100 Notable Books of 2025

Publisher: New York Times

Year: 2025

Original source

Public
Angel Down

Angel Down

Daniel Kraus

2025

Fiction

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR NATIONAL BESTSELLER “A thunderous gallop of a war novel, a new classic, a best-in-class example of speculative fiction.” —The New York Times Book Review The critically acclaimed author of the “crazily enjoyable” (The New York Times) Whalefall returns with an immersive, cinematic novel about five World War I soldiers who stumble upon a fallen angel that could hold the key to ending the war. Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War through his wits and deception, swindling fellow soldiers at every opportunity.

Read more

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR NATIONAL BESTSELLER “A thunderous gallop of a war novel, a new classic, a best-in-class example of speculative fiction.” —The New York Times Book Review The critically acclaimed author of the “crazily enjoyable” (The New York Times) Whalefall returns with an immersive, cinematic novel about five World War I soldiers who stumble upon a fallen angel that could hold the key to ending the war. Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War through his wits and deception, swindling fellow soldiers at every opportunity. But his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four other grunts are given a deadly mission: venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade. What they find amid the ruined battlefield, however, is not a man in need of mercy but a fallen angel, seemingly struck down by artillery fire. This celestial being may hold the key to ending the brutal conflict, but only if the soldiers can suppress their individual desires and work together. As jealousy, greed, and paranoia take hold, the group is torn apart by their inner demons, threatening to turn their angelic encounter into a descent into hell. Angel Down plunges you into the heart of World War I and weaves a polyphonic tale of survival, supernatural wonder, and moral conflict.
===
Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War, but his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four other grunts are given a deadly mission: venture into the perilous No Man's Land to euthanize a wounded comrade. What they find, however, is not a man in need of mercy but a fallen angel, seemingly struck down by artillery fire. This celestial being may hold the key to ending the brutal conflict, but only if the soldiers can work together. As jealousy, greed, and paranoia take hold, the group is torn apart by their inner demons, threatening to turn their angelic encounter into a descent into hell.

August Lane

August Lane

Regina Black

2025

Fiction

A Black country music star who lied about writing his only hit risks his comeback to reunite with the woman he stole it from, a first love the lyrics won't let him forget. Every Thursday night, former country music heartthrob Luke Randall has to sing "Another Love Song." God, he hates that song.

Read more

A Black country music star who lied about writing his only hit risks his comeback to reunite with the woman he stole it from, a first love the lyrics won't let him forget. Every Thursday night, former country music heartthrob Luke Randall has to sing "Another Love Song." God, he hates that song. But performing his lone hit at an interstate motel lounge is the only regular money he still has. Following another lackluster performance at the rock bottom of his career, Luke receives the opportunity of his dreams, opening for his childhood idol--90's era Black country music star, JoJo Lane, who's being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But the concert is in Arcadia, Arkansas, the small hometown he swore he'd never see again. Going back means facing a painful past of abuse and neglect. It also means facing JoJo's daughter, August Lane--the woman who wrote the lyrics he's always claimed as his own. August also hates that song. But she hates Luke Randall even more. When he shows up ten years too late to apologize for his betrayal, she isn't interested in making amends. Instead, she threatens to expose his lies unless he co-writes a new song with her and performs it at the concert, something she hopes will launch her out of her mother's shadow and into a songwriting career of her own. Desperate to keep his secret, Luke agrees to put on the rogue performance, despite the risk of losing his shot at a new record deal. When Luke's guitar reunites with August's soulful alto, neither can deny that the passionate bond they formed as teenagers is still there. As the concert nears, August will have to choose between an overdue public reckoning with the boy who betrayed her, or trusting the man he's become to write a different love song.
===
A Southern small-town romance about the visibility of Black women’s voices in country music, perfect for fans of Beyonce's Cowboy Carter and The Final Revival of Opal & Nev. "The best romance I've read all year." —The New York Times A New York Times Notable Book Every Thursday night, former country music heartthrob Luke Randall has to sing “Another Love Song.” God, he hates that song. But performing his lone hit at an interstate motel lounge is the only regular money he still has. Following another lackluster performance at the rock bottom of his career, Luke receives the opportunity of his dreams, opening for his childhood idol—90’s era Black country music star, JoJo Lane, who’s being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But the concert is in Arcadia, Arkansas, the small hometown he swore he’d never see again. Going back means facing a painful past of abuse and neglect. It also means facing JoJo’s daughter, August Lane—the woman who wrote the lyrics he’s always claimed as his own. August also hates that song. But she hates Luke Randall even more. When he shows up ten years too late to apologize for his betrayal, she isn’t interested in making amends. Instead, she threatens to expose his lies unless he co-writes a new song with her and performs it at the concert, something she hopes will launch her out of her mother's shadow and into a songwriting career of her own. Desperate to keep his secret, Luke agrees to put on the rogue performance, despite the risk of losing his shot at a new record deal. When Luke’s guitar reunites with August’s soulful alto, neither can deny that the passionate bond they formed as teenagers is still there. As the concert nears, August will have to choose between an overdue public reckoning with the boy who betrayed her, or trusting the man he’s become to write a different love song. An instant USA Today bestseller An NPR 2025 Book We Love A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 A Book Riot Best Book of 2025 A Publishers Weekly Best Romance Book of 2025 A Chicago Public Library 2025 Must-Read Romance

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

Kylie Lee Baker

2025

Fiction

"A compelling, gory, ghostly romp." —Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie "This is what it felt like to live in New York City during lockdown: haunted, absurd, terrifying, ridiculous, and full of hungry ghosts." —Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House In this explosive horror novel, a woman is haunted by inner trauma, hungry ghosts, and a serial killer as she confronts the brutal violence experienced by East Asians during the pandemic. Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown.

Read more

"A compelling, gory, ghostly romp." —Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie "This is what it felt like to live in New York City during lockdown: haunted, absurd, terrifying, ridiculous, and full of hungry ghosts." —Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House In this explosive horror novel, a woman is haunted by inner trauma, hungry ghosts, and a serial killer as she confronts the brutal violence experienced by East Asians during the pandemic. Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. But none of that seems so terrible when she’s already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister, Delilah, being pushed in front of a train. Before fleeing the scene, the murderer shouted two words: bat eater. So the bloody messes don’t really bother Cora—she’s more bothered by the germs on the subway railing, the bare hands of a stranger, the hidden viruses in every corner, and the bite marks on her coffee table. Of course, ever since Delilah was killed in front of her, Cora can’t be sure what's real and what’s in her head. She pushes away all feelings and ignores the advice of her aunt to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open. But she can't ignore the dread in her stomach as she keeps finding bat carcasses at crime scenes, or the scary fact that all her recent cleanups have been the bodies of East Asian women. As Cora will soon learn, you can’t just ignore hungry ghosts. For fans of Stephen Graham Jones and Gretchen Felker-Martin, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng is a wildly original, darkly humorous, and subversive contemporary novel from a striking new voice in horror.

Buckeye

Buckeye

Patrick Ryan

2025

Fiction

'Funny and tender ... Patrick Ryan has long been one of my favourite writers' ANN PATCHETT 'I love this novel with my entire heart ...

Read more

'Funny and tender ... Patrick Ryan has long been one of my favourite writers' ANN PATCHETT 'I love this novel with my entire heart ... Wise and heartbreaking' ANN NAPOLITANO May, 1945. As news of the Allied victory in Europe reaches the small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, a woman named Margaret Salt walks into a hardware store and asks the man behind the counter, Cal Jenkins, for a radio. What happens next will change both of their lives forever. While the country reconstructs in the post-war boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie - and nothing can remain hidden in a small town. The consequences of that long-ago encounter will intertwine the fates of two families, rippling through the next generation and compelling them to re-examine who they thought they were and what the future might hold. Full of compassion, humour and charm, Buckeye is a dazzling portrait of the human spirit by way of one unforgettable community; the twisted roads we take to achieve forgiveness and redemption; and above all a universal longing for love and connection.
===
'Poignant, powerful' Independent 'Omniscient, sweeping, almost defiantly sentimental' New York Times '[A] luminous and tender 20th-century saga of wounded souls and small-town secrets' Guardian May, 1945. As news of the Allied victory in Europe reaches the small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, a woman named Margaret Salt walks into a hardware store and asks the man behind the counter, Cal Jenkins, for a radio. What happens next will change both of their lives forever. While the country reconstructs in the post-war boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie - and nothing can remain hidden in a small town. The consequences of that long-ago encounter will intertwine the fates of two families, rippling through the next generation and compelling them to re-examine who they thought they were and what the future might hold. Full of compassion, humour and charm, Buckeye is a dazzling portrait of the human spirit by way of one unforgettable community; the twisted roads we take to achieve forgiveness and redemption; and above all a universal longing for love and connection.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Stephen Graham Jones

2025

Fiction

An instant New York Times bestseller, a chilling historical horror novel tracing the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall.

Read more

An instant New York Times bestseller, a chilling historical horror novel tracing the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

V.E. Schwab

2025

Fiction

From V. E.

Read more

From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger. This is a story about hunger. 1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets. This is a story about love. 1827. London. A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined. This is a story about rage. 2019. Boston. College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge. This is a story about life— how it ends, and how it starts. USA Today, 15 Most Anticipated of 2025 BookBub, Most Anticipated of 2025 (and Reader’s Pick) Readers Digest, 20 Most Anticipated Books This Year Paste Magazine, Most Anticipated Fantasy Books of 2025 BookRiot, Most Anticipated Books of 2025 Men's Health, 25 Best & Most Anticipated Books of 2025 The Nerd Daily, SFF to Devour in 2025 Goodreads, Readers' Most Anticipated Books of 2025 At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
===
Love runs wild. Love bites deep. Love dies last ... Ein epischer Vampirroman von Bestsellerautorin V. E. Schwab. Dies ist die Geschichte von drei Frauen und dem Blut, das sie verbindet. Von Maria, die im Jahre 1511 in dem kleinen Dorf Santo Domingo de la Calzada geboren wird. Sie heiratet einen spanischen Edelmann, nur um fortzukommen, doch ihr Mann ist streng und die Ehe keine glückliche. Erst als sie einer geheimnisvollen Witwe begegnet, scheint die Freiheit in Reichweite, doch der Preis ist hoch. Von Charlotte, die im Jahr 1827 in London verheiratet werden soll, doch es vorzieht, mit einer geheimnisvollen Adligen zu fliehen und ein Leben in Freiheit und Sünde zu verbringen. Sie reisen Jahrzehnte durch die europäischen Metropolen. Und ziehen eine Spur der Gewalt hinter sich her. Und von Alice, die im Jahr 2019 nach einem wilden One-Night-Stand mit höllischen Kopfschmerzen aufwacht und feststellt, dass sie eine seltsame Wunde am Hals hat. Und dass sie ein unstillbares Verlangen nach Blut entwickelt. Für Leser*innen von Anne Rice, Leigh Bardugo, Jay Kristoff und Carissa Broadbent

The Colony

The Colony

Annika Norlin

2025

Fiction

Ants live in communities, where everyone helps out. Everyone has a task for the community ...

Read more

Ants live in communities, where everyone helps out. Everyone has a task for the community ... Everyone is needed. No one has to know everything. One morning, Emelie can't get out of bed. Her therapist calls it burnout. Her neighbour calls it the tiny work death. She needs to get away from the brightness of the city lights, the noise of the people, the constant demands, so she goes to the woods, pitches her tent overlooking the lake, breathes. And that's where she sees them, the Colony: A man with a sad face. A tall, strong, older woman. A woman in her forties, squatting to examine an ant hill. Another woman in her forties, short, long hair, ample bosom, good posture -- the leader? An extremely beautiful man. A slightly younger man, in a Helly Hansen jacket and trucker hat. And a teenage boy, standing a little way from the group. Who are they? What do they mean to each other? And why do they behave in such strange ways: thanking the fish they eat, sleeping under a tree, singing off key, dancing without music, never letting the boy fully in? As Emelie becomes more and more drawn to the Colony, she begins to re-evaluate her own lifestyle. Wouldn't it be nice to live as these seven do? Apart from society and its expectations. But groups always have their dynamics and roles. Which are you? And what if you want to change?
===
A mega best-seller in Sweden, with rights sold to over a dozen countries and a TV adaptation underway, Annika Norlin's debut novel The Colony is the biggest Swedish literary phenomenon since Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove. Winner of the Vi Literature Award and Swedish Radio's Novel Prize, two of Sweden's biggest literary awards, The Colony is a gripping portrayal of contemporary society and its alternatives. Burnt-out from a demanding job and a bustling life in the city, Emelie has left town to spend a few days in the country. Once there, in the peaceful, verdant hills, down by the river she encounters a mysterious group of seven people, each with personal stories full of pain, alienation, and the longing to live differently. They are misfits, each in their own way, and all led by the enigmatic and charismatic Sara. How did they end up there? Are they content with the rigid roles they've been assigned? And what happens when an outsider appears and is initially drawn to their alternative lifestyle but cannot help but stir things up? A masterful blend of humor, emotion, unforgettable characters, and sharp social commentary, The Colony is a magnetic and deeply touching story about love, community, and the unfathomable power we other others and that others have over us.

Death Takes Me

Death Takes Me

Cristina Rivera Garza

2025

Fiction

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Liliana's Invincible Summer, a dreamlike, genre-defying novel about a professor and detective seeking justice in a world suffused with gendered violence. “Deeply rewarding .

Read more

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Liliana's Invincible Summer, a dreamlike, genre-defying novel about a professor and detective seeking justice in a world suffused with gendered violence. “Deeply rewarding . . . a dreamscape with a powerful undertow . . . [a] harrowing and labyrinthine masterpiece.”—Katie Kitamura, The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) AN ESQUIRE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A city is always a cemetery. A professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a mutilated man in a dark alley and reports it to the police. When shown a crime scene photo, she finds a stark warning written in tiny print with coral nail polish on the brick wall beside the body: “Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.” The professor becomes the first informant on the case, which is led by a detective newly obsessed with poetry and trailed by a long list of failures. But what has the professor really seen? As the bodies of more castrated men are found alongside lines of verse, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems to put a stop to the violence spreading throughout the city. Originally written in Spanish, where the word “victim” is always feminine, Death Takes Me is a thrilling masterpiece of literary fiction that flips the traditional crime narrative of gendered violence on its head. As sharp as the cuts on the bodies of the victims, it unfolds with the charged logic of a dream, moving from the police station to the professor’s classroom and through the slippery worlds of Latin American poetry and art in an imaginative exploration of the unstable terrains of desire and sexuality.
===
Translated by Sarah Booker and Robin Myers A city is always a cemetery. When a professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a man in a dark alley, she finds a stark warning on the brick wall beside the body, scrawled in coral nail polish: 'Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.' After reporting the crime to the police, the professor becomes the lead informant of the case, led by a detective with a newfound obsession with poetry and a long list of failures on her back. But what has the professor really seen? While more bodies of men are found across the city, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems, and the darker stream of violence spreading throughout the city. From one of Mexico's greatest living writers, Death Takes Me is a dark and dazzling literary thriller that flips the traditional crime narrative on its head, in a world where death is rampant and violence is gendered. Unfolding with the charged logic of a dream in sentences as sharp as the cuts on the bodies of the victims - a word which, in Spanish, is always feminine - it explores with masterful imagination the unstable terrains of desire and sexuality.
===
'A labyrinthine masterpiece' New York Times 'A subversive twist on the traditional serial killer story' TIME 'Obsessive, dreamlike and hallucinatory' Layla Martinez A city is always a cemetery. When a professor named Cristina stumbles upon the corpse of a man in a dark alley, she finds a stark warning on the brick wall beside the body, scrawled in coral nail polish: 'Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.' After reporting the crime to the police, the professor becomes the main informant of the case, led by a detective with a newfound obsession with poetry and a long list of failures on her back. As the bodies of more men are found, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems, and the stream of violence spreading throughout the city. A dark and dazzling literary thriller that flips the traditional crime narrative on its head, Death Takes Me explores with masterful imagination the unstable terrains of gender and violence, death and desire. A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FOR 2025 Translated by Sarah Booker and Robin Myers

The Director

The Director

Daniel Kehlmann

2025

Fiction

"G.W. Pabst, one of cinema's greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power.

Read more

"G.W. Pabst, one of cinema's greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him. When he receives word that his elderly mother is ill, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark. Pabst, his wife, and his young son are suddenly confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime. So, when Joseph Goebbels--the minister of propaganda in Berlin--sees the potential for using the European film icon for his directorial genius and makes big promises to Pabst and his family, Pabst must consider Goebbels's thinly veiled order"--

The Doorman

The Doorman

Chris Pavone

2025

Fiction

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025 A pulse-pounding novel of class, privilege, sex, and murder, from the New York Times bestselling author of Two Nights in Lisbon and The Expats. Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York’s cultural elite.

Read more

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025 A pulse-pounding novel of class, privilege, sex, and murder, from the New York Times bestselling author of Two Nights in Lisbon and The Expats. Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York’s cultural elite. Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth has the perfect-looking everything, all except her husband, whom she’d quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where all the money comes from. But his wealth is immense, their prenup is iron-clad, and Emily can’t bring herself to leave him. Yet. And downstairs in 2A, Julian Sonnenberg—who has carved himself a successful niche in the art world, and led a good half-century of a full and satisfying, cosmopolitan life—has just received a devastating phone call that does nothing at all to alleviate his sense that, probably for better and worse, he has aged out and he’s just not that useful to anyone any more. Meanwhile, gathered in the Bohemia’s bowels, the building’s almost entirely Black and Hispanic, working-class staff is taking in the news that that just a few miles uptown, a Black man has been killed by the police, leading to a demonstration, a counterdemonstration, and a long night of violence across the tinderbox city. As Chicky changes into his uniform for tonight’s shift, he finds himself breaking a cardinal rule of the job: tonight, he’ll be carrying a gun, bought only hours earlier, but before he knew of the pandemonium taking over the city. Chicky knows that there’s more going on in his patch of sidewalk in front of the Bohemia than anyone’s aware of. Tonight in the city, enemies will clash, loyalties will be tested, secrets will be revealed—and lives will be lost.
===
The new electrifying thriller from the New York Times bestseller and master of the shock ending.

The Feeling of Iron

The Feeling of Iron

Giaime Alonge

2025

Flesh

Flesh

David Szalay

2025

Fiction

"Teenaged Istvâan lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor--a married woman close to his mother's age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands--as his only companion.

Read more

"Teenaged Istvâan lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor--a married woman close to his mother's age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands--as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that Istvâan himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident thatleaves a man dead. What follows is a rocky trajectory that sees Istvâan emigrate from Hungary to London, where he moves from job to job before finding steady work as a driver for London's billionaire class. At each juncture, his life is affected by the goodwill or self-interest of strangers. Through it all, Istvâan is a calm, detached observer of his own life, and through his eyes we experience a tragic twist on an immigrant "success story," brightened by moments of sensitivity, softness, and Szalay's keen observation"--
===
**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025** 'A masterpiece, told with virtuosic economy... Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence’ India Knight 'Brilliance on every page' Samantha Harvey 'Spare, visceral, urgent, compelling. This book doesn't f**k around' Gary Stevenson ‘So brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money' David Nicholls Through chance, luck and choice, one man’s life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London – in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion. As these encounters shift into a clandestine relationship, István’s life spirals out of control. Years later, rising through the ranks from the army to the elite circles of London's super-rich, he navigates the twenty-first century's tides of money and power. Torn between love, intimacy, status, and wealth, his newfound riches threaten to undo him completely. ‘How do I get out of a reading slump? This is the book to do that’ Rhianna Dhillon, BBC Radio 4 'A revelatory novel' Sunday Times 'So much searing insight into the way we live now' Observer ‘Refreshing, illuminating and true’ Financial Times 'Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant' Tessa Hadley 'One of the year’s best novels to date' Daily Mail ‘Utterly engrossing and I read it all in a day’ 5* reader review ‘I was hooked and tried to read this book with any spare moment that I had' 5* reader review A ‘Best Book of 2025’ in the Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail
===
From Booker Prize-winning author David Szalay, comes a propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour—a married woman close to his mother’s age—as his only companion. These encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, and his life soon spirals out of control. As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the currents of the twenty-first century’s tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London’s super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely. Spare and penetrating, Flesh is the finest novel yet by a master of realism, asking profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.

A Gentleman's Gentleman

A Gentleman's Gentleman

T.J. Alexander

2025

Fiction

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A USA TODAY BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of Chef's Kiss, a groundbreaking trans Regency romance that's both delightfully witty and refreshingly iconoclastic. “A Gentleman’s Gentleman is a thoroughly charming confection of a romance.

Read more

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A USA TODAY BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of Chef's Kiss, a groundbreaking trans Regency romance that's both delightfully witty and refreshingly iconoclastic. “A Gentleman’s Gentleman is a thoroughly charming confection of a romance. If you’re looking for a tender, gentle slow burn, this is the book for you.” —Cat Sebastian, author of We Could Be So Good The notoriously eccentric Lord Christopher Eden is a “man of unusual make” and even more unusual habits: he prefers to live far from the prying eyes and ears of the ton, and would rather have the comfortable company of his childhood cook and his aged butler than the swarm of servants and hangers-on befitting a man of his station. But Christopher’s pleasant, if occasionally lonely life is upended when he receives word from his lawyers that, according to his late father’s will, he must find a wife by the end of the Season if he intends to keep his family’s fortune and the Eden estate. Christopher cannot imagine a worse fate: as he isn’t attracted to women, his chances of making a wife happy are slim. Furthermore, if his quest to marry has any hope of succeeding, he must move to London posthaste and acquire some more suitable staff. Enter James Harding, Christopher’s new, distractingly handsome—if rigidly traditional—valet. After a rocky start, the two strike up a fragile friendship amid the throes of the London Season . . . a friendship that threatens to shatter under the looming shadow of Christopher’s impending nuptials—and the secrets both men are keeping. With its heady combination of dry wit, slow-burn romance, and a nuanced portrait of trans identity, A Gentleman’s Gentleman stands to transform the historical romance genre as we know it.

The Good Liar

The Good Liar

Denise Mina

2025

Fiction

In this provocative mystery from beloved crime writer Denise Mina, new evidence in an old murder case leads a forensic scientist to an impossible choice: Would you still do the right thing if you knew it would cost everything you loved? Doctor Claudia O'Sheil is approaching the podium at an elegant fundraiser, where she is expected to give a speech about how her forensic science evidence helped convict the brutal killer in her most famous case: The Incident at Chester Terrace, a sensational double-murder that ignited the country just one year before. But the research has moved on, the evidence Claudia gave was junk science, used to put William Stewart away for the murder of his father and his girlfriend.

Read more

In this provocative mystery from beloved crime writer Denise Mina, new evidence in an old murder case leads a forensic scientist to an impossible choice: Would you still do the right thing if you knew it would cost everything you loved? Doctor Claudia O'Sheil is approaching the podium at an elegant fundraiser, where she is expected to give a speech about how her forensic science evidence helped convict the brutal killer in her most famous case: The Incident at Chester Terrace, a sensational double-murder that ignited the country just one year before. But the research has moved on, the evidence Claudia gave was junk science, used to put William Stewart away for the murder of his father and his girlfriend. Because of her an innocent man is in prison, and she didn't act alone--some very powerful people have an agenda she is only beginning to understand. This speech might be her last chance to reveal the truth and catch the real murderer. But admitting her mistake will cost Claudia: her reputation, her career, her home, security for her two sons, the esteem of her colleagues, and the pride of a nation obsessed with her success. In this breathless upmarket suspense novel, interwoven with the present-day framework is a past narrative that slowly reveals what actually happened the night of a devastating double-murder in a wealthy family. As Claudia steps toward the microphone, she revisits the murder investigation, desperate to understand what went wrong before her chance is gone. What speech will Claudia give? And what really happened at Chester Terrace that night?
===
In this provocative mystery from beloved crime writer Denise Mina, new evidence in an old murder case forces one woman to make an impossible choice. WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO TELL THE TRUTH WHEN YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON A LIE? A year ago, a father and his fiancée were brutally murdered in their opulent London townhouse, sparking the most high-profile murder investigation in recent history. Blood spatter expert Doctor Claudia O’Sheil’s evidence put the killer behind bars—or so everyone believes. But since the trial, Claudia’s learned a horrific truth: her evidence and her testimony were wrong. And someone she knows made sure of it. Now, as she takes the stage to give a career-defining speech before London’s elite, Claudia faces a devastating choice. Protect her children and her career with her continued complicity, or blow the whole conspiracy apart and reveal the truth: not only is the real murderer still out there, but they’re in the audience. As Claudia steps toward the microphone, she revisits that fateful night. What really happened? And what will Claudia say?

A Guardian and a Thief

A Guardian and a Thief

Megha Majumdar

2025

Fiction

OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK TIME MUST-READ BOOK SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE ‘An indictment of this moment and a timeless parable about the lengths we go to for love and self-preservation, written in exuberant prose - this is a novel that will burrow its way into your soul and remain there forever’ Tahmima Anam Megha Majumdar’s electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times Bestseller A Burning—longlisted for the National Book Award—is set in a near-future Kolkata, India, ravaged by climate change and food scarcity, in which two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other—a piercing and propulsive tour de force. In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter Mishti, and her elderly father Dadu are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Read more

OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK TIME MUST-READ BOOK SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE ‘An indictment of this moment and a timeless parable about the lengths we go to for love and self-preservation, written in exuberant prose - this is a novel that will burrow its way into your soul and remain there forever’ Tahmima Anam Megha Majumdar’s electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times Bestseller A Burning—longlisted for the National Book Award—is set in a near-future Kolkata, India, ravaged by climate change and food scarcity, in which two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other—a piercing and propulsive tour de force. In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter Mishti, and her elderly father Dadu are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, with all the treasured immigration documents within it, has been stolen. Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom. With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe. A masterful new work from one of the most exciting voices of her generation. ‘A true literary achievement… Majumdar creates a tense and deeply compassionate portrait of desperation, fear and the combined selflessness and selfishness of parenthood… Detail is the strongest thing in A Guardian and a Thief. It conveys the nuances of not only love but also wisdom… a true joy to read.’ New York Times
===
A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.

Heart the Lover

Heart the Lover

Lily King

2025

Fiction

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Lily King has written another masterpiece. This book overflows with her brilliance and her heart.

Read more

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Lily King has written another masterpiece. This book overflows with her brilliance and her heart. We are so lucky.” —Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow From the New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers comes a magnificent and intimate new novel of desire, friendship, and the lasting impact of first love You knew I’d write a book about you someday. Our narrator understands good love stories—their secrets and subtext, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules. In the fall of her senior year of college, she meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit class: Sam and Yash. Best friends living off campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love and her own intellectual ambition. But youthful passion is unpredictable, and soon she finds herself at the center of a charged and intricate triangle. As graduation comes and goes, choices made will alter these three lives forever. Decades later, the vulnerable days of Jordan's youth seem comfortably behind her. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news bring the past crashing into the present, she returns to a world she left behind and must confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self. Written with the superb wit and emotional sensitivity fans and critics of Lily King have come to adore, Heart the Lover is a deeply moving love story that celebrates literature, forgiveness, and the transformative bonds that shape our lives. Wise, unforgettable, and with a delightful connective thread to Writers & Lovers, this is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.
===
"Lily King is one of our great literary treasures."--Madeline Miller From the New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers comes an intimate and sweeping new novel of love and friendship--a journey into the heart of youth and middle age, desire and loss, and the intricate bonds that shape our lives Our bright narrator is a college senior quietly dreaming of becoming a writer when she meets Sam and Yash, best friends and the golden boys of the English Department. Top-of-the-class Honors students, they live at the stately home of a favorite professor on sabbatical and can banter about Joyce and Fitzgerald like a game of rapid-fire tennis. The two nickname her Jordan and invite her into their magnetic world where her college experience is forever altered. As graduation approaches, the lines between love and friendship blur, and Jordan finds herself caught in a life-changing triangle. Decades later, her writing career is thriving, but motherhood is full of challenges. When she receives unexpected news that brings the past crashing into the present, Jordan returns to a world she thought she left behind. Written with the superb wit and emotional sensitivity fans and critics have come to adore, King explores a tangled lattice of friendship, love, family and uncertainty that celebrates how we love, who we love, and all the complexity a single heart can hold.

Heartwood

Heartwood

Amity Gaige

2025

Fiction

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination.

Read more

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping....

Hollow Spaces

Hollow Spaces

Victor Suthammanont

2025

Fiction

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice The only Asian American partner at a prestigious law firm sees his professional and personal life demolished when he is put on trial for murder. Three decades later, his children reunite to uncover the truth and try to salvage what remains of their family.

Read more

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice The only Asian American partner at a prestigious law firm sees his professional and personal life demolished when he is put on trial for murder. Three decades later, his children reunite to uncover the truth and try to salvage what remains of their family. Thirty years ago, John Lo was acquitted of the murder of an employee he was having an affair with. The repercussions of that long-ago event still haunt his adult children. Brennan, a lawyer following in her father’s footsteps in more ways than one, has always maintained that the trial got it right. Hunter, a disgruntled war correspondent whose similarities to his father run more than skin-deep, believes their father got away with murder. Their opposing convictions have pushed them apart. Now, spurred by their mother’s failing health, the estranged siblings decide to reconcile their differences by reinvestigating the murder to come to a definitive conclusion. Told in a dual timeline that moves between John’s perspective thirty years prior and Brennan and Hunter’s present-day investigation, Hollow Spaces is a moving portrait of a flawed man’s shocking fall from grace and a gripping exploration of race in corporate America, filial loyalty, ambition, and the fallout of a sensational trial for those caught in its wake.

The Hounding

The Hounding

Xenobe Purvis

2025

Fiction

The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides in this haunting debut about five sisters in a small village in eighteenth-century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs. Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbank to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die.

Read more

The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides in this haunting debut about five sisters in a small village in eighteenth-century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs. Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbank to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before. The truth is that though the inhabitants of Little Nettlebed have never much liked the Mansfield girls—a little odd, think some; a little high on themselves, perhaps—they’ve always had plenty to say about them. As the rotating perspectives of five villagers quickly make clear, now is no exception. Even if local belief in witchcraft is waning, an aversion to difference is as widespread as ever, and these conflicting narratives all point to the same ultimate conclusion: Something isn’t right in Little Nettlebed, and the sisters will be the ones to pay for it. A richly atmospheric parable of the pleasures and perils of female defiance, The Hounding considers whether in any age it might be safer to be a dog than an unusual young girl.
===
'Extraordinary . . . clever, strange and beautifully written' THE TIMES 'Prompts thoughts of both THE CRUCIBLE and THE VIRGIN SUICIDES . . . Purvis is an exquisitely accomplished wordsmith.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A taut, tense tale, impeccably told' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Feverish, finely wrought and unforgettable.' DAILY MAIL 'An unflinchingly strange and savage novel – a rare and twisted pleasure, and an unmissable must-read for every girl who has ever been made to feel strange.' LUCY ROSE, Sunday Times bestselling author of THE LAMB 'Haunting and beguiling, this fever dream of a novel draws you in and colours your mind all shades of doubt and suspicion.' STACEY HALLS, Sunday Times bestselling author of THE FAMILIARS 'Melancholy and bittersweet.' OTEGHA UWAGBA, Sunday Times bestselling author of LITTLE BLACK BOOK 'A novel of rare grace and skill, exquisitely wrought and simmering with feral violence.' ROWE IRVIN, author of LIFE CYCLE OF A MOTH Many stories are told about the five Mansfield sisters. They are haughty, thinking themselves better than their neighbours in the picturesque village of Little Nettlebed. They have taken the death of their grandmother hard. They are liars, troublemakers, untamed and dangerous... Accounts of their behaviour differ, but the villagers all agree that the girls are odd. One long summer, a heatwave descends. Bloated sea creatures wash up along the parched riverbed, animals grow frenzied, ravens gather on the roofs of those about to die. As the stifling heat grips the village, so does a strange rumour: the Mansfield sisters have been seen transforming into a pack of dogs. With the witch trials only a recent memory, hysteria sets in. Slowly but surely, the villagers become convinced that something strange is taking root in Little Nettlebed. And when a bark finally leads to a bite, the sisters will be the ones to pay for it. Visceral and richly atmospheric, The Hounding plunges its reader into 18th century Oxfordshire, where the power of a man’s word is absolute, and it is safer to be a wild animal than an unconventional young woman. *** 'Utterly bizarre in the best way possible' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ BOOK REVIEWER 'A glorious shimmering heat mirage of a novel' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ BOOK REVIEWER 'A visceral and consuming fever dream of a book' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ BOOK REVIEWER 'Tense, almost claustrophobic' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ BOOK REVIEWER 'Sharp and extremely enjoyable' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ BOOK REVIEWER

How to Dodge a Cannonball

How to Dodge a Cannonball

Dennard Dayle

2025

Fiction

How to Dodge a Cannonball is a razor-sharp satire that dives into the heart of the Civil War, hilariously questioning the essence of the fight, not just for territory, but for the soul of America. How to Dodge a Cannonball is funnier than the Civil War should ever be.

Read more

How to Dodge a Cannonball is a razor-sharp satire that dives into the heart of the Civil War, hilariously questioning the essence of the fight, not just for territory, but for the soul of America. How to Dodge a Cannonball is funnier than the Civil War should ever be. It follows Anders, a teenage idealist who enlists and reenlists to shape the American Future—as soon as he figures out what that is, who it includes, and why everyone wants him to die for it. Escaping his violently insane mother is a bonus. Anders finds honor as a proud Union flag twirler—until he’s captured. Then he tries life as a diehard Confederate—until fate asks him to die hard for the Confederacy at Gettysburg. Barely alive, Anders limps into a Black Union regiment in a stolen uniform. While visibly white, he claims to be an octoroon, and they claim to believe him. Only then does his life get truly strange. His new brothers are even stranger, including a science-fiction playwright, a Haitian double agent, and a former slave feuding with God. Despite his best efforts, Anders starts seeing the war through their eyes, sparking ill-timed questions about who gets to be American or exploit the theater of war. Dennard Dayle’s satire spares no one as doomed charges, draft riots, gleeful arms dealers, and native suppression campaigns test everyone’s definition of loyalty. Uproariously funny and revelatory, How to Dodge a Cannonball asks if America is worth fighting for. And then answers loudly. Read it while it’s still legal.

Isola

Isola

Allegra Goodman

2025

Fiction

A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK The New York Times ‘Best Books of the Year (So Far)' A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in a deeply moving novel of love, faith and survival, for readers of Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist and Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See ‘This made me cry on an airplane but it was worth it! A luscious, rich and moving novel, a beautiful, careful and profound book about survival and hope’ Alice Winn, bestselling author of In Memoriam ‘An extraordinary book that reads like a thriller, written with the care of the most delicate psychological and historical fiction’ Vogue ‘Best Books of 2025’ ‘A shocking story, made all the more stunning by the fact that it has its roots in true history’ Jodi Picoult, author of My Sister's Keeper In sixteenth-century France, as the heiress to an aristocratic fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of privilege. Then she is orphaned, and her enigmatic and volatile guardian squanders her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to the new French colonies of North America.

Read more

A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK The New York Times ‘Best Books of the Year (So Far)' A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in a deeply moving novel of love, faith and survival, for readers of Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist and Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See ‘This made me cry on an airplane but it was worth it! A luscious, rich and moving novel, a beautiful, careful and profound book about survival and hope’ Alice Winn, bestselling author of In Memoriam ‘An extraordinary book that reads like a thriller, written with the care of the most delicate psychological and historical fiction’ Vogue ‘Best Books of 2025’ ‘A shocking story, made all the more stunning by the fact that it has its roots in true history’ Jodi Picoult, author of My Sister's Keeper In sixteenth-century France, as the heiress to an aristocratic fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of privilege. Then she is orphaned, and her enigmatic and volatile guardian squanders her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to the new French colonies of North America. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian’s servant and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished, abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue. From a childhood dressed in gowns with laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she had never before needed… Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola tells the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.

Katabasis

Katabasis

R.F. Kuang

2025

Fiction College teachers

'a formidable, timeless work, destined to be a modern classic' OLIVIE BLAKE 'A novel to savour. This book is an experience.

Read more

'a formidable, timeless work, destined to be a modern classic' OLIVIE BLAKE 'A novel to savour. This book is an experience. I envy those who get to read it for the first time' REBECCA ROSS 'A witty, gory, harrowing ride' LEIGH BARDUGO 'Literary super-stardom doesn't seem too far out of her reach now' THE HERALD ‘Mind-bending fantasy’ GRAZIA
===
Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own. Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek: The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world. That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams…. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion. With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like. But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.
===
"Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world. That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in Hell, and she's going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams"--Page 4 of cover.

Killing Stella

Killing Stella

Marlen Haushofer

2025

Fiction

Never before in English, a gripping, razor-sharp novella of a fractured marriage, by the ferociously talented author of THE WALL Main description: Left alone for the weekend while her husband and two children are visiting her in-laws, the narrator of KILLING STELLA recounts the addition of her friend’s daughter, Stella, into their already tense and tumultuous household. Staring out the window at her garden, she worries about the baby bird in the linden tree, about her husband, Richard, who flits from one adulterous affair to another, about her son’s gloomy demeanor and her daughter’s obliviousness to everything, and, most of all, she worries about Stella, a confused teenager who has just met a sudden and disastrous end.

Read more

Never before in English, a gripping, razor-sharp novella of a fractured marriage, by the ferociously talented author of THE WALL Main description: Left alone for the weekend while her husband and two children are visiting her in-laws, the narrator of KILLING STELLA recounts the addition of her friend’s daughter, Stella, into their already tense and tumultuous household. Staring out the window at her garden, she worries about the baby bird in the linden tree, about her husband, Richard, who flits from one adulterous affair to another, about her son’s gloomy demeanor and her daughter’s obliviousness to everything, and, most of all, she worries about Stella, a confused teenager who has just met a sudden and disastrous end. A domestic horror story that builds to an apocalyptic ending, KILLING STELLA distills many of the themes of Marlen Haushofer’s acclaimed novel THE WALL into a claustrophobic, gothic, shattering novella.

King Sorrow

King Sorrow

Joe Hill

2025

Fiction

SOME PROMISES SHOULD NEVER BE MADE... ***A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK*** 'With King Sorrow, Joe Hill gloriously resurrects the doorstop horror blockbuster for a startling new century.' ALAN MOORE 'A soaring epic and painfully intimate.

Read more

SOME PROMISES SHOULD NEVER BE MADE... ***A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK*** 'With King Sorrow, Joe Hill gloriously resurrects the doorstop horror blockbuster for a startling new century.' ALAN MOORE 'A soaring epic and painfully intimate. You won't be able to stop burning through the pages' PAUL TREMBLAY 'Epic, exhilarating and haunting in equal measures' DAILY EXPRESS 'A commanding, captivating read' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Epic...a multi-layered, rich response to the horrors and hopes of living today' DAILY MAIL Bookish dreamer Arthur Oakes is a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters and beautiful buildings. But his idyll - and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot - is shattered when local drug dealers force him into a terrible crime: stealing rare and valuable books from the exceptional college library. Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for help: the wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren; brave, beautiful Allison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen. Together they dream up an impossible, fantastical scheme that they scarcely imagine will work: to summon the fabled dragon King Sorrow to kill those tormenting Arthur. But the six stumble backwards into a deadly bargain - they soon learn they must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow each year or one of them will become his next victim. Unleashing consequences they can neither predict nor control, this promise will, over the course of four decades, shape and endanger their lives in ways they could never expect. 'A brilliantly Faustian fable with a heart as huge as a dragon's, and a stinging twist in its tail. I devoured it.' RUTH WARE 'A wild, genre-defying journey, packed with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns' DAILY MIRROR 'Epic! KING SORROW is Hill's best and most ambitious work to date' LINWOOD BARCLAY 'Magnificent - by far and away Hill's best book to date' SFX 'When they talk about "natural born storytellers," it's Joe Hill they're talking about' JOHN SCALZI 'A monster of a book...a vast, brimstoned, relentless zinger' NICK HARKAWAY Praise for Sunday Times bestseller Joe Hill: 'Fantastically compelling' THE OBSERVER 'Clever, gripping and packs a hell of a punch' JOANNE HARRIS 'Character-driven stories that enthral and thrill' DAILY MAIL 'Original and gripping' GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
===
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill, a chilling tale of modern-world dangers, dark academia, and the unexpected consequences of revenge as six friends dabble in the occult and are tragically, horrifyingly successful… calling forth an evil entity that demands regular human sacrifice. “A brilliantly Faustian fable with a heart as huge as a dragon’s, and a stinging twist in its tail. I devoured it.” —Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Suite 11 Arthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters, exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll—and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot—is shattered when a local drug dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can imagine: stealing rare books from the college library. Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world. But there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year—or become his next meal.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Kiran Desai

2025

Fiction

BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLIST • KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss “A transcendent triumph . .

Read more

BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLIST • KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss “A transcendent triumph . . . not so much a novel as a marvel.”—The New York Times Book Review “A spectacular literary achievement. I wanted to pack a little suitcase and stay inside this book forever.”—Ann Patchett “Devastating, lyrical, and deeply romantic . . . an unmitigated joy to read.”—Khaled Hosseini One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Fall: The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Time, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Book Riot, Publishers Weekly, and more When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that served only to drive Sonia and Sunny apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India. She fears that she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.
===
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated, yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that only served to drive Sonia and Sunny apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India, fearing she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists. ‘I wanted to pack a little suitcase and stay inside this book forever’ Ann Patchett Profound, sparkling, funny, exquisitely written, [The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny] teaches us how to live in full-throated exultation for the astonishments of this world’ Lauren Groff
===
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF PEOPLE’S TOP 5 BOOKS OF THE YEAR BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLIST KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Washington Post, NPR, Time, Oprah Daily, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Economist, Harper’s Bazaar, The Globe and Mail, BBC, New York Post, Kirkus Reviews, Elle, Library Journal, Libby, Chicago Public Library, Lit Hub ONE OF BOOKPAGE’S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss “A transcendent triumph . . . not so much a novel as a marvel.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) “A magnificent saga.”—Washington Post “Lavish, funny, smart, and wise, this is a novel that will last.”—The Boston Globe “A spectacular literary achievement. I wanted to pack a little suitcase and stay inside this book forever.”—Ann Patchett “A novel so wonderful, when I got to the last page, I turned to the first and began again.”—Sandra Cisneros “Devastating, lyrical, and deeply romantic . . . an unmitigated joy to read.”—Khaled Hosseini “A masterpiece.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review “A sweeping page-turner, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is a kind of Romeo and Juliet story for a modern, globalized age.”—Publishers Weekly (Top 10 New Fall Books) When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that served only to drive Sonia and Sunny apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India. She fears that she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.

Lonely Crowds

Lonely Crowds

Stephanie Wambugu

2025

Fiction

Luster meets The Idiot in this riveting debut novel about a volatile friendship between two outsiders who escape their bleak childhoods and enter the glamorous early '90s art world in New York City, where only one of them can make it. Ruth, an only child of recent immigrants to New England, lives in an emotionally cold home and attends the local Catholic girl’s school on a scholarship.

Read more

Luster meets The Idiot in this riveting debut novel about a volatile friendship between two outsiders who escape their bleak childhoods and enter the glamorous early '90s art world in New York City, where only one of them can make it. Ruth, an only child of recent immigrants to New England, lives in an emotionally cold home and attends the local Catholic girl’s school on a scholarship. Maria, a beautiful orphan whose Panamanian mother dies by suicide and is taken care of by an ill, unloving aunt, is one of the only other students attending the school on a scholarship. Ruth is drawn forcefully into Maria’s orbit, and they fall into an easy, yet intense, friendship. Her devotion to her charming and bright new friend opens up her previously sheltered world. While Maria, charismatic and aware of her ability to influence others, eases into her full self, embracing her sexuality and her desire to be an artist, Ruth is mostly content to follow her around: to college and then into the early-nineties art world of New York City. There, ambition and competition threaten to rupture their friendship, while strong and unspoken forces pull them together over the years. Whereas Maria finds early success in New York City as an artist, Ruth stumbles along the fringes of the art world, pulled toward a quieter life of work and marriage. As their lives converge and diverge, they meet in one final and fateful confrontation. Ruth and Maria's decades-long friendship interrogates the nature of intimacy, desire, class and time. What does it mean to be an artist and to be true to oneself? What does it mean to give up on an obsession? Marking the arrival of a sensational new literary talent, Lonely Crowds challenges us to reckon honestly with our own ambitions and the lives we hope to lead.
===
Ruth, an only child of recent immigrants to New England, lives in an emotionally cold home and attends the local Catholic girl's school on a scholarship. Maria, a beautiful orphan whose Panamanian mother dies by suicide and is taken care of by an ill, unloving aunt, is one of the only other students attending the school on a scholarship. Ruth is drawn forcefully into Maria's orbit, and they fall into an easy, yet intense, friendship. Her devotion to her charming and bright new friend opens up her previously sheltered world. While Maria, charismatic and aware of her ability to influence others, eases into her full self, embracing her sexuality and her desire to be an artist, Ruth is mostly content to follow her around: to college and then into the early-nineties art world of New York City. There, ambition and competition threaten to rupture their friendship, while strong and unspoken forces pull them together over the years. Whereas Maria finds early success in New York City as an artist, Ruth stumbles along the fringes of the art world, pulled toward a quieter life of work and marriage. As their lives converge and diverge, they meet in one final and fateful confrontation. Ruth and Maria's decades-long friendship interrogates the nature of intimacy, desire, class and time. What does it mean to be an artist and to be true to oneself? What does it mean to give up on an obsession? Marking the arrival of a sensational new literary talent, Lonely Crowds challenges us to reckon honestly with our own ambitions and the lives we hope to lead.

Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar

Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar

Katie Yee

2025

Fiction

A New York Times Notable Book. One of Time’s 100 Must-Read Book of 2025.

Read more

A New York Times Notable Book. One of Time’s 100 Must-Read Book of 2025. Summer’s Best Beach Reads by The New York Times • Books You Should Read This July by New York magazine • Books We’re Most Excited About by Today • Best Beach Reads by Harper’s Bazaar • Best Books of Summer by ELLE • Most Anticipated Books of the Summer by Time • Best Summer Reads by Oprah Daily • Books to Read this Summer by The Washington Post “As with Nora Ephron’s Heartburn…you read Maggie to spend time with its author.” —The Washington Post A Chinese American woman spins tragedy into comedy when her life falls apart in a taut, wry debut novel, “as playful as it is profound” (Alison Espach, author of The Wedding People)—perfect for fans of Joan Is Okay and Crying in H Mart. A man and a woman walk into a restaurant. The woman expects a lovely night filled with endless plates of samosas. Instead, she finds out her husband is having an affair with a woman named Maggie. A short while after, her chest starts to ache. She walks into an examination room, where she finds out the pain in her breast isn’t just heartbreak—it’s cancer. She decides to call the tumor Maggie. Unfolding in fragments over the course of the ensuing months, Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar follows the narrator as she embarks on a journey of grief, healing, and reclamation. She starts talking to Maggie (the tumor), getting acquainted with her body’s new inhabitant. She overgenerously creates a “Guide to My Husband: A User’s Manual” for Maggie (the other woman), hoping to ease the process of discovering her ex-husband’s whims and quirks. She turns her children’s bedtime stories into retellings of Chinese folklore passed down by her own mother, in an attempt to make them fall in love with their shared culture—and to maybe save herself in the process. In the style of Jenny Offill and the tradition of Nora Ephron’s hilarious and devastating writing on heartbreak and womanhood, Maggie is a master class in transforming personal tragedy into a form of defiant comedy.

Night Watch

Night Watch

Kevin Young

2025

Poetry

From the award-winning poet at the height of his career, a book of personal and American experiences, both beautiful and troubling, touching on the generative cycle of loss and renewal Following on his exquisite Stones, Kevin Young’s new collection, written over the span of sixteen years, shapes stories of loss and legacy, inspired in part by other lives. After starting in the bayous of his family's Louisiana, Young journeys to further states of mind in “All Souls,” evoking “The whale / who finds the shore / & our poor prayers.” Another central sequence, “The Two-Headed Nightingale,” is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American “Carolina Twins.” Born into enslavement, stolen, and then displayed by P.

Read more

From the award-winning poet at the height of his career, a book of personal and American experiences, both beautiful and troubling, touching on the generative cycle of loss and renewal Following on his exquisite Stones, Kevin Young’s new collection, written over the span of sixteen years, shapes stories of loss and legacy, inspired in part by other lives. After starting in the bayous of his family's Louisiana, Young journeys to further states of mind in “All Souls,” evoking “The whale / who finds the shore / & our poor prayers.” Another central sequence, “The Two-Headed Nightingale,” is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American “Carolina Twins.” Born into enslavement, stolen, and then displayed by P. T. Barnum and others, the twins later toured the world as free women, their alto and soprano voices harmonizing their own way. Young’s poem explores their evolving philosophical selfhood and pluralities: “As one we sang, /we spake— / She was the body / I the soul / Without one / Perishes the whole.” In “Darkling,” a cycle of poems inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Young expands and embroiders the circles of Hell, drawing a cosmology of both loneliness and accompaniment, where “the dead don’t know / what to do / with themselves.” Young writes of grief and hope as familiar yet surprising states: “It’s like a language, / loss—,” he writes, “learnt only / by living—there—.” Evoking the history of poetry, from the darkling thrush to the darkling plain, Young is defiant and playful on the way through purgatory to a kind of paradise. When he goes, he warns, “don't dare sing Amazing Grace”—that “National / Anthem of Suffering.” Instead, he suggests, “When I Fly Away, / Don't dare hold no vigil . . . Just burn the whole / Town on down.” This collection will stand as one of Young’s best—his voice shaping sorrow with music, wisdom, heartache, and wit.
===
'One of the most important poets of his generation' Washington Post A richly evocative and moving collection about African American identity and history, this is an ode to home places and the dearly departed, and to what of them - of us - poetry can save. In bellowing declarations of suffering and whispered prayers of faith, Night Watch speaks to an inner history which is compelling and authentic and deeply American, rippling with timely and devastating truths about the insidious nature of the American nation. 'Keeping up with him is like trying to keep up with Bob Dylan or Prince in their primes' New York Times

On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)

On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)

Solvej Balle

2025

Fiction

In the marvelous third installment of Balle's "astonishing" (The Washington Post) septology, Tara's November 18th transforms when she discovers that she is no longer alone in her endless autumnal day. For she has met someone who remembers, and who knows as well as she does that "it is autumn, but that we're not heading into winter.

Read more

In the marvelous third installment of Balle's "astonishing" (The Washington Post) septology, Tara's November 18th transforms when she discovers that she is no longer alone in her endless autumnal day. For she has met someone who remembers, and who knows as well as she does that "it is autumn, but that we're not heading into winter. That spring and summer will not follow. That the reds and yellows of the trees are here to stay. That yesterday doesn't mean the seventeenth of November, that tomorrow means the eighteenth, and that the nineteenth is a day we may never see." Where Book I and II focused on a single woman's involuntary journey away from her life and her loved ones and into the chasm of time, Book III brings us back into the realm of companionship, with all its thrills, odd quirks, and a sense of mutual bewilderment at having to relearn how to exist alongside others in a shared reality. And then of course, what of Tara's husband Thomas, still sitting alone day after day, entirely unawares, in their house in Clarion-sous-Bois, waiting for his wife to return? Blending poetry and philosophical inquiry with rich reflections on our discombobulating times, Balle's On the Calculation of Volume asks us to consider: What is a single person's responsibility to humanity and to the preservation of this world?
===
“A literary phenomenon nearly forty years in the making, and a speculative masterwork” (New York Magazine), Balle’s epic On the Calculation of Volume in Book III introduces new thrills to the adventures of Tara Selter’s endless November day LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE In the marvelous third installment of Balle’s “astonishing” (The Washington Post) septology, Tara’s November 18th transforms when she discovers that she is no longer alone in her endless autumnal day. For she has met someone who remembers, and who knows as well as she does that “it is autumn, but that we’re not heading into winter. That spring and summer will not follow. That the reds and yellows of the trees are here to stay. That yesterday doesn’t mean the seventeenth of November, that tomorrow means the eighteenth, and that the nineteenth is a day we may never see.” Where Book I and II focused on a single woman’s involuntary journey away from her life and her loved ones and into the chasm of time, Book III brings us back into the realm of companionship, with all its thrills, odd quirks, and a sense of mutual bewilderment at having to relearn how to exist alongside others in a shared reality. And then of course, what of Tara’s husband Thomas, still sitting alone day after day, entirely unawares, in their house in Clarion-sous-Bois, waiting for his wife to return? Blending poetry and philosophical inquiry with rich reflections on our discombobulating times, Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume asks us to consider: What is a single person’s responsibility to humanity and to the preservation of this world?

Perfection

Perfection

Vincenzo Latronico

2025

Fiction

A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 A 2025 International Booker Prize Shortlist Nominee Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Translated Literature Winner of AIRMAIL's Inaugural Tom Wolfe Literary Prize for Fiction A scathing, provocative novel about contemporary existence by a rising star in Italian literature. Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin.

Read more

A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 A 2025 International Booker Prize Shortlist Nominee Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Translated Literature Winner of AIRMAIL's Inaugural Tom Wolfe Literary Prize for Fiction A scathing, provocative novel about contemporary existence by a rising star in Italian literature. Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital "creatives" exploring the excitements of the city, freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online. At first, they reasonably deduce that they've turned their passion for aesthetics into a viable, even enviable career, but the years go by, and Anna and Tom grow bored. As their friends move back home or move on, so their own work and sex life—and the life of Berlin itself—begin to lose their luster. An attempt to put their politics into action fizzles in embarrassed self-doubt. Edging closer to forty, they try living as digital nomads only to discover that, wherever they go, "the brand of oat milk in their flat whites was the same." Perfection—Vincenzo Latronico's first book to be translated into English—is a scathing novel about contemporary existence, a tale of two people gradually waking up to find themselves in various traps, wondering how it all came to be. Was it a lack of foresight, or were they just born too late?

Playworld

Playworld

Adam Ross

2025

Fiction

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER, PEOPLE, AND TOWN & COUNTRY • NAMED A NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE WASHINGTON POST • GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE FINALIST • MULANEY READS BOOK CLUB PICK • A big and big-hearted novel—one enthralling, transformative year in the life of a child actor coming of age in a bygone Manhattan, from the critically acclaimed author of Mr. Peanut "A gorgeous cat's cradle of a book .

Read more

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER, PEOPLE, AND TOWN & COUNTRY • NAMED A NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE WASHINGTON POST • GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE FINALIST • MULANEY READS BOOK CLUB PICK • A big and big-hearted novel—one enthralling, transformative year in the life of a child actor coming of age in a bygone Manhattan, from the critically acclaimed author of Mr. Peanut "A gorgeous cat's cradle of a book . . . The swirling vapors of Holden Caulfield are present in Playworld, for sure, but also Lolita, Willy Loman, Garp." —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review "Extraordinary . . . A beguiling ode to a lost era . . . Line for line the book is a revelation." —Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times “In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was thirty-six, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didn’t seem strange at the time.” Griffin Hurt is in over his head. Between his role as Peter Proton on the hit TV show The Nuclear Family and the pressure of high school at New York's elite Boyd Prep—along with the increasingly compromising demands of his wrestling coach—he's teetering on the edge of collapse. Then comes Naomi Shah, twenty-two years Griffin’s senior. Unwilling to lay his burdens on his shrink—whom he shares with his father, mother, and younger brother—Griffin soon finds himself in the back of Naomi’s Mercedes sedan, again and again, confessing all to the one person who might do him the most harm. Less a bildungsroman than a story of miseducation, Playworld is a novel of epic proportions, bursting with laughter and heartache. Adam Ross immerses us in the life of Griffin and his loving (yet disintegrating) family while seeming to evoke the entirety of Manhattan and the ethos of an era—with Jimmy Carter on his way out and a B-list celebrity named Ronald Reagan on his way in. Surrounded by adults who embody the age’s excesses—and who seem to care little about what their children are up to—Griffin is left to himself to find the line between youth and maturity, dependence and love, acting and truly grappling with life.

The Rarest Fruit

Gaëlle Bélem

The Remembered Soldier

The Remembered Soldier

Anjet Daanje

2025

Fiction

FINALIST for the 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD for TRANSLATED LITERATURE "Superb . .

Read more

FINALIST for the 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD for TRANSLATED LITERATURE "Superb . . . In its dangerous admixture of truth and reassembled reality, 'The Remembered Soldier' develops an unforgettable picture of marital love."—Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal An extraordinary love story and a captivating novel about the power of memory and imagination: Flanders 1922. After serving as a soldier in the Great War, Noon Merckem has lost his memory and lives in a psychiatric asylum. Countless women, responding to a newspaper ad, visit him there in the hope of finding their spouse who vanished in battle. One day a woman, Julienne, appears and recognizes Noon as her husband, the photographer Amand Coppens, and takes him home against medical advice. But their miraculous reunion doesn’t turn out the way that Julienne wants her envious friends to believe. Only gradually do the two grow close, and Amand’s biography is pieced together on the basis of Julienne’s stories about him. But how can he be certain that she’s telling the truth? In The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje immerses us in the psyche of a war-traumatized man who has lost his identity. When Amand comes to doubt Julienne’s word, the reader is caught up in a riveting spiral of confusion that only the greatest of literature can achieve. Reading group guide to The Remembered Soldier is available for download free of charge at newvesselpress.com.

Shadow Ticket

Shadow Ticket

Thomas Pynchon

2025

Fiction

A New York Times Bestseller • A New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by The Los Angeles Times, Vulture, TIME, The Guardian, The New Republic, and LitHub The new novel from Thomas Pynchon, author of Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, and Inherent Vice. “A masterpiece.” —The Telegraph “Bonkers and brilliant fun.” —The Washington Post “Late Pynchon at his finest.

Read more

A New York Times Bestseller • A New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by The Los Angeles Times, Vulture, TIME, The Guardian, The New Republic, and LitHub The new novel from Thomas Pynchon, author of Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, and Inherent Vice. “A masterpiece.” —The Telegraph “Bonkers and brilliant fun.” —The Washington Post “Late Pynchon at his finest. Dark as a vampire’s pocket, light-fingered as a jewel thief, Shadow Ticket capers across the page with breezy, baggy-pants assurance — and then pauses on its way down the fire escape just long enough to crack your heart open.” —The Los Angeles Times Milwaukee 1932, the Great Depression going full blast, repeal of Prohibition just around the corner, Al Capone in the federal pen, the private investigation business shifting from labor-management relations to the more domestic kind. Hicks McTaggart, a onetime strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he’s found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine case, locating and bringing back the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune who’s taken a mind to go wandering. Before he knows it, he’s been shanghaied onto a transoceanic liner, ending up eventually in Hungary where there’s no shoreline, a language from some other planet, and enough pastry to see any cop well into retirement—and of course no sign of the runaway heiress he’s supposed to be chasing. By the time Hicks catches up with her he will find himself also entangled with Nazis, Soviet agents, British counterspies, swing musicians, practitioners of the paranormal, outlaw motorcyclists, and the troubles that come with each of them, none of which Hicks is qualified, forget about being paid, to deal with. Surrounded by history he has no grasp on and can’t see his way around in or out of, the only bright side for Hicks is it’s the dawn of the Big Band Era and as it happens he’s a pretty good dancer. Whether this will be enough to allow him somehow to Lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee and the normal world, which may no longer exist, is another question.

Silver Elite

Silver Elite

Dani Francis

2025

Fiction

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • In the first book of a sizzling dystopian romance series, psychic gifts are a death sentence and there are rules to survival: Trust no one. Lie to everyone.

Read more

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • In the first book of a sizzling dystopian romance series, psychic gifts are a death sentence and there are rules to survival: Trust no one. Lie to everyone. And whatever you do, don’t fall for your greatest enemy. “Dani Francis wrote the adult dystopian romance I’ve been wanting to read for the longest time. . . . I’m absolutely obsessed, and I need the next book in the series injected into my vein right now.”—Ali Hazelwood, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Bride This stunning hardcover features a jacket with foil and a black-and-white interior map! TRUST NO ONE. Wren Darlington has spent her whole life in hiding, honing her psychic abilities and aiding the rebel Uprising in small ways. On the Continent, being Modified means certain death—and Wren is one of the most powerful Mods in existence. When one careless mistake places her in the hands of the enemy and she’s forced to join their most elite training program, she’s finally handed the perfect opportunity to strike a devastating blow from inside their ranks. LIE TO EVERYONE. But training for Silver Block can be deadly, especially when you’re harboring dangerous secrets and living in close quarters with everyone who wants you dead. AND WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T FALL FOR YOUR GREATEST ENEMY. As the stakes grow ever higher, Wren must prove herself to Silver Block. But that’s easier said than done when your commanding officer is the ruthless and infuriatingly irresistible Cross Redden, who doesn’t miss anything when it comes to her. And as war rages between Mods like her and those who aim to destroy them, Wren must decide just how far she’s willing to go to protect herself . . . and how much of the Continent is worth saving.
===
In the first book of a sizzling dystopian romance series, psychic gifts are a death sentence and there are rules to survival: Trust no one. Lie to everyone. And whatever you do, don’t fall for your greatest enemy. TRUST NO ONE. Wren Darlington has spent her whole life in hiding, honing her psychic abilities and aiding the rebel Uprising in small ways. On the Continent, being Modified means certain death—and Wren is one of the most powerful Mods in existence. When one careless mistake places her in the hands of the enemy and she’s forced to join their most elite training program, she’s finally handed the perfect opportunity to strike a devastating blow from inside their ranks. LIE TO EVERYONE. But training for Silver Block can be deadly, especially when you’re harboring dangerous secrets and living in close quarters with everyone who wants you dead. AND WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T FALL FOR YOUR GREATEST ENEMY. As the stakes grow ever higher, Wren must prove herself to Silver Block. But that’s easier said than done when your commanding officer is the ruthless and infuriatingly irresistible Cross Redden, who doesn’t miss anything when it comes to her. And as war rages between Mods like her and those who aim to destroy them, Wren must decide just how far she’s willing to go to protect herself . . . and how much of the Continent is worth saving.
===
Vertraue niemandem. Belüge jeden. Und was auch immer geschieht: Verliebe dich nicht in deinen größten Feind Wren Darlington hat ihr gesamtes Leben im Verborgenen verbracht. Sie unterstützt das Rebellen-Netzwerk Uprising, das seit Beginn der Neuen Ära Widerstand gegen General Redden leistet. Gleichzeitig muss sie ihre telepathischen Fähigkeiten verstecken. Denn auf dem Kontinent zu den Modifizierten mit übernatürlichen Kräften zu gehören, bedeutet den sicheren Tod. Aber dann gerät Wren in die Fänge der Company und soll im Trainingsprogramm der Silver-Elite ausgebildet werden - ihr schlimmster Albtraum, und vielleicht auch die einzige Chance das Regime endlich zu stürzen! Doch ihr Vorgesetzter ist niemand Geringeres als Captain Cross Redden, der misstrauische und viel zu attraktive Sohn des Generals, der den Auftrag hat, Wren nicht aus den Augen zu lassen ... »Dani Francis bringt die Dystopien zurück in unsere Bücherregale! Ich habe ewig auf ein Buch wie Silver Elite gewartet, und es hat all meine Erwartungen übertroffen.« ALI HAZELWOOD Band 1 der SILVER-ELITE-Reihe von TIKTOK-Hype-Autorin Dani Francis

The Sisters

The Sisters

Jonas Hassen Khemiri

2025

Fiction

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR One of The New Yorker's 24 Essential Reads of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction One of Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal One of the BBC’s 10 Best Books of the Summer | A Times (London) Best Book of the Year “One gawps . .

Read more

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR One of The New Yorker's 24 Essential Reads of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction One of Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal One of the BBC’s 10 Best Books of the Summer | A Times (London) Best Book of the Year “One gawps . . . at its breadth and ambition. [The Sisters is] a transnational tour de force.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review “One of this summer’s most buzzed-about novels.” —Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times “A classic story about sibling rivalry . . . One of the best novels I've ever read about the complexities of mixed heritage.” —Fredrik Backman, The New Yorker “[The Sisters] generates every kind of heat . . . If you welcome this novel into your mind, it will warm and transform you.” —Tess Gunty, National Book Award–winning author of The Rabbit Hutch “Astonishing . . . Every character—every sentence—is startlingly, indubitably alive.” —Katie Kitamura, author of Audition and Intimacies An addictively entertaining family saga by a National Book Award finalist. Meet the Mikkola sisters: Ina, Evelyn, and Anastasia. Their mother is a Tunisian carpet seller, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organizer. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. And Anastasia is moody, chaotic, a shape-shifting presence, quick to anger. Ina meets her future husband when she’s dragged to a New Year’s rave by her sisters, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actress. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life. Following the sisters from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. Over the course of three decades, his life intersects with the sisters, from a chance encounter in Tunis to the scene of a fighter jet crash in Stockholm. When Evelyn disappears on a trip to New York, Jonas manages to track her down—and helps her to break the curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for decades. In the process, a shocking revelation changes everything about who they think they are. Narrated in six parts, each spanning a period ranging from a year to a day to a single minute, Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s The Sisters is a big, vivid family saga of the highest order—an addictively entertaining tour de force.
===
'It's ambitious, it's full of life, it's a triumph' The Times SELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE SUMMER BY THE TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, VULTURE, BOSTON GLOBE, AND BBC 'Astonishing . . . every character - every sentence - is startlingly, indubitably alive' Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies 'A triumph' Irish Times 'One of the best novels I've ever read about the complexities of mixed heritage' New Yorker 'I really loved this book . . . a novel to sink into' New York Times 'One of the most enjoyable books I've read so far in 2025 . . . a page turner' The Gloss 'Superb . . . one of those books you live inside and miss when it's over' Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost 'A moving appraisal of family, language, and the spiritual developments that accrue over a life' Raven Leilani, author of Luster 'A thoroughly fascinating story about sibling rivalry, loyalty, and love' Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove 'If you welcome this novel into your mind, it will warm and transform you' Tess Gunty, author of the Rabbit Hutch 'His masterpiece . . . life overflows its pages' Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing MEET THE MIKKOLA SISTERS: INA, EVELYN, AND ANASTASIA. Their mother is a Tunisian saleswoman, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organizer. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. And Anastasia is moody, chaotic, quick to anger. Ina meets her future husband when she's dragged to a New Year's party by her sisters, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actress. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life. Following them from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. His life intersects with the sisters across decades and continents, from Stockholm to Tunis and New York. When Evelyn disappears, it's Jonas who tracks her down - and helps her to break a curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for years. But in the process, a shocking revelation changes everything. Narrated in six parts, each spanning a period ranging from a year to a day to a single minute, The Sisters is a vivid, epic family saga of the highest order - an addictively entertaining tour de force.

The Slip

The Slip

Lucas Schaefer

2025

Fiction

A HAYMAKER OF AN AMERICAN NOVEL ABOUT A MISSING TEENAGE BOY, CASES OF FLUID AND MISTAKEN IDENTITY, AND THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF BOXING Austin, Texas: It's the summer of 1998, and there's a new face on the scene at Terry Tucker's Boxing Gym. Sixteen-year-old Nathaniel Rothstein has never felt comfortable in his own skin, but under the tutelage of a swaggering Haitian-born ex-fighter named David Dalice, he begins to come into his own.

Read more

A HAYMAKER OF AN AMERICAN NOVEL ABOUT A MISSING TEENAGE BOY, CASES OF FLUID AND MISTAKEN IDENTITY, AND THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF BOXING Austin, Texas: It's the summer of 1998, and there's a new face on the scene at Terry Tucker's Boxing Gym. Sixteen-year-old Nathaniel Rothstein has never felt comfortable in his own skin, but under the tutelage of a swaggering Haitian-born ex-fighter named David Dalice, he begins to come into his own. Even the boy's slightly stoned uncle, Bob Alexander, who is supposed to be watching him for the summer, notices the change. Nathaniel is happier, more confident - tanner, even. Then one night he vanishes, leaving little trace behind. Across the city, Charles Rex, now going simply by 'X', has been undergoing a teenage transformation of his own, trolling the phone sex hotline that his mother works, seeking an outlet for everything that feels wrong about his body, looking for intimacy and acceptance in a culture that denies him both. As a surprising and unlikely romance blooms, X feels, for a moment, like he might have found the safety he's been searching for. But it's never that simple. More than a decade later, Nathaniel's uncle Bob receives a shocking tip, propelling him to open his own investigation into his nephew's disappearance. The resulting search involves gymgoers past and present, including a down-on-his-luck twin and his opportunistic brother; a rookie cop determined to prove herself; and Alexis Cepeda, a promising lightweight who crossed the US-Mexico border when he was only fourteen, carrying with him a license bearing the wrong name and face. Bobbing and weaving across the ever-shifting canvas of a changing country, The Slip is an audacious, daring look at sex and race in America that builds to an unforgettable collision in the center of the ring. 'A sprawling, unpredictable and hilarious masterpiece. Hell of a debut.' Zoë Foster Blake
===
NATIONAL BESTSELLER | WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE | NBCC JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FINALIST One of The New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of 2025 One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2025 For readers of Jonathan Franzen and Nathan Hill comes a haymaker of an American novel about a missing teenage boy, cases of fluid and mistaken identity, and the transformative power of boxing. Austin, Texas: It’s the summer of 1998, and there’s a new face on the scene at Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym. Sixteen-year-old Nathaniel Rothstein has never felt comfortable in his own skin, but under the tutelage of a swaggering, Haitian-born ex-fighter named David Dalice, he begins to come into his own. Even the boy’s slightly stoned uncle, Bob Alexander, who is supposed to be watching him for the summer, notices the change. Nathaniel is happier, more confident—tanner, even. Then one night he vanishes, leaving little trace behind. Across the city, Charles Rex, now going simply by “X,” has been undergoing a teenage transformation of his own, trolling the phone sex hotline that his mother works, seeking an outlet for everything that feels wrong about his body, looking for intimacy and acceptance in a culture that denies him both. As a surprising and unlikely romance blooms, X feels, for a moment, like he might have found the safety he’s been searching for. But it's never that simple. More than a decade later, Nathaniel’s uncle Bob receives a shocking tip, propelling him to open his own investigation into his nephew’s disappearance. The resulting search involves gymgoers past and present, including a down-on-his-luck twin and his opportunistic brother; a rookie cop determined to prove herself; and Alexis Cepeda, a promising lightweight, who crossed the US-Mexico border when he was only fourteen, carrying with him a license bearing the wrong name and face. Bobbing and weaving across the ever-shifting canvas of a changing country, The Slip is an audacious, daring look at sex and race in America that builds to an unforgettable collision in the center of the ring.

The South

The South

Tash Aw

2025

Fiction

"When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they've inherited, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought.

Read more

"When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they've inherited, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought. Jay's father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the son of the farm's manager, different from him in every way except for one. Out in the fields, and on the streets into town, the charge between the boys intensifies. Inside the house, the other family members begin to confront their own secrets and regrets. Jack is a professor at a struggling local college whose failures might have begun when he married his student, Sui Ching. Sui Ching does her best to keep the family together, though she too wonders what her life could have been. And Fong, the manager, refuses to look at what is: at Chuan, at the land, at the global forces that threaten to render his whole life obsolete." --
===
'Shimmeringly intelligent and elegiacally intimate' YIYUN LI 'A mesmerising tale. Both heartbreaking and joyful' MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM A radiant novel of the longing that blooms between two boys over the course of one summer--about family, desire, and what we inherit--from celebrated author Tash Aw.

Startlement

New and Selected Poems

Ada Limón

Stone Yard Devotional

Stone Yard Devotional

Charlotte Wood

2023

Fiction

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR A LOS ANGELES TIMES TOP FIFTEEN BOOK OF THE YEAR Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, a novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be good, from the award-winning author of The Weekend. “Stone Yard Devotional is as extraordinary as you’ve heard.” —The Washington Post “An exquisite, wrenching novel of leaving your life behind.” —New York Times Book Review "Meditative (but by no means uneventful)." —New York Times "Riveting prose about how humans beat back despair."—Los Angeles Times Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia.

Read more

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR A LOS ANGELES TIMES TOP FIFTEEN BOOK OF THE YEAR Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, a novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be good, from the award-winning author of The Weekend. “Stone Yard Devotional is as extraordinary as you’ve heard.” —The Washington Post “An exquisite, wrenching novel of leaving your life behind.” —New York Times Book Review "Meditative (but by no means uneventful)." —New York Times "Riveting prose about how humans beat back despair."—Los Angeles Times Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident. But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past. Meditative, moving, and finely observed, Stone Yard Devotional is a seminal novel from a writer of rare power, exploring what it means to retreat from the world, the true nature of forgiveness, and the sustained effect of grief on the human soul.
===
The new Booker-longlisted novel by Charlotte Wood, the Stella Prize-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend. A fearless exploration of forgiveness, grief and the complicated beauty of female friendship.[Bokinfo].
===
A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be 'good', from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend. SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIME MINISTER'S LITERARY AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE AGE BOOK OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE ABIA AWARD FOR LITERARY FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE BARBARA JEFFERIS AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD BOOK OF THE YEAR, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD BOOK OF THE YEAR, ABC A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past. With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? A meditative and deeply moving novel from one of Australia's most acclaimed and best loved writers. 'Extraordinary ... a stunning work of fiction from a major writer who keeps getting better' THE AUSTRALIAN 'Remarkable ... I'm still trying to figure out how she pulled it off. The best thing she's done' TIM WINTON, author of The Shepherd's Hut 'I have rarely been so absorbed by a novel ... A powerful, generous book' GUARDIAN 'It extends and deepens Wood's already remarkable achievements as a novelist in powerful and often profound ways' THE SATURDAY PAPER 'A beautiful, mature work that does not flinch from life' SUNDAY TIMES 'A book about what it means to be good: simply and with great humility, it asks the big questions, leaving the reader feeling kinder, more brave, enlarged' ANNE ENRIGHT, author of The Wren, The Wren 'Beautiful, strange and otherworldly' PAULA HAWKINS, bestselling author of A Slow Fire Burning 'Both profound and addictively entertaining. I loved it' CLARE CHAMBERS, bestselling author of Small Pleasures 'No words can quite convey how much I loved this book' KAREN JOY FOWLER, author of Booth 'Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout.' THE GUARDIAN UK

Sunrise on the Reaping

Sunrise on the Reaping

Suzanne Collins

2024

Fiction

"Sunrise on the Reaping is a propulsive, heart-wrenching addition to The Hunger Games, adding welcome texture to the cruel world of Panem . This is the project of dystopian fiction: to shine a light in tyranny's greasiest corners and show how people - ordinary, determined human beings - might take it apart" - New York Times "Collins is an excellent writer, and there are moments of surprising lyricism .

Read more

"Sunrise on the Reaping is a propulsive, heart-wrenching addition to The Hunger Games, adding welcome texture to the cruel world of Panem . This is the project of dystopian fiction: to shine a light in tyranny's greasiest corners and show how people - ordinary, determined human beings - might take it apart" - New York Times "Collins is an excellent writer, and there are moments of surprising lyricism . Sunrise on the Reaping contains enough both to snare new readers and to satisfy the most bloodthirsty fan" - Guardian When you've been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for? As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honour of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes. Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves. When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena. Four books, five films and one worldwide phenomenon, The Hunger Gamesoriginal trilogy changed the face of global YA and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakeswas an instant number one bestseller (Nielsen Bookscan, May 2020). All four of the Hunger Games novels have been made into major feature films, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Rachel Zegler, Tom Blyth and Peter Dinklage. A feature film for Sunrise On the Reaping - the fifth book in the Hunger Games series - is slated for November 2026 OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES The Hunger Games The Hunger Games illustrated edition released in October 2024 Catching Fire Mockingjay The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

These Summer Storms

These Summer Storms

Sarah MacLean

2025

Fiction

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From author Sarah MacLean, a razor-sharp, wildly sexy novel about a wealthy New England family’s long-overdue reckoning . .

Read more

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From author Sarah MacLean, a razor-sharp, wildly sexy novel about a wealthy New England family’s long-overdue reckoning . . . and the one week that threatens to tear them apart. “Deliciously impossible to put down.”—Jodi Picoult “Addictive.”—Ali Hazelwood “A gripping inheritance drama, wrapped around a swoony summer romance.”—The New York Times Book Review A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, NPR, KIRKUS REVIEWS, LIBRARY JOURNAL Alice Storm hasn’t been welcome at her family’s magnificent private island off the Rhode Island coast in five years—not since she was cast out and built her life beyond the Storm name, influence, and untold billions. But the shocking death of her larger-than-life father changes everything. Alice plans to keep her head down, pay her final respects (such as they are), and leave the minute the funeral is over. Unfortunately, her father had other plans. The eccentric, manipulative patriarch left his family a final challenge—an inheritance game designed to upend their world. The rules are clear: spend one week on the island, complete their assigned tasks, and receive the inheritance. But a whole week on Storm Island is no easy task for Alice. Every corner of the sprawling old house is bursting with chaos: Her older sister’s secret love affair. Her brother’s unyielding arrogance. Her younger sister’s constant analysis of the vibes. Her mother’s cold judgment. And all under the stern, watchful gaze of Jack Dean, her father’s intriguing and too-handsome second-in-command. It will be a miracle if Alice manages to escape unscathed. A smart and tender story about the transformative power of grief, love, and family, this luscious novel explores past secrets, present truths, and futures forged in the wake of wild summer storms.

To Smithereens

To Smithereens

Rosalyn Drexler

1972

Fiction Women wrestlers

"To Smithereens is an extraordinarily good book, but then so is everything Rosalyn Drexler ever wrote." --The New York Times A provocative, cheeky romp through the Manhattan art scene and the female wrestling world of the 1970s, from an overlooked star of the Pop Art movement When Rosa, a curious, brash twenty-something flitting aimlessly through the Manhattan avant garde art scene, meets Paul, an art critic who is obsessed with being dominated by physically powerful women, an electric and off-kilter love story commences. On Paul's encouragement, Rosa becomes a professional wrestler and joins the women's wrestling circuit on a tour of the American South.

Read more

"To Smithereens is an extraordinarily good book, but then so is everything Rosalyn Drexler ever wrote." --The New York Times A provocative, cheeky romp through the Manhattan art scene and the female wrestling world of the 1970s, from an overlooked star of the Pop Art movement When Rosa, a curious, brash twenty-something flitting aimlessly through the Manhattan avant garde art scene, meets Paul, an art critic who is obsessed with being dominated by physically powerful women, an electric and off-kilter love story commences. On Paul's encouragement, Rosa becomes a professional wrestler and joins the women's wrestling circuit on a tour of the American South. Through wrestling, Rosa learns to articulate what kind of life she wants, and to wriggle free of Paul's attempts to possess her. To Smithereens is a lighthearted reconfiguration of the 1970s American road novel and a delightful satire of the avant garde art world of the same period, in which Rosalyn Drexler was a major figure. Inspired both by Drexler's experiences as one of few women in the Pop Art movement and her own career in the ring (immortalized in Andy Warhol's "Album of a Mat Queen"), and first published in 1972, To Smithereens is an antic, biting portrait of its time from a voice that speaks directly to ours.

The Tokyo Suite

The Tokyo Suite

Giovana Madalosso

2025

Trip

Trip

Amie Barrodale

2025

Fiction

A woman embarks on an odyssey through the afterlife to help her son, who is literally and figuratively lost at sea: a hilarious and deeply moving voyage of the body and the mind. Sandra dies suddenly at a death conference in Nepal attended by academics and mystics.

Read more

A woman embarks on an odyssey through the afterlife to help her son, who is literally and figuratively lost at sea: a hilarious and deeply moving voyage of the body and the mind. Sandra dies suddenly at a death conference in Nepal attended by academics and mystics. Days later, back in America, her teenage son, Trip, runs away with a man who picks him up on the side of a road. Sandra tries to get a message back to Trip through the mystics, but the mystics are distracted, and her son and the strange man set out to sea. Amie Barrodale’s first novel features restless souls, Buddhist deities, divorcees in recovery programs, arguing academics, uncomprehending school principals, and treatment centers for troubled teenagers. It journeys from body to body, through life and death and back again. It tells the story of a mother and son who find other people hard to understand and who are themselves misunderstood. Guiding this wild, unpredictable journey is deep devotion: the desire to save a child and to be a good mother despite it all. Wide-eyed with wonder, blazingly funny and achingly moving, Trip brings us the deeper meaning of The Tibetan Book of the Dead: the past is a memory, the future is a projection, the present is gone before we can see it.

Venetian Vespers

Venetian Vespers

John Banville

2025

Fiction

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A NEW YORKER RECOMMENDED BOOK • IRISH BESTSELLER “A stylish escapade that even Henry James might relish." —Wall Street Journal A masterful, enthralling new novel from the Booker Prize winner Everything was a puzzle, everything a trap set to mystify and hinder me. .

Read more

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A NEW YORKER RECOMMENDED BOOK • IRISH BESTSELLER “A stylish escapade that even Henry James might relish." —Wall Street Journal A masterful, enthralling new novel from the Booker Prize winner Everything was a puzzle, everything a trap set to mystify and hinder me. . . . 1899. As the new century approaches, struggling English writer Evelyn Dolman—a hack, by his own description—marries Laura Rensselaer, daughter of an American oil tycoon. Evelyn anticipates that he and Laura will inherit a substantial fortune and lead a comfortable, settled life. But his hopes are dashed when a mysterious rift between Laura and her father, just before the patriarch’s death, leads to her disinheritance. The unhappy newlyweds travel to Venice to celebrate the New Year at the Palazzo Dioscuri, ancestral home of the charming but treacherous Count Barbarigo. From their first moments in the mist-blanketed floating city, otherworldly occurrences begin to accumulate. Evelyn’s already jangled nerves fray further. Where has Laura disappeared to? How to explain the increasingly sinister circumstances closing around him? Could he be losing his mind? Venetian Vespers is a haunting, atmospheric novel from one of the most sophisticated stylists of our time.
===
A SUNDAY TIMES AND TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR, SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2025 FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SNOW AND THE SEA Everything was a puzzle, everything a trap set to mystify and hinder me. . . Winter 1899, and strange things are afoot. As the new century approaches, English hack writer Evelyn Dolman marries Laura Rensselaer, the daughter of a wealthy American plutocrat. But in the midst of a rift between Laura and her father, Evelyn's plans for a substantial inheritance look to be dashed. Arriving in Venice for their belated honeymoon at Palazzo Dioscuri - the ancestral home of the charming but treacherous Count Barbarigo - the couple are met by a series of seemingly otherworldly occurrences, which exacerbate Evelyn's already frayed nerves. Is it just the sea mist blanketing the floating city, or is he really losing his mind? 'A marvellous and rewarding novelist . . . He is a magician, really.' THE SCOTSMAN 'Banville has a grim gift of seeing people's souls.' DON DeLILLO 'The most eminent innovator in Irish fiction of the last 50 years.' IRISH TIMES 'One of my favourite writers alive.' REBECCA F. KUANG 'Banville writes prose of such luscious elegance.' NEW YORK TIMES

Victorian Psycho

Victorian Psycho

Virginia Feito

2025

Fiction

'Jane Eyre meets American Psycho. Gloriously outrageous, sensationally unhinged' SUNDAY TIMES ‘Simmering with rage, propulsive and laugh-out-loud funny' CATRIONA WARD 'Weird and wonderful' LUCY MANGAN, GUARDIAN === SOON TO BE A FEATURE FILM STARRING MAIKA MONROE, THOMASIN MCKENZIE AND JASON ISSACS "This book will be the bloody belle of the 2025 literary ball." (Oprah Daily) Most Anticipated Books of 2025: Vulture, Oprah Daily, Polygon, Reader's Digest, Lit Hub, Men's Health, CrimeReads, The Stacks, LibraryReads, Paste Best Books of the Month: Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Goodreads, Gizmodo, Book Riot, The A.V.

Read more

'Jane Eyre meets American Psycho. Gloriously outrageous, sensationally unhinged' SUNDAY TIMES ‘Simmering with rage, propulsive and laugh-out-loud funny' CATRIONA WARD 'Weird and wonderful' LUCY MANGAN, GUARDIAN
===
SOON TO BE A FEATURE FILM STARRING MAIKA MONROE, THOMASIN MCKENZIE AND JASON ISSACS "This book will be the bloody belle of the 2025 literary ball." (Oprah Daily) Most Anticipated Books of 2025: Vulture, Oprah Daily, Polygon, Reader's Digest, Lit Hub, Men's Health, CrimeReads, The Stacks, LibraryReads, Paste Best Books of the Month: Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Goodreads, Gizmodo, Book Riot, The A.V. Club, Apple Books, Amazon The American Booksellers Association's #1 Indie Next Great Read! (Feb 2025) A Matty Maggiacomo Book Club Selection “Simmering with rage, propulsive and laugh out loud funny, Victorian Psycho speaks profoundly of horror both within and without us.” —Catriona Ward From the acclaimed author of Mrs. March comes the riveting tale of a bloodthirsty governess who learns the true meaning of vengeance. Virginia Feito’s Mrs. March was hailed as “a brilliant debut . . . [by] a writer who keeps pace with the grandees she invokes” (Sarah Ditum, Guardian)—from Daphne Du Maurier and Shirley Jackson to Patricia Highsmith. Now, Feito returns with her “silver-polish sentences and her eerie psychological acumen” (Constance Grady, Vox) to unleash an entirely new antihero on us all. Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . . Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.

We Do Not Part

We Do Not Part

Han Kang

2025

Fiction

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD “[Han Kang’s] intense poetic prose . .

Read more

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD “[Han Kang’s] intense poetic prose . . . confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”—The Nobel Committee for Literature, in the citation for the Nobel Prize Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian—and her first published in English since winning the Nobel Prize—We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter in Korean history. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, KIRKUS REVIEWS, BOOK RIOT, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY • ONE OF BOOKPAGE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR “[A] masterpiece.”—The Boston Globe “A haunting exploration of friendship amid historical trauma.”—Time “A novel that is both disquieting and entrancing.”—The Economist One winter morning in Seoul, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at the hospital. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn’t yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into darkness that awaits her at her friend’s house. Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully brings to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable pain—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.

What We Can Know

What We Can Know

Ian McEwan

2025

Fiction

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION • Named a Best Book of 2025 by The Globe and Mail • New York Times • The New Yorker • The Washington Post • NPR • Barnes & Noble • Kirkus • Audible From the Booker prize–winning, bestselling author of Atonement and Saturday, a genre-bending new novel full of secrets and surprises; an immersive exploration, across time and history, of what can ever be truly known. 2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, ‘A Corona for Vivien’.

Read more

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION • Named a Best Book of 2025 by The Globe and Mail • New York Times • The New Yorker • The Washington Post • NPR • Barnes & Noble • Kirkus • Audible From the Booker prize–winning, bestselling author of Atonement and Saturday, a genre-bending new novel full of secrets and surprises; an immersive exploration, across time and history, of what can ever be truly known. 2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, ‘A Corona for Vivien’. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery. 2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, ‘A Corona for Vivian’. How wild and full of risk their lives were, thinks Thomas, as he pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem’s discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well. What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
===
'One of the finest writers alive' Sunday Times 2014- A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found. 2119- The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain's remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the great lost poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately. A quest, a literary thriller and a love story, What We Can Know is a masterpiece that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost. 'A true master' Daily Telegraph 'McEwan is one of the most accomplished craftsmen of plot and prose' New York Times

A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping

A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping

Sangu Mandanna

2025

Fiction

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! • A whimsical and heartwarming novel about a witch who has a second chance to get her magical powers—and her life—back on track, from the national bestselling author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. Sera Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain.

Read more

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! • A whimsical and heartwarming novel about a witch who has a second chance to get her magical powers—and her life—back on track, from the national bestselling author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. Sera Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her Guild. Now she (slightly reluctantly and just a bit grumpily) helps Jasmine run an enchanted inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests' shenanigans, tries to keep said talking fox in check, and longs for the future that seems lost to her. But then she finds out about an old spell that could hold the key to restoring her power… Enter Luke Larsen, handsome and icy magical historian, who arrives on a dark winter evening and just might know how to unlock the spell’s secrets. Luke has absolutely no interest in getting involved in the madcap goings-on of the inn and is definitely not about to let a certain bewitching innkeeper past his walls, so no one is more surprised than he is when he agrees to help Sera with her spell. Worse, he might actually be thawing. Running an inn, reclaiming lost magic, and staying one step ahead of the watchful Guild is a lot for anyone, but Sera Swan is about to discover that she doesn’t have to do it alone...and that the weird, wonderful family she’s made might be the best magic of all.

Abundance

Abundance

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

2025

Business & Economics

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND SCHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2025**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR'A must-read for progressives' BARACK OBAMA'Downing Street's current hot read' ANDREW MARR'Forceful, quick-moving, important' FINANCIAL TIMESThe threat to liberal democracy isn't just autocrats - it's a lack of effective action by so-called progressives. We have the means to build an equitable world without hunger, fuelled by clean energy.

Read more

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND SCHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2025**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR'A must-read for progressives' BARACK OBAMA'Downing Street's current hot read' ANDREW MARR'Forceful, quick-moving, important' FINANCIAL TIMESThe threat to liberal democracy isn't just autocrats - it's a lack of effective action by so-called progressives. We have the means to build an equitable world without hunger, fuelled by clean energy. Instead, we have a politics driven by scarcity, lives defined by unaffordability and public institutions that no longer deliver on big ideas. It's time for change.Bestselling authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson have spent decades analysing the political, economic and cultural forces that have led us here. In this once-in-a-generation intervention, they unpick the barriers to progress and show how we can, and must, shift the political agenda to one that not only protects and preserves, but also builds. From healthcare to housing, infrastructure to innovation, they lay out a path to a future defined not by fear, but by abundance.
===
"Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic scarcity: from climate change to housing, education to healthcare."--

The Age of Choice

The Age of Choice

A History of Freedom in Modern Life

Sophia Rosenfeld

2025

History

A history of the rise of personal choice in the modern world and how it became equated with freedom. Taking readers from the seventeenth century to today, Rosenfeld describes how the early modern world witnessed the simultaneous rise of shopping as an activity and religious freedom as a matter of being able to pick one's convictions === Finalist for the Cundill History Prize A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A sweeping history of the rise of personal choice in the modern world and how it became equated with freedom Choice touches virtually every aspect of our lives, from what to buy and where to live to whom to love, what profession to practice, and even what to believe.

Read more

A history of the rise of personal choice in the modern world and how it became equated with freedom. Taking readers from the seventeenth century to today, Rosenfeld describes how the early modern world witnessed the simultaneous rise of shopping as an activity and religious freedom as a matter of being able to pick one's convictions
===
Finalist for the Cundill History Prize A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A sweeping history of the rise of personal choice in the modern world and how it became equated with freedom Choice touches virtually every aspect of our lives, from what to buy and where to live to whom to love, what profession to practice, and even what to believe. But the option to choose in such matters was not something we always possessed or even aspired to. At the same time, we have been warned by everybody from marketing gurus to psychologists about the negative consequences stemming from our current obsession with choice. It turns out that not only are we not very good at realizing our personal desires, we are also overwhelmed with too many possibilities and anxious about what best to select. There are social costs too. How did all this happen? The Age of Choice tells the long history of the invention of choice as the defining feature of modern freedom. Taking readers from the seventeenth century to today, Sophia Rosenfeld describes how the early modern world witnessed the simultaneous rise of shopping as an activity and religious freedom as a matter of being able to pick one’s convictions. Similarly, she traces the history of choice in romantic life, politics, and the ideals of human rights. Throughout, she pays particular attention to the lives of women, those often with the fewest choices, who have frequently been the drivers of this change. She concludes with an exploration of how reproductive rights have become a symbolic flashpoint in our contemporary struggles over the association of liberty with choice. Drawing on a wealth of sources ranging from novels and restaurant menus to the latest scientific findings about choice in psychology and economics, The Age of Choice urges us to rethink the meaning of choice and its promise and limitations in modern life.

All Consuming

All Consuming

Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now

Ruby Tandoh

2025

Cooking

AN OBSERVER, GQ, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES AND BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2025 Longlisted for the André Simon Food and Drink Book Award 'Entertaining, alarming, illuminating, alive' NIGELLA LAWSON 'Brilliant and original' NIGEL SLATER 'Ruby is a rare and singular voice. I loved this book' ANNA JONES The iconic New Yorker and Vittles food writer asks: Why do we eat the way we eat now? Being into food - following and making it, queuing for it and discussing it - is no longer a subculture.

Read more

AN OBSERVER, GQ, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES AND BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2025 Longlisted for the André Simon Food and Drink Book Award 'Entertaining, alarming, illuminating, alive' NIGELLA LAWSON 'Brilliant and original' NIGEL SLATER 'Ruby is a rare and singular voice. I loved this book' ANNA JONES The iconic New Yorker and Vittles food writer asks: Why do we eat the way we eat now? Being into food - following and making it, queuing for it and discussing it - is no longer a subculture. It's become mass culture. The food landscape is more expansive and dizzying by the day. Recipes, once passed from hand to hand, now flood newspaper supplements and social media. Our tastes are engineered in food factories, hacked by supermarkets and influenced by Instagram reels. Ruby Tandoh's startlingly original analysis traces this extraordinary transformation over the past seventy-five years, making sense of this electrifying new era by examining the social, economic, and technological forces shaping the foods we hunger for today. Exploring the evolution of the cookbook and light-speed growth of bubble tea, the advent of TikTok critics and absurdities of the perfect dinner party, Tandoh's laser-sharp investigation leaves her questioning: how much are our tastes, in fact, our own? Discover All Consuming Bubble Tea | Critics | Recipes | Martha Stewart | Mob |Fast food | Hype queues | Nara Smith | Tiktok | Viennetta | Weekend supplements | Wife Guys | Cult Cookbooks | Lobster | Influencers | Wellness elixirs | Entertaining | Keith Lee | Wimpy with Ruby Tandoh this autumn.
===
Food dominates our every waking minute: Hype restaurants. Allrecipes. The Great British Bake Off. In this dazzling cultural history, bestselling food writer Ruby Tandoh (author of Cook As You Are) traces how—and why—we’ve all become foodies. “Ruby Tandoh is a genius and All Consuming is everything.” —Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal “A fascinating, sometimes shocking, eye-opener that is also brilliantly funny.” —Claudia Roden How, in the space of a few decades, has food gone from fact of life to national past time; something to be thought about—and talked about—24/7? In this startlingly original, deeply irreverent cultural history, Ruby Tandoh traces that transformation, exposing how cult cookbooks, bad TV, visionary restaurants, and new social media have all wildly overhauled our appetites. All Consuming explores: •The rise of the TikTok food critic •What makes a hype restaurant go viral •Bubble tea’s world domination •The dream of the modern dinner party •The limits of the cookbook •The history of the supermarket •Wellness drinks—and where they come from •The rise and fall of the automat Our tastes have been radically refashioned, painstakingly engineered in the depths of food factories, and hacked by craveable Instagram recipes. They’ve been pulled into supermarket aisles and seduced by Michelin stars, transfixed by Top Chefs and shaped by fads. A deep dive into the social, economic, cultural, legislative, and demographic forces that have reshaped our relationship with food, All Consuming questions how our tastes have been shaped—and how much they are, in fact, our own.

Apple in China

Apple in China

The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

Patrick McGee

2025

Business & Economics Political Science

*** THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *** ‘Absolutely riveting’ Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads ‘Disturbing and enlightening’ Chris Miller, author of Chip War ‘Hugely important’ Rana Foroohar, author of Makers and Takers ‘A once-in-a-generation read’ Robert D. Kaplan, author of Waste Land As Trump wages a tariff war with China, seeking to boost domestic electronics manufacturing, this book offers an unparalleled insight into why his strategy is embarrassingly naïve.

Read more

*** THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *** ‘Absolutely riveting’ Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads ‘Disturbing and enlightening’ Chris Miller, author of Chip War ‘Hugely important’ Rana Foroohar, author of Makers and Takers ‘A once-in-a-generation read’ Robert D. Kaplan, author of Waste Land As Trump wages a tariff war with China, seeking to boost domestic electronics manufacturing, this book offers an unparalleled insight into why his strategy is embarrassingly naïve. Apple isn’t just a brand; it’s the world’s most valuable company and creator of the 21st century’s defining product. The iPhone has revolutionized the way we live, work and connect. But Apple is now a victim of its own success, caught in the middle of a new Cold War between two superpowers. On the brink of bankruptcy in 1996, Apple adopted an outsourcing strategy. By 2003 it was lured to China by the promise of affordable, ubiquitous labour. As the iPod and iPhone transformed Apple’s fortunes, their sophisticated production played a seminal role in financing, training, supervising and supplying Chinese manufacturers – skills Beijing is now weaponizing against the West. Investigative journalist Patrick McGee draws on 200 interviews with former Apple executives and engineers to reveal how Cupertino’s choice to anchor its supply chain in China has increasingly made it vulnerable to the regime’s whims. Both an insider’s historical account and a cautionary tale, Apple in China is the first history of Apple to go beyond the biographies of its top executives and set the iPhone’s global domination within an increasingly fraught geopolitical context.
===
"[A] look at how Apple helped build China's dominance in electronics assembly and manufacturing only to find itself trapped in a relationship with an authoritarian state making ever-increasing demands" --
===
Als Apple seine Produktion nach China verlagerte, um von den billigen Arbeitskräften zu profitieren, saß das Unternehmen am längeren Hebel und diktierte die Bedingungen. Es schickte Tausende von Ingenieuren über den Pazifik, schulte Millionen Arbeiter und gab viele Milliarden Dollar aus, um die fortschrittlichste Lieferkette der Welt aufzubauen. Womit Apple nicht gerechnet hatte: Seine massiven Investitionen verliehen Peking ungewollt eine Macht, die als Waffe eingesetzt werden kann. Ein faszinierender Einblick in die Art und Weise, wie Apple dazu beigetragen hat, Chinas Dominanz in der Elektronikfertigung aufzubauen ... nur um sich dann in einer Beziehung mit einem autoritären Staat wiederzufinden, der immer mehr Forderungen stellt.

The Arrogant Ape

The Arrogant Ape

The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters

Christine E. Webb

2025

Nature

A New York Times’s Notable Book of 2025 An impassioned celebration of humility before the living world that leads us to a new understanding of other species—and ourselves Darwin considered humans one part of the web of life, not the apex of a natural hierarchy. Yet today many maintain that we are the most intelligent, virtuous, successful species that ever lived.

Read more

A New York Times’s Notable Book of 2025 An impassioned celebration of humility before the living world that leads us to a new understanding of other species—and ourselves Darwin considered humans one part of the web of life, not the apex of a natural hierarchy. Yet today many maintain that we are the most intelligent, virtuous, successful species that ever lived. This flawed thinking enables us to exploit the earth towards our own exclusive ends, throwing us into a perilous planetary imbalance. But is this view and way of life inevitable? The Arrogant Ape shows that human exceptionalism is an ideology that relies more on human culture than our biology, more on delusion and faith than on evidence. Harvard primatologist Christine Webb has spent years researching the rich social, emotional, and cognitive lives of our closest living relatives. She exposes the ways that many scientific studies are biased against other species and reveals underappreciated complexities of nonhuman life—from the language of songbirds and prairie dogs, to the cultures of chimpanzees and reef fishes, to the acumen of plants and fungi. With compelling stories and fresh research she gives us a paradigm-shifting way of looking at other organisms on their own terms, one that is revolutionizing our perception both of them and of ourselves. Critiques of human exceptionalism tend to focus on our moral obligation towards other species. They overlook what humanity also stands to gain by dismantling its illusions of uniqueness and superiority. This shift in perspective fills us with a sense of awe and satisfies one of our oldest and deepest desires to belong to the larger whole we inhabit. What’s at stake is a better, sustainable way of life with the potential to heal and rejuvenate our shared planet.

Awake

Awake

A Memoir

Jen Hatmaker

2025

Biography & Autobiography

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, OPRAH DAILY, GOODREADS, KIRKUS REVIEWS, AND MORE • A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “I can’t imagine any woman reading this without feeling seen, inspired, and totally empowered.” —Mel Robbins • “A MASTERPIECE, you guys. This memoir by the great Jen Hatmaker *cannot* be missed.

Read more

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, OPRAH DAILY, GOODREADS, KIRKUS REVIEWS, AND MORE • A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “I can’t imagine any woman reading this without feeling seen, inspired, and totally empowered.” —Mel Robbins • “A MASTERPIECE, you guys. This memoir by the great Jen Hatmaker *cannot* be missed. I was riveted as if to a thriller and touched/moved/inspired in ways I can’t quite articulate yet. Just please read. You’ll thank me.” —Elin Hilderbrand, on Instagram From Jen Hatmaker—beloved New York Times bestselling author and host of the For the Love podcast—a brutally honest, funny, and revealing memoir about the traumatic end of her twenty-six-year-long marriage, and the beginning of a different kind of love story. At 2:30 a.m. on July 11, 2020, Jen Hatmaker woke up to her husband of twenty-six years whispering in his phone to another woman from their bed. It was the end of life as she knew it. In the months that followed, she went from being a shiny, funny, popular leader to a divorced wreck on antidepressants and antianxiety meds, parenting five kids alone with no clue about the functioning of her own bank accounts. Having led millions of women for over a decade—urging them to embrace authenticity, find radical agency, and create healthy relationship—she felt like a catastrophic failure. In Awake, Jen shares for the first time what happened when she found herself completely lost at sea—and how she made it to shore. In candid, sur­prisingly funny vignettes spanning forty years of girlhood, marriage, and parenting, Jen lays bare the disorienting upheaval of midlife—the implosion of a marriage, the unraveling of religious and cultural systems, and the grief that accompanies change you didn’t ask for. And, drawing on all resources—from without and within—Jen dares to question the systems beneath the whole house of cards, and to reckon with the myths, half-truths, and lies that brought her to this point. More than one woman’s story, Awake is a critical analysis of the story given to all of us: the story of gender limitations, religious subservience, body shame, self-erasure. With refreshing candor, Jen explores a midlife renaissance—grieving what’s lost, cherishing possibility, and entering the second half of life wide awake.
===
‘I cannot think of a single person who wouldn’t find hope and inspiration in these pages’ – Mel Robbins, author of The Let Them Theory ‘This book doesn’t just speak to your heart, it revives it’ – Jenna Kutcher, author of How Are You, Really? Perfect for fans of Untamed, Awake is a powerful memoir of self-discovery, authenticity and finding the courage to rethink and rebuild your life after heartbreak. A truly brilliant read, it’s also a fascinating account of a woman learning to question the rules of the oppressively patriarchal US church in which she grew up. At 2.30 a.m. on July 11, 2020, author and mother-of-five Jen Hatmaker woke up to her husband of twenty-six years voice texting his girlfriend in bed next to her. Life as she knew it was over. In Awake, she scrutinises the toxic systems that led to the end of her marriage, sharing intimate, sometimes hilariously hard moments along the way. Beautifully written and shot through with deep emotion, this is a story of hope and resilience, of unpicking the past and challenging limitations around the kind of person you can be. It’s a love letter to friendship, family and the power of community, and a roadmap showing how to cope, survive and even thrive when all seems lost. 'A powerful howl of honesty that will open the eyes and hearts of every single woman who sees herself in its pages, which is to say, all of us. This book is the best kind of medicine' – Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance and Signal Fires
===
Jen Hatmaker dacht alles op de rails te hebben tot haar huwelijk na 26 jaar opeens voorbij was. Van populaire podcasthost en bestsellerauteur veranderde ze in een gescheiden vrouw met vijf kinderen, zonder houvast en vol vragen. In Awake vertelt ze openhartig en met humor hoe ze vanuit totale ontwrichting een nieuw begin vond. Awake is meer dan een persoonlijk verhaal. Het is een taboedoorbrekende zoektocht naar vrijheid, verlangen en vrouw-zijn in de huidige maatschappij. Hatmaker laat zien hoe je te midden van verlies een tweede leven kunt ontdekken.

Baldwin

A Love Story

Nicholas Boggs

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

A Reckoning

Peter Beinart

2025

Political Science

A bold, urgent appeal from the acclaimed columnist and political commentator, addressing one of the most important issues of our time In Peter Beinart’s view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine.

Read more

A bold, urgent appeal from the acclaimed columnist and political commentator, addressing one of the most important issues of our time In Peter Beinart’s view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew? Beinart imagines an alternate narrative, which would draw on other nations’ efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish tradition. A story in which Israeli Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One that recognizes the danger of venerating states at the expense of human life. Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is a provocative argument that will expand and inform one of the defining conversations of our time. It is a book that only Peter Beinart could write: a passionate yet measured work that brings together his personal experience, his commanding grasp of history, his keen understanding of political and moral dilemmas, and a clear vision for the future.

Black Moses

Black Moses

A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State

Caleb Gayle

2025

History

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction A New York Times Editors' Choice Pick “Powerful… [and] fascinating.” —The Washington Post The remarkable story of Edward McCabe, a Black man who tried to establish a Black state within the United States. In this paradigm-shattering work of American history, Caleb Gayle recounts the extraordinary tale of Edward McCabe, a Black man who championed the audacious idea to create a state within the Union governed by and for Black people — and the racism, politics, and greed that thwarted him.

Read more

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction A New York Times Editors' Choice Pick “Powerful… [and] fascinating.” —The Washington Post The remarkable story of Edward McCabe, a Black man who tried to establish a Black state within the United States. In this paradigm-shattering work of American history, Caleb Gayle recounts the extraordinary tale of Edward McCabe, a Black man who championed the audacious idea to create a state within the Union governed by and for Black people — and the racism, politics, and greed that thwarted him. As the sweeping changes and brief glimpses of hope brought by the Civil War and Reconstruction began to wither, anger at the opportunities available to newly freed Black people were on the rise. As a result, both Blacks and whites searched for new places to settle. That was when Edward McCabe, a Black businessman and a rising political star in the American West, set in motion his plans to found a state within the Union for Black people to live in and govern. His chosen site: Oklahoma, a place that the U.S. government had deeded to Indigenous people in the 1830s when it forced thousands of them to leave their homes under Indian Removal, which became known as the Trail of Tears. McCabe lobbied politicians in Washington, D.C., Kansas, and elsewhere as he exhorted Black people to move to Oklahoma to achieve their dreams of self-determination and land ownership. His rising profile as a leader and spokesman for Black people as well as his willingness to confront white politicians led him to become known as Black Moses. And like his biblical counterpart, McCabe nearly made it to the promised land but was ultimately foiled by politics, business interests, and the growing ambitions of white settlers who also wanted the land. In Black Moses, Gayle brings to vivid life the world of Edward McCabe: the Black people who believed in his dream of a Black state, the white politicians who didn't, and the larger challenges of confronting the racism and exclusion that bedeviled Black people's attempts to carve a place in America for themselves. Gayle draws from extraordinary research and reporting to reveal an America that almost was.

Book of Lives

Book of Lives

A Memoir of Sorts

Margaret Atwood

2025

Biography & Autobiography

How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life? The long-awaited memoir from one of our most lauded and influential cultural figures. “Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes.

Read more

How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life? The long-awaited memoir from one of our most lauded and influential cultural figures. “Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes. Though everything written must have passed through their minds, or mind, they are not the same.” Raised by ruggedly independent, scientifically minded parents—entomologist father, dietician mother—Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec. This childhood was unfettered and nomadic, sometimes isolated (on her eighth birthday: “It sounds forlorn. It was forlorn. It gets more forlorn.”), but also thrilling and beautiful. From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking seminal moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel year that spawned Cat’s Eye to the Orwellian 1980s of East Berlin where she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale. In pages bursting with bohemian gatherings, her magical life with the wildly charismatic writer Graeme Gibson and major political turning points, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood actors and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel. As we travel with her along the course of her life, more and more is revealed about her writing, the connections between real life and art—and the workings of one of our greatest imaginations.
===
How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life? The long-awaited memoir from one of our most lauded and influential cultural figures 'Every writer is at least two beings- the one who lives, and the one who writes. Though everything written must have passed through their minds, or mind, they are not the same.' Raised by ruggedly independent, scientifically minded parents - entomologist father, dietician mother - Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec. This childhood was unfettered and nomadic, sometimes isolated (on her eighth birthday- 'It sounds forlorn. It was forlorn. It gets more forlorn.'), but also thrilling and beautiful. From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking seminal moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel year that spawned Cat's Eye to divided 1980s Berlin where she began The Handmaid's Tale. In pages bursting with bohemian gatherings, her magical life with the wildly charismatic writer Graeme Gibson and major political turning points, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood actors and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel. As we travel with her along the course of her life, more and more is revealed about her writing, the connections between real life and art - and the workings of one of our greatest imaginations.
===
'Fat and satisfying' Observer * 'I loved it' Dua Lipa * 'Deliciously naughty' iNews * 'Beautifully told' Woman & Home * 'Spellbinding' FT * Book of the Year Guardian, Financial Times, Observer, Belfast Telegraph Immerse yourself in the creative universe of Margaret Atwood for a riot of life, art and everything in between Raised by scientifically minded parents, Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec: a vast playground for her entomologist father and independent, resourceful mother. It was an unfettered and nomadic childhood, sometimes isolated but also thrilling and beautiful. From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking key moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel school year that would become Cat’s Eye to the unease of 1980s Berlin, where she began The Handmaid’s Tale. In pages alive with the natural world, reading and books, major political turning points and her lifelong love for the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood stars and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel. As she explores her past, Atwood reveals more and more about her writing, the connections between real life and art – and the workings of one of our boldest imaginations. *Top ten Sunday Times bestseller week of 22 November 2025*

Born in Flames

Born in Flames

The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City

Bench Ansfield

2025

History

“[R]evelatory…Deeply researched and masterfully told.” —Brian Goldstone, New York Times Book Review The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s—and its legacy today. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history.

Read more

“[R]evelatory…Deeply researched and masterfully told.” —Brian Goldstone, New York Times Book Review The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s—and its legacy today. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color. Yet as historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates in Born in Flames, the most destructive of the fires were not set by residents, as is commonly assumed, but by landlords looking to collect insurance payouts. Driven by perverse incentives—new government-sponsored insurance combined with tanking property values—landlords hired “torches,” mostly Black and Brown youth, to set fires in the buildings, sometimes with people still living in them. Tens of thousands of families lost their homes to these blazes, yet for much of the 1970s, tenant vandalism and welfare fraud stood as the prevailing explanations for the arson wave, effectively indemnifying landlords. Ansfield’s book, based on a decade of research, introduces the term “brownlining” for the destructive insurance practices imposed on poor communities of color under the guise of racial redress. Ansfield shows that as the FIRE industries—finance, insurance, and real estate— eclipsed manufacturing in the 1970s, they began profoundly reshaping Black and Brown neighborhoods, seeing them as easy sources of profit. At every step, Ansfield charts the tenant-led resistance movements that sprung up in the Bronx and elsewhere, as well as the explosion of popular culture around the fires, from iconic movies like The Towering Inferno to hit songs such as “Disco Inferno.” Ultimately, they show how similarly pernicious dynamics around insurance and race are still at play in our own era, especially in regions most at risk of climate shocks.

The Broken King

The Broken King

Michael Thomas

2026

Biography & Autobiography

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2025 LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD "There's a bridge of beautiful American prose--lyrical, powerful, fearlessly candid--running straight from James Baldwin to Thomas, who is obviously Baldwin's worthy heir . .

Read more

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2025 LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD "There's a bridge of beautiful American prose--lyrical, powerful, fearlessly candid--running straight from James Baldwin to Thomas, who is obviously Baldwin's worthy heir . . . An utterly immersive book."--Francisco Goldman, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Monkey Boy From the author of Man Gone Down--a New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year and winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award--comes a deeply personal memoir of race, trauma, alcoholism, parenting, mental illness and ultimately hope in a portrait of three generations of Black American men In 2007, Michael Thomas launched into the literary world with his award-winning first novel Man Gone Down, a beautiful and devastating story of a Black father trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. Called "powerful and moving . . . an impressive success," by Kaiama L. Glover on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, Thomas' debut introduced a writer of prodigious and rare talent. In his long-awaited encore and first work of nonfiction, The Broken King, Thomas explores fathers and sons, lovers and the beloved, trauma and recovery, success and failure in a unique, urgent, and timeless memoir. The title is borrowed from T.S. Eliot's line in "Little Gidding" "If you came at night like a broken king," and the work ponders the process of being broken. Akin to Baldwin's The Fire Next Time or Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Thomas' memoir unfolds through six powerful, interlocking and overlaying parts focusing on the lives of five men: his father--a philosopher, Boston Red Sox fan, and absent parent; his estranged older brother; his two sons growing up in Brooklyn; and always, heartbreakingly himself. At the center of The Broken King is the story of Thomas' own breakdown, a result of inherited family history and his own experiences, from growing up Black in the Boston suburbs to publishing a prize-winning novel with "the house of Beckett." Every page of The Broken King rings with the impact of America's sweeping struggle with race and class, education and family, and builds to a brave, meticulous articulation of a creative mind's journey into and out of madness.

Buckley

Buckley

The Life and the Revolution That Changed America

Sam Tanenhaus

2025

Biography & Autobiography

“A magnificent achievement—a long, gripping, and enthralling account of the life of America’s premier conservative polemicist of the twentieth century.”—Max Boot, author of Reagan: His Life and Legend “A rich, immersive biography exposes the roots of the modern conservative movement through the life of the firebrand writer and commentator who shaped it.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Economist, The Financial Times, Telegraph (UK), Christian Science Monitor, Air Mail, Prospect Magazine LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD In 1951, with the publication of God and Man at Yale, a scathing attack on his alma mater, twenty-five-year-old William F. Buckley, Jr., seized the public stage—and commanded it for the next half century as he led a new generation of conservative activists and ideologues to the peak of political power and cultural influence.

Read more

“A magnificent achievement—a long, gripping, and enthralling account of the life of America’s premier conservative polemicist of the twentieth century.”—Max Boot, author of Reagan: His Life and Legend “A rich, immersive biography exposes the roots of the modern conservative movement through the life of the firebrand writer and commentator who shaped it.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Economist, The Financial Times, Telegraph (UK), Christian Science Monitor, Air Mail, Prospect Magazine LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD In 1951, with the publication of God and Man at Yale, a scathing attack on his alma mater, twenty-five-year-old William F. Buckley, Jr., seized the public stage—and commanded it for the next half century as he led a new generation of conservative activists and ideologues to the peak of political power and cultural influence. Ten years before his death in 2008, Buckley chose prize-winning biographer Sam Tanenhaus to tell the full, uncensored story of his life and times, granting him extensive interviews and exclusive access to his most private papers. Thus began a deep investigation into the vast and often hidden universe of Bill Buckley and the modern conservative revolution. Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases: founding editor of National Review, the twentieth century’s most influential political journal; syndicated columnist, Emmy-winning TV debater, and bestselling spy novelist; ally of Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater; mentor to Ronald Reagan; game-changing candidate for mayor of New York. Tanenhaus also has uncovered the darker trail of Bill Buckley’s secret exploits, including CIA missions in Latin America, dark collusions with Watergate felon Howard Hunt, and Buckley’s struggle in his last years to hold together a movement coming apart over the AIDS epidemic, culture wars, and the invasion of Iraq—even as his own media empire was unraveling. At a crucial moment in American history, Buckley offers a gripping and powerfully relevant story about the birth of modern politics and those who shaped it.

The Call of the Honeyguide

The Call of the Honeyguide

What Science Tells Us about How to Live Well with the Rest of Life

Rob Dunn

2025

Science

"A must read" (David George Haskell) that shows how rethinking our relationships with other species can help us reimagine the future of humankind In the woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa, sometime deep in our species’ past, something strange happened: a bird called out, not to warn others of human presence, but to call attention to herself. Having found a beehive, that bird—a honeyguide—sought human aid to break in.

Read more

"A must read" (David George Haskell) that shows how rethinking our relationships with other species can help us reimagine the future of humankind In the woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa, sometime deep in our species’ past, something strange happened: a bird called out, not to warn others of human presence, but to call attention to herself. Having found a beehive, that bird—a honeyguide—sought human aid to break in. The behavior can seem almost miraculous: How would a bird come to think that people could help her? Isn’t life simply bloodier than that? As Rob Dunn argues in The Call of the Honeyguide, it isn’t. Nature is red in tooth and claw, but in equal measure, life works together. Cells host even smaller life, wrapped in a web of mutual interdependence. Ants might go to war, but they also tend fungi, aphids, and even trees. And we humans work not just with honeyguides but with yeast, crops, and pets. Ecologists call these beneficial relationships mutualisms. And they might be the most important forces in the evolution of life. We humans often act as though we are all alone, independent from the rest of life. As The Call of the Honeyguide shows, we are not. It is a call to action for a more beneficent, less lonely future.

Capitalism

Capitalism

A Global History

Sven Beckert

2025

History

A brilliant global narrative that unravels the defining story of the past thousand years 'Magisterial in scope and ambition, Sven Beckert’s Capitalism is a dazzling global history of the forces that have shaped – and continue to shape – our world. A true tour de force' - Peter Frankopan Sven Beckert has written what will surely become a key reference on the global history of modern capitalism, from 1450 until the present day.

Read more

A brilliant global narrative that unravels the defining story of the past thousand years 'Magisterial in scope and ambition, Sven Beckert’s Capitalism is a dazzling global history of the forces that have shaped – and continue to shape – our world. A true tour de force' - Peter Frankopan Sven Beckert has written what will surely become a key reference on the global history of modern capitalism, from 1450 until the present day. A monumental book, a must-read' - Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century No other phenomenon has shaped human history as decisively as capitalism. It structures how we live and work, how we think about ourselves and others, how we organise our politics. Sven Beckert situates the story of capitalism within the largest conceivable geographical and historical framework in this fascinating new book. Capitalism, argues Beckert, was born global. Emerging from merchant communities across Asia, Africa and Europe, capitalism’s radical recasting of economic life rooted itself only gradually. Then it burst onto the world scene, as European states and merchants built a powerful alliance that would propel them across the oceans. This epic drama corresponded at no point to an idealised dream of free markets. All along, state-backed institutions and imperial expansions shaped its dynamics. Capitalism decentres the European perspective, highlighting agency, resistance, innovation and ruthless coercion around the world through to the present with the rise of Asian economies, particularly China. Sven Beckert doesn’t merely add up capitalism’s debits and credits in this monumental book, but allows us to think afresh about the past to help us re-imagine the future.

Careless People

Careless People

A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

Sarah Wynn-Williams

2025

Social Science Biography & Autobiography Political Science

#1 New York Times Bestseller “Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking...Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods." -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “When one of the world’s most powerful media companies tries to snuff out a book — amid other alarming attacks on free speech in America like this — it’s time to pull out all the stops.” –Ron Charles, The Washington Post An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them. From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold.

Read more

#1 New York Times Bestseller “Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking...Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods." -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “When one of the world’s most powerful media companies tries to snuff out a book — amid other alarming attacks on free speech in America like this — it’s time to pull out all the stops.” –Ron Charles, The Washington Post An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them. From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite. Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.” Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.
===
The #1 global bestseller with a new foreword for paperback A Book of the Year for Audible, The Times, Financial Times, The New York Times, Time, Cosmopolitan, The Economist, Spectator and more Shortlisted for the Westminster Book Awards 2025 Shortlisted for the Hatchards First Biography Prize 2025 Winner of the Blueprint Asia-Pacific Whistleblowing Prize 2025 ‘How else to put this? Bloody hell’ – The Guardian ‘Devastating . . . Funny . . . Highly enjoyable’ – The Times ‘Jaw-dropping . . . A tell-all tome’ – Financial Times Sarah Wynn-Williams joined Facebook believing the company could change things for the better. Instead, what she encountered over seven years was so shocking that Meta obtained a legal order to silence her. Now you can read her award-winning story. Candid and entertaining, Wynn-Williams’ account pulls back the curtain on Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the global elite. She exposes the true cost of Silicon Valley’s ambition, from outrageous schemes cooked up on private jets to the alarming consequences of Facebook’s aggressive pursuit of global dominance. Careless People is an ordinary woman's gripping and darkly funny memoir that will forever change how you view the technology that runs our lives – and the unchecked power of those who control it. ‘A Bridget Jones’s Diary-style tale of a young woman thrown into a series of improbable situations’ – The Times ‘Amazing: of all the books in all the world Mr Free Speech Zuckerberg wants to ban, it’s the one about him’ – Marina Hyde
===
‘Als een van de machtigste mediabedrijven ter wereld probeert een boek te laten verbieden – terwijl er in Amerika almaar meer alarmerende aanvallen worden gedaan op het vrije woord – is het tijd om alle registers open te trekken.’ The Washington Post ‘Mark Zuckerberg wil niet dat u dit boek leest.’ Financieel Dagblad ‘Oud-medewerker Sarah Wynn Williams doet in Careless People een boekje open over hoe Facebook van onschuldig sociaal medium tot een politiek wapen verwerd.’ Trouw Careless People is het explosieve verhaal van een vrouw in die jarenlang in het hart van een van de invloedrijkste bedrijven ter wereld werkte. Het geeft je een diepgravende inkijk in Facebook, in de beslissingen die de afgelopen decennia gebeurtenissen wereldwijd hebben bepaald en in de mensen die ze hebben genomen. Van privéjets en ontmoetingen met wereldleiders tot schokkende verhalen over vrouwenhaat en het meten met twee maten achter de schermen – Careless People is een bijzonder persoonlijk verhaal over het hoe en waarom dingen in het afgelopen decennium zo vreselijk verkeerd hebben kunnen gaan. Met haar scherpe, gevatte en bijzonder ontwapenende stem biedt Sarah Wynn-Williams niet alleen haar onverschrokken visie op de rol die sociale media in ons leven zijn gaan spelen, maar onthult zij ook de waarheid over de bazen van Facebook – hoe meer macht ze grijpen, des te minder verantwoordelijkheid ze aanvaarden – en de gevolgen die dit voor ieder van ons heeft.
===
«Ero tra i consulenti dei massimi dirigenti dell'azienda, Mark Zuckerberg e Sheryl Sandberg, mentre escogitavano il modo in cui l'organizzazione avrebbe interagito con i governi di tutto il mondo. Alla fine, li ho guardati, senza più speranze, fare la corte a regimi autoritari come quello cinese e, con assoluta noncuranza, ingannare l'opinione pubblica. Ero su un jet privato con Mark il giorno in cui finalmente capì che con ogni probabilità Facebook aveva contribuito a portare Donald Trump alla Casa Bianca, e ne trasse le sue personali e oscure conclusioni. Quasi sempre, però, lavorando alle politiche di Facebook, più che assistere alla messa in scena di un capitolo di Machiavelli, sembrava di guardare un gruppo di quattordicenni a cui sono stati dati dei superpoteri e una quantità spropositata di denaro andare in giro per il mondo per capire cosa possono comprare e ottenere con quel potere. Questa è la storia che intendo raccontare qui.»

Claire McCardell

Claire McCardell

The Designer Who Set Women Free

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson

2025

Biography & Autobiography

The riveting hidden history of Claire McCardell, the most influential fashion designer you’ve never heard of. Claire McCardell forever changed fashion—and most importantly, the lives of women.

Read more

The riveting hidden history of Claire McCardell, the most influential fashion designer you’ve never heard of. Claire McCardell forever changed fashion—and most importantly, the lives of women. She shattered cultural norms around women’s clothes, and today much of what we wear traces back to her ingenious, rebellious mind. McCardell invented ballet flats and mix-and-match separates, and she introduced wrap dresses, hoodies, leggings, denim, and more into womenswear. She tossed out corsets in favor of a comfortably elegant look and insisted on pockets, even as male designers didn’t see a need for them. She made zippers easy to reach because a woman “may live alone and like it,” McCardell once wrote, “but you may regret it if you wrench your arm trying to zip a back zipper into place.” After World War II, McCardell fought the severe, hyper-feminized silhouette championed by male designers, like Christian Dior. Dior claimed that he wanted to “save women from nature.” McCardell, by contrast, wanted to set women free. Claire McCardell became, as the young journalist Betty Friedan called her in 1955, “The Gal Who Defied Dior.” Filled with personal drama and industry secrets, this story reveals how Claire McCardell built an empire at a time when women rarely made the upper echelons of business. At its core, hers is a story about our right to choose how we dress—and our right to choose how we live.

The Containment

The Containment

Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North

Michelle Adams

2025

History

Winner of the MAAH Stone Book Award Winner of the 2025 Avern Cohn Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2025, A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 selection A Christian Science Monitor 25 Best Books of 2025 The epic story of Detroit’s struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs—and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v.

Read more

Winner of the MAAH Stone Book Award Winner of the 2025 Avern Cohn Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2025, A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 selection A Christian Science Monitor 25 Best Books of 2025 The epic story of Detroit’s struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs—and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement’s struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why? In The Containment, the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit's students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight—and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth’s landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs. The “metropolitan remedy” could have remade the landscape of racial justice. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the suburbs could not be a part of the effort to integrate—and thus upheld the inequalities that remain in place today. Adams tells this story via compelling portraits of a city under stress and of key figures—including Detroit’s first Black mayor, Coleman Young, and Justices Marshall, Rehnquist, and Powell. The result is a legal and historical drama that exposes the roots of today’s backlash against affirmative action and other efforts to fulfill the country’s promise.

Crumb

Crumb

A Cartoonist's Life

Dan Nadel

2025

Biography & Autobiography

"The first biography of Robert Crumb--one of the most profound and influential artists of the 20th century--whose iconic, radically frank and meticulously rendered cartoons and comics inspired generations of readers and cartoonists, from Art Spiegelman to Alison Bechdel"--

Dark Renaissance

Dark Renaissance

The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival

Stephen Greenblatt

2025

History Biography & Autobiography

Poor boy. Dark star.

Read more

Poor boy. Dark star. Spy. Transgressor. Genius. This is the thrilling and subversive life story of Christopher Marlowe – Shakespeare’s inspiration and rival, who helped to bring England out of the cultural darkness and into the light. ’Sparkling, addictive reading' MAGGIE O'FARRELL 'Brilliant' JAMES SHAPIRO 'As evocative as any novel' PHILIPPA GREGORY 'An unforgettable literary biographical tour de force' INDEPENDENT In brutally repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry – which to him is a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous scepticism. What Christopher Marlowe finds on the other side of that door, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of many others, including his contemporary and collaborator William Shakespeare. By the time of his murder in a Deptford tavern in 1593, the 29-year-old Marlowe will be the most celebrated dramatist of his time. Stephen Greenblatt grippingly reconstructs the involvement with the queen’s spy service that shaped Marlowe’s brief, troubling life and helped fashion his masterpieces. Along the way we discover how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, gave birth to the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world – involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still. Dark Renaissance is a scintillating life of a writer whose blazing talent catapulted England from cultural backwater to crucible of creativity.
===
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Will in the World reveals the daring and subversive life of Christopher Marlowe--Shakespeare's contemporary, inspiration, and rival.
===
Poor boy. Spy. Transgressor. Genius. In repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world of government censorship and religious authoritarianism comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with a daring desire to be known—and an uncanny ear for Latin poetry. A torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, like Christopher Marlowe, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism. What Marlowe seizes in his rare opportunity for a classical education, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture. His astonishing literary success will, in turn, nourish the talent of a collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare. Dark Renaissance illuminates both Marlowe’s times and the origins and significance of his work—from his erotic translations of Ovid to his portrayal of unfettered ambition in a triumphant Tamburlaine to Doctor Faustus, his unforgettable masterpiece about making a pact with the devil in exchange for knowledge. Introducing us to Marlowe’s transgressive genius in the form of a thrilling page-turner, Stephen Greenblatt brings a penetrating understanding of the literary work to reveal the inner world of the author, bringing to life a homosexual atheist who was tormented by his own compromises, who refused to toe the party line, and who was murdered just when he had found love. Meanwhile, he explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, gave birth to the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world including Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.

Daughters of the Bamboo Grove

Daughters of the Bamboo Grove

From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins

Barbara Demick

2025

Biography & Autobiography

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • The heartrending story of twin sisters torn apart by China’s one-child policy and the rise of international adoption—from the author of the National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy “Remarkable . .

Read more

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • The heartrending story of twin sisters torn apart by China’s one-child policy and the rise of international adoption—from the author of the National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy “Remarkable . . . Barbara Demick movingly traces this history of overseas Chinese adoptions and their ripple effects on both sides of the Pacific.”—The Wall Street Journal WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER J. WELLES MEMORIAL PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The New Yorker, The Economist On a warm day in September 2000, a woman named Zanhua gave birth to twin girls in a small hut behind her brother’s home in China’s Hunan province. The twins, Fangfang and Shuangjie, were welcome additions to her family but also not her first children. Living under the shadow of China’s notorious one-child policy, Zanhua and her husband decided to leave one twin in the care of relatives, hoping each toddler on their own might stay under the radar. But, in 2002, Fangfang was violently snatched away. The family worried they would never see her again, but they didn’t imagine she could be sent as far as the United States. She might as well have been sent to another world. Following stories she wrote as the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, Barbara Demick embarks on a journey that encompasses the origins, shocking cruelty, and long-term impact of China’s one-child rule; the rise of international adoption and the religious currents that buoyed it; and the exceedingly rare phenomenon of twin separation. Today, Esther—formerly Fangfang—lives in Texas, and Demick brings to vivid life the Christian family that felt called to adopt her, unaware that she had been kidnapped. Through Demick’s indefatigable reporting, will the long-lost sisters finally reunite—and will they feel whole again? A remarkable window into the volatile, constantly changing China of the last half century and the long-reaching legacy of the country’s most infamous law, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove is also the moving story of two sisters torn apart by the forces of history and brought together again by their families’ determination and one reporter’s dogged work. “Excellent . . . entrancing and disturbing . . . [Demick] is one of our finest chroniclers of East Asia. . . . [Her] characters are richly drawn, and her stories, often reported over a span of years, deliver a rare emotional wallop.”—The New York Times
===
In 2000, a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove, trying to avoid detection by the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later, an American couple travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned. Their understanding had been that China's brutal one-child policy was leading to hundreds of abandoned girls, desperate for the care of adopted parents. What they didn't know - and what award-winning journalist Barbara Demick uncovered in 2007, while working as a correspondent in Beijing - was that their daughter had been snatched from her beloved family and her identical twin. Under China's one-child policy hundreds of poor Chinese were giving up their children due to soaring fines and threats of violence. More sinister still, international demand for adoptees was sky-rocketing, and local officials were forcibly seizing children and trafficking them to orphanages, who were selling them abroad. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove tells the gripping story of separated twins, their respective fates in China and the USA, and Barbara Demick's role in reuniting them against huge odds. Painting a rich portrait of China's history and culture, it asks questions about the roots, impact and consequences of China's one-child policy, the ethics of international adoption, and, ultimately, the assumptions and narratives we hold about the quality of lives lived in the East and the West.

Empire of AI

Empire of AI

Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

Karen Hao

2025

Business & Economics Technology & Engineering Computers

An eye-opening account of the tech arms race shaping out planet, from an award-winning journalist and AI insider to the world of Sam Altman and OpenAI When longtime AI expert Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI, five years ago, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile forces.

Read more

An eye-opening account of the tech arms race shaping out planet, from an award-winning journalist and AI insider to the world of Sam Altman and OpenAI When longtime AI expert Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI, five years ago, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile forces. But the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that breakthrough success requires an almost unprecedented amount of proprietary resources: the "compute" power of scarce high-end chips, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans on the ground "cleaning up" the data for sweatshop wages throughout the global South, and a truly alarming spike in the need for energy and water underlying everything. We have entered a new, ominous age of empire with OpenAI setting a breakneck pace as a small group of the most valuable companies in human history try to chase them down. With unparalleled access to Open AI, Hao tells the full story that shocked the entire tech industry--Altman's sudden firing by the Open AI board just as he seemed at the top of the world, and then the board's ignominious retreat and Altman's triumphant return. But this isn't just a tale of a single company and its team. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down on the darkling plain where the real suffering happens at impact, Empire of AI is the book we need to pierce the veil and bring the stakes into sharp focus.
===
A New York Times Notable Book • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award • An Instant New York Times Bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by Smithsonian, Scientific American, and Elle “A bestselling page-turner that has made waves not just in Silicon Valley but around the world . . . With Empire of AI, Hao is fundamentally shaping many people’s perceptions and understanding of the company at the center of the AI revolution.” —TIME Magazine, “TIME100 AI 2025” “Excellent and deeply reported.” —Tim Wu, The New York Times “Startling and intensely researched . . . an essential account of how OpenAI and ChatGPT came to be and the catastrophic places they will likely take us.” —Vulture From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong? Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of resources: the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of empire: only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations? Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Armed with Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too—as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they’re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.
===
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An eye-opening account of the tech arms race shaping out planet, from an award-winning journalist and AI insider to the world of Sam Altman and OpenAI When longtime AI expert and journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely market forces. But the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that it requires an unprecedented amount of proprietary resources: the ‘compute’ power of scarce high-end chips, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans on the ground ‘cleaning it up’ for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the need for energy and water underlying everything. We have entered a new, ominous age of empire with OpenAI setting a breakneck pace, as a small group of the most valuable companies in human history try to chase it down. In exhilarating prose and with unparalleled access to those closest to Sam Altman, Hao recounts the meteoric rise of OpenAI and shows us the sinister impact that this industry is having on society.

Every Day Is Sunday

Every Day Is Sunday

How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut

Ken Belson

2025

Sports & Recreation

From veteran New York Times Business & NFL reporter, Ken Belson, a deeply-reported account of how the NFL’s Commissioner, Roger Goodell, and its two most powerful owners, Jerry Jones & Robert Kraft, turned the league into a cultural phenomenon. On February 11, 2024, NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, & the league’s two most powerful owners, Jerry Jones & Robert Kraft, looked down at the spectacle before them.

Read more

From veteran New York Times Business & NFL reporter, Ken Belson, a deeply-reported account of how the NFL’s Commissioner, Roger Goodell, and its two most powerful owners, Jerry Jones & Robert Kraft, turned the league into a cultural phenomenon. On February 11, 2024, NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, & the league’s two most powerful owners, Jerry Jones & Robert Kraft, looked down at the spectacle before them. What they saw was the sport’s championship game, the Super Bowl—now a de facto national holiday—being played in a shiny new $2B stadium, home to the first franchise based in Las Vegas, after the league’s embrace of nationwide gambling. The moment was over 30 years in the making. As one of Goodell's colleagues said: “Roger doesn’t view the other leagues as competition. He wants to be mentioned with Disney and the Vatican, these massive institutions.” In Every Day is Sunday, Ken Belson traces the evolution of the league from “one of the four US professional sports,” to the superpower it is today. Belson illustrates how the league’s rise coincided with the arrival of Jones & Kraft in the early 90’s. He provides an inside look on how these two men reshaped the league, taking readers into the secretive owner’s meeting, how they decided Goodell was the right man to place as Commissioner, and how the three built, wielded, and held on to their collective power. Perfect for fans of The Dynasty and Big Game, Belson provides a unique peek behind the curtain of how America’s favorite sport achieved its status—and how these three men let nothing stand in their way.
===
From veteran New York Times Business & NFL reporter, Ken Belson, a deeply-reported account of how the NFL's Commissioner, Roger Goodell, and its two most powerful owners, Jerry Jones & Robert Kraft, turned the league into a financial and cultural juggernaut. On February 11, 2024, NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, & the league's two most powerful owners, Jerry Jones & Robert Kraft, looked down at the spectacle before them. What they saw was the sport's championship game, the Super Bowl--now a de facto national holiday--being played in a shiny new $2B stadium, home to the first franchise based in Las Vegas, after the league's embrace of nationwide gambling. The moment was over 30 years in the making. "We're not competing with the NBA or MLB," Goodell later quipped in private. "Our competitors are Apple & Google." In Every Day is Sunday, veteran New York Times Business & NFL reporter, Ken Belson, traces the evolution of the league from "one of the four US professional sports," into the cultural & economic juggernaut it is today. Belson illustrates how the league's rise coincided with the arrival of Jones & Kraft in the early 90's. He provides an inside look on how these two men reshaped the league, taking readers into the secretive owner's meeting, how they decided Goodell was the right man to place as Commissioner, and how the three built, wielded, and held on to their collective power. Perfect for fans of THE DYNASTY and BIG GAME, Belson provides a unique peek behind the curtain of how America's favorite sport achieved its status--and how these three men let nothing, or no one--stand in their way.

The Fate of the Day

The Fate of the Day

The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780

Rick Atkinson

2025

History

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the second volume of the landmark American Revolution trilogy by the bestselling author of The British Are Coming, George Washington’s army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat. Rick Atkinson is featured in the new Ken Burns documentary The American Revolution, premiering ahead of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.

Read more

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the second volume of the landmark American Revolution trilogy by the bestselling author of The British Are Coming, George Washington’s army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat. Rick Atkinson is featured in the new Ken Burns documentary The American Revolution, premiering ahead of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. “This is great history . . . compulsively readable . . . There is no better writer of narrative history than the Pulitzer Prize–winning Atkinson.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) The first twenty-one months of the American Revolution—which began at Lexington and ended at Princeton—was the story of a ragged group of militiamen and soldiers fighting to forge a new nation. By the winter of 1777, the exhausted Continental Army could claim only that it had barely escaped annihilation by the world’s most formidable fighting force. Two years into the war, George III is as determined as ever to bring his rebellious colonies to heel. But the king’s task is now far more complicated: fighting a determined enemy on the other side of the Atlantic has become ruinously expensive, and spies tell him that the French and Spanish are threatening to join forces with the Americans. Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson provides a riveting narrative covering the middle years of the Revolution. Stationed in Paris, Benjamin Franklin woos the French; in Pennsylvania, George Washington pleads with Congress to deliver the money, men, and materiel he needs to continue the fight. In New York, General William Howe, the commander of the greatest army the British have ever sent overseas, plans a new campaign against the Americans—even as he is no longer certain that he can win this searing, bloody war. The months and years that follow bring epic battles at Brandywine, Saratoga, Monmouth, and Charleston, a winter of misery at Valley Forge, and yet more appeals for sacrifice by every American committed to the struggle for freedom. Timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolution, Atkinson’s brilliant account of the lethal conflict between the Americans and the British offers not only deeply researched and spectacularly dramatic history, but also a new perspective on the demands that a democracy makes on its citizens.

A Flower Traveled in My Blood

A Flower Traveled in My Blood

The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children

Haley Cohen Gilliland

2025

History

"The epic, true story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, grandmothers who fought to find their stolen grandchildren during Argentina's brutal dictatorship"--Provided by publisher. === NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025 • THE WASHINGTON POST’S 5 BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF 2025 • THE ATLANTIC’S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2025 • THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 • TIME MAGAZINE’S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 • NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 “[An] astonishing story…Powerful…Harrowing…Absorbing and lucid…You would have to harden your heart to be unmoved by the Abuelas’ quest.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review (front-cover review) “Inspiring…A triumphant saga of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the face of pure malevolence.” —Hampton Sides • “Enthralling…Written with the nail-biting verve of a thriller.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) • “Extraordinary...A harrowing and timely reminder of what happens when democracy succumbs to despotism.” —Adam Higginbotham • “[A] cinematically detailed, deeply researched narrative.” —The Washington Post • “Piercing, emotional...Will resonate for generations.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A remarkable new talent in narrative nonfiction delivers the epic true story of a group of courageous grandmothers who fought to find their grandchildren who were stolen.

Read more

"The epic, true story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, grandmothers who fought to find their stolen grandchildren during Argentina's brutal dictatorship"--Provided by publisher.
===
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025 • THE WASHINGTON POST’S 5 BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF 2025 • THE ATLANTIC’S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2025 • THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 • TIME MAGAZINE’S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 • NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 “[An] astonishing story…Powerful…Harrowing…Absorbing and lucid…You would have to harden your heart to be unmoved by the Abuelas’ quest.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review (front-cover review) “Inspiring…A triumphant saga of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the face of pure malevolence.” —Hampton Sides • “Enthralling…Written with the nail-biting verve of a thriller.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) • “Extraordinary...A harrowing and timely reminder of what happens when democracy succumbs to despotism.” —Adam Higginbotham • “[A] cinematically detailed, deeply researched narrative.” —The Washington Post • “Piercing, emotional...Will resonate for generations.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A remarkable new talent in narrative nonfiction delivers the epic true story of a group of courageous grandmothers who fought to find their grandchildren who were stolen. In the early hours of March 24, 1976, the streets of Buenos Aires rumble with tanks as soldiers seize the presidential palace and topple Argentina’s leader. The country is now under the control of a military junta, with army chief Jorge Rafael Videla at the helm. With quiet support from the United States and tacit approval from much of Argentina’s people, who are tired of constant bombings and gunfights, the junta swiftly launches the National Reorganization Process or El Proceso—a bland name masking their ruthless campaign to crush the political left and instill the country with “Western, Christian” values. The junta holds power until 1983 and decimates a generation. One of the military’s most diabolical acts is kidnapping hundreds of pregnant women. After giving birth in captivity, the women are “disappeared,” and their babies secretly given to other families—many of them headed by police or military officers. For mothers of pregnant daughters and daughters-in-law, the source of their grief is twofold—the disappearances of their children, and the theft of their grandchildren. A group of fierce grandmothers forms the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, dedicated to finding the stolen infants and seeking justice from a nation that betrayed them. At a time when speaking out could mean death, the Abuelas confront military officers and launch protests to reach international diplomats and journalists. They become detectives, adopting disguises to observe suspected grandchildren, and even work alongside a renowned American scientist to pioneer groundbreaking genetic tests. A Flower Traveled in My Blood is the rarest of nonfiction that reads like a novel and puts your heart in your throat. It is the product of years of extensive archival research and meticulous, original reporting. It marks the arrival of a blazing new talent in narrative journalism. In these pages, a regime tries to terrorize a country, but love prevails. The grandmothers’ stunning stories reveal new truths about memory, identity, and family.

Girl on Girl

Girl on Girl

How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves

Sophie Gilbert

2025

Social Science Literary Criticism

A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book • Named one of the Best Books of the Year by TIME, NPR, Elle, and The Boston Globe “Searing… rigorously researched but never stuffy… Gilbert has compiled perhaps the first comprehensive examination of turn-of-the-millennium mainstream, cool-kid trends and ephemera, and how they were largely molded by those in power to sell a generation of girls and young women reality-warping lies.” —The New York Times “So clear-eyed that it’s startling." —The Washington Post “Entertaining and even energizing, transforming a dismal history into something like a rallying cry.” —The Boston Globe From Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert, a blazing critique of early aughts pop culture What happened to feminism in the twenty-first century? This question feels increasingly urgent in a moment of cultural and legislative backlash, when widespread uncertainty about the movement’s power, focus, and currency threatens decades of progress. Sophie Gilbert identifies an inflection point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the energy of third-wave and “riot grrrl” feminism collapsed into a regressive period of hyper-objectification, sexualization, and infantilization.

Read more

A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book • Named one of the Best Books of the Year by TIME, NPR, Elle, and The Boston Globe “Searing… rigorously researched but never stuffy… Gilbert has compiled perhaps the first comprehensive examination of turn-of-the-millennium mainstream, cool-kid trends and ephemera, and how they were largely molded by those in power to sell a generation of girls and young women reality-warping lies.” —The New York Times “So clear-eyed that it’s startling." —The Washington Post “Entertaining and even energizing, transforming a dismal history into something like a rallying cry.” —The Boston Globe From Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert, a blazing critique of early aughts pop culture What happened to feminism in the twenty-first century? This question feels increasingly urgent in a moment of cultural and legislative backlash, when widespread uncertainty about the movement’s power, focus, and currency threatens decades of progress. Sophie Gilbert identifies an inflection point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the energy of third-wave and “riot grrrl” feminism collapsed into a regressive period of hyper-objectification, sexualization, and infantilization. Mining the darker side of nostalgia, Gilbert trains her keen analytic eye on the most revealing cultural objects of the era, across music, film, television, fashion, tabloid journalism, and more. What she recounts is harrowing, from the leering gaze of the paparazzi to the gleeful cruelty of early reality TV and a burgeoning internet culture vicious toward women in the spotlight and damaging for those who weren’t. Gilbert tracks many of the period’s dominant themes back to the rise of internet porn, which gained widespread influence as it began to pervade our collective consciousness. The result is a devastating portrait of a time when a distinctly American blend of excess, materialism, and power worship collided with the culture’s reactionary, puritanical, and chauvinistic currents. Amid a collective reconsideration of the way women are treated in public, Girl on Girl is a blistering indictment of the matrix of misogyny that undergirded the cultural production of the early twenty-first century, and continues to shape our world today.
===
'A captivating must-read for anyone who wants to understand how and why misogyny is as powerful a force as ever' KATE MANNE, author of Down Girl 'Riveting, incisive, rousing' MELISSA FEBOS, author of Girlhood Cosmetic surgeries are at an all-time high, Ozempic is bringing back 'heroin chic' and TikTok trad-wives are on the rise - after four waves of feminism, what went wrong? Despite decades of progress, the gains of the feminist movement feel more fragile than ever. But as Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert points out, this is not a unique moment. Feminism felt just as fragmented in the early 2000s, when the momentum of third-wave feminists and 'riot grrrl's was squashed by lad culture and the commodification of 'Girl Power'. Casting her eye across pop culture of the past thirty years - from Madonna, the Spice Girls and the Kardashians, to MySpace, #GirlBoss and Real Housewives - Sophie Gilbert reveals a toxic pattern of progress and misogynistic backlash. Girl on Girl shows how every form of media, heavily influenced by the rise of porn, has shaped and warped women's relationships with themselves and other women, and asks what lies ahead. We cannot move forward without fully reckoning with how pop culture has defined us - this book shows us how.

The Gods of New York

The Gods of New York

Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City, 1986-1990

Jonathan Mahler

2025

History

A sweeping chronicle of four tumultuous years in 1980s New York that changed the city forever—and anticipated the forces that would soon divide the nation—from the bestselling author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning “A rip-roaring, sweeping, essential work of history . .

Read more

A sweeping chronicle of four tumultuous years in 1980s New York that changed the city forever—and anticipated the forces that would soon divide the nation—from the bestselling author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning “A rip-roaring, sweeping, essential work of history . . . a deeply reported and brilliantly observed account of how the modern city was born and why all of us continue to live with the results.”—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life New York entered 1986 as a city reborn. Record profits on Wall Street sent waves of money splashing across Manhattan, bringing a battered city roaring back to life. But it also entered 1986 as a city whose foundation was beginning to crack. Thousands of New Yorkers were sleeping in the streets, addicted to drugs, dying of AIDS, or suffering from mental illnesses. Nearly one-third of the city’s Black and Hispanic residents were living below the federal poverty line. Long-simmering racial tensions threatened to boil over. The events of the next four years would split the city open. Howard Beach. Black Monday. Tawana Brawley. The crack epidemic. The birth of ACT UP. The Central Park jogger. The release of Do the Right Thing. And a cast of outsized characters—Ed Koch, Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, Spike Lee, Rudy Giuliani, Larry Kramer—would compete to shape the city’s future while building their own mythologies. The Gods of New York is a kaleidoscopic and deeply immersive portrait of a city whose identity was suddenly up for grabs: Could it be both the great working-class city that lifted up immigrants from around the world and the money-soaked capital of global finance? Could it retain a civic culture—a common idea of what it meant to be a New Yorker—when the rich were building a city of their own and vast swaths of its citizens were losing faith in the systems meant to protect them? New York City was one thing at the dawn of 1986; it would be something very different as 1989 came to a close. This is the story of how that happened.
===
New York City entered 1986 as a city reborn, with record profits on Wall Street sending waves of money splashing across Manhattan and bringing a once-bankrupt and reeling city back to life. But it also entered 1986 as a city divided. Nearly one-third of the city's Black and Hispanic residents were living below the poverty line. Thousands of New Yorkers were sleeping in the streets - and in many cases addicted to drugs, dying of AIDS, or suffering from mental illness. The manufacturing jobs that had once sustained a thriving middle class had vanished. Long-simmering racial tensions were boiling over. Over the next four years, a singular confluence of events - involving a cast of outsized, unforgettable characters - would widen those divisions into chasms. Ed Koch. Donald Trump. Al Sharpton. The Central Park Five. Larry Kramer. Spike Lee. Rudy Giuliani. Howard Beach. Tawana Brawley. The Preppy Murder. The Tompkins Square Riots. Jimmy Breslin. Ivan Boesky. Do the Right Thing, Wall Street, crack, the AIDS epidemic, Black Monday and, of course, ready to pour gasoline on every fire - the tabloids. In The Gods of New York, bestselling author Jonathan Mahler tells the story of these outsized characters and of these convulsive, defining years. It's an exuberant, kaleidoscopic, and deeply immersive portrait of a city in transformation, one whose long-held identity was suddenly up for grabs: Could it be both the great working-class city, drawing in and lifting up immigrants from around the world and the money-soaked capital of global finance? Could it retain a civic culture -- a common idea of what it meant to be a New Yorker -- when the rich were building a city of their own and vast swaths of its citizens were losing faith in the systems that were intended to protect them? New York was one thing at the dawn of 1986; it would be something very different as 1989 came to a close. This book is the story of how that happened.
===
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • A sweeping chronicle of four tumultuous years in 1980s New York that changed the city forever—and anticipated the forces that would soon divide the nation—from the bestselling author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning “A rip-roaring, sweeping, essential work of history . . . a deeply reported and brilliantly observed account of how the modern city was born and why all of us continue to live with the results.”—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Economist, The New Yorker, Town & Country New York entered 1986 as a city reborn. Record profits on Wall Street sent waves of money splashing across Manhattan, bringing a battered city roaring back to life. But it also entered 1986 as a city whose foundation was beginning to crack. Thousands of New Yorkers were sleeping in the streets, addicted to drugs, dying of AIDS, or suffering from mental illnesses. Nearly one-third of the city’s Black and Hispanic residents were living below the federal poverty line. Long-simmering racial tensions threatened to boil over. The events of the next four years would split the city open. Howard Beach. Black Monday. Tawana Brawley. The crack epidemic. The birth of ACT UP. The Central Park jogger. The release of Do the Right Thing. And a cast of outsized characters—Ed Koch, Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, Spike Lee, Rudy Giuliani, Larry Kramer—would compete to shape the city’s future while building their own mythologies. The Gods of New York is a kaleidoscopic and deeply immersive portrait of a city whose identity was suddenly up for grabs: Could it be both the great working-class city that lifted up immigrants from around the world and the money-soaked capital of global finance? Could it retain a civic culture—a common idea of what it meant to be a New Yorker—when the rich were building a city of their own and vast swaths of its citizens were losing faith in the systems meant to protect them? New York City was one thing at the dawn of 1986; it would be something very different as 1989 came to a close. This is the story of how that happened.

I Seek a Kind Person

I Seek a Kind Person

My Father, Seven Children and the Adverts that Helped Them Escape the Holocaust

Julian Borger

2025

Biography & Autobiography

This gripping family memoir of grief, courage, and hope tells the hidden stories of children who escaped the Holocaust, building connections across generations and continents. In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna.

Read more

This gripping family memoir of grief, courage, and hope tells the hidden stories of children who escaped the Holocaust, building connections across generations and continents. In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out advertisements offering their children into the safe keeping of readers of a British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. The right words in the right order could mean the difference between life and death. 83 years later, Guardian journalist Julian Borger comes across the ad that saved his father, Robert, from the Nazis. Robert had kept this a secret, like almost everything else about his traumatic Viennese childhood, until he took his own life. Drawn to the shadows of his family's past and starting with nothing but a page of newspaper ads, Borger traces the remarkable stories of his father, the other advertised children, and their families, each thrown into the maelstrom of a world at war. From a Viennese radio shop to the Shanghai ghetto, internment camps and family homes across Britain, the deep forests and concentration camps of Nazi Germany, smugglers saving Jewish lives in Holland, an improbable French Resistance cell, and a redemptive story of survival in New York, Borger unearths the astonishing journeys of the children at the hands of fate, their stories of trauma and the kindness of strangers.

John & Paul

John & Paul

A Love Story in Songs

Ian Leslie

2025

Biography & Autobiography

"A new take on a legendary partnership...Thoroughly delightful...Fans will love this fresh, insightful approach to the band." —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) John Lennon and Paul McCartney knew each other for twenty-three years, from 1957 to 1980. This book is the myth-shattering biography of a relationship that changed the cultural history of the world.

Read more

"A new take on a legendary partnership...Thoroughly delightful...Fans will love this fresh, insightful approach to the band." —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) John Lennon and Paul McCartney knew each other for twenty-three years, from 1957 to 1980. This book is the myth-shattering biography of a relationship that changed the cultural history of the world. The Beatles shook the world to its core in the 1960’s and, to this day, new generations continue to fall in love with their songs and their story. At the heart of this phenomenon lies the dynamic between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Few other musical partnerships have been rooted in such a deep, intense and complicated personal relationship. John and Paul’s relationship was defined by its complexity: compulsive, tender and tempestuous; full of longing, riven by jealousy. Like the band, their relationship was always in motion, never in equilibrium for long. John & Paul traces its twists and turns and reveals how these shifts manifested themselves in the music. The two of them shared a private language, rooted in the stories, comedy and songs they both loved as teenagers, and later, in the lyrics of Beatles songs. In John & Paul, acclaimed writer Ian Leslie uses the songs they wrote to trace the shared journey of these two compelling men before, during, and after The Beatles. Drawing on recently released footage and recordings, Leslie offers us an intimate and insightful new look at two of the greatest icons in music history, and rich insights into the nature of creativity, collaboration, and human intimacy.

King of Kings

King of Kings

The Iranian Revolution—A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation

Scott Anderson

2025

History

Finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • Named a Best Book of 2025 by Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and Globe and Mail From the author of the acclaimed international bestseller Lawrence in Arabia, a stunningly revelatory narrative history of one of the most momentous events in modern times and the dawn of the age of religious nationalism. On November 16th, 1977, at a state dinner in the White House, President Jimmy Carter toasted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, Shadow of God on Earth, praising his “enlightened leadership” and extolling Iran as “a stabilizing influence in that part of the world.” Iran had the world’s fifth largest army and was awash in billions of dollars in oil revenues.

Read more

Finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • Named a Best Book of 2025 by Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and Globe and Mail From the author of the acclaimed international bestseller Lawrence in Arabia, a stunningly revelatory narrative history of one of the most momentous events in modern times and the dawn of the age of religious nationalism. On November 16th, 1977, at a state dinner in the White House, President Jimmy Carter toasted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, Shadow of God on Earth, praising his “enlightened leadership” and extolling Iran as “a stabilizing influence in that part of the world.” Iran had the world’s fifth largest army and was awash in billions of dollars in oil revenues. Construction cranes dotted the skyline of its booming capital, Tehran. The regime’s feared secret police force SAVAK had crushed communist opposition, and the Shah had bought off the conservative Muslim clergy inside the country. He seemed invulnerable, and invaluable to the United States as an ally in the Cold War. Fourteen months later the Shah fled Iran into exile, forced from the throne by a volcanic religious revolution led by a fiery cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini. How could the United States (and other Western allies), which had one of the largest CIA stations in the world and thousands of military personnel in Iran, have been so blind? The spellbinding story Scott Anderson weaves is one of a dictator oblivious to the disdain of his subjects and a superpower blundering into disaster. The Shah emerges as a fascinating, Shakespearean character – a wannabe Richard III unaware of the depth of dissent to his rule, indecisive like Hamlet when action was called for, and at the end Lear-like as he raged against his fate. The Americans made terrible decisions at almost every juncture, from a secret pact designed by Kissinger and Nixon, to dismissing reports from the one diplomat who saw how hated the Shah was by the Iranian people (unlike almost all his colleagues, he spoke Farsi), to Jimmy Carter allowing the Shah to come to America for medical treatment, which set off the hostage crisis which forever damaged American influence in the world. Scott Anderson tells this astonishing tale with the narrative brio, mordant wit, and keen analysis that made his bestselling Lawrence in Arabia one of the key texts in understanding the modern Middle East. Based on voluminous research and dozens of interviews, King of Kings is driven by penetrating portraits of the people involved – the Iranian-American doctor who convinced American officials Khomeini was a moderate; the American teacher who learned of Khomeini’s influence long before the cleric was even mentioned in official reports; the Shah’s court minister who kept a detailed diary of all their interactions; the Shah’s wife Farah who still mourns her lost kingdom; the hypocritical and misguided Jimmy Carter; and the implacable Khomeini who outmaneuvered his foes at every turn. The Iranian Revolution, Anderson convincingly argues, was as world-shattering an event as the French and Russian revolutions. In the Middle East, in India, in Southeast Asia, in Europe, and the United States, the hatred of economically-marginalized, religiously-fervent masses for a wealthy secular elite has led to violence and upheaval – and Iran was the template. King of Kings is a bravura work of history, and a warning.

The Last Manager

The Last Manager

John W. Miller

2025

Sports & Recreation

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025 WINNER OF THE CASEY AWARD FOR BEST BASEBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR “Baseball books don’t get any better than this...Earl Weaver has at last been given his due.” —George F. Will “Vivid...Most sports books are pop flies to the infield.

Read more

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025 WINNER OF THE CASEY AWARD FOR BEST BASEBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR “Baseball books don’t get any better than this...Earl Weaver has at last been given his due.” —George F. Will “Vivid...Most sports books are pop flies to the infield. Miller’s is a screaming triple into the left field corner.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times The first major biography of legendary Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver—who has been described as “the Copernicus of baseball” and “the grandfather of the modern game”—The Last Manager is a wild, thrilling, and hilarious ride with baseball’s most underappreciated genius, and one of its greatest characters. Long before the Moneyball Era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History’s feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968 to 1982. When Weaver was hired by the Orioles, managers were still seen as coaches and inspirational leaders, more teachers of the game than strategists. Weaver invented new ways of building baseball teams, prioritizing on-base average, elite defense, and strike throwing. Weaver was the first manager to use a modern radar gun, and he pioneered the use of analytical data. By moving six-foot four-inch Cal Ripken Jr. to shortstop, Weaver paved the way for a generation of plus-sized superstar shortstops, such as Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. He foreshadowed almost everything that Bill James, Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, and hundreds of other big-brain baseball types would later present as innovations. Beyond being a great baseball mind, Weaver was a rare baseball character. Major League Baseball is show business, and Weaver understood how much of his job was entertainment. Weaver’s legendary outbursts offered players cathartic relief from their own frustration, signaled his concern for the team, and fired up fans. In his frequent arguments with umpires, he hammed it up for the crowds, faked heart attacks, ripped bases out of the ground, and pretended to toss umpires out of the game. Weaver also fought with his players, especially Jim Palmer, but that creative tension contributed to stunning success and a hilarious clubhouse. During his tenure as major-league manager, the Orioles won the American League pennant in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1979, each time winning more than 100 games. The Last Manager uncovers the story of Weaver’s St. Louis childhood with a mobster uncle, his years of minor-league heartbreak, and his unlikely road to becoming a big-league manager, while tracing the evolution of the game from the old-time baseball of cross-country trains and “desk contracts” to the modern era of free agency, video analysis, and powerful player agents. Weaver’s career is a critical juncture in baseball history. He was the only manager to hold a job during the five years leading up to and the five years after free agency upended the sport in 1976. Weaver was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. “No manager belongs there more,” wrote Tom Boswell. “Weaver encapsulates the fire, the humor, the brains, the childishness, the wisdom and the goofy fun of baseball.” The Last Manager tells the story of one man—belligerent, genius, infamous—who left his mark on the game for generations.

Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Ron Chernow

2025

Biography & Autobiography

The #1 New York Times Bestseller • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025• A Washington Post and New York Times Notable Book • Named a Best Book of 2025 by TIME, The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, and Kirkus Reviews “Comprehensive, enthralling . .

Read more

The #1 New York Times Bestseller • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025• A Washington Post and New York Times Notable Book • Named a Best Book of 2025 by TIME, The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, and Kirkus Reviews “Comprehensive, enthralling . . . Mark Twain flows like the Mississippi River, its prose propelled by Mark Twain’s own exuberance.” —The Boston Globe “Chernow writes with such ease and clarity . . . For all its length and detail, [Mark Twain] is deeply absorbing throughout.” — The Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn’t long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize. In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care. After establishing himself as a journalist, satirist, and lecturer, he eventually settled in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, where he went on to write The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He threw himself into the hurly-burly of American culture, and emerged as the nation’s most notable political pundit. At the same time, his madcap business ventures eventually bankrupted him; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play. Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars, and who was the most important white author of his generation to grapple so fully with the legacy of slavery. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.

A Marriage at Sea

A Marriage at Sea

A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck

Sophie Elmhirst

2025

Family & Relationships

THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER & ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025 A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025 ALSO NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2025 BY NPR, VOGUE, TIME MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER, AND MORE “This is nonfiction that reads like fiction – the best kind. Elmhirst’s retelling is a triumph, second only to the seemingly impossible feat of Maurice and Maralyn themselves.

Read more

THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER & ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025 A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025 ALSO NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2025 BY NPR, VOGUE, TIME MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER, AND MORE “This is nonfiction that reads like fiction – the best kind. Elmhirst’s retelling is a triumph, second only to the seemingly impossible feat of Maurice and Maralyn themselves. You won’t be able to put it down.” – USA Today “Remarkable… I found myself, alternately, holding my breath as I read at top speed, wandering rooms in search of someone to read aloud to, and placing the book facedown, arrested by quiet statements that left me reeling with their depth.” – The New York Times “Such an emotionally vivid portrait of a couple in isolation that I was shocked it wasn’t fiction. How could a writer get so deeply into the minds of two real people in such extraordinary circumstances? … So brilliantly depicted.” – Elle “A beautiful meditation on endurance, codependence, and the power of love. A dazzling book.” – Patrick Radden Keefe “An enthralling, engrossing story of survival and the resilience of the human spirit.” —Bill Bryson An instant New York Times bestseller, this is the electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at sea: a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits. Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away? Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But in June 1972, Maurice and Maralyn set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves. What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can’t run away from themselves. Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.

Memorial Days

Memorial Days

A Memoir

Geraldine Brooks

2025

Biography & Autobiography

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER · A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 · A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2025 · A Time Best Memoir of 2025 · Named a Best Book of 2025 by NPR, People, Air Mail, Bookreporter, and Publishers Weekly “Brooks tracks the geography of grief with patience and grace as she comes to terms with the ongoing nature of outliving the ones you love most. ...

Read more

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER · A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 · A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2025 · A Time Best Memoir of 2025 · Named a Best Book of 2025 by NPR, People, Air Mail, Bookreporter, and Publishers Weekly “Brooks tracks the geography of grief with patience and grace as she comes to terms with the ongoing nature of outliving the ones you love most. ... Her memoir is certainly a testament to her own unique loss, but it’s moreover a lifeline to others who will find themselves in this familiar, shattered landscape of grief.” —Los Angeles Times “A rich account of marriage and mourning.” —Washington Post A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk. After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at the beach. But all of this ended abruptly when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf. Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony’s death. A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.
===
A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey toward peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse.

Mother Emanuel

Mother Emanuel

Kevin Sack

2025

History

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’ TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A sweeping history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice—from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Sack “A masterpiece . .

Read more

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’ TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A sweeping history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice—from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Sack “A masterpiece . . . a dense, rich, captivating narrative, featuring vivid prose . . . expansive, inspiring and hugely important.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) “Race, religion, and terror combine for an extraordinary story of America.”—Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., bestselling author of Begin Again A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Kirkus Reviews Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight other worshippers. Although the shooter had targeted Mother Emanuel—the first A.M.E. church in the South—to agitate racial strife, he did not anticipate the aftermath: an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted Charleston and the South since the earliest days of European settlement. Mother Emanuel explores the fascinating history that brought the church to that moment and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall. It reveals how African Methodism was cultivated from the harshest American soil, and how Black suffering shaped forgiveness into both a religious practice and a survival tool. Kevin Sack, who has written about race in his native South for more than four decades, uses the church to trace the long arc of Black life in the city where nearly half of enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. Through the microcosm of one congregation, he explores the development of a unique practice of Christianity, from its daring breakaway from white churches in 1817, through the traumas of Civil War and Reconstruction, to its critical role in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. At its core, Mother Emanuel is an epic tale of perseverance, not just of a congregation but of a people who withstood enslavement, Jim Crow, and all manner of violence with an unbending faith.

Motherland

Motherland

A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy

Julia Ioffe

2025

History

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Acclaimed journalist Julia Ioffe tells the story of modern Russia through the history of its women, from revolution to utopia to autocracy. In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union.

Read more

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Acclaimed journalist Julia Ioffe tells the story of modern Russia through the history of its women, from revolution to utopia to autocracy. In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow—only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up—doctors, engineers, scientists—seemed to have been replaced by women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to becoming a bastion of conservative Christian values? In Motherland, Ioffe turns modern Russian history on its head, telling it exclusively through the stories of its women. From her own physician great-grandmothers to Lenin’s lover, a feminist revolutionary; from the hundreds of thousands of Soviet girls who fought in World War II to the millions of single mothers who rebuilt and repopulated a devastated country; from the members of Pussy Riot to Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, Ioffe chronicles one of the most audacious social experiments in history and documents how it failed the very women it was meant to liberate—and how that failure paved the way for the revanche of Vladimir Putin. Part memoir, part journalistic exploration, part history, Motherland paints a portrait of modern Russia through the women who shaped it. With deep emotion, Ioffe reveals what it means to live through the cataclysms of revolution, war, idealism, and heartbreak—and how the story of Russia today is inextricably tied to the sacrifices of its women.

Mother Mary Comes to Me

Mother Mary Comes to Me

Arundhati Roy

2025

Biography & Autobiography

Named One of the New York Times Book Review's Top Ten Books of 2025 Finalist for the Kirkus Prize A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces her complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a fierce and formidable force who shaped Arundhati’s life both as a woman and a writer. Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.” “Heart-smashed” by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and “more than a little ashamed” by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.” And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today.

Read more

Named One of the New York Times Book Review's Top Ten Books of 2025 Finalist for the Kirkus Prize A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces her complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a fierce and formidable force who shaped Arundhati’s life both as a woman and a writer. Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.” “Heart-smashed” by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and “more than a little ashamed” by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.” And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today. With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace—a memoir like no other.

1929

1929

Inside the Greatest Crash in History--and How It Shattered a Nation

Andrew Ross Sorkin

2025

Business & Economics

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “It is one of the best narrative histories I’ve read.” —The Wall Street Journal A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025 • Named a BEST BOOK OF 2025 by The Washington Post, TIME, The Economist, Air Mail, Bloomberg, Fast Company, Katie Couric Media, and History From the bestselling author of Too Big to Fail, “the definitive history of the 2008 banking crisis,” (The Atlantic) comes a riveting narrative of the most infamous stock market crash in history—one with ripple effects that still shape our society today. In 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation.

Read more

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “It is one of the best narrative histories I’ve read.” —The Wall Street Journal A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025 • Named a BEST BOOK OF 2025 by The Washington Post, TIME, The Economist, Air Mail, Bloomberg, Fast Company, Katie Couric Media, and History From the bestselling author of Too Big to Fail, “the definitive history of the 2008 banking crisis,” (The Atlantic) comes a riveting narrative of the most infamous stock market crash in history—one with ripple effects that still shape our society today. In 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation. But behind the flashing ticker tapes and panicked traders, another drama unfolded—one of visionaries and fraudsters, titans and dreamers, euphoria and ruin. With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naïveté in an endless boom led to disaster. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today’s world—where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again. This is not just a story about money. 1929 is a tale of power, psychology, and the seductive illusion that this time is different. It’s about disregarded alarm bells, financiers who fell from grace, and skeptics who saw the crash coming—only to be dismissed until it was too late. Hailed as a landmark book, Too Big to Fail reimagined how financial crises are told. Now, with 1929, Sorkin delivers an immersive, electrifying account of the most pivotal market collapse of all time—with lessons that remain as urgent as ever. More than just a history, 1929 is a crucial blueprint for understanding the cycles of speculation, the forces that drive financial upheaval, and the warning signs we ignore at our peril.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Omar El Akkad

2025

Biography & Autobiography

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an empire that doesn’t consider you fully human. On October 25th, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet was viewed more than ten million times.

Read more

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an empire that doesn’t consider you fully human. On October 25th, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet was viewed more than ten million times. One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This chronicles the deep fracture that has occurred for Black, brown, Indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in Western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse. This book is a reckoning with what it means to live in the West, and what it means to live in a world run by a small group of countries—America, the UK, France, and Germany. It will be The Fire Next Time for a generation that understands we're undergoing a shift in the so-called “rules-based order,” a generation that understands the West can no longer be trusted to police and guide the world, or its own cities and campuses. It draws on intimate details of Omar's own story as an emigrant who grew up believing in the Western project, who was catapulted into journalism by the rupture of 9/11. This book is El Akkad's heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a breakup we are watching all over the United States, on college campuses, on city streets, and the consequences of this rupture will be felt by all of us. His book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.

The Peepshow

The Peepshow

The Murders at Rillington Place

Kate Summerscale

2024

True Crime Social Science Biography & Autobiography

A New York Times Notable Book • A New York Times Review Editors' Choice • Named a Best Book of the year by FT • Nominated for the Women's prize for nonfiction • Winner of the 2025 ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction “A trove of thrilling material . .

Read more

A New York Times Notable Book • A New York Times Review Editors' Choice • Named a Best Book of the year by FT • Nominated for the Women's prize for nonfiction • Winner of the 2025 ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction “A trove of thrilling material . . . skillfully examines the racism, sexism, economic privation and class prejudices that permeated postwar England . . . There’s so much to admire in this engaging, deeply researched book.” —The New York Times Book Review “An absorbing portrait of post-WWII London.” —Booklist From the Edgar Award–winning author of The Haunting of Alma Fielding, the tale of two journalists competing to solve the notorious Christie murders in postwar London In March 1953, London police discovered the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall at 10 Rillington Place, a dingy rowhouse in Notting Hill. On searching the building, they found another body beneath the floorboards, then an array of human bones in the garden. They launched a nationwide manhunt for the tenant of the ground-floor apartment, a softly spoken former policeman named Reg Christie. But they had already investigated a double murder at 10 Rillington Place three years before, and the killer was hanged. Did they get the wrong man? The story was an instant sensation. The star reporter Harry Procter chased after the scoop on Christie. The eminent crime writer Fryn Tennyson Jesse begged her editor to let her cover the case. To Harry and Fryn, Christie seemed a new kind of murderer: he was vacant, impersonal, a creature of a brutish postwar world. Christie liked to watch women, they discovered, and he liked to kill them. They realized that he might also have engineered a terrible miscarriage of justice. In this riveting true story, Kate Summerscale mines the archives to uncover the lives of Christie’s victims, the tabloid frenzy that their deaths inspired, and the truth about what happened inside the house. What she finds sheds fascinating light on the origins of our fixation with true crime—and suggests a new solution to one of the most notorious cases of the century.
===
'Once more, Kate Summerscale shatters our preconceptions of a classic crime' Val McDermid From Britain's top-selling true crime writer and author of Sunday Times #1 bestseller THE SUSPICIONS OF MR WHICHER... London, 1953. Police discover the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall at 10 Rillington Place, a dingy terrace house in Notting Hill. On searching the building, th[Bokinfo].
===
The UK's top-selling true crime writer and author of the #1 bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher takes on the notorious murders at 10 Rillington Place
===
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025 FROM BRITAIN'S TOP-SELLING TRUE CRIME WRITER AND THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SUSPICIONS OF MR WHICHER A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR: The Times/Sunday Times, Financial Times, Spectator, Independent, Tablet and New Statesman 'Once more, Kate Summerscale shatters our preconceptions of a classic crime' Val McDermid 'I really, really loved it. It's written so beautifully and it really makes you feel like you're in the 1950s' Richard Osman 'Every bit the gripping, page-turning treat' Mark Bostridge, Spectator London, 1953. Police discover the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall at 10 Rillington Place, a dingy terrace house in Notting Hill. On searching the building, they find another body beneath the floorboards, then an array of human bones in the garden. But they have already investigated a double murder at 10 Rillington Place, three years ago, and the killer was hanged. Did they get the wrong man? A nationwide manhunt is launched for the tenant of the ground-floor flat, a softly spoken former policeman named Reg Christie. Star reporter Harry Procter chases after the scoop. Celebrated crime writer Fryn Tennyson Jesse begs to be assigned to the case. The story becomes an instant sensation, and with the relentless rise of the tabloid press the public watches on like never before. Who is Christie? Why did he choose to kill women, and to keep their bodies near him? As Harry and Fryn start to learn the full horror of what went on at Rillington Place, they realise that Christie might also have engineered a terrible miscarriage of justice in plain sight. In this riveting true story, Kate Summerscale mines the archives to uncover the lives of Christie's victims, the tabloid frenzy that their deaths inspired, and the truth about what happened inside the house.

Raising Hare

Raising Hare

A Memoir

Chloe Dalton

2024

Biography & Autobiography

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE 2025 WOMEN'S PRIZE • A fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one woman’s unlikely friendship with a wild hare. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, TIME, The Boston Globe, The Economist, Scientific American, Slate “Moving.

Read more

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE 2025 WOMEN'S PRIZE • A fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one woman’s unlikely friendship with a wild hare. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, TIME, The Boston Globe, The Economist, Scientific American, Slate “Moving. . . . Impart[s] valuable lessons about slowing down and the beauty in the unexpected.”—USA Today “A perfect testimony to the transformative power of love.”—Margaret Renkl, author of The Comfort of Crows Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and bounded around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, more than two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality. In February 2021, Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare—a leveret—that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how difficult it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton’s house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, weasels, feral cats, raptors, or even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death. Raising Hare chronicles their journey together while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore. We witness firsthand the joy at this extraordinary relationship between human and animal, which serves as a reminder that the best things, and most beautiful experiences, arise when we least expect them.
===
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING WINNER OF BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION, HATCHARDS AND BIOGRAPHERS' CLUB FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE HAY FESTIVAL, SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, SPECTATOR, ECONOMIST AND iNEWS 'A beautiful book' - ANGELINA JOLIE 'I will be recommending this to everyone' - MATT HAIG 'Quietly profound, beautifully written, Hare is now lodged in my heart' - TRACY CHEVALIER __ Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and snoozed in your house for hours on end. This happened to me. When lockdown led busy professional Chloe to leave the city and return to the countryside of her childhood, she never expected to find herself custodian of a newly born hare. Yet when she finds the creature, endangered, alone and no bigger than her palm, she is compelled to give it a chance at survival. Raising Hare chronicles their journey together and the challenges of caring for the leveret and preparing for its return to the wild. We witness an extraordinary relationship between human and animal, rekindling our sense of awe towards nature and wildlife. This improbable bond of trust serves to remind us that the most remarkable experiences, inspiring the most hope, often arise when we least expect them.

Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope

Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope

A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement

Brandon M. Terry

2025

History

The romantic vision of the civil rights movement is exhausted, and its inverse, Afropessimism, offers a self-defeating irony. To resolve this impasse, Brandon Terry transforms the standard story of America's democratic awakening through a tragic reading of the civil rights movement: as an ongoing struggle still worthy of affirmation.

The Spinach King

The Spinach King

The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

John Seabrook

2025

Biography & Autobiography

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice One of The Christian Science Monitor's 10 best books of June 2025 The riveting saga of the Seabrook Family, by one of The New Yorker’s most acclaimed storytellers. “Having left this material for his writer son, my father must have wanted the story told, even if he couldn’t bear to tell it himself.” So begins the story of a forgotten American dynasty, a farming family from the bean fields of southern New Jersey who became as wealthy and powerful as aristocrats—only to implode in a storm of lies.

Read more

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice One of The Christian Science Monitor's 10 best books of June 2025 The riveting saga of the Seabrook Family, by one of The New Yorker’s most acclaimed storytellers. “Having left this material for his writer son, my father must have wanted the story told, even if he couldn’t bear to tell it himself.” So begins the story of a forgotten American dynasty, a farming family from the bean fields of southern New Jersey who became as wealthy and powerful as aristocrats—only to implode in a storm of lies. The patriarch, C. F. Seabrook, was hailed as the “Henry Ford of Agriculture.” His son Jack, a keen businessman, was poised to take over what Life called “the biggest vegetable factory on earth.” But the carefully cultivated facade—glamorous outings by horse-drawn carriage, hidden wine cellars, and movie star girlfriends—hid dark secrets that led to the implosion of the family business. At the heart of the narrative is a multi-generational succession battle. It’s a tale of family secrets and Swiss bank accounts, of half-truths, of hatred and passion—and lots and lots of liquor. The Seabrooks’ colorful legal and moral failings took place amid the trappings of extraordinary privilege. But the story of where that money came from is not so pretty They say behind every great fortune there is a great crime. At Seabrook Farms, the troubling American histories of race, immigration, and exploitation arise like weeds from the soil. Great Migration Black laborers struck against the company for better wages in the 1930s, and Japanese Americans helped found a “global village” on the farm after World War II. Revealing both C. F. and Jack Seabrook’s corruption, The Spinach King undermines the “great man” theory of industrial progress. It also shows how American farms evolved from Jeffersonian smallholdings to gigantic agribusinesses, and what such enormous firms do to the families whose fate is bound up in the land. A compulsively readable story of class and privilege, betrayal and revenge—three decades in the making—The Spinach King explores the author’s complicated family legacy and the dark corners of the American Dream.

There Is No Place for Us

There Is No Place for Us

Working and Homeless in America

Brian Goldstone

2026

Social Science

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE ATLANTIC’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Through the “revelatory and gut-wrenching” (Associated Press) stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend—the dramatic rise of the working homeless in cities across America. “An exceptional feat of reporting, full of an immediacy that calls to mind Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family and Matthew Desmond’s Evicted.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Elle, New America, BookPage, Shelf Awareness The working homeless.

Read more

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE ATLANTIC’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Through the “revelatory and gut-wrenching” (Associated Press) stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend—the dramatic rise of the working homeless in cities across America. “An exceptional feat of reporting, full of an immediacy that calls to mind Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family and Matthew Desmond’s Evicted.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Elle, New America, BookPage, Shelf Awareness The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one. In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country’s “Black Mecca” after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children—and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation’s working homeless. Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation’s hidden homeless—omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem. By turns heartbreaking and urgent, There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness—and shows that it won’t be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right.

Things in Nature Merely Grow

Things in Nature Merely Grow

Yiyun Li

2025

Literary Collections

Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Short-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Long-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography One of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year Yiyun Li’s remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance as she considers the loss of her son James. “There is no good way to say this,” Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book.

Read more

Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Short-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Long-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography One of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year Yiyun Li’s remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance as she considers the loss of her son James. “There is no good way to say this,” Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book. “There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged . . . My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.” There is no good way to say this—because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, “a single point in a time line.” Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she can: doing “things that work,” including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death. This is a book for James, but it is not a book about grieving or mourning. As Li writes, “The verb that does not die is ‘to be.’ Vincent was and is and will always be Vincent. James was and is and will always be James. We were and are and will always be their parents. There is no now and then, now and later; only now and now and now and now.” Things in Nature Merely Grow is a testament to Li’s indomitable spirit.

The Tragedy of True Crime

The Tragedy of True Crime

Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us

John J. Lennon

2025

Biography & Autobiography True Crime

In 2001, John J. Lennon killed a man on a Brooklyn Street.

Read more

In 2001, John J. Lennon killed a man on a Brooklyn Street. Now he’s a journalist, working from behind bars, trying to make sense of it all. The Tragedy of True Crime is a first-person journalistic account of the lives of four men who have killed, written by a man who has killed. Lennon entered the New York prison system with a sentence of 28 years to life but after he stepped into a writing workshop at Attica Correctional Facility, his whole life changed. Reporting from the cell block and the prison yard, Lennon challenges our obsession with true crime by telling the full life stories of men now serving time for the lives they took. These men have completely different backgrounds — Robert Chambers, a preppy Manhattanite turned true crime celebrity; Milton E. Jones, a seventeen-year-old coaxed from burglary into something far darker; and Michael Shane Hale, a gay man caught in a crime of passion — and all are searching to find meaning and redemption behind bars. Lennon’s reporting is intertwined with his own story, from a young man seduced by the infamous gangster culture of New York City to a celebrated prison journalist. The same desire echoes throughout the lives of these four men: to become more than murderers. A first-of-its-kind book of immersive prison journalism, The Tragedy of True Crime poses fundamental questions about the stories we tell and who gets to tell them. What essential truth do we lose when we don’t consider all that comes before an act of unthinkable violence? And what happens to the convicted after the cell gate locks?

We the People

We the People

A History of the U.S. Constitution

Jill Lepore

2025

History

ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, New Yorker, Smithsonian, Bookpage, and the Chicago Public Library Longlisted for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction "[Lepore's] 15th book, We the People, a history of the U.S. Constitution, may be her best yet, a capacious work that lands at the right moment, like a life buoy, as our ship of state takes on water." —Hamilton Cain, Los Angeles Times From the best-selling author of These Truths comes We the People, a stunning new history of the U.S.

Read more

ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, New Yorker, Smithsonian, Bookpage, and the Chicago Public Library Longlisted for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction "[Lepore's] 15th book, We the People, a history of the U.S. Constitution, may be her best yet, a capacious work that lands at the right moment, like a life buoy, as our ship of state takes on water." —Hamilton Cain, Los Angeles Times From the best-selling author of These Truths comes We the People, a stunning new history of the U.S. Constitution, for a troubling new era. The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world but also one of the most difficult to amend. Jill Lepore, Harvard professor of history and law, explains why in We the People, the most original history of the Constitution in decades—and an essential companion to her landmark history of the United States, These Truths. Published on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding—the anniversary, too, of the first state constitutions—We the People offers a wholly new history of the Constitution. “One of the Constitution’s founding purposes was to prevent change,” Lepore writes. “Another was to allow for change without violence.” Relying on the extraordinary database she has assembled at the Amendments Project, Lepore recounts centuries of attempts, mostly by ordinary Americans, to realize the promise of the Constitution. Yet nearly all those efforts have failed. Although nearly twelve thousand amendments have been introduced in Congress since 1789, and thousands more have been proposed outside its doors, only twenty-seven have ever been ratified. More troubling, the Constitution has not been meaningfully amended since 1971. Without recourse to amendment, she argues, the risk of political violence rises. So does the risk of constitutional change by presidential or judicial fiat. Challenging both the Supreme Court’s monopoly on constitutional interpretation and the flawed theory of “originalism,” Lepore contends in this “gripping and unfamiliar story of our own past” that the philosophy of amendment is foundational to American constitutionalism. The framers never intended for the Constitution to be preserved, like a butterfly, under glass, Lepore argues, but expected that future generations would be forever tinkering with it, hoping to mend America by amending its Constitution through an orderly deliberative and democratic process. Lepore’s remarkable history seeks, too, to rekindle a sense of constitutional possibility. Congressman Jamie Raskin writes that Lepore “has thrown us a lifeline, a way of seeing the Constitution neither as an authoritarian straitjacket nor a foolproof magic amulet but as the arena of fierce, logical, passionate, and often deadly struggle for a more perfect union.” At a time when the Constitution’s vulnerability is all too evident, and the risk of political violence all too real, We the People, with its shimmering prose and pioneering research, hints at the prospects for a better constitutional future, an amended America.
===
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER On the 250th anniversary of America's founding - a landmark history of the US Constitution for a troubling new era. The US Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world - and one of the most difficult to amend. Although nearly twelve thousand amendments have been proposed since 1789, only twenty-seven have ever been ratified. Tellingly, the Constitution has not been meaningfully amended since 1971. Without amendment, the risk of political violence rises. So does the risk of constitutional change by presidential power. Leading Harvard historian Jill Lepore captures the stories of generations of ordinary people who have attempted everything from abolishing the Electoral College to guaranteeing environmental rights, hoping to mend their nation. Recounting the history of America through centuries of efforts to realize the promise of the Constitution, we witness how nearly all those bids have failed. We the People is the sweeping account of a struggle, arguing that the Constitution was never intended to be preserved, but was expected to be gradually altered. At a time when the risk of political violence is all too real, it hints at the prospects for a better, amended America.

What Is Queer Food?

What Is Queer Food?

How We Served a Revolution

John Birdsall

2025

Cooking

A celebrated culinary writer’s expansive, audacious excavation of the roots of modern queer identity and food culture. The food on our plates has long been designed, twisted, and elevated by queer hands.

Read more

A celebrated culinary writer’s expansive, audacious excavation of the roots of modern queer identity and food culture. The food on our plates has long been designed, twisted, and elevated by queer hands. Piecing together a dazzling mosaic of queer lives, spaces, and meals, beloved food writer John Birdsall unfolds the complex story of how, through times of fear and persecution, queer people used food to express joy and build community—and ended up changing the shape of the table for everyone. Tracing the evolution of queer food from the early decades of the twentieth century through the LGBTQ civil rights movement of post-Stonewall liberation and the devastation of AIDS, Birdsall fills the gaps between past and present. He channels the twin forces of criticism and cultural history to propel readers into the kitchens, restaurants, swirling party houses, and buzzing interior lives of James Baldwin, Alice B. Toklas, Truman Capote, Esther Eng, and others who left an indelible mark on the culinary world from the margins. Queer food, as Birdsall brilliantly reveals, is quiche and Champagne eleganza at Sunday brunch and joyous lesbian potlucks in the bunker world of Cold War homophobic purges. It’s paper chicken for the gender-rebel divas of Chinese opera in San Francisco, Richard Olney’s ecstatic salade composée, and Rainbow Ice-Box Cake from Ernest Matthew Mickler’s White Trash Cooking. It’s the intention surrounding a meal, the circumstances behind it, the people gathered around the table. With cinematic verve and delicious prose, What Is Queer Food? is a monumental work: a testament to food’s essential link to modern queerness that reveals how, like fashion or pop music, cooking and eating have become a crucial language of LGBTQ+ identity. By reframing our understanding of both food and queerness, it opens the door for courageous reckoning and boundless conversation.

Wild Thing

Wild Thing

A Life of Paul Gauguin

Sue Prideaux

2025

Biography & Autobiography

One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2025 One of The New Yorker's Top Books of 2025 One of Vogue's Best Books of 2025 One of the Wall Street Journal's Best Books of the Year One of the New York Public Library's Best Books of 2025 One of the Chicago Public Library's Best Books of 2025 Shortlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Winner of the 2025 American Library in Paris Book Award Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Awards An original and revealing portrait of the misunderstood French Post-Impressionist artist. Paul Gauguin’s legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his biography as his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings.

Read more

One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2025 One of The New Yorker's Top Books of 2025 One of Vogue's Best Books of 2025 One of the Wall Street Journal's Best Books of the Year One of the New York Public Library's Best Books of 2025 One of the Chicago Public Library's Best Books of 2025 Shortlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Winner of the 2025 American Library in Paris Book Award Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Awards An original and revealing portrait of the misunderstood French Post-Impressionist artist. Paul Gauguin’s legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his biography as his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings. Gauguin is chiefly known for his pictures that eschewed convention, to celebrate the beauty of an indigenous people and their culture. In this gorgeously illustrated, myth-busting work, Sue Prideaux reveals that while Gauguin was a complicated man, his scandalous reputation is largely undeserved. Self-taught, Gauguin became a towering artist in his brief life, not just in painting but in ceramics and graphics. He fled the bustle of Paris for the beauty of Tahiti, where he lived simply and worked consistently to expose the tragic results of French Colonialism. Gauguin fought for the rights of Indigenous people, exposing French injustices and corruption in the local newspaper and acting as advocate for the Tahitian people in the French colonial courts. His unconventional career and bold, breathtaking art influenced not only Vincent van Gogh, but Matisse and Picasso. Wild Thing upends much of what we thought we knew about Gauguin through new primary research, including the resurfaced manuscript of Gauguin’s most important writing, the untranslated memoir of Gauguin’s son, and a sample of Gauguin’s teeth that disproves the pernicious myth of his syphilis. In the first full biography of Paul Gauguin in thirty years, Sue Prideaux illuminates the extraordinary oeuvre of a visionary artist vital to the French avant-garde. The result is “a brilliantly readable and compassionate study of Gauguin—not just as a painter, sculptor, carver and potter, but as a human soul perpetually searching for what is always just out of reach” (Artemis Cooper, Spectator).

The Zorg

The Zorg

A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery

Siddharth Kara

2025

History Social Science

The Zorg is the most consequential slave ship of the 18th century whose voyage changed the course of history, yet the story remains largely unknown. Drawing on a trove of archival materials, New York Times bestselling author Siddharth Kara uncovers new details of the Zorg's voyage and takes the reader on a gripping journey from the Netherlands to Africa's Gold Coast where it was captured by a British privateer before loading its human cargo and heading onto Jamaica on its ill-fated journey to fuel the lucrative sugar trade.

Read more

The Zorg is the most consequential slave ship of the 18th century whose voyage changed the course of history, yet the story remains largely unknown. Drawing on a trove of archival materials, New York Times bestselling author Siddharth Kara uncovers new details of the Zorg's voyage and takes the reader on a gripping journey from the Netherlands to Africa's Gold Coast where it was captured by a British privateer before loading its human cargo and heading onto Jamaica on its ill-fated journey to fuel the lucrative sugar trade. A series of unpredictable weather events and mistakes in navigation left the ship drastically off course, running out of food and water. To save the crew and the most valuable of the slaves, the captain decided to throw 140 slaves, mostly women and children, overboard. What followed is a fascinating legal drama in England's highest court that turned the brutal business of slavery into front page news. For the first time, concepts such as human rights and morality entered the discourse on slavery, in a notorious case that boiled down to a simple but profound question: were the Africans on board the Zorg people or cargo? The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement to one of the most consequential moral campaigns that changed the course of history.
===
"A book of great importance and one that will likely become a classic." - New York Times Book Review A Time Magazine Must-Read Book of 2025 From the Pulitzer Finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives Perfect for fans of David Grann’s The Wager and The Wide, Wide Sea by Hampton Sides In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. The Zorg (a Dutch word meaning “care”) was one of thousands of such ships, but the harrowing events that ensued on its doomed journey were unique. By the time its journey ends, the Zorg would become the first undeniable argument against slavery. When a series of unpredictable weather events and navigational errors led to the Zorg sailing off course and running low on supplies, the ship's captain threw more than a hundred slaves overboard in order to save the crew and the most valuable slaves. The ship's owners then claimed their loss on insurance, a first for slaves who had not been killed due to insurrection or died of natural causes. The insurers refused to pay due to the higher than usual mortality rate of the slaves on board, leading to a trial which initially found in their favor, in which the Chief Justice compared the slaves to horses. Thanks to the outrage of one man present in court that day, a retrial was held. For the first time, concepts such as human rights and morality entered the discourse on slavery in a courtroom case that boiled down to a simple yet profound question: Were the Africans on board people or cargo? What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England’s highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front-page news. The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical cause to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history―sparking the abolitionist movement in both England and the young United States. The Zorg is the astonishing yet little-known true story of the most consequential ship that ever crossed the Atlantic.
===
'A horrific tale of the slave trade, destined to become a classic' New York Times From the New York Times bestselling author of Cobalt Red, discover the incredible true story and page-turning account of the 18th century slave ship, often known as the Zong yet actually named the Zorg - ironically meaning 'care' - that sparked the human rights campaign to end the slave trade. Perfect for fans of David Grann’s The Wager and The Wide, Wide Sea by Hampton Sides. ‘Remarkable, riveting’, Adam Hochschild, historian and bestselling author of King Leopold's Ghost and Bury the Chains In 1781, the Zorg set off from The Netherlands to West Africa and from there onto the Caribbean. The fateful voyage would alter the course of history forever. By the time its journey ends, the Zorg would become the first undeniable argument against slavery. When a series of unpredictable weather events and navigational errors led to the Zorg sailing off course and running low on supplies, the ship's captain threw more than a hundred slaves overboard in order to save the crew and the most valuable slaves. The ship's owners then claimed their loss on insurance, a first for slaves who had not been killed due to insurrection or died of natural causes. The insurers refused to pay due to the higher than usual mortality rate of the slaves on board, leading to a trial which initially found in their favour, in which Chief Justice Mansfield compared the slaves to horses. Thanks to the outrage of one man present in court that day, a retrial was held. For the first time, concepts such as human rights and morality entered the discourse on slavery in a courtroom case that boiled down to a simple yet profound question: Were the Africans on board people or cargo? In his riveting new book, bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Siddharth Kara brings history to life, showcasing how the Zorg’s fateful voyage exposed the harsh reality of the slave trade. The case catapulted the emerging anti-slavery movement to one of the most consequential moral campaigns that changed the course of history. The Zorg is the astonishing yet little-known true story of one of the most consequential ships that ever crossed the Atlantic.