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The Islands: Stories
By Dionne Irving. 2022
Powerful stories that explore the legacy of colonialism, and issues of race, immigration, sexual discrimination, and class in the lives of…
Jamaican women across London, Panama, France, Jamaica, Florida and moreThe Islands follows the lives of Jamaican women—immigrants or thedescendants of immigrants—who have relocated all over the world to escape the ghosts of colonialism on what they call the Island. Set in the United States, Jamaica, and Europe, these international stories examine the lives of an uncertain and unsettled cast of characters. In one story, a woman and her husband impulsively leave San Francisco and move to Florida with wild dreams of American reinvention only to unearth the cracks in their marriage. In another, the only Jamaican mother—who is also a touring comedienne—at a prep school feels pressure to volunteer in the school&’s International Day. Meanwhile, in a third story, a travel writer finally connects with the mother who once abandoned her.Set in locations and times ranging from 1950s London to 1960s Panama to modern-day New Jersey, Dionne Irving reveals the intricacies of immigration and assimilation in this debut, establishing a new and unforgettable voice in Caribbean-American literature. Restless, displaced, and disconnected, these characters try to ground themselves—to grow where they find themselves planted—in a world in which the tension between what&’s said and unsaid can bend the soul.
In the Upper Country
By Kai Thomas. 2023
'Masterful . . . practically every page turns up a sentence or a phrase that could have been penned by…
Toni Morrison or James Baldwin' George Elliott Clarke, former Poet Laureate of Toronto Freedom, you can't get and bury, and keep it and keep it so it won't ever go away. No, child.You got to swing your freedom like a club.In 1859, deep in the forests of Canada, an elderly woman sits behind bars. She came to Dunmore via the Underground Railroad to escape enslavement, but an American bounty hunter tracked her down. Now she's in jail for killing him, and the fragile peace of Dunmore, a town settled by people fleeing the American south, hangs by a thread. Lensinda Martin, a smart young reporter, wants to gather the woman's testimony before she can be condemned, but the old woman has no time for confessions. Instead she proposes a barter: a story for a story. As the women swap stories - of family and first loves, of survival and freedom against all odds - Lensinda must face her past. And it seems the old woman may carry a secret that could shape Lensinda's destiny. Travelling along the path of the Underground Railroad from the American South to British Canada, from the Indigenous nations around the Great Lakes, to the Black refugee communities of Canada, In the Upper Country is an unforgettable debut about the interwoven history of peoples in North America, slavery and resistance, and two women reckoning with the stories they've been given, and the ones they want to tell.
Superfan: A Memoir
By Jen Sookfong Lee. 2023
A sharply observed and beautifully intimate memoir-in-pieces that uses one woman's life-long love affair with pop culture as a revelatory…
lens to explore family, identity, belonging, grief, and the power of female rage. Named a most anticipated book of the year by the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star.For most of Jen Sookfong Lee's life, pop culture was an escape from family tragedy and a means of fitting in with the larger culture around her. Anne of Green Gables promised her that, despite losing her father at the age of twelve, one day she might still have the loving family of her dreams. Princess Diana was proof that maybe there was more to being a good girl after all. And yet as Jen grew up, she began to recognize the ways in which pop culture was not made for someone like her—the child of Chinese immigrant parents who looked for safety in the invisibility afforded by embracing model minority myths.Ranging from the unattainable perfection of Gwyneth Paltrow and the father-figure familiarity of Bob Ross, to the long shadow cast by The Joy Luck Club and the life lessons she has learned from Rihanna, Jen weaves together key moments in pop culture with stories of her own failings, longings, and struggles as she navigates the minefields that come with carving her own path as an Asian woman, single mother, and writer. And with great wit, bracing honesty, and a deep appreciation for the ways culture shapes us, she draws direct lines between the spectacle of the popular, the intimacy of our personal bonds, and the social foundations of our collective obsessions.
Really Good, Actually: A Novel
By Monica Heisey. 1996
“Hilarious, heart-warming, wise.” — Paula HawkinsA hilarious and painfully relatable debut novel about one woman’s messy search for joy and…
meaning in the wake of an unexpected breakup, from comedian, essayist, and award-winning screenwriter Monica HeiseyMaggie is fine. She’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage only lasted 608 days, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée™.Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4 am, and “get back out there” sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of single life, intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor and asking herself tough questions along the way.Laugh-out-loud funny and filled with sharp observations, Really Good, Actually is a tender and bittersweet comedy that lays bare the uncertainties of modern love, friendship, and our search for that thing we like to call “happiness”. This is a remarkable debut from an unforgettable new voice in fiction.
Victory City: A Novel
By Salman Rushdie. 2023
The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over…
the centuries—from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie &“A major accomplishment by one of our greatest living writers . . . It does not resemble any other novel I could name.&”—Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2023: TIME, The Toronto Star, The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA Today, The Tampa Bay Times, The Week, CNBC, Business Insider, Kirkus Reviews, and Literary HubIn the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who begins to speak out of the girl&’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana&’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga—&“victory city&”—the wonder of the world.Over the next 250 years, Pampa Kampana&’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga&’s, from its literal sowing from a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry—with Pampa Kampana at its center.Brilliantly narrated in the style of an ancient epic, Victory City is a saga of love, adventure, and myth that is in itself a testament to the power of storytelling.
A Generous Meal: Modern Recipes for Dinner
By Christine Flynn. 2023
Dinner can be equal parts impressive and simple any day of the week. Sometimes all you need is a little…
inspiration and a cabbage—and this book!In A Generous Meal, Christine Flynn shows us—contrary to popular belief—that you don&’t need a lot of time, money, or know-how to make good food. A simple potato can transform a so-so day into something special, a soup can warm you in more ways than one, and baking a chocolate cake is just another way of shouting, &“I love you!&” at the top of your lungs. A Generous Meal is a modern cookbook of over 100 recipes that anyone—from a novice to an experienced chef like Christine—can use to whip up restaurant-quality meals with ease. Maybe you are having people over and want to put out some crusty bread and serve an array of simple starters like Butter Beans in Salsa Verde or Warm Chorizo in Sidra that will get everyone nibbling. Or, perhaps you&’re looking for a vegetable forward weeknight meal like Spicy Oven Charred Cabbage and Lemons. Seafood dishes, including Herb Stuffed Rainbow Trout or Cod and Zucchini in Curry Coconut Broth, offer good variety, and meaty mains like Crispy Chicken Thighs over Vinegar Beans or Lamb Loin Chops over Minty Pistachio Butter are perfect any day of the week—and just as impressive to serve to guests. And what is a meal without the possibility of dessert? Satisfy your post-dinner sweet tooth cravings with recipes like Caramel Pecan Ice Cream Crumble Cake or Polenta Biscuits with Sweet Corn Cream and Strawberries. The recipes in A Generous Meal are fresh, comforting, easy to follow, and the best part? They are enjoyable to cook and eat.
Old Babes in the Wood: Stories
By Margaret Atwood. 2023
A dazzling collection of fifteen short stories from Margaret Atwood, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale and…
The Testaments.Margaret Atwood has established herself as one of the most visionary and canonical authors in the world. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories—some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine—explore the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood&’s characteristic insight, wit and intellect. The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; &“Impatient Griselda&” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and &“My Evil Mother&” touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love—and what comes after.Returning to short fiction for the first time since her 2014 collection Stone Mattress, Atwood showcases both her creativity and her humanity in these remarkable tales which by turns delight, illuminate, and quietly devastate.
Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America
By Sheima Benembarek. 2023
An unprecedented glimpse into the sex lives of female and gender-expansive Muslims living across Canada and the United States.In the…
Muslim world, sex is permissible (or halal) only within the confines of marriage. Outside of wedlock, the act is considered haram, a sin of the faith. Girls are taught to protect their virginity; their mothers, if not forgoing &“the talk&” altogether, obscure the facts with elliptical language and metaphors.So, what happens when immigrants and the children of immigrants set about pursuing an open and active sex life on a more sexually liberated continent, amid western peers and attitudes? The six deeply personal stories in Halal Sex attempt to answer this question, bringing a hushed conversation out into the open.Within these pages you&’ll meet Azar, a non-binary trans Sufi; Bunmi, a Nigerian navigating shame and Tinder; Eman, a lesbian stand-up comic in an interfaith marriage; Taslim, a virgin in her forties struggling to erect healthy boundaries; and Khadijah, an exotic dancer and sex worker.With great empathy, Sheima Benembarek makes space for the honesty and vulnerability of each participant and handles their stories with gentleness and care. What emerges is a tapestry of a diverse Islam—encompassing a wide variety of cultural and religious and socioeconomic backgrounds—and a frank, feminist contribution to the advancement of Muslim sexual education and pleasure.
Ordinary Notes
By Christina Sharpe. 2023
One of The Millions&’ &“Most Anticipated Books of 2023One of The New York Times&’ &“19 Works of Nonfiction to Read…
This Spring&”A dazzlingly inventive, deeply moving, intellectually bracing exploration of pain and beauty, private memory and public monument, art and complexity in contemporary Black life.&“I wanted to write about silences and terror and acts that hover over generations, over centuries. I began by writing about my mother and grandmother.&” —from &“Note 18&” in Ordinary NotesA singular achievement, Ordinary Notes explores with immense care profound questions about loss, and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. In a series of 248 brief and urgent notes that gather meaning as we read them, Christina Sharpe skillfully weaves artifacts from the past—public ones alongside others that are poignantly personal—with present-day realities and possible futures, intricately constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence. Through the striking images and words in these pages, themes and tones echo: sometimes about life, art, language, beauty, memory; sometimes about history, photography, and literature—but always attending, with exquisite care, to the ordinary-extraordinary dimensions of Black life. At the heart of Ordinary Notes is the indelible presence of the author&’s mother, Ida Wright Sharpe. &“I learned to see in my mother&’s house,&” writes Sharpe. &“I learned how not to see in my mother&’s house . . . My mother gifted me a love of beauty, a love of words.&” Using these and other gifts and ways of seeing, Sharpe steadily summons a chorus of voices and experiences to become present on the page. She articulates and follows an aesthetic of "beauty as a method,&” collects entries from a community of thinkers towards a &“Dictionary of Untranslatable Blackness,&” and rigorously examines sites of memory and memorial. And in the process, she forges a new literary form, as multivalent as the ways of Black being it traces.
Just Once, No More: On Fathers, Sons, and Who We Are Until We Are No Longer
By Charles Foran. 2023
In his poignant memoir, Charles Foran presents a portrait of his gruff-but-fond father wrestling with the end of life as…
Charlie acts as witness, solace, and would-be guide while facing his own mortality. What story can we tell ourselves and those we love, this radiant book asks, to withstand the inevitable mutability of time and self? A powerful meditation on fathers and sons, love and loss, and what it means to be alive "just once, no more."Dave Foran was a formidable man of few words, from a different era than his sensitive, literary son, Charlie. As a younger person, Dave had lived alone for months in the bush, overcome snow blindness, hauled a dead body across a frozen lake on a dogsled, dodged bullets in a bar, and gone toe-to-toe with a bear. Some aspects of his life were rollicking while others were more restrained: A decent father and a devoted husband, Dave was also emotionally distant, prone to laconic cynicism and a changeable mood. As Charlie writes: &“He struggled most days of his life with wounds he could not readily identify, let alone heal."The year Charlie turned 55, his 83-year-old father began a slow, final decline, and Charlie surprised himself by wanting to write about their relationship. On the surface, his motiavation was to reassure his father that he was loved. But there was also a deeper desire at work. &“Late into the middle of my own lifespan,&” Charlie writes, &“sadness took hold of my being . . . I wanted to say so frankly, never mind how uncomfortable it made me.&”In spare, haunting prose, Just Once, No More pulls on these delicate threads—unravelling a fascinating personal story and revealing its poignant universality.
Salad Pizza Wine: And Many More Good Things from Elena
By Janice Tiefenbach, Stephanie Mercier Voyer, Ryan Gray, Marley Sniatowsky. 2023
A bright, bold and modern Italian cookbook packed with 115+ delicious mix-and-match recipes, plus a few goofs and somethoughts on…
creating a fuller life for yourself and the people around you.A different kind of cookbook, from a different kind of restaurant. The team behind the award-winning Montreal pizza joint Elena presents Salad Pizza Wine, delivering recipes for all of life&’s good things, with fresh, delicious and easy-to-recreate takes on modern Italian dishes, including:Elena&’s famous pizza If you could eat pizza every day and feel great, would you believe it? From heavy-hitters to off-menu pies, the secret to a pizza-filled life is in Elena&’s naturally leavened dough. Salads + Vegetables Like people, this book contains multitudes; you can stuff your face with pizza on the daily and take pleasure in eating vegetables with the seasons. Pasta Learn how to make two super versatile doughs and their multiple variations, and impress your loved ones with an all-star roster of favorite pastas. Meat + Fish Take your pick from weeknight-friendly recipes, dishes to save for special occasions and one once-in-a-lifetime adventure: the gargantuan Timpano, inspired by the classic film Big Night. Hoagies Who doesn&’t love sandwiches? Portable and easy to share with a friend, hoagies are also perfect for wrapping up all your tasty leftovers.Desserts End every meal on a high note with a series of serious sweet treats for beginners and advanced bakers alike. Go-Tos Lay the foundation for your home-cooking adventure with basic recipes that deliver big flavor, from crunchy toasted breadcrumbs and multi-purpose sauces to simple pickles and homemade cheeses.More than a collection of recipes, Salad Pizza Wine shares Elena&’s passion for natural wines too—the wine part of Salad Pizza Wine—as well as their goofs and thoughts on living a fuller life. The authors—Janice, Stephanie, Ryan, Marley—were part of Elena&’s opening team who came together, burnt out from years in the restaurant industry and ready to start afresh. Their answer was to create a restaurant that was also a healthy working environment (gasp). At Elena, it&’s all about making the most of a good thing—and the same goes for this book. Whether it&’s planning a dinner (salad, pizza, wine? pizza, pasta, dessert? salad, meat, hoagie?), or letting go of stuff that no longer serves you, Salad Pizza Wine encourages you to choose your own adventure—both in the kitchen and in life.Written in a self-deprecating, tongue-in-cheek style, this is a cookbook you&’ll really want to cook from, as well as to read. Because what&’s better than cooking beautiful food, being kind to those around us and laughing as we all try to figure it out?
The Adult
By Bronwyn Fischer. 2023
An engrossing, page-turning story about an introverted student and the mysterious older woman whose unexpected interest in her sparks an…
insidious, all-consuming love affair.Eighteen-year-old Natalie has just arrived for her first year of university in Toronto, leaving her remote, forested hometown for an unfamiliar city. Everyone she encounters seems to know exactly who they are. Chatty, confident Clara from down the hall, who wants to be her friend; intense, determined Rachel from her poetry class, who is going to be a writer. Natalie doesn't know what she wants. She reads advice listicles and watches videos online and thinks about how to fit in, how to really become someone.Just as she is trying to find her footing, she meets Nora, an older woman who takes an unexpected interest in her. Natalie is drawn magnetically into Nora's orbit. She begins spending more and more of her time off campus at Nora's home, enveloped by the intensity of her feelings and the version of adulthood she imagines Nora leads. Worried about how her floormates will react to news of her relationship with a woman, Natalie explains her absence by inventing a secret boyfriend called Paul; she carefully protects the intimate, sacred adulthood she is building for herself. But when it becomes clear that Nora is lying, too, her secrets begin to take an alarming shape in Natalie's life, even as Natalie tries to look away. What, or who, is Nora hiding?The Adult is a startlingly gorgeous and perceptive debut novel examining identity, love, insecurity, desire, and deceit.
A Death at the Party: A Novel
By Amy Stuart. 2023
In this tense, spellbinding thriller set over the course of a single day, a woman prepares for a party that…
goes dreadfully wrong—for fans of Ashley Audrain and Lisa Jewell.Nadine Walsh&’s summer garden party is in full swing. The neighbors all have cocktails, the catered food is exquisite—everything&’s going according to plan. But Nadine—devoted wife, loving mother, and doting daughter—finds herself standing over a dead body in her basement while her guests clink glasses upstairs. What happened? How did it come to this? Rewind to that morning, when Nadine is in her kitchen, making last-minute preparations before she welcomes more than a hundred guests to her home to celebrate her mother&’s birthday. But her husband is of little help to her, her two grown children are consumed with their own concerns, and her mother—only her mother knows that today isn&’t just a birthday party. It marks another anniversary as well. Still, Nadine will focus just on tonight. Everyone deserves a celebration after the year they&’ve had. A chance for fun. A chance to forget. But it&’s hard to forget when Nadine&’s head is swirling with secrets, haunting memories, and concerns about what might happen when her guests unite.
Cook It Wild: Sensational Prep-Ahead Meals for Camping, Cabins, and the Great Outdoors
By Chris Nuttall-Smith. 2023
Say goodbye to ho-hum canned beans and freeze-dried camping meals. With prep-ahead recipes and field-tested advice, flavor-packed dishes suchas herby…
lemon chicken and fire-baked sticky buns become deliciously doable and fuss-free—whether you&’re in the wilderness or your own backyard.In this game-changing camping cookbook, food writer and outdoorsman Chris Nuttall-Smith introduces an ingenious prep-ahead approach that gets most (or even all) of the cooking done before a trip ever begins. Each recipe is divided into &“at home&” and &“at camp&” sections, so on your trip, many recipes have you simply drop fully prepped ingredients into a pot or onto a grill. Just like that, you&’ll be dining on showstopping Sweet-Tangy Lemon Ribs or Sizzling Cumin Lamb Kebabs paired with Puff-and-Serve Chapati.Plus, learn about the best-traveling cheeses, how to chill drinks when you don&’t have ice, how to pick (and use) the right camp stove, and how to make great coffee outdoors! Cook It Wild proves that cooks and campers of every level can have the most spectacular campfire meals.
Pageboy: A Memoir
By Elliot Page. 2004
The Oscar-nominated star who captivated the world with his performance in Juno finally shares his truth.“Can I kiss you?” It…
was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans person. Getting closer to his desires, his dreams, himself, without the repression he’d carried for so long. But for Elliot, two steps forward had always come with one step back. With Juno’s massive success, Elliot became one of the world’s most beloved actors. His dreams were coming true, but the pressure to perform suffocated him. He was forced to play the part of the glossy young starlet, a role that made his skin crawl, on and off set. The career that had been an escape out of his reality and into a world of imagination was suddenly a nightmare. As he navigated criticism and abuse from some of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a past that snapped at his heels, and a society dead set on forcing him into a binary, Elliot often stayed silent, unsure of what to do, until enough was enough. Full of behind the scenes details and intimate interrogations on sex, love, trauma, and Hollywood, Pageboy is the story of a life pushed to the brink. But at its core, this beautifully written, winding journey of what it means to untangle ourselves from the expectations of others is an ode to stepping into who we truly are with defiance, strength, and joy.
Message in a Bottle: Ocean Dispatches from a Seabird Biologist
By Holly Hogan. 2023
From the heart of the Labrador Current to the furthest reaches of our global oceans, Message in a Bottle conjures…
an exquisite diversity of marine life and warns of a central threat to its survival: ocean plastic.The dovekie is a stocky seabird the size of a child&’s heart that spends its winters on the coast of Newfoundland, thriving in one of the toughest climates on Earth. The polar bear is an apex predator, designed to persevere in the Arctic's extreme conditions. The North Atlantic right whale outweighs the humpback by more than twenty tons and feeds on enormous quantities of tiny plankton in northeastern waters before migrating south for the winter. In Message in a Bottle, wildlife biologist and writer Holly Hogan brings to extraordinary life the wonder and resilience of these creatures and many other birds, fish and marine mammals she has encountered in sea voyages from the Arctic to the Antarctic oceans. However, in her travels she has noticed a troubling pattern: the constant presence of plastic, in the form of adrift fishing gear ("ghost gear"), garbage and micro-plastics which form an invisible but pervasive smog in our oceans and threaten even the most seemingly resilient forms of sea life.Bringing together nature, science and adventure writing, Hogan shines a light on our plastic-addicted lifestyle and offers a compelling, eyewitness account of its devastating effects on the marine environment—70% of our planet. With lyrical prose and a reverential eye for the majesty and fragility of our natural world, Message in a Bottle is a clarion call to protect global oceans and the life they sustain, including our own.
Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries: the Sunday Times Bestseller (Emily Wilde Series #1)
By Heather Fawcett. 2023
'A darkly gorgeous fantasy that sparkles with snow and magic, this book wholly enchanted me' Sangu Mandanna, author of The…
Very Secret Society of Irregular WitchesEnter the world of the hidden folk - and discover the most whimsical, enchanting and heart-warming tale you'll read this year, featuring the intrepid Emily Wilde. . .Emily Wilde is good at many things: she is the foremost expert on the study of faeries; she is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encylopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby But as Emily gets closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones - the most elusive of all faeries - she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all - her own heart.'Forget dark academia: give me instead this kind of winter-sunshined, sharp-tongued and footnoted academia, full of field trips and grumpy romance' Freya Marske, author of A Marvellous Light'Enchanting in every sense of the word. . . This book is real magic' H. G. Parry, author of The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep'A book so vividly, endlessly enchanting, so crisply assured, so rich and complete and wise and far-reaching in its worldbuilding that you'll walk away half ensorcelled, sure Fawcett found Emily Wilde's journal in some sea-stained trunk' Melissa Albert'The ideal book to curl up with on a chilly winter's evening. . . this book is an absolute delight.' Megan Bannen, author of The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy'A charmingly whimsical delight. . . Five dazzling, gladdening stars' India Holton, author of The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels'I enjoyed every word of this gorgeously written fairy tale featuring a grumpy heroine and an utterly charming love interest' Isabel Ibañez, author of Woven In Moonlight
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
By Michael Finkel. 2023
One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first century: the story of the world&’s most prolific art thief,…
Stéphane Breitwieser. • &“The Art Thief, like its title character, has confidence, élan, and a great sense of timing."—The New Yorker "Enthralling." —The Wall Street JournalIn this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser&’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them.For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser&’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart&’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict&’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend&’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.
Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna, Obsession, and the Future of Our Seas
By Karen Pinchin. 2023
The marvelous tale of one fish, the fisherman who first caught her, and how our insatiable appetite for bluefin tuna…
turned a cottage industry into a massive global dilemma.In 2004, an enigmatic charter captain named Al Anderson caught and tagged one Atlantic bluefin tuna off New England's coast. Fourteen years later that same fish—dubbed Amelia for her ocean-spanning journeys—was caught again, this time in a Mediterranean fish trap. Over his fishing career, Al marked more than sixty thousand fish with plastic tags, an obsession that made him nearly as many enemies as it did friends. His quest landed him in the crossfire of an ongoing fight between a booming bluefin tuna industry and desperate conservation efforts, a conflict that is once again heating up as overfishing and climate change threaten the fish's fate.Kings of Their Own Ocean is an urgent investigation that combines science, business, crime, and environmental justice. Through Karen Pinchin's exclusive interviews and access, interdisciplinary approach, and mesmerizing storytelling, readers join her on boats and docks as she visits tuna hot spots and scientists from Portugal to Japan, New Jersey to Nova Scotia, and glimpse, as Pinchin does, rays of dazzling hope for the future of our oceans.
Crook Manifesto: ‘Whitehead is fast becoming the Dickens of black American life’ SUNDAY TIMES
By Colson Whitehead. 2023
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF THE SUMMER BY OPRAH DAILY, NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, TIME, NPR, LOS…
ANGELES TIMES, ESSENCE AND MORE'Whether in high literary form or entertaining, page-turner mode, the man is simply incapable of writing a bad book' IAN WILLIAMS, GUARDIAN 'Crook Manifesto gave me something I had missed in recent reading: joy' TELEGRAPH'When he moves into a new genre, he keeps the bones but does his own decorating' WASHINGTON POST'A masterpiece' PEOPLE MAGAZINEFrom two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead comes the thrilling and entertaining sequel to Harlem Shuffle1971, New York City. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is going bankrupt, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney is trying to keep his head down, his business up and his life straight. But then he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up an old police contact, who wants favours in return. For Ray, staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated - and deadly. 1973. The old ways are being overthrown by the thriving counterculture, but Pepper, Carney's enduringly violent partner in crime, is a constant. In these difficult times, Pepper takes on a side gig doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem, finding himself in a world of Hollywood stars and celebrity drug dealers, in addition to the usual cast of hustlers, mobsters and hit men. These adversaries underestimate the seasoned crook - to their regret. 1976. Harlem is burning, while the country gears up for the Bicentennial. Carney is trying to come up with a celebratory July 4th advertisement he can actually live with, while his wife Elizabeth is campaigning for her childhood friend, rising politician Alexander Oakes. When a fire seriously injures one of Carney's tenants, he enlists Pepper to look into who may be behind it, navigating a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent and the utterly corrupt. In scalpel-sharp prose and with unnerving clarity and wit, Colson Whitehead writes about a city that runs on cronyism, threats, ego, ambition, incompetence and even, sometimes, pride. Crook Manifesto is a kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem, and a searching portrait of how families work in the face of chaos and hostility.'A dazzling treatise . . . gleefully detonates its satire upon this world while getting to the heart of the place and its people' NEW YORK TIMES'Funny, effortlessly streetwise, and criminally pleasurable to read it's also politically enlightening and quietly incendiary' BIG ISSUE