Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life by Anna Funder is a story that delves into the marriage behind some of the most renowned literary works of the 20th century and is a thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in today's world.

Anna Funder was at a crossroads in her life in the summer of 2017, overwhelmed by family obligations and household responsibilities that were distancing her from her writing. In search of help, she turned to the works of George Orwell, whose humor and keen insights into the dynamics of power deeply resonated with her. Upon re-reading his works and biographies, Funder discovered the overlooked figure of Orwell's wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, a writer whose intellectual prowess profoundly influenced Orwell's work and whose pragmatism was vital to his survival.

Funder's journey through the Orwells' marriage, from the Spanish Civil War to the Second World War in London, is not just a historical recount but also a personal quest to understand the sacrifices and contributions of a writer's spouse. Wifedom is an intimate portrayal of one of the most significant literary partnerships of the twentieth century and resonates with the present as much as it sheds light on the past. This genre-bending biography is a tribute to the unacknowledged efforts of women everywhere.

Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma is a passionate, provocative, and blisteringly smart interrogation of how we experience art in the age of #MeToo. Author Claire Dederer poses the critical question: What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we still love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation?

Dederer explores the concept of monstrousness in men and women artists alike, prompting readers to examine their own responses and behavior. With a focus on the tumultuous relationship between art, the artist's biography, and the audience, this book delves deep into one of our most pressing cultural conversations. It is a work that is morally wise, deeply considered, and sharply written, urging both the fan and the reader to engage with these complex issues.

A dazzlingly inventive, deeply moving, intellectually bracing exploration of pain and beauty, private memory and public monument, art and complexity in contemporary Black life.

Christina Sharpe begins by writing about her mother and grandmother in Ordinary Notes. This singular achievement explores profound questions about loss, and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. A series of 248 brief and urgent notes gather meaning as we read them, skillfully weaving artifacts from the past—public ones alongside others that are poignantly personal—with present-day realities and possible futures, intricately constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence.

Themes and tones echo throughout the pages, sometimes about life, art, language, beauty, memory; sometimes about history, photography, and literature—but always attending, with exquisite care, to the ordinary-extraordinary dimensions of Black life.

At the heart of Ordinary Notes is the indelible presence of the author's mother, Ida Wright Sharpe. Sharpe writes, "I learned to see in my mother's house," and "My mother gifted me a love of beauty, a love of words." Using these gifts and other ways of seeing, she steadily summons a chorus of voices and experiences to become present on the page. She articulates and follows an aesthetic of "beauty as a method," collects entries from a community of thinkers towards a "Dictionary of Untranslatable Blackness," and rigorously examines sites of memory and memorial. And in the process, she forges a new literary form, as multivalent as the ways of Black being it traces.