“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker’s game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.” – Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones ★
Nonfiction / History / Historical Fiction / Poetry.
A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present.
In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story builds on one of the most consequential journalistic events of recent years: The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project,” which reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on the original 1619 Project, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. This legacy can be seen in the way we tell stories, the way we teach our children, and the way we remember. Together, the elements of the book reveal a new origin story for the United States, one that helps explain not only the persistence of anti-Black racism and inequality in American life today, but also the roots of what makes the country unique.
The book also features a significant elaboration of the original project’s Pulitzer Prize–winning lead essay, by Nikole Hannah-Jones, on how the struggles of Black Americans have expanded democracy for all Americans, as well as two original pieces from Hannah-Jones, one of which makes a profound case for reparative solutions to this legacy of injustice.
This is a book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.
Description from Goodreads.
“[A] groundbreaking compendium… These bracing and urgent works, by multidisciplinary visionaries ranging from Barry Jenkins to Jesmyn Ward, build on the existing scholarship of The 1619 Project, exploring how the nation’s original sin continues to shape everything from our music to our food to our democracy. This collection is an extraordinary update to an ongoing project of vital truth-telling.” – Esquire
“Powerful… Based on the landmark 1619 Project, this collection… expands on the groundbreaking work with added nuance and new contributions by poets like Tracy K. Smith, writers including Kiese Laymon, and historians such as Anthea Butler… This work asks readers to deeply consider who is allowed to shape the collective memory. Like the magazine version of the 1619 Project, this invaluable book sets itself apart by reframing readers’ understanding of U.S. history, past and present.” – Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“Hannah-Jones and colleagues consider a nation still wrestling with the outcomes of slavery, an incomplete Reconstruction, and a subsequent history of Jim Crow laws and current legal efforts to disenfranchise Black voters… Those readers open to fresh and startling interpretations of history will find this book a comprehensive education. A much-needed book that stakes a solid place in a battlefield of ideas over America’s past and present.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Readers will discover something new and redefining on every page as long-concealed incidents and individuals, causes and effects are brought to light by Hannah-Jones and seventeen other vital thinkers and clarion writers… each of whom sharpens our understanding of the dire influence of anti-Black racism on everything… and how Black Americans fighting for equality decade after decade have preserved our democracy. The revelations are horrific and empowering… This visionary, meticulously produced, profound, and bedrock-shifting testament belongs in every library and on every reading list… [An] invaluable and galvanizing history… revelatory.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
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The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Thirteen edited by Ellen Datlow
Fiction / Horror.
For more than four decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave. Now, with the thirteenth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as: Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Stephen Graham Jones, Joyce Carol Oates, Laird Barron, Mira Grant, and many others.
With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows. It is a catalog of terror, fear, and unpleasantness as articulated by today’s most challenging and exciting writers.
Description from Goodreads.
“[The] best horror stories available.” – Tor Nightfire
“It’s right there on the tin. Want a great overview of this year’s horror? Studying to try to write your own? Today’s biggest names and scariest stories are all here.” – Den of Geek
“Ellen Datlow’s name is synonymous with horror… She’s the best in the business and knows everything about putting together a solid array of stories from the genre’s most talented authors.” – Lit Reactor
Available Formats:
Hoopla eBook
Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show by Jonathan Karl
Nonfiction / Current Events / Politics / History.
Nobody is in a better position to tell the story of the shocking final chapter of the Trump show than Jonathan Karl. As the reporter who has known Donald Trump longer than any other White House correspondent, Karl told the story of Trump’s rise in the New York Times bestseller Front Row at the Trump Show. Now he tells the story of Trump’s downfall, complete with riveting behind-the-scenes accounts of some of the darkest days in the history of the American presidency and packed with original reporting and on-the-record interviews with central figures in this drama who are telling their stories for the first time.
This is a definitive account of what was really going on during the final weeks and months of the Trump presidency and what it means for the future of the Republican Party, by a reporter who was there for it all. He has been taunted, praised, and vilified by Donald Trump, and now Jonathan Karl finds himself in a singular position to deliver the truth.
Description from Goodreads.
“In the follow-up to Front Row at the Trump Show, the ABC News political correspondent delivers fresh news on the last months of the Trump presidency.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“ABC’s man in Washington delivers a second riveting and horrifying read about how close America came to disaster.” – The Guardian
“As a long-time TV reporter, ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl brings an eye for life as presented on screen that is acutely appropriate for the Trump saga. That alone might justify widening our Trump lit shelf, but Karl also adds substantially to the record of this parlous period — especially in the chaos of its final months… Enough of this material is new, or renewed in Karl’s retelling, that it can all be compelling to read once again – even for those who have read more Trump books than they can count on their fingers…” – NPR
Available Formats:
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The Cartographer’s Secret by Tea Cooper
Fiction / Historical Fiction / Mystery.
The Hunter Valley, 1880. Evie Ludgrove loves to chart the landscape around her home—hardly surprising since she grew up in the shadow of her father’s obsession with the great Australian explorer Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt. So when an advertisement appears in The Bulletin magazine offering a thousand-pound reward for proof of where Leichhardt met his fate, Evie is determined to use her father’s papers to unravel the secret. But when Evie sets out to prove her theory, she vanishes without a trace, leaving behind a mystery that haunts her family for thirty years.
Letitia Rawlings arrives at the family estate in her Ford Model T to inform her great-aunt Olivia of a loss in their family. But Letitia is also escaping her own problems—her brother’s sudden death, her mother’s scheming, and her dissatisfaction with the life planned out for her. So when Letitia discovers a beautifully illustrated map that might hold a clue to the fate of her missing aunt, Evie Ludgrove, she sets out to discover the truth. But all is not as it seems, and Letitia begins to realize that solving the mystery of her family’s past could offer as much peril as redemption.
Description from Goodreads.
“…moving… Cooper gets to the heart of a family’s old wounds, puzzles, and obsessions, while providing a luscious historical rendering of the landscape. This layered family saga will keep readers turning the pages.” – Publishers Weekly
“…excellent… Weaving together historical facts with fabulous fiction, Tea delivers a richly imagined world.” – Better Reading
Available Formats:
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The Every by Dave Eggers ★
Fiction / Science Fiction.
Delaney Wells is an unlikely new hire at the Every. A former forest ranger and unwavering tech skeptic, she charms her way into an entry-level job with one goal in mind: to take down the company from within. With her compatriot, the not-at-all-ambitious Wes Makazian, they look for the Every’s weaknesses, hoping to free humanity from all-encompassing surveillance and the emoji-driven infantilization of the species. But does anyone want what Delaney is fighting to save? Does humanity truly want to be free?
Studded with unforgettable characters, outrageous outfits, and lacerating set-pieces, this companion to The Circle blends absurdity and terror, satire and suspense, while keeping the reader in apprehensive excitement about the fate of the company–and the human animal.
Description from Goodreads.
“A darkly hilarious narrative that doesn’t just hit close to home. It burns the home down and then coldly assassinates all insurance adjusters who arrive on the scene to offer redemption.” – c|net
“A prescient—and hilarious—meditation on the rise of tech giants and how our blind trust in them could ultimately be our demise.” – Harper’s Bazaar
“Once a decade a book like The Every advances the frontier of literary excellence: a book that reflects our culture. Predicts our future. Worm-holes into our subconscious. Delivers artful and complex characters, metaphor, ideas, narrative. Provides percussive movements of levity, gravity, grace, suspense, hilarity.” – Boston Globe
“[This is a] remarkable piece of satire, riven as it is with horribly plausible ideas and horribly good jokes. It’s one thing to sound a warning about how we are on a slippery slope to a kind of consumerist fascism where we exchange liberty for convenience. What Eggers does so well is make The Every alluring as well as alarming… Eight years after The Circle was published, there is all too little that rings false about its predictions about social media. If the same is true of The Every, we are in even more trouble than we thought we were.” – The Times
Available Formats:
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The Joy and Light Bus Company by Alexander McCall Smith
Fiction / Mystery.
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni attends a course hosted by the local chamber of commerce entitled “Where Is Your Business Going?” But rather than feeling energized, he comes back in low spirits, unsure how to grow the already venerable and successful Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Then an old friend from school approaches him about a new business venture that could be just the ticket. When it turns out he will need to mortgage his property in order to pursue this endeavor, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi wonder what this will mean for his current business―as well as their own.
Even as she puzzles over mysteries on the domestic front, Mma Ramotswe’s professional duties must take precedence. When a concerned son learns that his aging father’s nurse now stands to inherit the family home, he begins to doubt her intentions and takes his case to Botswana’s premier detective agency. Fortunately, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are committed agents of justice and agree to investigate.
Tricky as these matters may be, Mma Ramotswe knows that the most creative solutions are often found with the support of loving friends and family. Working together over a cup of red bush tea, she and Mma Makutsi will rely on their tact, humor, and goodwill to ensure that all involved find the happiness that they deserve.
Description from Goodreads.
“Comfort-food reading, and never more welcome.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Studies have shown that reading can lower your blood pressure, but might some books – and some authors – achieve this more effectively than others? It’s certainly hard to think of many works of fiction that could offer a reading experience as calming in style and reassuring in message as the latest Mma Ramotswe outing from Alexander McCall Smith.” – The Scotsman
“As ever, Smith’s mix of solving minor crimes and kindhearted philosophical ruminations enchants.” – Publishers Weekly
Available Formats:
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Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park
Fiction.
Love in the Big City is the English-language debut of Sang Young Park, one of Korea’s most exciting young writers. A runaway bestseller, the novel hit the top five lists of all the major bookstores and went into nine printings. Both award-winning for its unique literary voice and perspective, and particularly resonant with young readers, it has been a phenomenon in Korea and is poised to capture a worldwide readership.
Love in the Big City is an energetic, joyful, and moving novel that depicts both the glittering nighttime world of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning-after. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and ice-cold Marlboro Reds that they keep in their freezer. Yet over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life.
A brilliantly written novel filled with powerful sensory descriptions and both humor and emotion, Love in the Big City is an exploration of millennial loneliness as well as the joys of queer life, that should appeal to readers of Sayaka Murata, Han Kang, and Cho Nam-Joo.
Description from Goodreads.
“I cried when I got to the end. As cliched as it sounds, reading this book made me feel that ‘this summer night, this big city, because of you’ I could believe in love again.” – Brunch.co.kr
“…stunning… The strength of the narrator, notably his flexibility of voice and expansiveness, carries the narrative to great heights, making this a standout among queer literature. Brilliant, glowing, and fun, Hur’s translation succeeds in bringing Park’s effervescent voice to English-reading audiences.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“…anchored by the narrator’s irresistible voice, which alternates between earnest, heartfelt emotion and likable wryness… The prose is dense with fine-grained characterization… this book will sweep readers up in its sheer longing. An addictive, profound novel.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
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Mercy by David Baldacci
Fiction / Mystery / Suspense.
For her entire life, FBI agent Atlee Pine has been searching for her twin sister, Mercy, who was abducted at the age of six and never seen again. Mercy’s disappearance left behind a damaged family that later shattered beyond repair when Atlee’s parents inexplicably abandoned her.
Now, after a perilous investigation that nearly proved fatal, Atlee has finally discovered not only the reason behind her parents’ abandonment and Mercy’s kidnapping, but also the most promising breakthrough yet: proof that Mercy survived her abduction and then escaped her captors many years ago.
Though Atlee is tantalizingly close to her family at last, the final leg of her long road to Mercy will be the most treacherous yet. Mercy left at least one dead body behind before fleeing her captors years before. Atlee has no idea if her sister is still alive, and if so, how she has been surviving all this time. When the truth is finally revealed, Atlee Pine will face the greatest danger yet, and it may well cost her everything.
Description from Goodreads.
“Baldacci at his best.” – Florida Times-Union
Available Formats:
Print Book | Large Print Book | Audiobook | Playaway | eBook | eAudiobook
Noor by Nnedi Okorafor
Fiction / Science Fiction.
Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO. To her, these initials have always stood for Artificial Organism. AO has never really felt… natural, and that’s putting it lightly. Her parents spent most of the days before she was born praying for her peaceful passing because even in-utero she was wrong. But she lived. Then came the car accident years later that disabled her even further. Yet instead of viewing her strange body the way the world views it, as freakish, unnatural, even the work of the devil, AO embraces all that she is: A woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations. And then one day she goes to her local market and everything goes wrong.
Once on the run, she meets a Fulani herdsman named DNA and the race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria begins. In a world where all things are streamed, everyone is watching the reckoning of the murderess and the terrorist and the saga of the wicked woman and mad man unfold. This fast-paced, relentless journey of tribe, destiny, body, and the wonderland of technology revels in the fact that the future sometimes isn’t so predictable. Expect the unaccepted.
Description from Goodreads.
“A searing techno-magical indictment of capitalism from one of the strongest voices in fiction.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Nnedi Okorafor has an uncanny ability for creating intriguing survival tales within grandiose Africanfuturist worlds… a compelling reflection on man’s principal role in climate disaster and the need to use technology to continue living in an altered world… an unconventional hero’s tale that calls into question what we’re willing to lose for a better future.” – AV Club
“Convenience and comfort come at a cost in this probing, brilliant near-future odyssey from Okorafor… Okorafor exposes the cracks in this technology-driven, highly surveilled society as each detour in AO and DNA’s route adds layers of intrigue on the way to a jaw-dropping finale… This is a must-read.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
Hoopla eAudiobook
Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant’s Search for Her Family’s Lasting Legacy by Gayle Jessup White
Nonfiction / History / Memoir.
Gayle Jessup White had long heard the stories passed down from her father’s family, that they were direct descendants of Thomas Jefferson—lore she firmly believed, though others did not. For four decades the acclaimed journalist and genealogy enthusiast researched her connection to Thomas Jefferson, to confirm its truth once and for all.
After she was named a Jefferson Studies Fellow, Jessup White discovered her family lore was correct. Poring through photos and documents and pursuing DNA evidence, she learned that not only was she a descendant of Jefferson on his father’s side; she was also the great-great-great-granddaughter of Peter Hemings, Sally Hemings’s brother.
In Reclamation she chronicles her remarkable journey to definitively understand her heritage and reclaim it, and offers a compelling portrait of what it means to be a black woman in America, to pursue the American dream, to reconcile the legacy of racism, and to ensure the nation lives up to the ideals advocated by her legendary ancestor.
Description from Goodreads.
“Jessup White tells a story that will be meaningful to many readers. Through her account, the author fleshes out many of the genealogical questions concerning Jefferson that have emerged in recent decades.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Armed with her newfound familial truth, the author… helps rewrite the estate’s well-known narrative to include the hundreds of enslaved people who worked for Jefferson… [a] timely, relevant, and important book.” – Booklist
“[A] vivid account of her search for proof that she is related to Thomas Jefferson and two of the families he enslaved… This spirited memoir charts a hopeful path for a more honest reckoning with the legacy of slavery.” – Publishers Weekly
Available Formats:
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Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
Fiction / Science Fiction / Suspense.
Neal Stephenson’s sweeping, prescient new novel transports readers to a near-future world where the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves, and virulent, deadly pandemics.
One man has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as “elemental.” But will it work? And just as important, what are the consequences for the planet and all of humanity should it be applied?
Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the sunbaked Chihuahuan Desert, Termination Shock brings together a disparate group of characters from different cultures and continents who grapple with the real-life repercussions of global warming. Ultimately, it asks the question: Might the cure be worse than the disease?
Description from Goodreads.
“An enthralling and thought-provoking read.” – BuzzFeed
“The novel is classic Stephenson: fiercely intelligent, weird, darkly witty, and boldly speculative… Stephenson has become one of the most revered science fiction writers of his time.” – Publishers Weekly
“This book is the rare climate thriller that’s realistic about political stonewalling in the face of disaster yet unafraid to imagine a possible future where people might actually come together and try to save civilization. The kind of climate-change fiction we all need.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
Print Book | eBook
These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant
Fiction / Suspense / Mystery.
No electricity, no family, no connection to the outside world. For eight years, Cooper and his young daughter, Finch, have lived in isolation in a remote cabin in the northern Appalachian woods. And that’s exactly the way Cooper wants it, because he’s got a lot to hide. Finch has been raised on the books filling the cabin’s shelves and the beautiful but brutal code of life in the wilderness. But she’s starting to push back against the sheltered life Cooper has created for her—and he’s still haunted by the painful truth of what it took to get them there.
The only people who know they exist are a mysterious local hermit named Scotland, and Cooper’s old friend, Jake, who visits each winter to bring them food and supplies. But this year, Jake doesn’t show up, setting off an irreversible chain of events that reveals just how precarious their situation really is. Suddenly, the boundaries of their safe haven have blurred—and when a stranger wanders into their woods, Finch’s growing obsession with her could put them all in danger. After a shocking disappearance threatens to upend the only life Finch has ever known, Cooper is forced to decide whether to keep hiding—or finally face the sins of his past.
Vividly atmospheric and masterfully tense, These Silent Woods is a poignant story of survival, sacrifice, and how far a father will go when faced with losing it all.
Description from Goodreads.
“Your next must read.” – Country Living
“[An] evocative novel of suspense… Grant is a writer to watch.” – Publishers Weekly
“Grant’s lyrical writing and a deep understanding of her characters propel These Silent Woods… [an] emotional story that gains heart-pounding suspense when the outside world intrudes.” – Shelf Awareness