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Misfit in Love
by S. K. AliIn this fun and fresh sequel to Saints and Misfits, Janna hopes her brother&’s wedding will be the perfect start to her own summer of love, but attractive new arrivals have her more confused than ever.Janna Yusuf is so excited for the weekend: her brother Muhammad&’s getting married, and she&’s reuniting with her mom, whom she&’s missed the whole summer. And Nuah&’s arriving for the weekend too. Sweet, constant Nuah. The last time she saw him, Janna wasn&’t ready to reciprocate his feelings for her. But things are different now. She&’s finished high school, ready for college…and ready for Nuah. It&’s time for Janna&’s (carefully planned) summer of love to begin—starting right at the wedding. But it wouldn&’t be a wedding if everything went according to plan. Muhammad&’s party choices aren&’t in line with his fiancée&’s taste at all, Janna&’s dad is acting strange, and her mom is spending more time with an old friend (and maybe love interest?) than Janna. And Nuah&’s treating her differently. Just when things couldn&’t get more complicated, two newcomers—the dreamy Haytham and brooding Layth—have Janna more confused than ever about what her misfit heart really wants. Janna&’s summer of love is turning out to be super crowded and painfully unpredictable.
Being and Race
by Charles JohnsonFor the first time in ebook, renowned scholar Charles Johnson's exploration of contemporary black literature and the meaning of the black experience as expressed through the writers Richard Wright, Jean Toomer, David Bradley, and others. Charles Johnson approaches contemporary black literature through the lens of phenomenology. Drawing on such philosophers as Heidegger, Husserl, Satre, and Dufrenne, Johnson addresses the esthetic and epistemological questions surrounding the black experience as expressed by African American authors. In exploring the works of Wright, Toomer, Bradley, and many more, Being & Race enlarges our vision of what fiction's purpose is and how it arises from our common experiences.
The Writing of the Gods
by Edward DolnickThe surprising and compelling story of two rival geniuses in an all-out race to decode one of the world&’s most famous documents—the Rosetta Stone—and their twenty-year-long battle to solve the mystery of ancient Egypt&’s hieroglyphs.The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum ever year, and yet most people don&’t really know what it is. Discovered in a pile of rubble in 1799, this slab of stone proved to be the key to unlocking a lost language that baffled scholars for centuries. Carved in ancient Egypt, the Rosetta Stone carried the same message in different languages—in Greek using Greek letters, and in Egyptian using picture-writing called hieroglyphs. Until its discovery, no one in the world knew how to read the hieroglyphs that covered every temple and text and statue in Egypt. Dominating the world for thirty centuries, ancient Egypt was the mightiest empire the world had ever known, yet everything about it—the pyramids, mummies, the Sphinx—was shrouded in mystery. Whoever was able to decipher the Rosetta Stone, and learn how to read hieroglyphs, would solve that mystery and fling open a door that had been locked for two thousand years. Two brilliant rivals set out to win that prize. One was English, the other French, at a time when England and France were enemies and the world&’s two great superpowers. The Writing of the Gods chronicles this high-stakes intellectual race in which the winner would win glory for both himself and his nation. A riveting portrait of empires both ancient and modern, this is an unparalleled look at the culture and history of ancient Egypt and a fascinating, fast-paced story of human folly and discovery unlike any other.
The Guns of John Moses Browning
by Nathan GorensteinThe first major biography of &“the Thomas Edison of guns,&” John Moses Browning, a visionary inventor who designed the modern handgun and whose awe-inspiring array of firearms helped ensure victory in numerous American wars and found an important place in American culture. Few people are aware that John Moses Browning—a tall, humble, cerebral man born in 1855 and raised as a Mormon in the American West—was the mind behind many of the world-changing firearms that dominated more than a century of conflict. He invented the crucial design used in virtually all modern pistols, created the most popular hunting rifles and shotguns, and conceived the machine guns that proved decisive not just in World Wars I and II but nearly every major military action since. Yet few in America knew his name until he was into his sixties. Now, author Nathan Gorenstein brings firearms inventor John Moses Browning to vivid life in this riveting and revealing biography. Embodying the tradition of self-made, self-educated geniuses (like Lincoln and Edison), Browning was able to think in three dimensions (he never used blueprints) and his gifted mind produced everything from the famous Winchester &“30-30&” hunting rifle to the awesomely effective machine guns used by every American aircraft and infantry unit in World War II. The British credited Browning&’s guns with helping to win the Battle of Britain. His inventions illustrate both the good and bad of weapons. Sweeping, lively, and brilliantly told, this fascinating book introduces a little-known American legend whose impact on history ranks with that of the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford.
Desperate
by Kris MaherSet in Appalachian coal country, this &“superb&” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) legal drama follows one determined lawyer as he faces a coal industry giant in a seven-year battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community.For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo County didn&’t look, smell, or taste right. Could the water be the root of the health problems—from kidney stones to cancer—in this Appalachian community? Environmental lawyer Kevin Thompson certainly thought so.For seven years, Thompson waged an epic legal battle against Massey Energy, West Virginia&’s most powerful coal company, helmed by CEO Don Blankenship. While Massey&’s lawyers worked out of a gray glass office tower in Charleston known as &“the Death Star,&” Thompson set up shop in a ramshackle hotel in the fading coal town of Williamson. Working with fellow lawyers and a crew of young activists, Thompson would eventually uncover the ruthless shortcuts that put the community&’s drinking water at risk.Retired coal miners, women whose families had lived in the area&’s coal camps for generations, a respected preacher and his brother, all put their trust in Thompson when they had nowhere else to turn. Desperate is a masterful work of investigative reporting about greed and denial, &“both a case study in exploitation of the little guy and a playbook for confronting it&” (Kirkus Reviews). Maher crafts a revealing portrait of a town besieged by hardship and heartbreak, and an inspiring account of one tenacious environmental lawyer&’s mission to expose the truth and demand justice.
Light Perpetual
by Francis SpuffordFrom the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, a mesmerizing and boldly inventive novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in southeast London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything&’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children. Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the life arcs of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs, disasters; of second chances and redemption. Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory and expectation, and the preciousness of life.
The High House
by Jessie GreengrassShortlisted for the 2021 Costa Novel Award In this powerful, highly anticipated novel from an award-winning author, four people attempt to make a home in the midst of environmental disaster.Perched on a sloping hill, set away from a small town by the sea, the High House has a tide pool and a mill, a vegetable garden, and, most importantly, a barn full of supplies. Caro, Pauly, Sally, and Grandy are safe, so far, from the rising water that threatens to destroy the town and that has, perhaps, already destroyed everything else. But for how long? Caro and her younger half-brother, Pauly, arrive at the High House after her father and stepmother fall victim to a faraway climate disaster—but not before they call and urge Caro to leave London. In their new home, a converted summer house cared for by Grandy and his granddaughter, Sally, the two pairs learn to live together. Yet there are limits to their safety, limits to the supplies, limits to what Grandy—the former village caretaker, a man who knows how to do everything—can teach them as his health fails. A searing novel that takes on parenthood, sacrifice, love, and survival under the threat of extinction, The High House is a stunning, emotionally precise novel about what can be salvaged at the end of the world.
Manhattan Beach
by Jennifer EganElleAnna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.
Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war.
One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished.
With the atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan’s first historical novel follows Anna and Styles into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men.
Manhattan Beach is a deft, dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world. It is a magnificent novel by the author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, one of the great writers of our time.
Winner of the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction
A New York Times Bestseller
A Little Hope
by Ethan JoellaA Read with Jenna Bonus Selection An &“immersive…illuminating&” (Booklist) and life-affirming novel following the residents of an idyllic Connecticut town over the course of a year, A Little Hope explores the intertwining lives of a dozen neighbors as they confront everyday desires and fears: a lost love, a stalled career, an illness, and a betrayal.Freddie and Greg Tyler seem to have it all: a comfortable home, a beautiful young daughter, a bond that feels unbreakable. But when Greg is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, the sense of certainty they once knew evaporates. Throughout their town, friends and neighbors face the most difficult of life&’s challenges and are figuring out how to survive thanks to love, grace, and hope. &“A quietly powerful portrait of small-town life…told with wisdom and tenderness&” (Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes) A Little Hope is a deeply resonant debut that immerses the reader in a community and celebrates the importance of small moments of connection.
A Cure for Darkness
by Alex RileyA fascinating look at the treatment of depression, blending journalism, science, history, and memoir, by an award-winning science writer.What is depression? Is it a persistent low mood or a complex range of symptoms? Is it a single diagnosis or a diversity of mental disorders requiring different treatments? In A Cure for Darkness, science writer Alex Riley explores these questions, digging into the long history of depression and chronicling the lives of psychiatrists and scientists who sought cures for their patients. Since 2015, Riley has received both cognitive behavioral therapy and antidepressants for his own depression. Throughout his treatment, he wondered—are antidepressants effective? Do short-term talking therapies actually work? And what treatments are on the horizon for those who don&’t respond to these first-line treatments? Expanding from his own experience, he tracks treatments through history, from the &“talking cure&” to electroconvulsive therapy to magic mushrooms. With depression fast becoming the leading burden of disease around the world, the future of mental healthcare depends not just on the development of new therapies, but on increasing access for people who are currently without. Reporting on the field of global mental health from its colonial past to the present day, Riley highlights a range of scalable therapies, including how a group of grandmothers stands on the frontline of a mental health revolution. Weaving in personal and family history, A Cure for Darkness is a gripping narrative journey and a surprisingly hopeful work that delves deep into the science of mental health.
Interesting Women
by Andrea LeeFrom the acclaimed author of Red Island House, Andrea Lee&’s brilliant, outrageous collection of short stories confronts identity, desire, colliding cultures, and self-discovery.In vivid prose infused with wicked irony, award-winning author Andrea Lee takes us into the hearts and minds of a number of extraordinary women—intelligent, beautiful, self-possessed—who, with wit and style, grapple with questions of identity in an increasingly connected world where everyone has become, in some way, a foreigner. In &“The Birthday Present,&” a loyal and conventional American wife explores the wilder shores of marital devotion by giving her Italian husband a costly present. &“Winter Barley&” is the account, alternately lyrical and perverse, of the brief love affair in Scotland between an elderly European prince and a thoroughly modern New England beauty half his age. And in the collection&’s title story, &“Interesting Women,&” a woman on vacation in Thailand reflects with wry detachment on the confessional relationships that spring up between women (&“another day, another soul laid bare&”), before falling into one herself, which culminates in a hilarious and absurd odyssey through the jungle. Lee&’s beautifully crafted stories offer a rare combination: a sensual evocation of the moment, and profound insight into the underlying struggles—of gender, race, and class—that continue to shape our world. Critically acclaimed when it was first published, this collection is ready to be embraced by a new generation of readers.
When You Are Mine
by Michael RobothamIn this page-turning psychological thriller from an author who Stephen King called &“an absolute master,&” a young female police officer faces danger on all fronts—from a clever victim of abuse, her colleagues on the force, and even her own mobster father.Philomena McCarthy is a young, ambitious police office with the elite Metropolitan Police in London. When she responds to a domestic violence call, she finds the victim, Tempe Brown, trying to protect her abuser, a married man named Darren Goodall, a decorated Scotland Yard detective afraid of no one. As Philomena pursues the case against him, she not only encounters resistance from her police force colleagues but also becomes dangerously entangled with the victim—who is not at all whom she appears to be—much to the increasing endangerment of herself and Henry, her fiancée. Complicating matters is Philomena&’s estranged father Edward McCarthy, a powerful man who has built a criminal empire along with his brothers. Philomena has long tried to pursue her career as a police officer without her father&’s involvement, but as she falls under suspicion of stalking and harassing Goodall, her father becomes involved. As the situation escalates, Tempe&’s sinister maneuvers further entangle Philomena in a web of secrets, corruption, and murder, putting Philomena&’s impending marriage, career, and very survival in jeopardy… Spellbinding, suspenseful, and filled with complex characters that could be heroes or villains, Robotham has crafted a smart and propulsive thriller that&’s impossible to put down.
Move
by Parag KhannaA compelling look at the powerful global forces that will cause billions of us to move geographically over the next decades, ushering in an era of radical change. In the 60,000 years since people began colonizing the continents, a recurring feature of human civilization has been mobility—the ever-constant search for resources and stability. Seismic global events—wars and genocides, revolutions and pandemics—have only accelerated the process. The map of humanity isn&’t settled—not now, not ever. As climate change tips toward full-blown crisis, economies collapse, governments destabilize, and technology disrupts, we&’re entering a new age of mass migrations—one that will scatter both the dispossessed and the well-off. Which areas will people abandon and where will they resettle? Which countries will accept or reject them? As today&’s world population, which includes four billion restless youth, votes with their feet, what map of human geography will emerge? In Move, celebrated futurist Parag Khanna provides an illuminating and authoritative vision of the next phase of human civilization—one that is both mobile and sustainable. As the book explores, in the years ahead people will move people to where the resources are and technologies will flow to the people who need them, returning us to our nomadic roots while building more secure habitats. Move is a fascinating look at the deep trends that are shaping the most likely scenarios for the future. Most important, it guides each of us as we determine our optimal location on humanity&’s ever-changing map.
The Power of Geography
by Tim MarshallFrom the author of the New York Times bestseller Prisoners of Geography, the highly anticipated follow-up that uses ten maps of crucial regions around the globe to explain the geopolitical strategies of today&’s world powers and what it means for our future.Tim Marshall&’s global bestseller Prisoners of Geography offered us a &“fresh way of looking at maps&” (The New York Times Book Review), showing how every nation&’s choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Since then, the geography hasn&’t changed, but the world has. Now, in this revelatory new book, Marshall takes us into ten regions that are set to shape global politics and power. Find out why the Earth&’s atmosphere is the world&’s next battleground; why the fight for the Pacific is just beginning; and why Europe&’s next refugee crisis is closer than we think. In ten chapters covering Australia, The Sahel, Greece, Turkey, the UK, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Space, Marshall explains how a region&’s geography and physical characteristics affect the decisions made by its leaders. Innovative, compelling, and delivered with Marshall&’s trademark wit and insight, this is a gripping and enlightening exploration of the power of geography to shape humanity&’s past, present, and—most importantly—our future.
Red Island House
by Andrea LeeFrom National Book Award–nominated writer Andrea Lee comes Red Island House, a travel epic that opens a window on the mysterious African island of Madagascar, and on the dangers of life and love in paradise, as seen through the eyes of a Black American heroine. &“People do mysterious things when they think they have found paradise,&” reflects Shay, the heroine of Red Island House. When Shay, an intrepid Black American professor, marries Senna, a brash Italian businessman, she doesn&’t imagine that her life&’s greatest adventure will carry her far beyond their home in Milan: to an idyllic stretch of beach in Madagascar where Senna builds a flamboyant vacation villa. Before she knows it, she becomes the reluctant mistress of a sprawling household, caught between her privileged American upbringing and her connection to the continent of her ancestors. So begins Shay&’s journey into the heart of a remote African country. Can she keep her identity and her marriage intact amid the wild beauty and the lingering colonial sins of this mysterious world that both captivates and destroys foreigners?A mesmerizing, powerful tale of travel and self-discovery that evokes Isabel Allende&’s House of the Spirits and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie&’s Americanah, Red Island House showcases an extraordinary literary voice and gorgeously depicts a lush and unknown world.
Look for Me and I'll Be Gone
by John Edgar WidemanFrom John Edgar Wideman, “a master [who] boldly subverts what a short story can be” (Publishers Weekly) comes a stunning story collection that spans a range of topics from Michael Jordan to Emmett Till, from childhood memories to the final day in a prison cell.
Forty years after John Edgar Wideman’s first collection of stories was published, he continues to produce new stories of the highest caliber and relevancy. Here, in his sixth story collection, he revisits themes that have infused his work for the duration of his career: family, loss, the penal system, Pittsburgh, physical and emotional life, art, and memory.
Stories include “Separation,” which begins with a boy standing alone beside his grandfather’s coffin, progressing to a scene with the narrator’s grandmother paying the funeral director weekly installments for the price of the casket. “Arizona,” which appeared in The New Yorker, is written in the form of a letter to singer Freddie Jackson, whose song “You Are My Lady,” enters the story through a car radio—a car that conveys the narrator’s son and his lawyers to a prison cell in Arizona. “Atlanta Murders” contemplates James Baldwin’s Evidence of Things Not Seen, written about the Atlanta child murders from 1979 to 1981, beginning with a riff on a “why-did-the chicken-cross-the-road” joke that takes a dark turn. Never satisfied to simply tell a story—with writing that is “layered and interwoven…understanding that perspective is various, varied” (The New Statesman)—Wideman continues to push form, with stories within stories, sentences that rise like a jazz solo with every connecting clause, voices that reflect who he is and where he’s from, and an exploration of time that entangles past and present.
Whether historical or contemporary, intimate or expansive, the stories here represent the most recent work of a treasured American writer whose innovation, imagination, and intellect “prove his continued vitality…with vigor and soul” (Entertainment Weekly).
The Book of Mother
by Violaine HuismanA gorgeous, critically acclaimed debut novel about a young woman coming of age with a dazzling yet damaged mother who lived and loved in extremes. A prizewinning tour de force when it was published in France, Violaine Huisman&’s remarkable debut novel is about a daughter&’s inextinguishable love for her magnetic, mercurial mother. Beautiful and charismatic, Catherine, a.k.a. &“Maman,&” smokes too much, drives too fast, laughs too hard, and loves too extravagantly. During a joyful and chaotic childhood in Paris, her daughter Violaine wouldn&’t have it any other way. But when Maman is hospitalized after a third divorce and a breakdown, everything changes. Even as Violaine and her sister long for their mother&’s return, once she&’s back Maman&’s violent mood swings and flagrant disregard for personal boundaries soon turn their home into an emotional landmine. As the story of Catherine&’s own traumatic childhood and adolescence unfolds, the pieces come together to form an indelible portrait of a mother as irresistible as she is impossible, as triumphant as she is transgressive. With spectacular ferocity of language, a streak of dark humor, and stunning emotional bravery, The Book of Mother is an exquisitely wrought story of a mother&’s dizzying heights and devastating lows, and a daughter who must hold her memory close in order to let go.
Cloud Cuckoo Land
by Anthony DoerrFrom the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, perhaps the most bestselling and beloved literary fiction of our time, comes the highly anticipated Cloud Cuckoo Land. Set in Constantinople in the fifteenth century, in a small town in present-day Idaho, and on an interstellar ship decades from now, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book.
In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone. Thirteen-year-old Anna, an orphan, lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless, insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople.
Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross. Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet.
Like Marie-Laure and Werner in All the Light We Cannot See, Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders who find resourcefulness and hope in the midst of gravest danger. Their lives are gloriously intertwined. Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own. Dedicated to “the librarians then, now, and in the years to come,” Cloud Cuckoo Land is a beautiful and redemptive novel about stewardship—of the book, of the Earth, of the human heart.
Both/And
by Huma AbedinIn this beautifully written and propulsive memoir, Huma Abedin—Hillary Clinton&’s famously private top aide and longtime adviser—emerges from the wings of American political history to take command of her own story
The daughter of Indian and Pakistani intellectuals and advocates who split their time between Saudi Arabia, the UK, and the United States, Abedin grew up in many worlds. Both/And grapples with family, legacy, identity, faith, marriage, and motherhood with wisdom and sophistication.
Abedin launched full steam into a college internship in the office of the first lady in 1996, never imagining that her work at the White House would blossom into a career in public service, nor that the career would become an all-consuming way of life. Still in her twenties and thirties, she thrived in rooms with diplomats and sovereigns, entrepreneurs and artists, philanthropists and activists, and witnessed many crucial moments in 21st-century American history—Camp David for urgent efforts at Middle East peace in the waning months of the Clinton administration, Ground Zero in the days after the 9/11 attacks, the inauguration of the first African American president of the United States, the convention floor when America nominated its first female presidential candidate. Abedin’s relationship with Clinton has seen both women through extraordinary personal and professional highs, as well as unimaginable lows.
Here, for the first time, is a deeply personal account of Hillary Clinton as mentor, confidante, and role model. Abedin cuts through caricature, rumor, and misinformation to reveal a crystal-clear portrait of Clinton as a brilliant and caring leader a steadfast friend, generous, funny, hardworking, and dedicated. Both/And is a candid and heartbreaking chronicle of Abedin’s marriage to Anthony Weiner, what drew her to him, how much she wanted to believe in him, the devastation wrought by his betrayals—and their shared love for their son. It is also a timeless story of a young woman with aspirations and ideals coming into her own in high-pressure jobs, and a testament to the potential for women in leadership to blaze a path forward while supporting those who follow in their footsteps.
Both/And describes Abedin’s journey through the opportunities and obstacles, the trials and triumphs, of a full and complex life. Abedin’s compassion and courage, her resilience and grace, her work ethic and mission are an inspiration to people of all ages. “This journey has led me through exhilarating milestones and devastating setbacks,” said Abedin. “I have walked both with great pride and in overwhelming shame. It is a life I am—more than anything—enormously grateful for and a story I look forward to sharing.”
A New York Times Best Seller
Red Roulette
by Desmond ShumA unique and incendiary memoir from an entrepreneur who rose to the highest realms of power and money in China and whose wife was disappeared, Red Roulette reveals the truth of what is happening inside the country&’s wealth-making machine. After the Communist Revolution, Desmond Shum&’s grandfather was marked as belonging to a &“black category&” that included former landlords and rich peasants—meaning the Shums would be stigmatized and impoverished. As Desmond was growing up, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity Shum earned an American college degree and returned to China to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly intelligent and equally ambitious Whitney Duan who was determined to make her mark within China&’s male-dominated society. Whitney and Desmond formed an effective team and, aided by relationships they formed with top members of the red aristocracy, vaulted into China&’s billionaire class. Soon they were developing the massive air cargo facility at Beijing International Airport, and they followed that feat with the creation of one of Beijing&’s premier hotels. They were dazzlingly successful, traveling in private jets, funding multi-million-dollar buildings and endowments, and purchasing expensive homes, vehicles, and art. But in 2017, their fates diverged irrevocably when Desmond, while residing overseas with his son, learned that his now ex-wife Whitney had vanished along with three coworkers. This is both Desmond&’s story and Whitney&’s, because she cannot tell it herself.
The Fortnight in September
by R.C. SherriffThis charming, timeless classic about a family of five setting out on their annual seaside vacation is &“the most uplifting, life-affirming novel I can think of...the beautiful dignity to be found in everyday living has rarely been captured more delicately&” (Kazuo Ishiguro).Meet the Stevens family, as they prepare to embark on their yearly holiday to the coast of England. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens first made the trip to Bognor Regis on their honeymoon, and the tradition has continued ever since. They stay in the same guest house and follow the same carefully honed schedule—now accompanied by their three children, twenty-year-old Mary, seventeen-year-old Dick, and little brother Ernie. Arriving in Bognor they head to Seaview, the guesthouse where they stay every year. It&’s a bit shabbier than it once was—the landlord has died and his wife is struggling as the number of guests dwindles every year. But the family finds bliss in booking a slightly bigger cabana, with a balcony, and in their rediscovery of the familiar places they visit every year. Mr. Stevens goes on his annual walk across the downs, reflecting on his life, his worries and disappointments, and returns refreshed. Mrs. Stevens treasures an hour spent sitting alone with her medicinal glass of port. Mary has her first small taste of romance. And Dick pulls himself out of the malaise he&’s sunk into since graduation, resolving to work towards a new career. The Stevenses savor every moment of their holiday, aware that things may not be the same next year. Delightfully nostalgic and soothing, The Fortnight in September is an extraordinary novel about ordinary people enjoying life&’s simple pleasures.
To Rule the Waves
by Bruce JonesFrom a brilliant Brookings Institution writer, a vivid, timely, and insightful examination of the critical role that oceans play in the daily struggle for global power, in the bestselling tradition of Robert Kaplan&’s The Revenge of Geography.For centuries, oceans were the chessboard on which empires battled for dominance. But in the nuclear age, air power and missile systems dominated our worries about security, and for the United States, the economy was largely driven by domestic production, with trucking and railways that crisscrossed the continent the primary modes of commercial transit. All that has changed, as nine-tenths of global commerce and the bulk of energy trade is today linked to sea-based flows. A brightly-painted 40-foot steel shipping container loaded in Asia with twenty tons of goods may arrive literally anywhere else in the world; how that really happens and who actually profits by it show that the struggle for power on the seas is a critical issue today. Now, in bright, closely observed prose, To Rule the Waves author Bruce Jones conducts us on a fascinating voyage through the great modern ports and naval bases of this era—from the vast container ports of Shanghai and Hong Kong to the vital naval base of the American 7th fleet in Hawaii to the sophisticated security arrangements in the port of New York. Along the way, the book illustrates how global commerce works, that we are amidst a global naval arms race, and why the oceans are so crucial to America's standing going forward. As Jones reveals, the three great geopolitical struggles of our time—for military power, for economic dominance, and over our changing climate—are playing out atop, within, and below the world&’s oceans. The essential question, he shows, is this: who will rule the waves and set the terms of the world to come?
The Magician
by Colm ToibinA New York Times Notable Book, Critic&’s Top Pick, and Top Ten Book of Historical Fiction Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg Businessweek From one of today&’s most brilliant and beloved novelists, a dazzling, epic family saga set across a half-century spanning World War I, the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the Cold War that is &“a feat of literary sorcery in its own right&” (Oprah Daily).The Magician opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the twentieth century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice. He is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton and then in Los Angeles. In this &“exquisitely sensitive&” (The Wall Street Journal) novel, Tóibín has crafted &“a complex but empathetic portrayal of a writer in a lifelong battle against his innermost desires, his family, and the tumultuous times they endure&” (Time), and &“you&’ll find yourself savoring every page&” (Vogue).
The Island of Sea Women
by Lisa SeeA new novel from Lisa See, the New York Times bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and family secrets on a small Korean island.
Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences are impossible to ignore.
The Island of Sea Women is an epoch set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and its aftermath, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, and she will forever be marked by this association. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that after surviving hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.
This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape them—The Island of Sea Women introduces readers to the fierce and unforgettable female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.
A New York Times Bestseller
Sing, Unburied, Sing
by Jesmyn WardA searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.
In Jesmyn Ward’s first novel since her National Book Award–winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi’s past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers.
Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie’s children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.
Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward’s distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature.