progeny of film producers, C-Suite executives, and international art-dealers, most of whom float through life knowing that their futures are secured, Raquel feels herself an outsider. Students of color, like Raquel, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.

But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita's story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.

Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.

Change

Change is an autobiographical novel from Édouard Louis, hailed as one of the most important voices of his generation—about social class, transformation, and the perils of leaving the past behind.

One question took center stage in my life, it focused all of my thoughts and occupied every moment when I was alone with myself: how could I get this revenge, by what means? I tried everything. Édouard Louis longs for a life beyond the poverty, discrimination, and violence in his working-class hometown—so he sets out for school in Amiens, and, later, university in Paris.

He sheds the provincial “Eddy” for an elegant new name, determined to eradicate every aspect of his past. He reads incessantly; he dines with aristocrats; he spends nights with millionaires and drug-dealers alike. Everything he does is motivated by a single obsession: to become someone else.

At once harrowing and profound, Change is not just a personal odyssey, a story of dreams and of “the beautiful violence of being torn away,” but a profound portrait of a society divided by class, power, and inequality.

Expiration Dates

2024

by Rebecca Serle

Expiration Dates is a captivating journey through the highs and lows of romantic love, as envisioned by Rebecca Serle, the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years and One Italian Summer.

Daphne Bell holds a firm belief that the universe has a destined plan for her. Her romantic encounters come with a unique twist: each new man she meets comes with a slip of paper, revealing the precise duration of their relationship. Over the past two decades, Daphne has collected these slips, each with a countdown, yet she yearns for one that promises eternity.

On the evening of a blind date in her beloved Los Angeles eatery, she merely encounters a man named Jake—no expiration date in sight.

As their story unravels, Daphne grapples with the paper's ominous prediction, questioning the very essence of commitment and honesty. She harbors secrets that, if uncovered, could shatter Jake's heart.

With her characteristic blend of warmth and profound insight into the heart's mysteries, Serle has crafted a novel that delves into the nature of being single, finding love, and defining both on one's own terms. Expiration Dates is the poignant, emotional, and fervently passionate tale that fans have eagerly anticipated.

Fruit of the Dead

2024

by Rachel Lyon

Fruit of the Dead is an electric contemporary reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set over the course of one summer on a lush private island. It delves into themes of addiction and sex, family and independence, and explores who holds the power in a modern underworld.

Camp counselor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, is afraid to face her high-strung single mother in New York and uncertain about where home truly is. Her life takes an unexpected turn when the father of one of her campers, Rolo Picazo—the CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company—offers her an alternative. Middle-aged, divorced, and magnetic, Rolo intoxicates Cory and draws her into his world. Presented with a childcare job and a nondisclosure agreement, Cory is ferried to his private island, where she is plied with luxury and opiates.

Meanwhile, Cory's mother, Emer, who heads a precarious agricultural NGO, senses that something is amiss. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer embarks on a journey across land and sea, driven by a maternal instinct that she believes is a cry for help.

Alternating between Cory and Emer's perspectives, Rachel Lyon's Fruit of the Dead is a story that incorporates its mythic inspiration with a light touch and devastating precision. This haunting and ecstatic novel vibrates with lush abandon, offering a tale that explores love, control, and obliteration against the backdrop of America's own late capitalist mythos. A reinvention of the classic story of Persephone and Demeter, Fruit of the Dead promises to be a novel that readers will not soon forget.

Ghost Dogs: On Killers And Kin

2024

by Andre Dubus III

Ghost Dogs: On Killers And Kin is a collection of essays from the literary master and bestselling author of Townie, Andre Dubus III. In this work, Dubus reflects on a life filled with challenges, contradictions, and fulfillments. The narrative takes readers on an intimate journey through the author's personal experiences, thoughts, and emotions.

Ghost Pains

Ghost Pains showcases Jessi Jezewska Stevens as a distinguished voice of comical, techno-millenarian unease. This collection, featuring her acclaimed short fiction originally published in prestigious outlets like The Paris Review, Harper's, and Tin House, brings together some of her finest narratives.

Stevens's characters are women who navigate the complexities of modern life, from throwing disastrous parties in an era where social gatherings have lost their luster, to engaging in flirtations amidst landscapes marred by conflict and upheaval. These women confront the bewildering experience of waking up alongside past lovers in unfamiliar cities, and traverse the intricate mazes of history, love, and morality in a splintered American reality.

Each story in Ghost Pains is a testament to Stevens's skill in probing life's grand questions through the lens of everyday human struggles, making this collection a resounding declaration of her literary prowess.

Help Wanted

2024

by Adelle Waldman

From the best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman brings us Help Wanted, a sharp and funny tale of work in our time.

Set in a superstore in a small town in upstate New York, the narrative follows the members of Team Movement who start their shifts at the ungodly hour of 3:55 am. Under the watchful eye of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they tackle the Herculean task of unloading delivery trucks filled with merchandise, stocking the shelves, and then head home—or to another job—before the flood of customers arrive.

An unexpected opportunity for a promotion arises, and the diverse collective of workers—including a comedy-obsessed individual who defies his age, a young woman trying to hold onto her high school 'cool kid' status, and a former college football player seeking a new direction—come together with a plan so outlandish it just might succeed.

In this darkly comic workplace drama, Help Wanted explores the pain and purpose of solidarity and offers a deeply humane portrait of individuals striving, against ever-increasing odds, to earn a living.

Here After

2024

by Amy Lin

Here After is a poetic, raw depiction of an unlikely love followed by a dizzying loss. A stunning, taut memoir from debut Canadian author Amy Lin that will resonate deeply with anyone who has been in grief’s grasp. “When he dies, I fall out of time.” Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. On a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds’ move to Vancouver, thirty-two-year-old Kurtis heads out to run a half-marathon with Amy’s family. It’s the last time she sees her husband alive.

What follows is a rich and unflinchingly honest portrayal of her life with Kurtis, the vortex created by his death, and the ongoing struggle Amy faces as she attempts to understand her own experience in the context of commonly held “truths” about what the grieving process looks like. Here After is an intimate story of deep love followed by dizzying loss; a memoir so finely etched that its power will remain with you long after the final page.

Listen for the Lie

2024

by Amy Tintera

What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter?

After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life.

But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast "Listen for the Lie," and its too-good looking host Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one that did it.

Murder Road

A young couple find themselves haunted by a string of gruesome murders committed along an old deserted road in this terrifying new novel.

July 1995. April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They're looking for the small resort town where they plan to spend their honeymoon. When they spot what appears to be a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchhiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barreling down Atticus Line after them.

When the hitchhiker dies at the local hospital, April and Eddie find themselves in the crosshairs of the Coldlake Falls police. Unexplained murders have been happening along Atticus Line for years, and the cops finally have two witnesses who easily become their only suspects. As April and Eddie start to dig into the history of the town and that horrible stretch of road to clear their names, they soon learn that there is something supernatural at work, something that could not only tear the town and its dark secrets apart but take April and Eddie down with it all.

My Heavenly Favorite

My Heavenly Favorite is a harrowing, unforgettable masterpiece by the winner of the Booker International Prize. This work serves as a confession, a lament, and a mad gush of grief and obsession. It is the remarkable and chilling successor to Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's international sensation, The Discomfort of Evening.

The narrative tells the story of a veterinarian who visits a farm in the Dutch countryside where he becomes enraptured by his "Favorite"—the farmer's daughter. She is on the cusp of adolescence and longs to inhabit a boy's body. The veterinarian appears as a tantalizing possible escape from the constrictions of her conservative rural life.

Narrated after the veterinarian has faced punishment for his crimes, Rijneveld's audacious and profane novel captivates with paradoxical beauty in its prose, gripping the reader's attention. The novel refracts the contours of the Lolita story with perverse glee, leading the reader into otherwise unimaginable spaces—pop lyrics, horror novels, the Favorite's fantasized conversations with Freud and Hitler, and her dreams of flight, destruction, and transcendence.

An unflinching depiction of abjection and a pointed excavation of taboos and social norms, My Heavenly Favorite solidifies Rijneveld as one of the most daring and brilliant writers on the world stage.

Parasol Against The Axe

2024

by Helen Oyeyemi

Parasol Against the Axe, a novel by the prize-winning, bestselling author Helen Oyeyemi, takes readers on an adventurous and kaleidoscopic journey into the heart of Prague, a city portrayed as a living entity capable of welcoming or rejecting its visitors.

Hero Tojosoa, upon accepting an invitation to a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend Sofie, finds herself in the intriguing and often deceptive embrace of Prague. A mysterious book she carries distorts her perception, its content shifting with each reader and each reading, unveiling a tapestry of fictional tales from Prague's history. Throughout the weekend, unexpected figures join the festivities, imparting their wisdom, humor, and hints of betrayal.

The sudden arrival of a third woman from Hero and Sofie's shared past intensifies the tension and challenges their differing recollections. As the lines between illusion and delusion, fact and interpretation become blurred, Hero must navigate the treacherous waters of friendship and storytelling.

Parasol Against the Axe probes the influence of the reader on a narrative and the narrative on the reader, posing the ultimate question: in a clash between friends, is it wiser to be the shield or the weapon?

The Extinction of Irena Rey

2024

by Jennifer Croft

The Extinction of Irena Rey is an utterly beguiling novel about eight translators and their search for a world-renowned author who goes missing in a primeval Polish forest. These translators, coming from eight different countries, share a deep reverence for their beloved author, Irena Rey. They gather at her house on the border of Belarus, with an assignment to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence.

But the plot thickens when Irena disappears without a trace. The translators embark on an investigation into her whereabouts while continuing their work on her masterpiece. As they delve into the ancient woods filled with intoxicating slime molds, lichens, and her exotic belongings, they uncover shocking secrets and deceptions they never anticipated.

Amidst a fever dream of isolation and obsession, the translators' unity is tested as they are driven by rivalries and desire. The stakes are high as their actions threaten not only the translation project but also the fate of Irena Rey herself. Jennifer Croft's hilarious and thought-provoking debut novel examines themes of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the transformative power of language. It's an unforgettable journey set in one of Europe's last great wildernesses, where a small but global cast of characters grapple with the tumultuous forces of love, destruction, and creation.

The Great Divide

An epic novel of the construction of the Panama Canal, casting light on the unsung people who lived, loved, and labored there, by Cristina Henrquez, acclaimed author of The Book of Unknown Americans

It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.

Ada Bunting is a bold sixteen-year-old from Barbados who arrives in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work. Alone and with no resources, she is determined to find a job that will earn enough money for her ailing sister's surgery. When she sees a young manOmarwho has collapsed after a grueling shift, she is the only one who rushes to his aid.

John Oswald has dedicated his life to scientific research and has journeyed to Panama in single-minded pursuit of one goal: eliminating malaria. But now, his wife, Marian, has fallen ill herself, and when he witnesses Ada's bravery and compassion, he hires her on the spot as a caregiver. This fateful decision sets in motion a sweeping tale of ambition, loyalty, and sacrifice.

Searing and empathetic, The Great Divide explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers those rarely acknowledged by history even as they carved out its course.

The Hunter

2024

by Tana French

It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.

Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, or so he thought. He’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat.

Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

A nuanced, atmospheric tale that explores what we’ll do for our loved ones, what we’ll do for revenge, and what we sacrifice when the two collide.

The New Couple in 5B

2024

by Lisa Unger

Rosie and Chad Lowan are barely making ends meet in New York City when they receive life-changing news: Chad's late uncle has left them his luxury apartment at the historic Windermere in glamorous Murray Hill. With its prewar elegance and impeccably uniformed doorman, the building is the epitome of old New York charm. One would almost never suspect the dark history lurking behind its perfectly maintained facade.

At first, the building and its eclectic tenants couldn't feel more welcoming. But as the Lowans settle into their new home, Rosie starts to suspect that there's more to the Windermere than meets the eye. Why is the doorman ever-present? Why are there cameras everywhere? And why have so many gruesome crimes occurred there throughout the years? When one of the neighbors turns up dead, Rosie must get to the truth about the Windermere before she, too, falls under its dangerous spell.

The Prisoner's Throne

2024

by Holly Black

An imprisoned prince. A vengeful queen. And a battle that will determine the future of Elfhame.

Prince Oak is paying for his betrayal. Imprisoned in the icy north and bound to the will of a monstrous new queen, he must rely on charm and calculation to survive. With High King Cardan and High Queen Jude ready to use any means necessary to retrieve their stolen heir, should Oak attempt to regain the trust of the girl he's always loved, or remain loyal to Elfhame and hand over the means to end her reign—even if it means ending Wren, too...

With war looming and treachery lurking in every corner, neither Oak's guile nor his wit will be enough to keep everyone he loves alive. He will have some terrible choices to make.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black comes the stunning blood-soaked conclusion to the The Stolen Heir Duology.

Wandering Stars

2024

by Tommy Orange

Wandering Stars is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tommy Orange's breakout bestseller There There. This novel traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through to the shattering aftermath of Orvil Red Feather's shooting in There There.

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star's son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father's jailer. Under Pratt's harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

Oakland, 2018. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield is barely holding her family together after the shooting that nearly took the life of her nephew Orvil. From the moment he awakens in his hospital bed, Orvil begins compulsively googling school shootings on YouTube. He also becomes emotionally reliant on the prescription medications meant to ease his physical trauma. His younger brother, Lony, suffering from PTSD, is struggling to make sense of the carnage he witnessed at the shooting by secretly cutting himself and enacting blood rituals that he hopes will connect him to his Cheyenne heritage. Opal is equally adrift, experimenting with Ceremony and peyote, searching for a way to heal her wounded family.

Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous, a book piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage—a masterful follow-up to his already-classic first novel, and a devastating indictment of America's war on its own people.

Brooklyn

2024

by Tracy Brown

Tracy Brown crafts a tale about a master manipulator and serial survivor, who will scorch earth to get what she wants. The question isn't who murdered her; the question is who wouldn't?

Brooklyn Melody James has finally gotten the punishment she deserves after leaving a web of lies, heartache, and betrayal behind her. As her life slips away, Brooklyn remembers the events that shaped her into the cold, calculating creature she became.

Brooklyn learned the art of hustling from her parents who used the church to get money. Idolizing her father and despising her mother, Brooklyn's determined to be the type of woman who makes her own rules. When her back's up against the wall, she sacrifices her family, takes the burnt offering that remains, and runs away. In NYC, young Brooklyn charms her way into the inner circle of hustlers and stick-up kids, learning tricks along the way. She catches the eye of a major player in the drug game, Hassan, and they have a breathless love affair. Brooklyn becomes integrated into his operation, earning the trust of Hassan and his associates. But when she gets the keys to the kingdom, driven by unfettered ambition and a ruthless desire to survive, Brooklyn snatches the pot of gold, leaving bitter retribution promises behind her.

From DC to Maryland, Brooklyn burns bridges and breaks hearts. What she doesn't realize is that someone is prepared to end her reign of terror. As she faces her killer and her fate, Brooklyn's stunned that justice comes from the least likely place.

Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers: A Life is the first major biography in more than twenty years of one of America's greatest writers. Drawing from newly available letters and journals, this biography paints a full picture of a brilliant and complex artist, Carson McCullers, whose literary stature has endured over time.

Carson McCullers, born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia, aspired to become a concert pianist, but her talent for writing, evident since she was sixteen, led her to a different path. The influence of music can be seen throughout her work, and her personal life was as rich and complex as her novels. At the age of twenty, she married Reeves McCullers, and their tumultuous twelve-year marriage ended tragically with his suicide in 1953.

McCullers' debut novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, published when she was just twenty-three, catapulted her to literary stardom. Despite her public success, her private life remained enigmatic. Now, with access to a wealth of materials that have surfaced in recent years, Mary V. Dearborn gives us an unprecedented look into the life of a writer who was decades ahead of her time, capturing the heart and longing of the outcast.

Dead Weight: Essays On Hunger And Harm

2024

by Emmeline Clein

In Dead Weight, Emmeline Clein tells the story of her own disordered eating alongside, and through, other women from history, pop culture and the girls she's known and loved. Tracing the medical and cultural history of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, and orthorexia, Clein investigates the economic conditions underpinning our eating disorder epidemic, and illuminates the ways racism and today's feminism have been complicit in propping up the thin ideal.

While examining goop, Simone Weil, pro-anorexia blogs, and the flawed logic of our current methods of treatment, Clein also grapples with the myriad ways disordered eating has affected her own friendships and romantic relationships.

Dead Weight makes the case that we are faced with a culture of suppression and denial that is insidious, pervasive, and dangerous, one that internalizes and promotes the fetish of self-shrinking as a core tenet of the American cult of femininity. This is replicated in our algorithms, our television shows, our novels, and our relationships with one another. A sharp, perceptive, and revelatory polemic for readers fascinated by the external forces shaping our lives, Dead Weight is electrifying, unapologetically bold, and fiercely compassionate.

Grief Is for People

2024

by Sloane Crosley

Disarmingly witty and poignant, Sloane Crosley's first memoir explores multiple kinds of loss following the death of her closest friend. Grief Is for People is an unusual kind of grief book—the story of several compounding, unexpected losses, and the struggle to hold on to the past without being consumed by it, but told with the verve and voice we have come to expect from Sloane Crosley.

Focusing her trademark humor and wit on the deep pain and confusion of losing her closest friend and mentor to suicide, Crosley looks for answers in friends, philosophy, and art, searching for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief to understand her new reality. Sloane and Russell worked together and played together, navigating the corridors of office life, the literary world, weekends in the country, and the dramatic ups and downs of making it in New York City. In a city where friends become family, they were best friends. When Russell dies, Sloane is already reeling from a break-in and the theft of her jewelry, her most prized and meaningful possessions. While Russell's death puts that loss in perspective, it also propels her on a quest to right the losses she is feeling, as the city itself faces the staggering toll brought on by the pandemic.

Crosley's search for answers is frank, funny, and gilded with a deeply resounding empathy. Upending the "grief memoir" in utterly unexpected and entirely welcome ways, Grief Is for People rises precisely to console and challenge our notions of loss during these grief-stricken times.

In Ascension

In Ascension is an astonishing novel about a young microbiologist, Leigh, who embarks on an investigation of an unfathomable deep vent in the ocean floor. This journey leads her to encompass the full trajectory of the cosmos and the passage of a single human life.

Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, where she was drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology and travels the globe to study ancient organisms. Upon the discovery of a trench in the Atlantic Ocean, she joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the Earth's first life forms. However, what she finds instead calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.

Her discovery takes her to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. As she is drawn deeper into the agency's work, Leigh learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Faced with the dilemma of leaving behind her declining mother and younger sister, Leigh must make an impossible choice: to remain with her family or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.

In Ascension explores the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve for the stars. It is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence and looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart. It shows how, no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope, we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.

Moon Of The Turning Leaves

2024

by Waubgeshig Rice

In this gripping sequel to the award-winning post-apocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, a brave scouting party of hunters and harvesters led by Evan Whitesky must venture into unknown and dangerous territory to find a new home for their close-knit but slowly starving Northern Ontario Indigenous community more than a decade after a world-ending blackout.

For the past twelve years, a community of Anishinaabe people have made the Northern Ontario bush their home in the wake of the infrastructural power failure that brought about governmental and societal collapse. Hunters and harvesters, they have survived and thrived the way their ancestors once did, but their natural food resources are dwindling, and the time has come to find a new home.

Evan Whitesky volunteers to lead a dangerous mission south to explore the possibility of moving back to their ancestral home, the "land where the birch trees grow by the big water" in the Great Lakes region. Accompanied by five others, including his daughter Nangohns, a great archer and hunter, Evan begins a journey that will take him through the reserve where the Anishinaabe were once settled, the devastated city of Gibson, and a land now being reclaimed by nature.

But it isn't just the wilderness that poses a threat as they encounter other survivors. Those who, like the Anishinaabe, live in harmony with the land. And those who use violence to fulfill their needs.

No Judgement

2024

by Lauren Oyler

No Judgement: Essays is a forthcoming collection by Lauren Oyler, known for her sharp wit and insightful commentary. While the descriptive copy is not yet available from the Publisher, readers can expect a series of compelling essays that delve into the art of being critical.

Oyler's work often explores the intersection of culture, social media, and literature, offering a unique perspective on contemporary issues. This collection promises to be an essential read for anyone interested in the power of critique in our modern world.

Normal Women

The #1 New York Times bestselling historical novelist delivers her magnum opus—a landmark work of feminist nonfiction that radically redefines our understanding of the extraordinary roles ordinary women played throughout British history.

Most histories have been written by men, about men, relegating women—with the exception of a few queens—to the shadows of time. Now, bestselling author Philippa Gregory reveals the importance of ordinary women, providing a more balanced and truer chronicle that expands and adds rich detail to the story of Great Britain.

In Normal Women, Gregory draws on an enormous archive of primary and secondary sources to rewrite British history, focusing on the agency, persistence, and effectiveness of everyday women throughout periods of social and cultural transition. She sweeps from the making of the Bayeux tapestry in the eleventh century to the Black Death in 1348—after which women were briefly paid the same wages as men, the last time for seven centuries—to the 1992 ordination of women by the Church of England, when the church accepted, for the first time, that a woman could perform the miracle of the mass.

Through the stories of the female soldiers of the civil war, the guild widows who founded the prosperity of the City of London, highwaywomen and pirates, miners, ship owners, international traders, the women who ran London theaters and commissioned plays from Shakespeare, and the "female husbands" who married each other legally in church and lived as husband and wife, Gregory redefines "normal" female behavior to include heroism, rebellion, crime, treason, money-making, and sainthood. As she makes clear, normal women make history.

Normal Women will include black-and-white illustrations throughout and a full-color insert.

The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, The C.I.A., And The Origins Of America's Invasion Of Iraq

2024

by Steve Coll

From bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Coll comes The Achilles Trap, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein. This deeply researched and news-breaking investigation explores how human error, cultural miscommunication, and hubris led to one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our time.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, the justification was clear: Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, allegedly possessed weapons of mass destruction posing a grave danger to the world. The absence of such weapons led to scrutiny of the political and intelligence failures that precipitated the invasion, occupation, and ensuing civil war. A key unresolved question: Why did Saddam give the false impression that he possessed WMDs?

The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the complex web of individuals, power plays, and geopolitics that culminated in America's war with Iraq. Coll traces Saddam's rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq's secret nuclear weapons program, delving into the dictator's inner circle. He vividly portrays diplomats, scientists, family members, and generals—all beholden to a leader responsible for widespread suffering.

CIA and presidential administrations repeatedly failed to understand Saddam's paranoia, resentments, and inconsistencies. Utilizing unpublished sources, interviews with participants, and Saddam's own transcripts and audio files, Coll provides an unparalleled portrait of a man who believed the world was against him.

The Achilles Trap is a work of great historical significance, offering a definitive account of the corruptions of power, diplomatic deceptions, and personal vanities that led to avoidable statecraft errors, resulting in immeasurable human suffering and a permanently altered political landscape.

The American Daughters

The American Daughters is a gripping historical novel about Ady, a spirited girl who, alongside her fierce mother Sanite, dreams of a loving future while enslaved in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Their days are filled with memories of their family's rebellious past. When separated from her mother, Ady finds herself hopeless until an encounter at the Mockingbird Inn introduces her to Lenore, a free Black woman.

Lenore, recognizing Ady's potential, invites her to join the Daughters, a secret society of spies. The courage passed down by Sanite, combined with the strength of these women, empowers Ady to prioritize her own well-being. This marks the start of her quest for liberation and the ability to envision a new future.

The American Daughters is a novel of hope and triumph, celebrating the power of community solidarity in the fight for freedom.

End of Story

2024

by A. J. Finn

“I’ll be dead in three months. Come tell my story.”

So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life “detective fever.”

“You and I might even solve an old mystery or two.”

Twenty years earlier—on New Year’s Eve 1999—Sebastian’s first wife and teenaged son vanished from different locations, never to be seen again. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past?

“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”

As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian’s life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth . . . while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family’s koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn’t gone—it’s just waiting.

Hard Girls

Hard Girls is a razor-sharp crime novel that delves into the complexities of family and the depths of darkness that can haunt a seemingly normal life. Jane Pool is content with her safe, suburban existence, complete with a house, a family, and a mundane job at a local college. However, Jane's past—marked by an enigmatic mother, family secrets, and a life-changing act of violence—continues to haunt her.

When Jane's estranged twin sister, Lila, reaches out with claims of knowing their mother's whereabouts and the reasons behind her long-ago departure, Jane is drawn into a quest for the truth. Together, the sisters embark on a perilous journey that takes them to far-flung corners of the world, challenging their mother's deceptions and confronting the pervasive darkness that has always loomed over their family.

As the stakes rise, Jane risks the life she has carefully built for a past that she has never been able to fully escape. Hard Girls combines elements of a chase novel, an espionage thriller, and domestic suspense to create a compelling and unique narrative experience that is at once propulsive, mysterious, intelligent, and filled with unexpected twists.

Ours

Ours: A Novel by Phillip B. Williams is a beautifully-written and ambitious epic about the complexity of freedom, set in mid-nineteenth-century America. This ingenious, sweeping novel introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjuror who, in the 1830s, annihilates plantations all over Arkansas to rescue the people enslaved there.

She brings those she has freed to a haven of her own creation: a town just north of St. Louis, magically concealed from outsiders, named Ours. It is in this miraculous place that Saint’s grand experiment—a truly secluded community where her people may flourish—takes root. But although Saint does her best to protect the inhabitants of Ours, over time, her conjuring and memories begin to betray her, leaving the town vulnerable to intrusions by newcomers with powers of their own.

As the cracks in Saint’s creation are exposed, some begin to wonder whether the community’s safety might be yet another form of bondage. Set over the course of four decades and steeped in a rich tradition of American literature informed by Black surrealism, mythology, and spirituality, Ours is a stunning exploration of the possibilities and limitations of love and freedom by a writer of capacious vision and talent.

Splinters: Another Kind Of Love Story

2024

by Leslie Jamison

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes the riveting story of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage—an exploration of motherhood, art, and new love.

Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, the complex. She has been compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, acclaimed for her powerful thinking, deep feeling, and electric prose. But while Jamison has never shied away from challenging material—scouring her own psyche and digging into our most unanswerable questions across four books—Splinters enters a new realm.

In her first memoir, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of the most intimate relationships of her life: her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope, and the shaping legacy of her own parents' complicated bond. In examining what it means for a woman to be many things at once—a mother, an artist, a teacher, a lover—Jamison places the magical and the mundane side by side in surprising ways: pumping breastmilk in a shared university office, driving the open highway in the throes of new love, growing a tender second skin of consciousness as she watches her daughter come alive to the world.

The result is a work of nonfiction like no other, an almost impossibly deep reckoning with the muchness of life and art, and a book that grieves the departure of one love even as it celebrates the arrival of another.

How do we move forward into joy when we are haunted by loss? How do we claim hope alongside the harm we've caused? A memoir for which the very term tour de force seems to have been coined, Splinters plumbs these and other pressing questions with writing that is revelatory to the last page. Jamison has delivered a book with the linguistic daring and emotional acuity that made The Empathy Exams and The Recovering instant classics, even as she reaches new depths of understanding, piercing the reader to the core. A master of nonfiction, she evinces once again her ability to "stitch together the intellectual and the emotional with the finesse of a crackerjack surgeon" (NPR).

Supercommunicators

2024

by Charles Duhigg

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit, a fascinating exploration of what makes conversations work, and how we can all learn to be Supercommunicators at work and in life.

Come inside a jury room as one juror leads a starkly divided room to consensus. Join a young CIA officer as he recruits a reluctant foreign agent. And sit with an accomplished surgeon as he tries, and fails, to convince yet another cancer patient to opt for the less risky course of treatment. In Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg blends deep research and his trademark storytelling skills to show how we can all learn to identify and leverage the hidden layers that lurk beneath every conversation.

Communication is a superpower and the best communicators understand that whenever we speak, we're actually participating in one of three conversations: practical (What's this really about?), emotional (How do we feel?), and social (Who are we?). If you don't know what kind of conversation you're having, you're unlikely to connect.

Supercommunicators know the importance of recognizing—and then matching—each kind of conversation, and how to hear the complex emotions, subtle negotiations, and deeply held beliefs that color so much of what we say and how we listen. Our experiences, our values, our emotional lives—and how we see ourselves, and others—shape every discussion, from who will pick up the kids to how we want to be treated at work. In this book, you will learn why some people are able to make themselves heard, and to hear others, so clearly.

With his storytelling that takes us from the writers' room of The Big Bang Theory to the couches of leading marriage counselors, Duhigg shows readers how to recognize these three conversations—and teaches us the tips and skills we need to navigate them more successfully.

In the end, he delivers a simple but powerful lesson: With the right tools, we can connect with anyone.

The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays

2024

by Joan Acocella

Joan Acocella, one of our finest cultural critics, has the rare ability to examine literature and unearth the lives contained within it—its authors, its subjects, and the communities from which it sprung. In her hands, arts criticism becomes a celebration and an investigation, and her essays pulse with unadulterated enthusiasm.

As Kathryn Harrison wrote in The New York Times, "Hers is a vision that allows art its mystery but not its pretensions, to which she is acutely sensitive. What better instincts could a critic have?" The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays gathers twenty-four essays from the past decade and a half of Acocella's career, as well as an introduction that frames her simple preoccupations, "life and art."

In agile, inspired prose, the New Yorker staff writer moves from J. R. R. Tolkien's translation of Beowulf to the life of Richard Pryor, from surveying profanity to untangling in the book of Job. Her appetite (and reading list) knows no bounds. This collection is a joy and a revelation, a library in itself, and Acocella our dream companion among its shelves.

The Great Wave

An urgent examination of how disruptive politics, technology, and art are capsizing old assumptions in a great wave of change breaking over today’s world, creating both opportunity and peril—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic and author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Truth.

The twenty-first century is experiencing a watershed moment defined by chaos and uncertainty, as one emergency cascades into another, underscoring the larger dynamics of change that are fueling instability across the world.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, people have increasingly lost trust in institutions and elites, while seizing upon new digital tools to sidestep traditional gatekeepers. As a result, powerful new voices—once regarded as radical, unorthodox, or marginal—are disrupting the status quo in politics, business, and culture. Meanwhile, social and economic inequalities are stoking populist rage across the world, toxic partisanship is undermining democratic ideals, and the internet and AI have become high-speed vectors for the spread of misinformation.

Writing with a critic’s understanding of cultural trends and a journalist’s eye for historical detail, Michiko Kakutani looks at the consequences of these new asymmetries of power. She maps the migration of ideas from the margins to the mainstream and explores the growing influence of outsiders—those who have sown chaos and fear (like Donald Trump), and those who have provided inspirational leadership (like Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky).

Kakutani argues that today’s crises are not only signs of an interconnected globe’s profound vulnerabilities, but also stress tests pointing to the essential changes needed to survive this tumultuous era and build a more sustainable future.

This American Ex-Wife

2024

by Lyz Lenz

This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life is a deeply validating manifesto on the gender politics of marriage and divorce in America today, presenting an argument that the former needs a reboot. Journalist and proud divorcée Lyz Lenz delivers an exuberant and unapologetic account, flipping the script on the media's portrayal of divorced women.

Studies indicate that nearly 70 percent of divorces are initiated by women—women who seek liberation from relationships premised on their fundamental inequality. Through a combination of reportage, sociological research, literature, and popular culture, this book weaves personal stories of union and separation to create a kaleidoscopic portrait of American marriage.

Lenz pushes for a collective reevaluation of the institution, challenging the notion that divorce is a personal failure when, in fact, it may be a practical and powerful solution for women to reclaim the power they deserve. This raucous manifesto for acceptance, solidarity, and collective female refusal offers readers a riveting ride, all the while pointing toward a future of greater freedom.

A Map Of Future Ruins

2024

by Lauren Markham

A provocative, virtuosic inquiry that reveals how the valorization of migrations past is intimately linked to the exclusion and demonization of migrants today.

When and how did migration become a crime? Why have “Greek ideals” remained foundational to the West’s idea of itself? How have our personal migration myths—and nostalgia for times past—shaped today’s troubling realities of nationalism and fortified borders?

In 2021, Lauren Markham went to Greece to cover the aftermath of a fire that had burned down the largest refugee camp in Europe. Almost no one had wanted the camp—not humanitarian activists, not the country’s growing neo-fascist movement, not even the government, which resented the disproportionate responsibility it bore for an overwhelming international human rights problem. But almost immediately, in spite of scant evidence, six young Afghan refugees were arrested for the crime.

As she immersed herself in the story, Markham saw that it was part of a larger tapestry, rooted not only in centuries of global history but also in the myths we tell ourselves about who we are.

A Map of Future Ruins helps us see that the stories we tell about migration don’t just explain what happened. They are oracles: they predict the future.

I Heard Her Call My Name

2024

by Lucy Sante

An iconic writer's lapidary memoir of a life spent pursuing a dream of artistic truth while evading the truth of her own gender identity, until, finally, she turned to face who she really was. For a long time, Lucy Sante felt unsure of her place. Born in Belgium, the only child of conservative working-class Catholic parents who transplanted their little family to the United States without ever entirely settling here, she only really felt at home when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s. In that feral moment, she found her people among a band of fellow bohemians picking their way through the wreckage. Some of her friends would die young, to drugs and AIDS, and some would become jarringly famous.

Sante flirted with both fates, on her way to building an estimable career as a writer. But in the deepest sense, she still felt like her life a performance. She was presenting a façade, even to herself. Sante's memoir braids together two threads of personal narrative: the arc of her life, and her recent step-by-step transition to a place of inner and outer alignment. It is a story with many twists and turns: however necessary and long overdue her embrace of womanhood was, it was nonetheless a fearful business, filled with pitfalls and pratfalls.

Sante brings a loving irony to her account of her unsteady first steps; there was much she found she still needed to learn about being a woman after some sixty years cloaked in a man's identity, in a man's world. She had found herself, widening the aperture of her heart in the bargain. A marvel of grace and empathy, I Heard Her Call My Name parses with great sensitivity many issues that touch our lives deeply, of gender identity and far beyond.

Smoke And Ashes: A Writer's Journey Through Opium's Hidden Histories

2024

by Amitav Ghosh

Smoke And Ashes: A Writer's Journey Through Opium's Hidden Histories is a compelling blend of travelogue, memoir, and historical essay by renowned author Amitav Ghosh. In this captivating narrative, Ghosh unravels the complex web of the opium trade's impact on global history, including its entanglement with his own family's past.

Ghosh's journey begins with the startling realization during his research for the Ibis trilogy that the lives of nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers were profoundly influenced by the currents of the Indian Ocean and the lucrative cargo they bore: opium. This revelation leads him to explore the opium trade's transformative effect on Britain, India, and China, and the role it played in the financial survival of the British Empire.

The narrative delves into the origins of some of the world's largest corporations, the fortunes of America's elite families and prestigious academic institutions, and the foundations of contemporary globalism. Ghosh's exploration is rich with insights into horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism.

Through Smoke And Ashes, Amitav Ghosh reveals the significant yet often overlooked role that the opium poppy has played in shaping our modern world—a world that now stands at the precipice of significant change.

Ten Bridges I've Burnt

2024

by Brontez Purnell

Ten Bridges I've Burnt: A Memoir in Verse brings forth a wrenching, sexy, and exhilaratingly energetic memoir from the beloved author of 100 Boyfriends, Brontez Purnell. With his unique literary style, Purnell turns his keen gaze inward, crafting a narrative that is as much a collection of genre-defying verse as it is a candid self-exploration.

In this series of thirty-eight autobiographical pieces, Purnell is at his unapologetic best. He vividly recounts events ranging from a ferocious altercation at a poetry conference to the challenges of navigating TV writers' rooms while dealing with personal trauma. Purnell grapples with the legacies inherited from his family, both curses and gifts, and lays bare a whirlwind of experiences that include misadventures and intimate encounters.

Throughout the memoir, Purnell's musings extend to a diverse array of subjects, from love and loneliness to the intricacies of capitalism and Blackness, as well as reflections on physical exercise and the ethics of artistic creation. His writing, marked by a balance of humor and insight that garnered acclaim for 100 Boyfriends, thrives on its unpredictability and fluidity. Ten Bridges I've Burnt stands as yet another testament to Purnell's boundary-pushing creativity, offering a book as original and thrilling as the author himself.

The Book Of Love

2024

by Kelly Link

The Book of Love showcases Kelly Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attuned to all varieties of love—from friendship to romance to abiding family ties—with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary derring-do. Readers will find joy (and a little terror) and an affirmation that love goes on, even when we cannot.

Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.

With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks; while they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they've been. In the end, there will be winners and there will be losers.

But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo grapple with the pieces of the lives they left behind, and Laura's sister, Susannah, attempts to reconcile what she remembers with what she fears, these mysterious others begin to arrive, engulfing their community in danger and chaos, and it becomes imperative that the teens solve the mystery of their deaths to avert a looming disaster.

The Fox Wife

2024

by Yangsze Choo

Some people think foxes are similar to ghosts because we go around collecting qi, or life force, but nothing could be further than the truth. We are living creatures, just like you, only usually better looking...

Manchuria, 1908. A young woman is found frozen in the snow. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes involved, which are believed to lure people by transforming themselves into beautiful women and men. Bao, a detective with a reputation for sniffing out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman's identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they've remained tantalizingly out of reach. Until, perhaps, now.

Meanwhile, a family that owns a famous Chinese medicine shop can cure ailments, but not the curse that afflicts them—their eldest sons die before their twenty-fourth birthdays. Now the only grandson of the family is twenty-three. When a mysterious woman enters their household, their luck seems to change. Or does it? Is their new servant a simple young woman from the north or a fox spirit bent on her own revenge?

Bestselling author Yangsze Choo brilliantly explores a world of mortals and spirits, humans and beasts, and their dazzling intersection. The Fox Wife is a stunning novel about a winter full of mysterious deaths, a mother seeking revenge, and old folktales that may very well be true.

The Hammer

2024

by Hamilton Nolan

A timely, in-depth, and vital exploration of the American labor movement and its critical place in our society and politics by acclaimed labor reporter Hamilton Nolan. Nolan is an expert who has covered labor and politics for more than a decade, and has helped to unionize his own industry.

The thesis is simple: Inequality is America's biggest problem. Unions are the single strongest tool that working people have to fix this problem. But the labor movement of today has failed to enable enough individuals to join unions. Thus, organized labor's powerful potential is being wielded incompetently. And what is happening inside of organized labor will—far more than most people realize—determine the economic and social course of American life for years to come.

In deeply reported chapters that span the country, Nolan shows readers how organized labor can and does wield power effectively—in spots—but also why it has long been unable to build itself into the powerful institution that the working class needs. These narratives both inspire by example and motivate by counter-example. Whether it's a union that has succeeded in a single city, and is trying to scale that effectiveness nationally, or the ins and outs of a historically large and transformative union campaign, or the human face of a strike, or a profile of the most anti-union state in America, Nolan highlights the actual mechanisms that connect labor to politics to real change. Throughout, Nolan follows Sara Nelson, the powerful and charismatic head of the flight attendants union, as she struggles with how (and whether) to assert herself as a national leader of the labor movement, to try to fix what is broken about it. The Hammer draws the line from forgotten workplaces to Washington's halls of power, and shows how labor can utterly transform American politics—if it can first transform itself.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts

2024

by Katherine Arden

During the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise, in this hauntingly beautiful historical novel with a speculative twist from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale.

January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.

As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.

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