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Red Sheet
by James Ellroy
This is 1960s Los Angeles like you’ve never seen it before.
It’s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The U.S. prevailed. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fears reprisals from domestic Communist Party members embedded in L.A. He orders a red probe and Freddy Otash is named lead investigator. When a murder occurs on Halloween night, it links to ex-VP and gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon, and possibly two homicides eight years back. Now Freddy is working double-time: he’s commanding the probe and is hired to keep Nixon out of trouble. Meanwhile, integrationist fever is sweeping L.A. and the police department comes under its fire. The stage is set for chaos: Red Sheet embodies the “indigenous American berserk" with a uniquely crazed and brilliant passion.
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The Adjunct
by Maria Adelmann
An adjunct professor navigates through academia’s poor job market when she crosses paths with her old PhD adviser whose new novel might be about her.
Meet Sam, an adjunct professor at a public university in Baltimore who takes a last-minute gig at the private liberal arts college down the road. Overworked and underpaid, her life is a blur of back-to-back classes, side hustles, and job applications as she attempts to claw her way toward a full-time position. But her already precarious existence is thrown into disarray when she runs into her former grad school adviser, Dr. Tom Sternberg, on campus. Tom and Sam have a complicated history, the lasting impact of which has haunted her academic career, and it’s the last thing she wants to think about. Then she learns that Tom left his old job for undisclosed reasons—and his long-awaited second novel is about a professor’s reckoning with his checkered past. As whispers spread that Sam is the inspiration behind a central character, she fights to regain control of the story while questioning everything she thought she knew about her future—and herself.
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Traitors
by Robert B. McCaw
A DOJ counterintelligence lawyer pursues a Russian spy ring embedded at the heart of the American government.
As deputy assistant attorney general for counterintelligence in the DOJ’s National Security Division, Robert Cooper has built a storied career distinguished by high–profile arrests and prosecutions of enemy spies. One morning, he’s approached by a Russian sleeper agent looking to defect. The agent offers Cooper alarming information: Russian operatives have infiltrated the US government at its highest levels, including a mole in the senior ranks of the FBI. Cooper’s investigations lead to the discovery of a clandestine Russian plot―code named Operation Viper―involving deep–cover agents in senior government positions. As Cooper and his team at the DOJ race to uncover the Kremlin’s plans and smoke out traitors, a coup in Russia brings to power a militant extremist regime intent on sidelining the US on the world stage.
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Muñeca
by Cynthia Gómez
A vivid, surreal Gothic about a queer, Latine, working class witch who sets out to rescue a bespelled heiress.
It is 1968 Oakland, and Natalia Fuentes has been hearing rumors about the beautiful Violeta Miramontes. The young heiress to Spanish colonial wealth has been left paralyzed by a mysterious illness. But Nati knows a thing or two about witchcraft, and she is certain that this is the work of dark magic. Armed with a plan to break the spell and earn a handsome reward, Nati works her way into the house as Violeta’s caretaker, and immediately discovers her suspicions are true. But who cursed Violeta? And why?
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The Jellyfish Problem
by Tessa Yang
A marine biologist makes the discovery of a lifetime when called to rescue the inhabitants of a small Maine island being menaced by a giant, glowing jellyfish.
Dr. Jo Ness prefers jellyfish to people. Her best friend, Aldo, was the exception, but he died seven months ago. So she spends her days hidden away at an underfunded aquarium with her specimens and a draft of the jellyfish guide she and Aldo had been working on together. Until she receives a call from Nadia, one of the few other humans she’s loved but whom she hasn’t heard from in years, asking for her help. Nadia tells her a grand tale of a giant jellyfish terrorizing her tiny island off the coast of Maine and sends a grainy video of the creature. Frankly, the footage looks fake, but Jo drops everything to fly across the country to see Nadia again, and to find this supposed sea beast. She couldn’t save Aldo, but perhaps she can help Nadia.
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The Typing Lady: And Other Fictions
by Ruth Ozeki
A spellbinding story collection from Booker Prize finalist Ruth Ozeki, about the lives we almost lived, the people we can’t quite forget, and the stories that shape us long after the last page is turned.
In this spirited and emotionally resonant collection, award-winning novelist Ruth Ozeki turns her singular gaze to the short story, exploring childhood ambition, youthful desire, midlife reinvention, and the unsparing clarity of old age. With her distinctive blend of wit, warmth, and deep humanity, she brings us twelve richly imagined stories of characters standing at life’s thresholds—grappling with faded ideals, evolving identities, and the inevitable compromises that shape a life.
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The Last of the Old Breed: An Oral History of the Final Marines from World War II
by Scott Davis
An oral history of the brutal Pacific Theater in WWII, told by many of the last living U.S. Marine veterans.
During World War II, over 16 million Americans served in the Armed Forces. Today, less than 1 percent are still alive. The Last of the Old Breed is an unprecedented oral history of the final living United States Marines from World War II, featuring over 130 veterans, ranging in age from 90 to 103. Told in harrowing detail, the witnesses reveal the brutal reality of combat against a fanatical enemy and the heavy toll it took on their post-war lives.
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The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier
by Megan Kate Nelson
From award-winning historian Megan Kate Nelson, an epic account of the creation of the American West in the 19th century.
The Westerners tells two richly detailed and interwoven stories. The first reveals the captivating lives of women and men moving through the American West—Indigenous peoples, Black Americans, Mexican Americans, and Canadian and Asian immigrants—in the 19th century. The second tracks the attempts of many Americans to erase these westerners from history, through a frontier myth that lionized individualism and conquest and celebrated white settlers traveling west in search of prosperity. Nelson’s vivid, eye-opening account centers on seven extraordinary individuals whose lives capture the true history of the American West. Highlighting the perseverance and ingenuity of the communities that have otherwise been forgotten or erased from history, The Westerners challenges us to reimagine who we are and where we came from.
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Cooking the Borderlands: Spice and Smoke Between Mexico and the States
by Claudette Zepeda
A culinary journey along the Mexican American border, telling the story of its intertwined cultures and communities with more than 100 vibrant, flavor-packed recipes.
The Mexican American border has been an inflamed political focal point within the US; at the same time, Mexican food has long been the most popular “ethnic” cuisine in America. A child of the border herself, Claudette Zepeda grew up in both California and Mexico and sees the border as a vibrant, vital, and unique cultural and culinary place. A gifted storyteller and chef, Claudette’s recipes and ruminations humanize border culture through 100 accessible and beloved dishes.
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Ricochet: Guns, Greed, and the American Way of Violence
by Mike McIntire
Three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Mike McIntire delivers the definitive story of the forces that shape gun culture and the American way of violence.
Not too long ago, you could still envision a future for America not marked by gun idolatry, blood-stained classrooms, and empty offers of thoughts and prayers. Yet a witches’ brew of politics, money, and ideology has warped gun culture in the United States, hijacking the Second Amendment and allowing fear and insecurity to drive the reckless marketing of powerful weapons. How did our country come to have more guns than people and become one in which just pulling into the wrong driveway can get you shot? A work of deep, revelatory investigative reporting, powerful storytelling, and incisive analysis, Ricochet is in essence a story about America, an excavation of the cultural and political dynamics that are at the root of our contemporary crises.
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National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America
by Michael Auslin
The dramatic and inspiring story of the Declaration of Independence—the first to take us from its drafting by Thomas Jefferson to today.
National Treasure is the gripping story of our most revered founding relic, as a physical object and a set of ideals that have made America what it is today. An award-winning historian, Michael Auslin take us from the boarding house in Philadelphia where Jefferson put quill to paper to the Declaration’s stealthy printing, covert signing, dissemination in the doldrums of the revolutionary war, and long, harrowing, and ultimately hallowed afterlife. We follow the parchment as it is hauled out of a soon-to-be-burning Washington in 1814 and see it hidden in a dank cellar, posted in classrooms, recited on village greens, printed on handkerchiefs, and used to sell insurance and bundle coal. An inspiration to both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in the Civil War, it has grown more important for each new generation.
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Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America
by Chris Murphy
A prominent senator assesses the destructive ideas that have seized the American spirit—and shows how the hidden alignments in our politics can free us from their hold.
Over fifty years, the pursuit of profit has undermined virtue and character, while too many of us have become convinced that happiness results from acting as good consumers, rather than as good citizens. New technologies threaten essential human capabilities, like friendship, thinking, and creation. And a winner-takes-all mentality has given the rich and well-connected nearly uncontested control of our politics and has corrupted our government. The Americans have lost the sense of daily purpose and connection that are vital to happiness, becoming anxious, angry, and adrift. In this vacuum, Donald Trump, feeding off the emptiness and resentment, has come to power. Refusing despair, Murphy offers a new politics of the common good that is both deeply rooted in our past and a radical challenge to the status quo. The common good, Murphy shows, is no object of nostalgia; it is a vital principle ready to be claimed today.
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