The Limits is a stunning new novel by the best-selling and prize-winning author Nell Freudenberger. Set across the vibrant landscapes of French Polynesia and the bustling intensity of New York City, this novel explores the lives of three characters who experience profound transformations over the span of a single year.

From the tiny volcanic island of Mo'orea, off the coast of Tahiti, a French biologist dedicated to preserving the endangered coral reefs sends her teenage daughter Pia to live with her ex-husband in New York. Upon arrival at her father Stephen's luxurious Manhattan apartment, Pia, who is fluent in French and intellectually advanced, meets his new, younger wife, Kate. Pia's life has been a constant shuttle between her parents' contrasting worlds: her father's demanding role as a surgeon in a New York hospital and her mother's urgent efforts against ecological destruction.

As COVID-19 imposes near total isolation, Pia is set on a path of rebellion, while Kate, a New York City schoolteacher, struggles to forge a connection with a teenager whose potential for havoc rivals her privilege. Meanwhile, Kate's sixteen-year-old student Athyna grapples with the weight of caring for her toddler nephew, Marcus, as she tries to complete her senior year online.

As Athyna's fears of the outside world grow, a crisis at home drives her to the brink of desperation. The lives of Pia and Athyna converge, leading them down parallel yet fundamentally different paths of tragedy.

The Limits is an emotionally charged narrative that delves into themes of nation, race, class, and family. It is a heart-wrenching and humane portrait of contemporary life, reflecting the stark inequalities of the 21st century and the enduring impact of colonial history.

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.