Fredrik Backman

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

A Novel

"Winning a junior ice hockey championship means everything to the residents of Beartown, a struggling community slowly being eaten alive by unemployment and an steadily encroaching wilderness. Victory could attract government funding and an influx of talented athletes who would choose Beartown over the big nearby cities. Victory would mean everything to outcast Amat, to golden boy and star player Kevin, and to dedicated general manager Peter, whose own professional hockey career ended too early. When scandal erupts following a drunken celebration after a key win, no resident is unaffected. With so much riding on the success of the team, the line between loyalty and betrayal becomes difficult to discern.--

Beartown

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Nick Fuller Googins

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

This richly imaginative, immersive, and “electrifyingly relevant” (William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author) debut novel follows a shocking disappearance amid the climate crisis of our near future—perfect for fans of Station Eleven and The Last Thing He Told Me. Emi Vargas, whose parents helped save the world, is tired of being told how lucky she is to have been born after the climate crisis. But following the public assassination of a dozen climate criminals, Emi’s mother, Kristina, disappears as a possible suspect, and Emi’s illusions of utopia are shattered. A determined Emi and her father, Larch, journey from their home in Nuuk, Greenland to New York City, now a lightly populated storm-surge outpost built from the ruins of the former metropolis. But they aren’t the only ones looking for Kristina. Thirty years earlier, Larch first came to New York with a team of volunteers to save the city from rising waters and torrential storms. Kristina was on the frontlines of a different battle, fighting massive wildfires that ravaged the western United States. They became part of a movement that changed the world­—The Great Transition—forging a new society and finding each other in process. Alternating between Emi’s desperate search for her mother and a meticulously rendered, heart-stopping account of her parents’ experiences during The Great Transition, this novel beautifully shows how our actions today determine our fate tomorrow. A triumphant debut, The Great Transition is “a book for the present and the future—read this and you will be changed” (Michelle Min Sterling, New York Times bestselling author).

The Great Transition

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Alejandra Campoverdi

A Memoir

*A NATIONAL BESTSELLER* Finalist for the Golden Poppy's Martin Cruz Smith Award Longlisted for the Outstanding Works of Literature (OWL) Award for First Year Experience An unflinching memoir and "invaluable resource" (Kirkus) about navigating social mobility as a first gen Latina--offering both a riveting personal story and an examination of the unacknowledged emotional tolls of being a trailblazer. Alejandra Campoverdi has been a child on welfare, a White House aide to President Obama, a Harvard graduate, a gang member's girlfriend, and a candidate for U.S. Congress. She's ridden on Air Force One and in G-rides. She's been featured in Maxim magazine and had a double mastectomy. Living a life of contradictory extremes often comes with the territory when you're a "First and Only." It also comes at a price. With candor and heart, Alejandra retraces her trajectory as a Mexican American woman raised by an immigrant single mother in Los Angeles. Foregoing the tidy bullet points of her resume and instead shining a light on the spaces between them, what emerges is a powerful testimony that shatters the one-dimensional glossy narrative we are often sold of what it takes to achieve the American Dream. In this timely and revealing reflection, Alejandra draws from her own experiences to name and frame the challenges First and Onlys often face, illuminating a road to truth, healing, and change in the process. Part memoir, part manifesto, FIRST GEN is a story of generational inheritance, aspiration, and the true meaning of belonging--a gripping journey to "reclaim the parts of ourselves we sacrificed in order to survive."

First Gen

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Elizabeth Gonzalez James

A dazzling magical realism western in the vein of Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez, The Bullet Swallower follows a Mexican bandido as he sets off for Texas to save his family, only to encounter a mysterious figure who has come, finally, to collect a cosmic debt generation in the making. In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He’s good with his gun and is drawn to trouble but he’s also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden with gold and other treasures, he sets off for Houston to rob it—with his younger brother Hugo in tow. But when the heist goes awry and Hugo is killed by the Texas Rangers, Antonio finds himself launched into a quest for revenge that endangers not only his life and his family, but his eternal soul. In 1964, Jaime Sonoro is Mexico’s most renowned actor and singer. But his comfortable life is disrupted when he discovers a book that purports to tell the entire history of his family beginning with Cain and Abel. In its ancient pages, Jaime learns about the multitude of horrific crimes committed by his ancestors. And when the same mysterious figure from Antonio’s timeline shows up in Mexico City, Jaime realizes that he may be the one who has to pay for his ancestors’ crimes, unless he can discover the true story of his grandfather Antonio, the legendary bandido El Tragabalas, The Bullet Swallower. A family saga that’s epic in scope and magical in its blood, and based loosely on the author’s own great-grandfather, The Bullet Swallower tackles border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting and stunning prose that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors, and whether it is possible to be better than our forebears.

The Bullet Swallower

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Sheila Sundar

A young academic moves from India to the United States, where she navigates first love, a green card marriage, single motherhood, and more in this “delightful novel, written with immediacy, warmth, and wry humor” (Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning author of Waiting). Vega Gopalan is adrift. Still reeling from the death of her sister years earlier, she leaves South India to attend graduate school at Columbia University. In New York, Vega straddles many different worlds, eventually moving in and out of a series of relationships that take her through the striving world of academia, the intellectual isolation of the immigrant suburbs, and, ultimately, the loneliness of single motherhood. But it is the birth of Vega’s daughter that forces the novel’s central question: What does it mean to make a home? Written with dry humor and searing insight, Habitations is an intimate story of identity, immigration, expectation and desire, and of love lost and found. But it is also a universal story of womanhood, and the ways in which women are forced to navigate multiple loyalties: to family, to community, and to themselves. A profound meditation on the many meanings of home and on the ways love and kinship can be found, even in the most unfamiliar of places, Habitations introduces Sheila Sundar as an electrifying new voice in literary fiction.

Habitations

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Scarlett Thomas

From “one of the UK’s most interesting authors” (Kirkus Reviews), Patricia Highsmith meets White Lotus in this surprising and suspenseful modern gothic story following a couple running from both secretive pasts and very present dangers while honeymooning on a Greek island. Still reeling from the chaos of their wedding, Evelyn and Richard arrive on a tiny Greek island for their honeymoon. It’s the end of the season and a storm is imminent. Determined to make the best of it, they check into the sun-soaked doors of the Villa Rosa. Already feeling insecure after seeing the “beautiful people,” the seemingly endless number of young models and musicians lounging along the Mediterranean, Evelyn is wary of the hotel’s owner, Isabella, who seems to only have eyes for Richard. Isabella ostensibly disapproves of every request Evelyn makes, seemingly annoyed at the fact that they are there at all. Isabella is also preoccupied with her chance to enthrall the only other guests—an American producer named Marcus and his partner Debbie—with the story of “the sleepwalkers,” a couple who had stayed at the hotel recently and drowned. Everyone seems to want to talk about the sleepwalkers, save for Hamza, a young Turkish man Evelyn had seen with some “beautiful people,” as well as the “dapper little man”—the strange yet fashionable owner of the island’s lone antiques and gift shop she sees everywhere. But what at first seemed eccentric, decorative, or simply ridiculous, becomes a living nightmare. Evelyn and Richard are separated the night of the storm and forced to face dark truths, but it’s their confessions around the origins of their relationship and the years leading up to their marriage that might save them. Exhilarating, suspenseful, and also very funny, The Sleepwalkers asks urgent questions about relationships, sexuality, and the darkest elements of contemporary society—where our most terrible secrets are hidden in plain sight.

The Sleepwalkers

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Jeremy Egner

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

The Untold Story Behind Ted Lasso, the Show That Kicked Its Way into Our Hearts

The definitive book on the TV show Ted Lasso, written by New York Times journalist and editor Jeremy Egner, celebrating the show’s improbable rise and cultural impact while never losing sight of the heart, friendship, and passion that have made it an enduring favorite for the ages When Ted Lasso first aired in 2020, nobody—including those who had worked on it—knew how a show inspired by an ad, centered around soccer, filled mostly with unknown actors, and led by a wondrously mustached “nice guy” would be received. Now, eleven Emmys and one Peabody Award later, it’s safe to say that the show’s status as a pop culture phenomenon is secure. And, for the first time, New York Times television editor Jeremy Egner explores the creation, production, and potent legacy of Ted Lasso. Drawing on dozens of interviews from key cast, creators, and more, Believe takes readers from the very first, silly NBC Premier League commercial to the pitch to Apple executives, then into the show’s writer’s room, through the brilliant international casting, and on to the unforgettable set and locations of the show itself. Egner approaches his reporting as a journalist and as a cultural critic, but also with an affection and admiration fans will appreciate, carefully and humorously telling Ted Lasso’s story of teamwork, of hidden talent, of a group of friends looking around at the world’s increasingly nasty discourse and deciding that maybe simple decency still had the power to bring us together—a story about what happens when you dare to believe.

Believe

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Mitch Albom

#1 New York Times Bestseller

What would happen if we called on God for help and God actually appeared? In Mitch Albom's profound new novel of hope and faith, a group of shipwrecked passengers pull a strange man from the sea. He claims to be "the Lord." And he says he can only save them if they all believe in him.

Adrift in a raft after a deadly ship explosion, ten people struggle for survival at sea. Three days pass. Short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him in.

"Thank the Lord we found you," a passenger says.

"I am the Lord," the man whispers.

So begins Mitch Albom's most beguiling novel yet.

Albom has written of heaven in the celebrated number one bestsellers The Five People You Meet in Heaven and The First Phone Call from Heaven. Now, for the first time in his fiction, he ponders what we would do if, after crying out for divine help, God actually appeared before us?

In The Stranger in the Lifeboat, Albom keeps us guessing until the end: Is this strange man really who he claims to be? What actually happened to cause the explosion? Are the survivors in heaven, or are they in hell? The story is narrated by Benji, one of the passengers, who recounts the events in a notebook that is discovered--a year later--when the empty life raft washes up on the island of Montserrat. It falls to the island's chief inspector, Jarty LeFleur, a man battling his own demons, to solve the mystery of what really happened. 

A fast-paced, compelling novel that makes you ponder your deepest beliefs, The Stranger in the Lifeboat suggests that answers to our prayers may be found where we least expect them.

The Stranger in the Lifeboat

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Joan Burbick

Gun Culture and American Democracy

"Looking at America from the floor of a gun show, Gun Show Nation answers the question posed by Michael Moore's hit documentary film Bowling for Columbine: why are Americans so obsessed with guns? And what can be done about it? Gun Show Nation goes beyond the issues of handgun bans and child-safety locks to delve into what the author sees as the heart of the matter-that owning a gun has come to be seen as a fundamental right in our democracy."--BOOK JACKET.

Gun Show Nation

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Nancy Jooyoun Kim

The New York Times bestselling author of the “timely, important” (PopSugar) The Last Story of Mina Lee returns with a propulsive and suspenseful new novel about a family that unravels when a stranger—who may hold the key to their missing mother—is found dead in their backyard. 1999: The Kim family is struggling to move on with their lives after their mother, Sunny, vanished a year ago. Sixty-one-year-old John Kim feels more isolated from his grown children, Anastasia and Ronald, than ever before. But one evening, their fragile lives are further upended when John discovers the body of a dead stranger in the backyard. The tragedy seems random until it’s revealed that the dead man was carrying a letter to Sunny, sparking a desperate investigation into the stranger’s history and possible connections to Sunny—only to discover that someone has been watching them. 1977: Sunny is pregnant and has just moved to Los Angeles from Korea with her work-obsessed husband. America is not turning out the way she had dreamed it to be, and the loneliness and isolation is broken only by a fateful encounter at a bus stop. The unexpected connection spans the decades and echoes into the family’s lives in the present as they uncover devastating secrets that put not only everything they thought they knew about their mother at risk, but their very lives as well. Both a riveting page-turner and moving family story, What We Kept to Ourselves masterfully explores the consequences of secrets between parents and children, husbands and wives, the search for home when all seems lost, and what it means to dream in America.

What We Kept to Ourselves

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Ana Menéndez

From the critically acclaimed author of In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd comes a new novel about the search for freedom and the power of community that spans decades of residents in one Florida apartment The Helena is an art deco apartment building that has witnessed the changing face of South Miami Beach for seventy years, observing the lives housed within. Among those who have called apartment 2B home are a Cuban concert pianist who performs in a nursing home; the widow of an intelligence officer raising her young daughter alone; a man waiting on a green card marriage to run its course so that he can divorce his wife and marry his lover, all of whom live together; a Tajik building manager with a secret identity; and a troubled young refugee named Lenin. Each tenant imbues 2B with energy that will either heal or overwhelm its latest resident, Lana, a mysterious woman struggling with her own past. Examining exile, homesickness, and displacement, The Apartment asks what—in our violent and lonely century—do we owe one another? If alone we are powerless before sorrow and isolation, it is through community and the sharing of our stories that we may survive and persevere.

The Apartment

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Lotte Jeffs

"We're calling it... Lotte Jeffs' novel is the new One Day." --Sunday Times Style Magazine "The love story we've been waiting for." --ELLE UK An utterly charming and modern debut novel spanning ten years of extraordinary friendship, about soulmates, unconventional families, and the limitless, ever-changing forms love can take. When Mae and Ari meet outside a crowded gay bar during their final year of university, their connection is instant, sparking a lifetime friendship. Stubborn and no stranger to breaking hearts, Mae needs Ari's bright light to guide her out of her self-centered ways. Reeling from a scandal in New York, vibrant, charming Ari sees Mae as an anchor keeping him grounded. Though they are young, ambitious, and queer, both Mae and Ari secretly daydream about settling down somewhere with a garden, children, and dogs, building a life that feels like home. They make a pact: somehow, some day, they will have a child together. In the decades that follow, Ari and Mae realize that fulfilling their promise will not be as simple as they once hoped. Navigating toxic partners and hidden secrets, combatting the heavy weight of grief, and relishing the spoils of flashy media careers, the two struggle to reconcile their ever-diverging paths. Although nothing goes quite to plan, Ari and Mae--alongside their dearest friends and lovers--come to realize that the messy, devoted, tight-knit family they could build together might be better than anything they could have ever imagined. Page-turning, emotionally evocative, and bursting with wit and charm, This Love is a testament to the power of friendship and a love letter to family--however it's formed.

This Love

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Alex Espinoza

From the American Book Award­–winning author comes a multi-generational epic spanning 1960s Mexico City to contemporary Los Angeles, following a family of Luchadores as they contend with forbidden love and family secrets. Ernesto and Elena Vega arrive in Mexico City where Ernesto works on a construction site until he is discovered by a local lucha libre trainer. At a time when luchadores—Mexican wrestlers donning flamboyant masks and capes—were treated as daredevils or rockstars, Ernesto finds fame as El Rey Coyote, rapidly gaining name recognition across Mexico. Years later, in East Los Angeles Freddy Vega is struggling to save his father’s gym while Freddy’s own son Julian is searching for professional and romantic fulfillment as a Mexican American gay man refusing to be defined by stereotypes. The once larger-than-life Ernesto Vega is now dying, leading Freddy and Julian to find their own passions and discover what really happened back in Mexico. Told from alternating perspectives, Ernesto takes you from the ranches of Michoacán to the makeshift colonias and crowded sports arenas of Mexico City. Freddy describes life in the suburban streets of 1980s Los Angeles and the community their family built as Julian descends deep into the culture of hook-up apps, lucha burlesque shows, and the dark underbelly of West Hollywood, The Sons of El Rey is an intimate portrait of a family wading against time and legacy, yet always choosing the fight.

The Sons of el Rey

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Alexis Landau

A daring novel from the acclaimed author of Those Who Are Saved: female rage, grief, and creativity collide in the present and animate the past, when a woman reconnects with her essential self during a summer journey, and discovers an ancient female world that offers parallels to her own Kept busy by her obligations as a wife and mother, art history professor Ava Zaretsky has little time to devote to her research and writing. Now tagging along on her film-producer husband’s shoot in Bulgaria for the summer, where she’s mostly solo parenting her sweet son and rebellious budding tween daughter, she has a chance encounter with her fierce feminist mentor from college, which changes everything. Ava is swept up into a circle of women who reenact ancient Greco-Roman mystery rites of initiation, bringing her research to life and illuminating the story of a 5th-century-BC mother-daughter pair whose sense of female loyalty to each other and connection to the divine feminine guides Ava in her exploration of the eternal stages of womanhood. Reaching across time and deep into the female psyche, The Mother of All Things delivers a revelatory tale of a woman coming to terms with her evolving sense of responsibility to herself and her family, as she achieves a new appreciation of the gifts of female wisdom and self-belief.

The Mother of All Things

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Karin Lin-Greenberg

As a once-bustling mall prepares to shut its doors for the final time, the residents of an upstate New York town must reckon with a shocking act that forces them to reevaluate who they are in this "remarkable study of ordinary people's extraordinary inner lives" (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

The inhabitants of a small town have long found that their lives intersect at one focal point: the local shopping mall. But business is down, stores are closing, and as the institution breathes its last gasp, the people inside it dream of something different, something more. In its pages, You Are Here brings this diverse group of characters vividly to life--flawed, real, lovable strangers who are wonderful company and prove unforgettable even after the last store has closed.

The only hair stylist at Sunshine Clips secretly watches YouTube primers on how to draw and paint, just as her awkward young son covertly studies new illusions for his magic act. His friend and magician's assistant, a high school cashier in the food court, has attracted the unwanted attention of a strange boy at school. She tells no one except the mall's chain bookstore manager, a failed academic living in the tiny house he built in his mother-in-law's backyard. His family is watched over by the judgmental old woman next door, whose weekly trips to Sunshine Clips hide a complicated and emotional history and will spark the moment when everything changes for them all.

Exploring how the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are inextricably bound to the places we call home, You Are Here is a keenly perceptive and deeply humane portrait of a community in transition, ultimately illuminating the magical connections that can bloom from the ordinary wonder of our everyday lives.

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Sadeqa Johnson

"Fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising her daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed onto her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrived in Washington, DC with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC's elite wealthy Black families, and his parents don't just let anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William's family and grant her the life she's been searching for. But having a baby, and fitting in, is easier said than done. The lives of these two women collide in the most unexpected way as they both face life altering decisions"--Publisher marketing.

The House of Eve

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Dan Kois

"Vintage Contemporaries is about being young and becoming less young, exploring friendship (sometimes magical, sometimes messy), parenthood (ditto), and how to reconcile youthful ambition and ideals with real life. It's a warm and big-hearted coming of age story that made me wistful for my own twenties, set in a vividly rendered and long-vanished New York City."--Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind

Slate editor Dan Kois makes his fiction debut with this stunning coming-of-age novel set in New York City, about the joys of unexpected life-altering friendships, the power of finding ourselves in the moment, and the importance of forgiving ourselves when we inevitably mess everything up.

It's 1991. Em moved to New York City for excitement and possibility, but the big city isn't quite what she thought it would be. Working as a literary agent's assistant, she's down to her last nineteen dollars but has made two close friends: Emily, a firebrand theater director living in a Lower East Side squat, and Lucy, a middle-aged novelist and single mom. Em's life revolves around these two wildly different women and their vividly disparate yet equally assured views of art and the world. But who is Em, and what does she want to become?

It's 2004. Em is now Emily, a successful book editor, happily married and barely coping with the challenges of a new baby. And suddenly Lucy and Emily return to her life: Her old friend Lucy's posthumous book needs a publisher, and her ex-friend Emily wants to rekindle their relationship. As they did once before, these two women--one dead, one very alive--force Emily to reckon with her decisions, her failures, and what kind of creative life she wants to lead.

A sharp, reflective, and funny story of a young woman coming into herself and struggling to find her place, Vintage Contemporaries is a novel about art, parenthood, loyalty, and fighting for a cause--the times we do the right thing, and the times we fail--set in New York City on both sides of the millennium.

Vintage Contemporaries

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Kyle Chayka

How Algorithms Flattened Culture

From New Yorker staff writer and author of The Longing for Less Kyle Chayka comes a timely history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine the shape of culture itself. From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. The algorithm is present in the familiar neon signs and exposed brick of Internet cafes, be it in Nairobi or Portland, and the skeletal, modern furniture of Airbnbs in cities big and small. Over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed—informing the songs we listen to, the friends with whom we stay in touch—as we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to our insipid new normal. This ever-tightening web woven by algorithms is called “Filterworld.” Kyle Chayka shows us how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless consumption, becoming a source of pervasive anxiety in the process. Users of technology have been forced to contend with data-driven equations that try to anticipate their desires—and often get them wrong. What results is a state of docility that allows tech companies to curtail human experiences—human lives—for profit. But to have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, while convenient, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question. In Filterworld, Chayka traces this creeping, machine-guided curation as it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces. With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions arise: What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity—the qualities that make us human? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet? To the last question, Filterworld argues yes—but to escape Filterworld, and even transcend it, we must first understand it.

Filterworld

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Anna Gracia

Girls Trip meets Forgetting Sarah Marshall in this giddy and hilarious romance following a college student who plans a trip to Cancun to try and win back her ex, only to meet a sexy new flame. The summer before senior year of college has arrived, and Grace has been anticipating an important trip to Los Angeles with her boyfriend, Josh. But when he unexpectedly dumps her, she’s left with nothing but a broken heart and an empty schedule. Her best friends Tiff and Camille quickly come to her rescue by taking her on a post-break-up beach vacation in Cancun, hoping it will help her start to move on. Too bad neither of them knows that Josh will be there, too, along with his possibly-new girlfriend. Grace is determined to win Josh back at all costs. But when she keeps crossing paths with Daniel, a gorgeous soccer player from Hawaii, she starts to rethink her plan. Daniel is everything Josh isn’t—easygoing, unpretentious, unselfish in bed—and he gets what it’s like to be biracial, too. Grace can’t help but wonder if it’s possible for your entire life to change in just one wild week in this boisterous and witty celebration of friendship, forgiveness, and falling in love.

The Breakup Vacation

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Robyn Harding

The bestselling author of The Party returns with a deliciously twisted story of friendship, retribution, and betrayal about a homeless woman fleeing a dangerous past--and the wealthy society wife she saves from drowning, who pulls her into a dark web of secrets and lies. Lee Gulliver never thought she'd find herself living on the streets--no one ever does--but when her restaurant fails, and she falls deeper into debt, she leaves her old life behind with nothing but her clothes and her Toyota Corolla. In Seattle, she parks in a secluded spot by the beach to lay low and plan her next move--until early one morning, she sees a sobbing woman throw herself into the ocean. Lee hauls the woman back to the surface, but instead of appreciation, she is met with fury. The drowning woman, Hazel, tells her that she wanted to die, that she's trapped in a toxic, abusive marriage, that she's a prisoner in her own home. Lee has thwarted her one chance to escape her life. Out of options, Hazel retreats to her gilded cage, and Lee thinks she's seen the last of her, until her unexpected return the next morning. Bonded by disparate but difficult circumstances, the women soon strike up a close and unlikely friendship. And then one day, Hazel makes a shocking request: she wants Lee to help her disappear. It'll be easy, Hazel assures her, but Lee soon learns that nothing is as it seems, and that Hazel may not be the friend Lee thought she was.

The Drowning Woman

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Paul Mendez

"An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative following nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah's Witness upbringing"--

Rainbow Milk

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Eilish Quin

Discover the full story of the sorceress Medea, one of the most reviled and maligned women of Greek antiquity, in this “haunting, deeply moving” (Claire Legrand, New York Times bestselling author) debut in the tradition of Circe, Elektra, and Stone Blind. Among the women of Greek mythology, the witch Medea may be the most despised. Known for the brutal act of killing her own children to exact vengeance on her deceitful husband, Jason, the leader of the Argonauts, Medea has carved out a singularly infamous niche in our histories. But what if that isn’t the full story? The daughter of a sea nymph and the granddaughter of a Titan, Medea is a paradox. She is at once rendered compelling by virtue of the divinity that flows through her bloodline and made powerless by the fact of her being a woman. As a child, she intuitively submerges herself in witchcraft and sorcery but soon finds her skills may not be a match for the prophecies that hang over her entire family like a shroud. As Medea comes into her own as a woman and a witch, she also faces the arrival of the hero Jason, preordained by the gods to be not only her husband but also her lifeline to escape her isolated existence. Medea travels the treacherous seas with the Argonauts, battles demons she has never imagined, and falls in love with the man who may ultimately be her downfall in this fresh and propulsive “must-have” (Library Journal, starred review) read in which you will finally hear Medea’s side of the story through a fresh and feminist lens.

Medea

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Lisa Jewell

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER This unputdownable psychological thriller by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell follows a woman who finds herself the subject of her own popular true crime podcast. Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins. A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life. Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realize that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home. But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat. Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?

None of This Is True

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Damon Young

A Memoir in Essays

From the cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the most read writers on race and culture at work today, a provocative and humorous memoir-in-essays that explores the ever-shifting definitions of what it means to be Black (and male) in America For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in America is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions such as “How should I react here, as a professional black person?” and “Will this white person’s potato salad kill me?” are forever relevant. What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker chronicles Young’s efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him. It’s a condition that’s sometimes stretched to absurd limits, provoking the angst that made him question if he was any good at the “being straight” thing, as if his sexual orientation was something he could practice and get better at, like a crossover dribble move or knitting; creating the farce where, as a teen, he wished for a white person to call him a racial slur just so he could fight him and have a great story about it; and generating the surreality of watching gentrification transform his Pittsburgh neighborhood from predominantly Black to “Portlandia . . . but with Pierogies.” And, at its most devastating, it provides him reason to believe that his mother would be alive today if she were white. From one of our most respected cultural observers, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker is a hilarious and honest debut that is both a celebration of the idiosyncrasies and distinctions of Blackness and a critique of white supremacy and how we define masculinity.

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