Sarah Gerard

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Pennsylvania

My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable

Acclaimed author Sarah Gerard turns her keen observational eye and penetrating prose to the 2016 murder of her friend Carolyn Bush, examining the multi-faceted reasons for her death―personal and societal, avoidable and inevitable―as "nuanced and subtly intimate" (NPR) as her lauded essay collection Sunshine State. On the night of September 28, 2016, twenty-five-year-old Carolyn Bush was brutally stabbed to death in her New York City apartment by her roommate Render Stetson-Shanahan, leaving friends and family of both reeling. In life, Carolyn was a gregarious, smart-mouthed aspiring poet, who had seemingly gotten along well with Render, a reserved art handler. Where had it gone so terribly wrong? This is the question that has plagued acclaimed author Sarah Gerard and driven her obsessive pursuit to understand this horrific tragedy. In Sarah's exploration of Carolyn's life and death, she spent thousands of hours interviewing Carolyn and Render's friends and family, poring over court documents and news media, reading obscure writings and internet posts, and attending Carolyn's memorials and Render's trial. What emerged from Sarah's relentless instinct to follow a story and its characters to their darkest ends is a book that is at once a striking homage to Carolyn's life, a chilling excavation of a brutal crime, and a captivating whydunit with a shocking conclusion.

Carrie Carolyn Coco

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Madhumita Murgia

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Living in the Shadow of AI

A riveting story of what it means to be human in a world changed by artificial intelligence, revealing the perils and inequities of our growing reliance on automated decision-making On the surface, a British poet, an UberEats courier in Pittsburgh, an Indian doctor, and a Chinese activist in exile have nothing in common. But they are in fact linked by a profound common experience—unexpected encounters with artificial intelligence. In Code-Dependent, Murgia shows how automated systems are reshaping our lives all over the world, from technology that marks children as future criminals, to an app that is helping to give diagnoses to a remote tribal community. AI has already infiltrated our day-to-day, through language-generating chatbots like ChatGPT and social media. But it’s also affecting us in more insidious ways. It touches everything from our interpersonal relationships, to our kids’ education, work, finances, public services, and even our human rights. By highlighting the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from the cozy enclave of Silicon Valley, Code-Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often-exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Murgia exposes how AI can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency, and shatter our illusion of free will. The ways in which algorithms and their effects are governed over the coming years will profoundly impact us all. Yet we can’t agree on a common path forward. We cannot decide what preferences and morals we want to encode in these entities—or what controls we may want to impose on them. And thus, we are collectively relinquishing our moral authority to machines. In Code-Dependent, Murgia not only sheds light on this chilling phenomenon, but also charts a path of resistance. AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small, and Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity.

Code Dependent

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Bernhard Schlink

Charlotte Collins

A Novel

From the author of the international bestseller The Reader comes this striking and provocative exploration of the legacy of German reunification and the rise of modern populism, witnessed in the story of a grandfather who attempt to connect with his radicalized granddaughter. May 1964. In East Berlin, at a conference sponsored by the Freie Deutsche Jugend, the youth organization of the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic, Birgit meets Kaspar a visiting young scholar from across the wall in West Germany. The pair fall in love, their affair blossoming across bright spring days when anything seems possible. Birgit eventually chooses to flee to West Berlin to Kaspar, choosing love and freedom. When Birgit dies years later, Kaspar discovers the price his wife paid: leaving East Germany in 1965, Birgit abandoned a baby. Shattered by grief, yet animated by a new hope, Kaspar closes his bookshop in Berlin, determined to find Birgit's lost daughter. The search leads him to Mecklenburg, a settlement of the Völkischen, the extreme right-wing German party with dreams of reviving the Drang nach Osten, the eastward settlement of the Nazis into central and Eastern Europe. Among these neo-Nazis Kaspar encounters Svenja, a woman whose eyes, hair, and even voice remind him of Birgit. Beside her is a red-haired, slouching, fifteen-year-old girl. The granddaughter? How can love be born in a climate of mistrust and hatred? This thwarted meeting between a grandfather and his granddaughter is the beginning of a turbulent political journey through German history. More than twenty-five years after The Reader, Bernhard Schlink once again offers a great novel which deconstructs modern Germany, this time from the end of World War II to the years following unification, and the difficulties a riven nation faces as it tries to create a common homeland again. Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins

The Granddaughter

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James McBride

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

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Private Rites

Ethan Mollick

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Living and Working with AI

From Wharton professor and author of the popular One Useful Thing Substack newsletter Ethan Mollick comes the definitive playbook for working, learning, and living in the new age of AI Something new entered our world in November 2022 — the first general purpose AI that could pass for a human and do the kinds of creative, innovative work that only humans could do previously. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick immediately understood what ChatGPT meant: after millions of years on our own, humans had developed a kind of co-intelligence that could augment, or even replace, human thinking. Through his writing, speaking, and teaching, Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world. In Co-Intelligence, Mollick urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher, and coach. He assesses its profound impact on business and education, using dozens of real-time examples of AI in action. Co-Intelligence shows what it means to think and work together with smart machines, and why it's imperative that we master that skill. Mollick challenges us to utilize AI's enormous power without losing our identity, to learn from it without being misled, and to harness its gifts to create a better human future. Wide ranging, hugely thought-provoking, optimistic, and lucid, Co-Intelligence reveals the promise and power of this new era.

Co-Intelligence

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Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey

Caleb Azumah Nelson

An exhilarating and expansive new novel about fathers and sons, faith and friendship from National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and Costa First Novel Award winning author Caleb Azumah Nelson One of the most acclaimed and internationally bestselling "unforgettable" (New York Times) debuts of the 2021, Caleb Azumah Nelson's London-set love story Open Water took the US by storm and introduced the world to a salient and insightful new voice in fiction. Now, with his second novel Small Worlds, the prodigious Azumah Nelson brings another set of enduring characters to brilliant life in his signature rhythmic, melodic prose. Set over the course of three summers, Small Worlds follows Stephen, a first-generation Londoner born to Ghanian immigrant parents, brother to Ray, and best friend to Adeline. On the cusp of big life changes, Stephen feels pressured to follow a certain path--a university degree, a move out of home--but when he decides instead to follow his first love, music, his world and family fractures in ways he didn't foresee. Now Stephen must find a path and peace for himself: a space he can feel beautiful, a space he can feel free. Moving from London, England to Accra, Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exquisite and intimate new novel about the people and places we hold close, from one of the most "elegant, poetic" (CNN) and important voices of a generation.

Small Worlds

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Danielle

Danielle

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Books Listed

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Followers

Sarah Gerard

Carrie Carolyn Coco

Madhumita Murgia

Code Dependent

Bernhard Schlink; Charlotte Collins

The Granddaughter

James McBride

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

Julia Armfield

Private Rites

Ethan Mollick

Co-Intelligence

Anna Dorn

The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey

Caleb Azumah Nelson

Small Worlds

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Sarah Gerard

Carrie Carolyn Coco

Madhumita Murgia

Code Dependent

Bernhard Schlink; Charlotte Collins

The Granddaughter

James McBride

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

Julia Armfield

Private Rites

Ethan Mollick

Co-Intelligence

Anna Dorn

The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey

Caleb Azumah Nelson

Small Worlds

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