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James: A Novel
by Percival Everett
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.
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Martyr!
by Kaveh Akbar
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
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Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
by Adam Higginbotham
The 1986 Challenger disaster, which killed all seven crew members, including Christa McAuliffe, is a defining yet forgotten tragedy. This book uses extensive reporting to detail the crew's lives, the accident's immediate events, and the subsequent investigation that uncovered ignored warnings and political failures.
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Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling
by Jason De Leâon
Soldiers and Kings is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction that offers an unprecedented look into the extralegal world of human smugglers (coyotes). Drawing from seven years embedded with a smuggling group in Mexico, anthropologist Jason De León provides a heart-wrenching, intimate narrative that centers on one coyote's attempt to quit the game for love. It chronicles the lives of low-level foot soldiers and conflicted gang leaders, revealing the harsh realities of this global industry.
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The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel
by James McBride
When a human skeleton is uncovered in Pottstown, PA, it exposes the secrets of Chicken Hill, a diverse neighborhood where immigrant Jews, like grocery owner Chona Ludlow and her husband Moshe, shared life alongside African Americans. The community bands together to protect a deaf Black child from being institutionalized. This story highlights the struggle against bigotry and hypocrisy at the margins of white America, ultimately demonstrating how love and community prevail
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Orbital: A Novel
by Samantha Harvey
The Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital follows six international astronauts through a single day aboard a space station. As they orbit at incredible speed, they connect briefly with Earth, perform mundane routines, and form crucial bonds against solitude. Most powerfully, they witness sixteen sunrises and sunsets over the silent blue planet—an experience that is both awesome and deeply intimate.
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Prophet Song: A Novel
by Paul Lynch
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society. How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind? Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.
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The Wedding People: A Novel
by Alison Espach
Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn in Newport for a decadent solo splurge, not a wedding. Mistaken for one of the guests, she is the only person not there for the big event. When the meticulous bride meets Phoebe, the two women unexpectedly find themselves confiding in each other, leading to a nuanced story of chance encounters and rerouting one's life.
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Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation On Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino"
by Hâector Tobar
Pulitzer Prize winner Héctor Tobar delivers a definitive and personal exploration of the Latino experience and identity in the United States. Addressed to young Latinos, Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of "Latino" by examining the impacts of colonialism, policy, media, and pop culture, while interweaving Tobar's own family story and his journey across the country.
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The God of the Woods: A Novel
by Liz Moore
Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found. As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.
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The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
by Jonathan Haidt
In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt investigates the epidemic of teen mental illness that began in the early 2010s. He attributes the crisis to the end of the "play-based childhood" and the arrival of the "phone-based childhood." Haidt details over a dozen mechanisms—from addiction to social contagion—by which this "great rewiring" has damaged development, then proposes four simple rules and specific steps for parents, schools, and governments to reverse the damage.
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Some Desperate Glory
by Emily Tesh
Kyr has spent her life training to avenge Earth's destruction from Gaea Station. But when humanity's Command assigns her brother to certain death and her to bear children, she takes revenge into her own hands. A queer space opera about the wreckage of war, this novel follows Kyr, her brother's seditious friend, and a lonely alien as they escape into a universe that challenges everything she knows.
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Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
by Ilyon Woo
Master Slave Husband Wife chronicles the three epic journeys of Ellen and William Craft, beginning with their bold 1848 self-emancipation. Posing as master and slave, the couple traveled over 1,000 miles from Georgia to freedom. Their story soon made them abolitionist celebrities, but the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act put them back in danger, forcing them to make a second, desperate escape from American soil. This is a monumental American love story that, across thousands of miles, fiercely challenged the nation’s core precepts of justice and liberty.
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Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir
by Tessa Hulls
Feeding Ghosts is Tessa Hulls' graphic memoir exploring three generations of Chinese women, set against a backdrop of love, grief, and exile. It tells the story of her journalist grandmother, Sun Yi, who fled to Hong Kong after the Communist victory and suffered a breakdown; her mother, Rose; and Tessa's own journey to face the intergenerational trauma she tried to escape by traveling the world.
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Night Watch: A Novel
by Jayne Anne Phillips
In post-Civil War 1874, twelve-year-old ConaLee and her mute mother, Eliza, are delivered to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. Haunted by war, trauma, and the disappearance of ConaLee's father, they seek to reclaim their lives. Masquerading as maid and patient, they become immersed in the facility's life and mysterious residents, navigating race and memory far from their mountain home.
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