“It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.” – Ian McEwan, Atonement
107 Days by Kamala Harris
nonfiction / memoir / politics / history.
For the first time, and with surprising and revealing insights, former Vice President Kamala Harris tells the story of one of the wildest and most consequential presidential campaigns in American history.
Your Secret Service code name is Pioneer.
You are the first woman in history to be elected vice president of the United States.
On July 21, 2024, your running mate, Joe Biden, announces that he will not be seeking reelection.
The presidential election will occur on November 5, 2024.
You have 107 days.
From the chaos of campaign strategy sessions to the intensity of debate prep under relentless scrutiny and the private moments that rarely make headlines, Kamala Harris offers an unfiltered look at the pressures, triumphs, and heartbreaks of a history-defining race. With behind-the-scenes details and a voice that is both intimate and urgent, this is more than a political memoir—it’s a chronicle of resilience, leadership, and the high stakes of democracy in action.
Written with candor, a unique perspective, and the pace of a page-turning novel, 107 Days takes you inside the race for the presidency as no one has ever done before.
“…sure to ignite chatter in political circles…” – Gerren Keith Gaynor, the grio
“…candid, salty (incoming f-bombs!) and even a little dishy. She names names… Political junkies will dig the play by play of each of the 107 days of her campaign.” – Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle
“The book isn’t a winding memoir or a political treatise, and Harris doesn’t disclose any future plans. Instead, it reads like a ticking time bomb, with each chapter counting down to Election Day.” – Chris Megerian, AP
Circle of Days by Ken Follett ★
fiction / historical fiction.
A FLINT MINER WITH A GIFT
Seft, a talented flint miner, walks the Great Plain in the high summer heat, to witness the rituals that signal the start of a new year. He is there to trade his stone at the Midsummer Fair, and to find Neen, the girl he loves. Her family lives in prosperity and offer Seft an escape from his brutish father and brothers within their herder community.
A PRIESTESS WHO BELIEVES THE IMPOSSIBLE
Joia, Neen’s sister, is a priestess with a vision and an unmatched ability to lead. As a child, she watches the Midsummer ceremony, enthralled, and dreams of a miraculous new monument, raised from the biggest stones in the world. But trouble is brewing among the hills and woodlands of the Great Plain.
A MONUMENT THAT WILL DEFINE A CIVILIZATION
Joia’s vision of a great stone circle, assembled by the divided tribes of the Plain, will inspire Seft and become their life’s work. But as drought ravages the earth, mistrust grows between the herders, farmers and woodlanders—and an act of savage violence leads to open warfare…
Truly ambitious in scope, Circle of Days invites you to join master storyteller Ken Follett in exploring one of the greatest mysteries of our age: Stonehenge.
“Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Without ever mentioning Stonehenge by name, Circle of Days leaves no doubt as to the legacy its heroes leave; it is a proud ode to an ancient feat unlike any other.” – Sydney Hankin, BookPage
“Inspired by one of humanity’s greatest conundrums, Circle of Days is a sweeping historical feat from a beloved author. The creation of Stonehenge is brought to life in this expansive novel of perseverance and hope.” – B&N Reads
“…engrossing… Follett builds tension as Seft grapples with the engineering challenge of transporting such large stones to the site, and keeps the reader invested in the story with well-developed characters. The author’s fans will be pleased.” – Publishers Weekly
Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel by Frances Wilson ★
nonfiction / biography.
“Is the story fact? Is it fiction? It is what it is,” said Muriel Spark.
Muriel Spark was a puzzle, and so too are her books. She dealt in word games, tricks, and ciphers; her life was composed of weird accidents, strange coincidences, and spooky events. Evelyn Waugh thought she was a saint, Bernard Levin said she was a witch, and she described herself as “Muriel the Marvel with her X-ray eyes.” By following the clues, riddles, and instructions Spark planted for posterity in her biographies, fiction, autobiography, and archives, Frances Wilson aims to crack her code.
Electric Spark explores not the celebrated Dame Muriel but the apprentice mage discovering her powers. It takes us through her early years, when turmoil reigned: divorce, madness, murder, espionage, poverty, skullduggery, blackmail, love affairs, revenge, and a major religious conversion. If this sounds like a novel by Spark, it is because her experiences in the 1940s and 1950s became, alchemically distilled, the material of her art.
“As good a critic as she is a biographer [and] as sharp a stylist as she is a reader” (Boston Globe), in Electric Spark Frances Wilson brings her enormous, incandescent powers to bear on one of the most formidable writers of the twentieth century.
“The enigmatic Scottish writer Muriel Spark gets her due in Wilson’s illuminating biography, which aims to demystify its stubbornly elusive but endlessly fascinating subject.” – Sophia M. Stewart, The Millions
“A canny biography of the early career of this strange, brilliant novelist.” – Olivia Laing, The Guardian
“Wilson’s style is so original and engaging that many readers will hope that the second part of Spark’s life, covering her life as a famous author until her death at 88 in 2006, will form a future volume… an unputdownable and ‘electric’ perspective on the extraordinary talent and life events that together forged Spark’s fiction.” – Isabel Berwick, Financial Times
“Frances Wilson employs her full artistic power to keep pace with Spark’s fantastic and fugitive life… Electric Spark’s structure is so elegant that it is difficult to describe. Each layer is shot through with the coincidences that Spark felt defined her life… We feel the co-existence of the past, present and future in each moment, and the distinction between life and art is dissolved, as it was so often in Spark’s work… Fleet and complex, Muriel trips through its pages, and it is not difficult to believe she guided Wilson’s hand.” – Claudia Bull, The Arts Desk
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai ★
fiction.
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.
“A masterpiece.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Almost 20 years in the making, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by Kiran Desai, is not so much a novel as a marvel… a work of art depicting love, family, nature and culture in all their fullness… Crowded but never claustrophobic, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is among those most rarefied books: better company than real-life people.” – Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times
“…stunning… a story filled with sensitivity, complexity, and the occasional dose of humor… a sweeping novel that traverses time and place… [with] a plot that not only is a love story, but also contains elements of a bildungsroman, thriller, and murder mystery.” – Renée H. Shea, Poets & Writers
“…brilliantly portrays the steep costs of relationships that can erode the psyche… Rich with old-fashioned storytelling and populated with fully fleshed, nuanced characters, this is a stunner worth savoring.” – Poornima Apte, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
The Royal Butler: My Remarkable Life in Royal Service by Grant Harrold
nonfiction / memoir.
Grant Harrold had been obsessed with the royaly family since childhood. In this unforgettable memoir, we journey along with Grant as he finds his way to the heart of the royal household.
The unique relationship between the monarch and their staff has always been shrouded in mystery but The Royal Butler artfully reveals never before heard stories about his time in royal service.
Today, Grant Harrold is a leading expert on etiquette, and in The Royal Butler he draws on his time as a member of the royal household of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Based at their country Highgrove House in the Cotswolds, his duties included being butler for the king and queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke of Sussex. On occasions, Grant also had the honour to Butler for the Late Queen Elizabeth II and her Husband The Late Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh.
The Royal Butler brings to life the extraordinary world of the Windsors as never before.
“Few Americans share the British obsession with royalty, but this dive into patrician domestic service will hold their attention… A royal servant’s diverting memoir.” – Kirkus Reviews
“With kind-yet-revealing accounts of the Royals during the turbulent years of 2004 to 2011, butler-turned-etiquette expert Grant Harrold’s book is a must-read for Brit Royal Family buffs.” – Dana Dickey, PureWow
Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley with Mary Jane Ross
nonfiction / memoir.
Priscilla Presley’s divorce from Elvis left his fans incredulous. How could she leave the man every woman wanted? From the outside, life in Elvis’s mansion looked glamorous and enviable, and in many respects, it was. But inside the mansion, her husband was constantly surrounded by a male entourage while at the gates, lines of beautiful women waited hopefully for an audience with the King. From the time she was seventeen years-old, that life was all Priscilla had known. During her ten years with Elvis, it became painfully apparent that she had no idea who she was outside Elvis’s world. The only way to find herself was to leave that world and seek a new life of her own, because leaving was the only way to survive, for herself and for her daughter.
Softly, As I Leave You, is the deeply personal story of what Priscilla lost and what she found when she walked away from the man she loved. Despite the legal separation, their love for one another transformed into a touching and tender dynamic that endured until Elvis’s untimely death four years later. Shattered by Elvis’s passing, she had to reinvent herself a second time as the single mother of a talented, often headstrong daughter who never really recovered from her father’s death. Priscilla’s dedication to motherhood was enriched by the birth of her second child, and she gradually found her footing as a businesswoman, actress, designer, and legislative advocate. She transformed Graceland into an international destination and helped guide the development of Elvis Presley Enterprises. But the unexpected, shattering loss of three immediate family members years later brought Priscilla to her knees. She shares her journey with a quiet dignity that will comfort and reassure anyone who has suffered – and survived – seemingly unbearable loss.
A passionate, compassionate, and inspiring story of finding your place in the world, Softly, As I Leave You, is a sweet Southern melody that will take the reader with Priscilla on her long road home.
“…engaging… Priscilla sets the record straight on many of the seemingly never-ending tabloid stories, candidly discussing her relationships with her kids and grandchildren plus marriages, divorces, substance abuse, Scientology rumors, money squabbles, and legal wranglings.” – Kathleen McBroom, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Heartfelt, emotional and eye-opening…” – B&N Reads
“[A] poignant memoir… Through it all, Presley remains an endearing, conversational storyteller whose focus on the positive (‘People my age often have bucket lists. I don’t, because I have already experienced everything I’ve dreamed of’) rings true. It’s a heartfelt record of stepping into one’s own.” – Publishers Weekly
Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places by Alex Riley
nonfiction / science / nature.
From scorching deserts to frozen seabeds, from the highest peaks of the Himalaya to the hadal depths of the oceans, there are habitats on this Earth that appear hostile to life—yet where, nevertheless, life flourishes. In North American forests, wood frogs awaken each spring from solid blocks of ice. Under the Saharan sun, shielded by silvery hairs, desert ants sprint through the midday heat that is lethal to any other animal. At the bottom of ice-covered lakes, painted turtles pass months without breathing oxygen. Transporting readers to far-flung environments we could never call home, in Super Natural, award-winning science writer Alex Riley paints an awe-inspiring portrait of life’s remarkable resilience even under the harshest circumstances.
Riley illuminates ecosystems on every continent to tell the stories of creatures exquisitely adapted to endure unimaginable deprivations—of water, oxygen, food, sunlight—and extremes of heat and cold, of pressure and altitude. To survive half a year without food on barren islands, snakes will shrink and regrow their digestive systems—even their hearts. At the site of the Chernobyl disaster, fungi harness radiation to thrive. Evolution, we see, can and will carve out a niche just about anywhere.
Super Natural shows us how, at nature’s furthest limits, the rules of biology as we know them are rewritten—and how, in life’s astonishing ingenuity and persistence even in the face of calamity and change, we can find hope for the future of life on Earth.
“Expert evidence that life is not merely resilient, but spectacularly so.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Filled with striking stories, vivid descriptions, and meaningful science, this is a fascinating account of resilience.” – Publishers Weekly
“…brilliant… Riley takes comfort in the resilience of nature. While he’s dismayed by erratic climate change and collapsing biodiversity, none of these can really threaten life on Earth, though they may well threaten us. The tardigrades will keep going, evolving into new and unimaginable forms of life.” – Christopher Hart, The Daily Mail
Tourist Season by Brynne Weaver
fiction / romance / comedy / suspense / horror.
You can hide in the farthest reaches of the deepest hell, and I will still drag you out. Even the devil can’t save you from me.
Cape Carnage is a seaside town of colorful houses, quirky shops, and an unusually high body count. With tourists comes trouble, and Harper Starling won’t let anyone ruin her picture-perfect home. A skilled gardener with killer instincts, Harper protects her sanctuary—and her aging mentor with a fading memory—at any cost. Troublesome tourists don’t check out of Carnage. They compost beneath Harper’s award-winning flowerbeds.
But Nolan Rhodes isn’t your average tourist. Devilishly handsome, disarmingly charming, and skilled with a blade, Nolan is relentless in the pursuit of revenge. On every anniversary of the hit-and-run accident that fractured his life, Nolan slays another target. And he’s saved the best for last: the undeniably beautiful Harper Starling. The problem? Harper isn’t the monster he expected. And she won’t go down without a fight.
When an amateur true crime investigator comes to Cape Carnage on the trail of a long-lost serial killer, Harper and Nolan strike an uneasy truce. If Nolan helps Harper protect her town, she’ll keep quiet about his hunting habits… for now. But their alliance soon spirals into obsession, one that threatens to shatter every secret in Carnage—including their fragile love.
“…darkly funny, heart-racing… flips the script on a traditional love story.” – B&N Reads
“Just as gleefully ghoulish as fans will expect… there’s plenty of humor, gore, and spice to hold readers’ interest. Weaver’s good at what she does.” – Publishers Weekly
“[It’s] absolutely everything readers have been craving… Tourist Season isn’t just another dark romance — it’s a masterclass in how to blend suspense, humor, and steam into something completely addictive. Brynne Weaver has created characters you’ll think about long after the final chapter, set against a backdrop that’s both beautiful and sinister.” – Jeff Murdock, Medium
We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad ★
fiction / horror / fantasy / comedy.
In the cult classic novel Bunny, Samantha Heather Mackey, a lonely outsider student at a highly selective MFA program in New England, was first ostracized and then seduced by a clique of creepy-sweet rich girls who call themselves “Bunny.” An invitation to the Bunnies’ Smut Salon leads Samantha down a dark rabbit hole (pun intended) into the violently surreal world of their off-campus workshops where monstrous creations are conjured with deadly and wondrous consequences.
When We Love You, Bunny opens, Sam has just published her first novel to critical acclaim. But at a New England stop on her book tour, her one-time frenemies, furious at the way they’ve been portrayed, kidnap her. Now a captive audience, it’s her (and our) turn to hear the Bunnies’ side of the story. One by one, they take turns holding the axe, and recount the birth throes of their unholy alliance, their discovery of their unusual creative powers—and the phantasmagoric adventure of conjuring their first creation. With a bound and gagged Sam, we embark on a wickedly intoxicating journey into the heart of dark academia: a fairy tale slasher that explores the wonder and horror of creation itself. Not to mention the transformative powers of love and friendship, Bunny.
Frankenstein by way of Heathers, We Love You, Bunny is both a prequel and a sequel, and an unabashedly wild and totally complete stand-alone novel. Open your hearts, Bunny, to another dazzlingly original and darkly hilarious romp in the Bunny-verse from the queen of the fever-dream, Mona Awad.
“When Margaret Atwood describes an author as her literary heir, expectations run high—and Awad delivers… It’s Bookstagram-worthy dark academia that’s alarming, allegorical, and nuanced and unravels Bunny catastrophically and captivatingly.” – Emily Bowles, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“Awad, in this perfect follow-up to a masterful weird-girl gory cult favorite, has once again crafted the perfect campy bloody celebration of striking prose, gorgeous characters, and sardonic horror… Like, work. Mona Awad, you are The Diva.” – Joshua Lambie, The Southern Bookseller Review
“Awad adds another brilliant roast of academia to the shelves, once again unmatched in playful language. Readers will laugh to tears and be fully immersed in this ethereal trip back to Warren.” – Courtney Eathorne, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Awad burrows further into the fragmented, hallucinatory terrain she began to chart in Bunny. Her commitment to the surreal is gripping, as is her evolving command of structure… With its feverish premise, metafiction turns, and a built-in cult following hungry for more, We Love You, Bunny is poised to be the buzziest release of the season…” – Clementine Doyle, Women.com
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan ★
fiction / science fiction / fantasy.
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.
“[A] bracing new time bender of a novel… McEwan’s elegantly structured and provocative novel is a strong argument for how little raw data, or even the most sublime art, can tell us about humans and their contrary natures.” – Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times
“…engaging and evocative… brilliantly, and surprisingly, plotted… demonstrates with shocking intensity how little we can ever really grasp about the strange evasions of the heart.” – Ron Charles, Washington Post
“[A] heady, intellectual tale that takes a searing look at how history is created—and distorted… Dealing with themes as weighty as the inexorable forward progress of humankind, and the relevance of the past in a world where the present is both ‘loud and ruthless,’ McEwan proves once again he is both a master of his craft and a gimlet-eyed observer of the human condition.” – Kristine Huntley, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“What We Can Know feels like a direct descendant of Atonement, McEwan’s most beloved work… In a 1969 essay, Mary McCarthy wrote that literature often cast nature as an ‘unmoved spectator of human grief.’ The relationship, she suggested, was asymmetrical: artists lavished devotion on mountains and moonbeams that did not love them back. McEwan’s view is starker. We are the homewreckers. We broke faith first, and yet many of our contemporaries deny the breach. That idea of denial lends the novel’s title an extra ironic bite. What we can know is far more than what we do.” – Katy Waldman, The New Yorker
Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood ★
fiction.
Amid a global pandemic, one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together – of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease. She’s afraid of her own floorboards, and “WHAT IS LOVE? BABY DON’T HURT ME” plays over and over in her ears. She hates her friends, or more accurately, she doesn’t know who they are.
Has the illness stolen her old mind and given her a new one? Does it mean she’ll get to start over from scratch, a chance afforded to very few people? The very weave of herself seems to have loosened: time and memories pass straight through her body. “I’m sorry not to respond to your email,” she writes, “but I live completely in the present now.”
Will There Ever Be Another You is the brain-shredding, phosphorescent story of one woman’s dissolution and her attempt to create a new way of thinking, as well as a profound investigation into what keeps us alive in times of unprecedented disorientation and loss, from one of our most original writers.
“The author’s fans will find her trademark humor, originality, and depth on full display. This is a knockout.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“There is only one Patricia Lockwood, and this surreal, silly, and sneakily profound book could only be hers.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“…completely singular… a lyrical, chaotic journal of holy and profane dispatches from our grief-soaked timeline… a claustrophobic travelogue of online and IRL adventures abounding with whimsical interludes, all packed taut with her signature wordplay.” – Grace Byron, The New Republic
“[A] formal and narrative masterpiece… a sparkling, strange, entertaining, yet affecting novel which has a darkness at its heart… a novel where high and low culture meet and get on famously… Literary, artful, funny, and unexpectedly emotional, Will There Ever Be Another You may make you feel it was written just for you.” – Alistair Braidwood, The Skinny
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