โViolence is what people do when they run out of good ideas.” – James S.A. Corey, Abaddonโs Gate
Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell โ
fiction / romance.
Everybody knows that Cherry’s husband, Tom, is in Hollywood making a movie…
Almost nobody knows that he isn’t coming home.
Tom is the creator of Thursdayโa semi-autobiographical webcomic that’s become an international phenomenon.
Semi-autobiographical. That means there’s a character in this movie based on Cherry… “Baby.”
Wide-hipped, heavy-chested, double-chinned Baby.
Cherry never wanted this. No fat girl wants to see herself caricatured on the pageโlet alone on the big screen. But there’s no getting away from it. Baby looks so much like Cherry that strangers recognize her at the grocery store.
While her soon-to-be ex-husband is in Los Angeles getting rich and famous and being the internet’s latest boyfriend, Cherry is stuck in Omaha taking care of the dog he always wanted and the house they were going to raise a family in… and wondering who she’s supposed to be without him.
Cherry had promised to love Tom through thick and thin.
She’d meant it.
One night, Cherry decides to leave all her problems, including Tom’s overgrown puppy, at home. She ventures out to see her favorite band play her favorite album… and someone recognizes her from across the room.
Russ Sutton knew Cherry when she was a young art student with a fondness for pin-up dresses and patent leather heels. Before Tom.
Russ knows Cherry. He likes Cherry.
And best of all… he’s never heard of Thursday.
Tender, funny, and utterly human, Cherry Baby is Rainbow Rowell’s richest, most surprisingโsexiestโnovel yet.
“…sexy, messy, funny and raw.” – New York Times
“Rowell explores body image, second chances, and rebuilding oneโs life after heartbreak. A must-read for those who enjoy the work of Emily Henry, Ashley Poston, and Katherine Center.” – Linsey Milillo,ย Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“Rowellโs cozy, sexy, Omaha-set love stories are practically their own genre, and readers will love this page-turning return to form, which also includes a timely and realistic look at omnipresent weight-loss drugs.” – Annie Bostrom,ย Booklist
“Rainbow Rowell is incomparable! Her characters are real, like they could lift off the page and have coffee with you. She doesn’t shy away from their flaws, and that’s what I loved so much about Cherry Baby.โ – Honor Hamilton,ย The Indie Next List
Dear Monica Lewinsky by Julia Langbein
fiction / comedy.
Forty-year-old Jean Dornan cannot escape the summer of 1998, when, as a college student studying abroad in France, she embarked on an inappropriate relationship with her professor. Now, decades later, when that professor contacts her out of the blue with an invitation to his retirement ceremony, Jeanโs long-standing malaise becomes an emotional crisis. Desperate to understand why this relationship derailed her life so completely, she begins rereading her old diaries and is shocked to realize that her own disastrous affair occurred during the summer of the Lewinsky scandal, yet she never saw the parallels.
In a frenzy of guilt and regret, Jean finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky for forgiveness as if she were a secular saint, a figure of both suffering and sympathy. To Jeanโs shock, Saint Monica appearsโpowerful, radiant, wise, and wittyโand guides Jean like the Ghost of Christmas Past back to the summer of 1998. Had Jean merely been naive and stupid, as she has told herself for so long? Was it sheer weakness that led her into the affair? Or will Jean, with Saint Monica by her side, see past blame to the beauty of her younger selfโs search for pleasure, connection, and transcendence?
Told in flashbacks of those sunlit six weeks in France, replete with Saint Monicaโs flinty, fiery insights and interspersed with retellings of the lives of real historical martyrs, Dear Monica Lewinsky is a tender, hilarious, and wholly original examination of desire and its costs, of appetite and its denial, and of certain defeat and surprise renewal. It asks what grace and forgiveness might look like both in our own individual lives and as a society.
“…incandescent… Langbein packs the fierce and funny tale with weighty insights into female desire, ambition, and selfhood, making it a winning combination of comedy, critique, and fantasy… This is a revelation.” –ย Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“The best thing thatโs happened in the crowded world of Lewinskiana in a long time.” –ย Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“[A] sharp-eyed, potent examination of sex and power dynamics between young women and older men.” – Kristine Huntley,ย Booklist
The Faith of Beasts by James S.A. Corey
fiction / science fiction / fantasy.
The monstrous Carryx empire was built by subjugation and war. Thousands of species are bound to their Sovranโs command in an endless, blood-soaked test: be useful in the eternal conflict or be slaughtered.
Dafyd Alkhor, highest among their human captives, is feared and despised by the very people he champions. Ruthless in carving out his niche in the eternal war machine of the empire, he will reshape human nature itself as a tool for their alien mastersโ use. But Dafydโs loyalty is not what it seems.
The Swarm, an agent of the Carryxโs deathless enemy, has been smuggled into the Carryx world-palace along with the human slaves. Its mission: discover a way to bring down the empireโs eternal reign. But the longer it lives among and within humanity, the more it forgets that it is a weapon.
As the human captives spread through the battlefronts of empire, the awesome power of the Carryx becomes clear. And with it, a desperate plan for their destruction.
But empires hide secrets, and even the deathless enemy may not be what it appearsโฆ
“…stellar… The authors continue to expertly balance character and plot development, setting the stage effectively for the seriesโ denouement. This wows.” –ย Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Thrilling yet contemplative.ย The Faith of Beasts blends first contact with rebellion and human adaptability… perfectly balanced… I loved it.” –ย Sound & Fury Book Reviews
“…more intimate than its predecessor… The Faith of Beasts is a wonderful set-up for whatever is next. Fans of the series should be satisfied here and excited for the next installment.” – John Keogh,ย Booklist
Famesick: A Memoir by Lena Dunham โ
nonfiction / memoir.
For the last decade, as sheโs spent countless hours in doctorโs waiting rooms searching for diagnoses, treatments, and relief, being the owner and operator of Lena Dunhamโs body has felt, as she puts it, โlike towing a wrecked car across town at midnight.โ Itโs not easy dragging a wrecked car anywhere, much less to the Met Gala while sewn into a gold lamรฉ corset. Or to the set of the hit show that youโas a twenty-five-year-oldโare writing, directing, producing, and starring in. Or to the White House, the Golden Globes, or your publicistโs office to discuss the latest internet disaster. But Dunham does itโeven if it means interminable hospital stays, vomiting in the bathroom when sheโs meant to be meeting Oprah, or terrifying those closest to herโbecause she can no longer tell the difference between fighting to do what she loves and being a servant to her own ambition. All the while, she is holding out for a love that can withstand her personal and public challenges and, more than anything, yearning to feel like herself againโif only she could remember who that self was.
As Dunham takes us through her journey, tracking her rise to fameโfrom selling the pilot of Girls to the presentโin three acts, it becomes clear that the spotlight casts long shadows, distorting the relationships she once held dear and isolating everyone in its glare. When an endless supply of drugs canโt protect you from painโand begins to control your every moveโbeing famous doesnโt stand a chance against the darker corners of the human experience.
In Famesick, Dunham asks herself what the cost of fulfilling her dreams has really been, and whether it was worth it. What she finds is deeper than physical relief, and more lasting, as she learns to live with what she canโt change and turn her regrets into wisdom that can carry her forward, as she reconnects to what, and who, she loves.
“…as raw, complicated and funny as her show often was.” – Chris Hewitt, Lewiston Tribune
โHere, youโll find resonance, relatability, and the kind of honesty that Dunham has made her creative signature.โ – Ella Ceron, Harperโs Bazaar
“For me at least, Dunham has always been the kind of girl who makes me sit up and pay attention, no matter what it is she wants to say.โ – Julia Hass, Literary Hub
“Dunham interrogates the bargain of public lifeโhow notoriety and illness intertwined, what ambition cost and why she built a creative life that doesnโt devour her. The voice is intimate, thorny and funny as ever; the insights, bracingly clear. Whether you loved or side-eyed Girls, this is a sharp, self-aware portrait of a woman learning how to be seen on her own terms. Radical candor, minus the performative gloss.” – Lauren Wise,ย SheReads
Ghosts of Sicily: The True Story of the Naval Intelligence Agents Who Courted the Mob to Fight Nazis in America and the Battlefields of Italy by Mark Harmon & Leon Carroll, Jr.
nonfiction / history.
It’s 1942, and New York City is at war. German U-boats are sinking ships just miles offshore, and Washington, DC, is convinced that waterfront spies are providing intelligence targeting the ships. To thwart the threat, the Office of Naval Intelligence reaches out to those with the most sway along the waterfronts of Brooklyn and Manhattan โ the mob. The result will be a triumph for the ONI and one of the most successful and controversial operations in the long history of what we now know as NCIS.
The Navyโs alliance with Charles โLuckyโ Luciano and his organization will send New Yorker Tony Marsloe and his fellow ONI officers on an international odyssey that includes holding secret meetings with legendary criminals, hunting clandestine spy rings operating on U.S. soil, and conducting daring undercover missions behind the bloody frontlines of the invasion of Italy.
In addition to towering historic figures like Meyer Lansky and General George Patton, readers will encounter a kaleidoscope of agents and gangsters who not only shaped the war in Italy but the future of international crime itself.
“Absorbing history of an unlikely alliance.” –ย Kirkus Reviews
“World War II history comes alive in unexpected ways in another harrowing true tale from the authors of Ghosts of Honolulu and Ghosts of Panama.” –ย B&N Reads
Go Gentle by Maria Semple โ
fiction / romance / mystery / comedy.
Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorcรฉe, she lives a contented life on New York Cityโs Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, sheโs applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. Sheโs even assembled a “coven”โlike-minded women who live on the same floor in the legendary Ansoniaโand is making active efforts to grow its membership. Adoraโs carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger.
Soon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue… and her pastโwhich she has worked so hard to buryโlands like a bomb in her present. Inflamed by unquenchable desire, Adora finds herself a woman wanting more: and sheโll risk everything to get it.
Adora Hazzardโs journey of self-discovery will grip you from the start. Romantic, hilarious, intelligent, and bursting with the stuff of life, Go Gentle is a thrilling story of one womanโs mid-life transformation, cementing Maria Semple in the pantheon of our most exciting and important contemporary writers.
“Semple entertains in every moment of this smart story of Greek philosophy and Greek statues; desire, happiness, and their opposites; and priceless midlife peace.” –ย Annie Bostrom,ย Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
โA smart, emotionally sharp novel from one of contemporary fictionโs most reliable crowd-pleasers.โ – Art McPhail, Book and Film Globe
“…Semple blends intrigue, humor, and irony into a story that splits open one characterโs life and might just inspire you to make yours a little bigger too.” – Ella Ceron, Harperโs Bazaar
“[A] thoroughly fun and raucous read… Plentiful laughs are paired with Sempleโs rich exploration of the wisdom that comes with middle age and the tradeoff between being content and taking chances. Go Gentleโs gentleness is just as bracing and satisfying as its humor.” – Amy Scribner,ย BookPage
The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own by Gwendolyn Kiste
fiction / short stories / horror.
“Truth is rarely convenient as silence.”
Celebrated author Gwendolyn Kiste cordially invites you to explore The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own. Enter a world possessed by recriminations from bygone eras, where the regrets and malice of years past still reverberate and shape our doom. Here, morally complex women and queer antiheroines swim against the current of a social structure that serves as a spectral prison in these layered stories of the weird and the Other.
Known for crafting bold metafictional narratives that grapple with challenging social issues, Kiste’s unwavering voice deftly weaves a siren’s song of resilience and survival. Included among the short stories in this collection are the Bram Stoker Award-winning “The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt From Lucy Westenra’s Diary),” “The Girls From the Horror Movie,” “The Sea Witch of the World’s Fair,” and other riveting new gothic tales of body horror, the supernatural, and unapologetic resistance.
“What’s going on inside you?” I ask, but the darkness never whispers back.
“[An] excellent collection of 16 stories (three new) that further solidify her place as the standard bearer for immersive, beautifully terrifying feminist horror… Readers are oriented and invested immediately, even in the weirdest and darkest of stories. They will feel each narratorโs fear, rage, and yearning. It is a remarkable feat sustained from cover to cover.” – Becky Spratford,ย Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“[A] brilliant collection, brimming with Kisteโs knack for the horrifyingly uncanny made wholly relatable and real… These 16 short stories exploring facets of womanhood and the trauma, rage, love, and triumph therein are punctuated with razor-sharp lines and cinematic flair, further cementing Kisteโs status as a writer not to miss.” – Emily Vinci,ย Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“This slim but harrowing collection from Kiste packs a punch, much like most of its heroines… Kiste lends each story the deeply unsettling quality of an apparition half-glimpsed in a dark mirror. The result is a visceral celebration of womenโs wrongs.” –ย Publishers Weekly
“Haunted Houses is a more tightly drawn collection than most, holding a melody while variations rise and fade. Love and hate twin; acceptance forms holiness from ashes; obsession leads to transcendence and heartbreak… Dreamy, almost surreal, [these stories] wind up in places you never imagined. Thereโs strangeness here, but plenty of beauty… The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own opens the possibilities of the horror genre as a whole. Writers should take note. Kiste could teach a masterclass in the use of the second person alone. An unforgettable collection, and one which reminds us that thereโs hope. Much-needed.” – Elizabeth Broadbent,ย Cemetery Dance
I Choose Me: Chasing Joy, Finding Purpose & Embracing Reinvention by Jennie Garth
nonfiction / memoir / self-help.
Jennie Garth is best known for playing the iconic role of Kelly Taylor in the hit television series Beverly Hills, 90210. Now in her 50s, she invites readers into the real story of growing up on screen, facing Hollywoodโs impossible beauty standards, and losingโand findingโherself through heartbreak, loss, and the challenge of motherhood. She shares the raw truths of the moments that broke her open and shows the resilience it takes to walk through grief and begin again.
Jennie writes with warmth and candor about learning to quiet the voice that says โnot enough,โ rediscovering her strength after loss, and daring to take up space, speak her truth, and want more. She opens up about the unglamorous, deeply human moments and finally letting go of the need for perfection and other peopleโs approval.
Through personal stories, practical advice, and the wisdom earned through her own hard lessons, Jennie lights a path back to self-love and clarity. I Choose Me is for anyone whoโs ever felt lost in their roles, struggling to give themselves permission to ask, โWhat do I want now?โ Itโs an invitation to honor your own journey, embrace self-care, and believe with compassion that choosing yourself is the bravest, kindest thing you can do.
“…Garthโs refreshing willingness to interrogate her own missteps adds credibility and distinguishes the book from more polished celebrity retrospectives. Readers will appreciate this sincere reflection on reclaiming oneโs agency.” –ย Publishers Weekly
I Could Give You the Moon by Ann Liang
fiction / young adult / romance / fantasy.
Everyone loves Chanel Caoโexcept Ares Yin.
While Chanel has spent her entire life curating a picture-perfect social media personalityโfrom her body to her hair to her camera-ready smileโAres has spent his trying to hide in the shadows. But Aresโs brother is missing, and Chanelโs parents have secretly separated, and their only hope is each other.
Ares is willing to do whatever it takes to find his brother, and Chanel will do anything to keep her parentsโ secret. When the two meet and share a vision of the futureโwhere Aresโs brother appears, as Chanelโs house burns to the groundโthey are determined to use each other. Ares believes Chanel is the key to finding his brother, but Chanel is convinced if she gets Ares to fall in love with her, sheโll save her family houseโand her parentsโ crumbling marriage.
But Ares isnโt interested in the fake personality that Chanel has used her entire life to get affection and adoration. If sheโs going to save her reputation, sheโs going to have to let Ares get to know the real herโand risk real feelings.
“…this work is signature Liang: exemplary prose, a deep emotional core with a resonant romance, and characters that burrow into your heart.” – Karis Rogerson,ย Booklist
“An appealing, complex romance infused with magical elements and balancing tension and heart.” –ย Kirkus Reviews
Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker โ
fiction / horror / historical fiction / fantasy.
October, 2026: Lee Turner doesnโt remember how or why he killed his college roommate. The details are blurred and bloody. All he knows is he has to flee New York and go to the one place that might offer refugeโhis fatherโs new home in Japan, a house hidden by sword ferns and wild ginger. But something is terribly wrong with the house: no animals will come near it, the bedroom window isn’t always a window, and a woman with a sword appears in the yard when night falls.
October, 1877: Sen is a young samurai in exile, hiding from the imperial soldiers in a house behind the sword ferns. A monster came home from war wearing her fatherโs face, but Sen would do anything to please him, even turn her sword on her own mother. She knows the soldiers will soon slaughter her whole family when she sees a terrible omen: a young foreign man who appears outside her window.
One of these people is a ghost, and one of these stories is a lie.
Something is hiding beneath the house of sword ferns, and Lee and Sen will soon wish they never unburied it.
“…unnerving and mesmerizing… Japanese Gothic is a triumph, deftly constructed and frequently hair-raising.” – Chris Pickens,ย BookPage, STARRED REVIEW
“…powerful… both great historical fiction and an excellent speculative thriller, and I canโt recommend it enough.” – Molly Odintz,ย CrimeReads
“Baker creates a breathless collision of timelines, cultures, and destinies in this impressive horror outing… In wrenching prose, Baker renders her characters both deeply flawed and profoundly human. The unsparing, poetic voice propels the story to its bitter end while evoking the nightmare of feeling like an outsider even among family… un-put-downable.” –ย Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Atmospheric and disorienting… blends historical horror with Japanese folklore, incorporating elements from the legend of Urashima Tarล to deliver a violent and thought-provoking tale of grief, generational trauma, and colonialism.” – Kaitlin Conner,ย Booklist
The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown
fiction / historical fiction / mystery / suspense.
Historian Alison Sage has made a groundbreaking archival discoveryโshe found a manuscript containing the prophecies of a 16th century nun, Elizabeth Barton. Bartonโs prophecy condemning Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn led to her execution and the destruction of all copies of her propheciesโor so the world believed.
With Alisonโs discovery, she is catapulted to academic superstardom and scores an invitation to the exclusive Codex Consortium, a week of research among a select handful of fellow historians at a crumbling manor in England, located next to the ruins of the priory where Elizabeth herself once lived.
What begins as a promising conference turns into a nightmare as the eerie house becomes the site of a murder. Suddenly, everyone is a suspect, and it seems that answers lie at the root of a local legend about centuries-old hidden treasure. Alisonโs research makes her best-suited to solve the mysteryโbut when old feelings resurface for a former colleague, and the stakes of the search skyrocket, everyone’s motives become murky.
Alisonโs cutthroat world of academia is almost as dangerous as Elizabeth Bartonโs sixteenth-century England, where heretics are beheaded, visions can kill, and knowing who to trust is a deadly art. The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton is a thrilling novel, crackling with the voices of the past and propelled by a mystery that will leave readers in suspense until the very last page.
“Brown expertly weaves the past and present into a cracking good tale… Recommend to fans of Wolf Hall and all readers consumed with the treacherous Tudor times.” – Jane Murphy,ย Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Medieval literature scholar Brown debuts with a captivating dual-timeline mystery… Brown excels at depicting the manipulation of women across the centuries while exhibiting both shrewd mystery-writing skills and a knack for folding deep historical research into a propulsive narrative. Fans of historical suspense will be wowed.” –ย Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“…I loved this book… compelling and emotional… This is a story where history doesnโt stay buried but instead, rewrites the present.” –ย The Bookish Bulletin
The Madness of Believing: A Memoir from Inside Alex Jones’s Conspiracy Machine by Josh Owens
nonfiction / memoir / politics / current events.
At twenty-four-years old, Josh Owens dropped out of film school when a job offer arrived from the very world that had already begun to warp his sense of reality. After years of being pulled in by Alex Jonesโs magnetic persona and anti-establishment defiance, heโd become entangled in a universe built on suspicion, spectacle, and carefully manufactured lies. When the call came, he packed up his life and moved halfway across the country, setting off on a journey that would unravel everything he thought he believed.
The Madness of Believing follows Joshโs experience working at Infowars, where he became one of Jonesโs most trusted employees. He began traveling across the world creating โnewsโ stories, staging chaos, and spreading outright lies to Infowarsโs ever-growing audience. As he rose through the ranks, his skepticism grew, and Josh underwent a personal transformation just as Infowars too changed from a fringe community to a mainstream disinformation machine.
Joshโs story is one playing out across America: that of impressionable young people pulled into a dangerous world where reality and fiction are blurred, and extremist beliefs gain steam. The Madness of Believing is a reckoning with this climate, one that provides riveting insight into these supposedly radical, truth-driven organizations while exposing their dangerous rhetoric and lies.
“[A] wild debut tell-all… a morbidly fascinating character study of Jones… a riveting insider account of a deranged media ecosystem.” –ย Publishers Weekly
“…as an apparently candid account of falling under a demagogueโs sway, this is substantive stuff… itโs Owensโ willingness to examine his shifting mindset that makes the book worthwhile… Itโs a character arc that feels authentic, a personal story that enhances our understanding of extremism. A searching memoir by a writer who regrets peddling toxic falsehoods for a living.” –ย Kirkus Reviews
The National Road: George Washington and America’s First Highway West by Brady J. Crytzer
nonfiction / history.
The National Road is the first narrative history of the federal projectโbegun decades before the nation itself was born and ranging through the 1830sโthat connected the United States across the Alleghenies and into the western frontier. Starting with a young Washingtonโs dream of uniting the Potomac and Ohio Rivers, historian Brady J. Crytzer traces the political rivalries and engineering marvels that created an artery bringing settlers, ideas, and commerce deep into the American interior.
Washington scouted the western frontier as a surveyor and championed a route to unite the fledgling republic. Albert Gallatin, Americaโs longest-serving treasury secretary, battled political opposition to fund the project. Thomas Jefferson, torn between his agrarian ideals and the demands of a growing nation, ultimately championed the road as a means of securing western lands and extending democratic reach. And Henry Clay harnessed the road to advance his bold American System.
With visionaries, rebels, and everyday families seeking the American dream, and featuring congressional showdowns and backroom deals to mountain crossings and frontier towns, The National Road reveals the triumphs and tragedies of an infrastructure saga that helped define the United States.
“A fine reminder that a revolution first united our nation, but roads kept it united.” –ย Kirkus Reviews
Rasputin: The Downfall of the Romanovs by Antony Beevor
nonfiction / biography / history.
When Russia’s Dowager Empress was pregnant with the future Tsar, she dreamed that a peasant would one day kill her son. The idea terrified her, and for the rest of her days she “lived under the pressure of the prophecy”. Did the prophecy come true with the arrival at court of a mysterious, barely literate moujhik from Siberia, Grigori Rasputin?
In this extraordinary portrait of an enigmatic character, Antony Beevor brings readers closer than ever before to Rasputinโs scandalous life and death. Though he had no official position at court, Rasputinโs hold over the Romanovs became the stuff of legend. Exaggerated accounts of political and financial corruption swirled around him, to say nothing of the stories of his debauchery with the Empress and even her daughters. The consequences of the rumor and conspiracy theories were devastatingโwhen the February revolution broke out in 1917, hardly a sword was raised in the Tsarโs defense.
Through extensive use of previously unpublished reports, interviews, and interrogations, Beevor shows the truth of Rasputinโs rampant lust and opportunism, victimization of poor and vulnerable women, and deep hypocrisy and corruption. Part political thriller, part gothic mystery, Rasputin is a fascinating story of human perversity.
“Rasputinโs role in the downfall of the Romanovs has been shrouded in legend, and this eerily timely book illustrates the sordid reality behind the sinister myth.” – Kirk Johnson,ย Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
โAn exceptionally well-sourced, morally serious and often darkly comic account of how a barely literate peasant from Siberia came to precipitate the collapse of one of the greatest autocracies in the world.โ – Owen Matthews, The Spectator
โBeevor is one of our finest narrative historians, with sharp judgment, a sweet pen and a deep understanding of the world in which he works… [A] beautifully written, clear-eyed biography of a very Russian tragedy. Rasputin is a meditation on history as well as a masterclass in smooth, judicious prose.โ – Dan Jones,ย The Times
RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise by Isabel Vincent
nonfiction / biography.
Born into one of the most storied families in American history, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was fourteen years old when his father was assassinated. He has since spent his life grappling with the weight of his familyโs legacy. Like his martyred father, RFK Jr. longs to be a hero, but he has struggled with his demons. โI knew daddy was watching me, and that he loved me,โ he wrote in a diary entry, โBut I also felt I was disappointing him.โ
Those thoughts were set down in his diary when he was serving out a monthlong prison term in Puerto Rico for civil disobedience. The experience changed his life. Alone in his cell, he was forced to grapple with his personal conflictsโhis addictions to drugs and womenโbut also to question everything that he and his family once held sacred, including their allegiance to the Democratic Party, which had sustained the Kennedy family for generations.
RFK Jr. became disillusioned with many of the partyโs leaders even as he committed himself to carving out a distinct identity as a public servant. He would vow to step up his environmental crusade, later establishing himself as a public health critic with controversial views on vaccines. He became a political maverick.
But even now, in his seventies, and after an unexpected pivot into the national spotlight as a political and cultural figure at odds with both the Democratic Party and his family, RFK Jr. is still fighting to live up to the legacy of his father.
Award-winning journalist Isabel Vincent draws on exclusive access to RFK Jr.โs personal diaries, candid interviews, and previously unreleased material, providing an unparalleled view of the life and mind of one of the most divisive individuals in America today, a deeply flawed man whose public life has often been in conflict with his private battles.
“[A] bombshell new biography…โ – Liz McNeil, People
The Take by Kelly Yang
fiction / horror / science fiction.
Would you sell your youth for $3 million?
Maggie Wang, a broke young Asian American writer, needs a lifeline. Ingrid Parker, a veteran white Hollywood producer with her career on the edge, offers an irresistible deal: $3 million for ten experimental medical sessions to reverse her aging, using Maggie as a transfusion partner, and mentorship.
For Ingrid, it’s a chance to reboot her fading career. For Maggie, it’s access and freedomโmoney to support her parents and the connections to finally get her novel published.
What starts as a professional transaction exchanging blood quickly becomes a complex psychological dance. As Maggie gains unprecedented access to Ingrid’s hard-earned wisdom, Ingrid sees in Maggie a weapon against an industry that’s been trying to sideline her.
As their relationship intensifies, the rules around aging begin to shift. So does the balance of power between the two women, leaving both questioning who holds the upper hand and what they’re willing to sacrifice to succeed.
Sharp, timely, and utterly compelling, The Take is perfect for readers of Yellowface and Such a Fun Ageโa searing portrait of two women fighting to rewrite their story.
โOne part The Substance, another part The Devil Wears Prada, The Take is a juicy, twisty take on aging, success, and race. Told in a sharp and hilarious voice, The Take is sure to be one of the hottest books of spring.โ – Liz Doupnik, Marie Claire
“Yangโs adult debut novel blends psychological suspense with sharp social commentary… Yang brilliantly explores privilege, the commodification of youth, and the marginalization of BIPOC and AAPI voices in the arts while also addressing sex work, infidelity, and creative exploitation. Her debut novel is a provocative work that will appeal to readers of literary thrillers and socially engaged fiction.” – Emily Park,ย Booklist
“Wellness horror meets capitalism noir in Kelly Yangโs vicious send-off of the lies we tell to those we exploit… So good! And so horrifyingโฆ” – Molly Odintz,ย CrimeReads
What Am I, A Deer? by Polly Barton
fiction.
What does it mean to lose yourself โ and is that something you should be aiming for?
A young woman with little interest in games takes up a job in Frankfurt at a famous gaming company, naively set on reinvention. On her morning commute, in the familiar clutches of tedium and self-loathing, she encounters a nice-eyed stranger who returns her forgotten umbrella and finds herself catapulted into a dizzying, year-long whirlwind of obsession โ not just with this endlessly attractive spectre, but also with the feverish karaoke trips from which she draws the ultimate solace.
With astonishing existential acuity, Polly Bartonโs formidable debut novel renders the paradoxes of modern life in all its complexity, in deliriously self-conscious prose that is at once propulsive, titillating and bitingly funny. Echoing with the sounds of Whitney Houston and The Cure, reaching for the sublime in dark, sweaty boxes, What Am I, A Deer? is an exhilarating exploration of authenticity, fantasy, romance and intoxication.
“This book made us want to fall in love with a stranger, go to karaoke and scream-sing ‘Purple Rain’, or throw ourselves out of a window. The performance of being a person is humiliating, but nonchalance is the thief of joyโquite a dilemma. Read if you seek stream-of-consciousness prose about a maladaptive daydreamer with a big vocab and a bad crush.” –ย Book of the Month
“Its prose tidal and prone to extending the briefest encounters into meditations full of associative logic, the novel is a brilliant, sustained monologue. Indeed, by laying bare a primal, feminine solitudeโcrafted by the narratorโs selective interiority, buoyed by obsession, and further exacerbated by her work-abroad circumstancesโthe woman becomes an integral conduit for wider fissures between hoped-for escapist fantasies and a lonelier reality in which communication is fraught but worth braving.” – Karen Rigby,ย Foreword Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“With both immediacy and the cooler reflections of hindsight, Barton sets a tone that is confessional and clinical, dissecting and shameless… Under the guise of her narratorโs internal monologues, fiction in Bartonโs hands becomes a guise for tackling topics like heteropessimism, corporate capitalism and karaoke as a unifying theory of translation.” – Jemima Skala,ย Dazed
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