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The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions
By Jonathan Rosen. 2023
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • Named a Top 10 Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Wall Street…
Journal, The Atlantic, Slate, and PeopleOne of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2023&“Brave and nuanced . . . an act of tremendous compassion and a literary triumph.&” —The New York Times&“Immensely emotional and unforgettably haunting.&” —The Wall Street JournalAcclaimed author Jonathan Rosen&’s haunting investigation of the forces that led his closest childhood friend, Michael Laudor, from the heights of brilliant promise to the forensic psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. A story about friendship, love, and the price of self-delusion, The Best Minds explores the ways in which we understand—and fail to understand—mental illness.When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle in 1973, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor became inseparable. Both children of college professors, the boys were best friends and keen competitors, and, when they both got into Yale University, seemed set to join the American meritocratic elite. Michael blazed through college in three years, graduating summa cum laude and landing a top-flight consulting job. But all wasn&’t as it seemed. One day, Jonathan received the call: Michael had suffered a serious psychotic break and was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Michael was still battling delusions when he traded his halfway house for Yale Law School. Featured in The New York Times as a role model genius, he sold a memoir, with film rights to Ron Howard. But then Michael, in the grip of an unshakeable paranoid fantasy, stabbed his girlfriend Carrie to death and became a front-page story of an entirely different sort. Tender, funny, and harrowing by turns, The Best Minds is Jonathan Rosen&’s magnificent and heartbreaking account of good intentions and tragic outcomes whose significance will echo widely.
Our Share of Night: A Novel
By Mariana Enriquez. 2022
&“A masterpiece of supernatural horror.&”—The Washington Post&“An enchanting, shattering, once-in-a-lifetime reading experience.&”—The New York Times (Editors&’ Choice)ONE OF TIME AND THE…
ATLANTIC&’S TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES&’S TEN BEST HORROR BOOKS OF THE YEAR • LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICKOne of Reactor Magazine&’s Most Iconic Speculative Fiction Books of the 21st Century A woman&’s mysterious death puts her husband and son on a collision course with her demonic family in the first novel to be translated into English by the International Booker Prize–shortlisted author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed—&“the most exciting discovery I&’ve made in fiction for some time&” (Kazuo Ishiguro).A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Esquire, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Book Riot, PopSugar, The New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Polygon, Tordotcom, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, Commonweal, CrimeReads&“A magnificent accomplishment.&”—Alan Moore, author of Watchmen &“A masterpiece of literary horror.&”—Publishers Weekly, starred review &“One of Latin America&’s most exciting authors.&”—Silvia Moreno-GarciaA young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar&’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina&’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America&’s most original novelists, &“a mesmerizing writer,&” says Dave Eggers, &“who demands to be read.&”
Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner): A Sister's Search for Justice
By Cristina Rivera Garza. 2023
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • &“A searing account of grief…
and the quest to bring her sister&’s murderer to justice years after the fact&” (The Boston Globe), from &“one of Mexico&’s greatest living writers&” (Jonathan Lethem). &“Part memoir, part true-crime story, Garza&’s chronicle is both personal and political.&”—The Washington PostA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, Chicago Public Library, She Reads, Electric LitOctober 18, 2019. Cristina Rivera Garza travels from her home in Texas to Mexico City, in search of an old, unresolved criminal file. &“My name is Cristina Rivera Garza,&” she writes in her request to the attorney general, &“and I am writing to you as a relative of Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered on July 16, 1990.&” It&’s been twenty-nine years. Twenty-nine years, three months, and two days since Liliana was murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend. Inspired by feminist movements across the world and enraged by the global epidemic of femicide and intimate partner violence, Cristina embarks on a path toward justice. Liliana&’s Invincible Summer is the account—and the outcome—of that quest .In luminous, poetic prose, Rivera Garza tells a singular yet universally resonant story: Liliana is a spirited, wondrously hopeful young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence. Rivera Garza traces her sister&’s history, depicting everything from Liliana&’s early romance with a handsome but possessive and short-tempered man to that exhilarating final summer of 1990 when she loved, thought, and traveled more widely and freely than she ever had before.Using her skills as an acclaimed scholar, novelist, and poet, Rivera Garza collected and curated evidence—handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, interviews with Liliana&’s loved ones—to document her sister&’s life. Through this remarkable and genre-defying memoir, she confronts the trauma of losing her sister and examines how this tragedy continues to shape who she is—and what she fights for—today.
Take What You Need: A Novel
By Idra Novey. 2023
A New York Times Notable Book of 2023A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, L.A. Times, Boston Globe,…
NPR, The Guardian Author Pick, and TodayLonglisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award Longlisted for 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize&“A heart-rending book, but also a beautiful celebration of &‘the glorious pleasure of erecting something new,&’ be it a work of art or a human connection.&”—The Wall Street JournalFrom &“one of the finest and bravest novelists at work today,&” (Vulture) award-winning writer Idra Novey has conjured a novel of &“astonishing and singular&” honesty (Rumaan Alam) with two determined, unforgettable female voices.Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who&’s sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah&’s urban life with her young family, she&’s revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother&’s hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition. But with Jean&’s death, Leah must return to sort through what&’s been left behind. What Leah discovers is staggering: Jean has filled her ramshackle house with giant sculptures she&’s welded from scraps of the area&’s industrial history. There&’s also a young man now living in the house who played an unknown role in Jean&’s last years and in her art. With great verve and humor, Idra Novey zeros in on the joys and difficulty of family, the ease with which we let distance mute conflict, and the power we can draw from creative pursuits.Take What You Need explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most with passionate and resonance, this novel illuminating can be built from what others have discarded—art, unexpected friendship, a new contentment of self. This is Idra Novey at her very best.
Lone Women: A Novel (The LaValle Quartet)
By Victor LaValle. 2023
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Blue skies, empty land—and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret. A woman with a past,…
a mysterious trunk, a town on the edge of nowhere, and an &“absorbing, powerful&” (BuzzFeed) new vision of the American West, from the award-winning author of The Changeling.&“Propulsive . . . LaValle combines chills with deep insights into our country&’s divides.&”—Los Angeles TimesONE OF BOOKPAGE'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE AND LOCUS AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE MARK TWAIN AMERICAN VOICE IN LITERATURE AWARDA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, NPR, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, Vulture, Paste, Tordotcom, Book Riot, Polygon, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Library JournalAdelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It&’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear.The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the &“lone women&” taking advantage of the government&’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn&’t alone. And the secret she&’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.Crafted by a modern master of magical suspense, Lone Women blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you&’ve never seen. And at its heart is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—or redeem it.
Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel
By C Pam Zhang. 2023
NATIONAL BESTSELLERA NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction AwardLonglisted for the…
Joyce Carol Oates AwardLonglisted for the Carol Shields Prize for FictionLonglisted for the Aspen Words Literary PrizeNAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, HARPER'S BAZAAR, TOWN & COUNTRY, KIRKUS REVIEWS, ESQUIRE, ELECTRIC LITERATURE, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN AND MORE!&“One of the most pleasurable, inventive reads of the year… fiendishly, deliciously fun."—San Francisco Chronicle"A profound exploration of human nature, the allure of pleasure and the choices we make in the face of adversity.&”—NPR, "Books We Love"&“It&’s rare to read anything that feels this unique.&” –GABRIELLE ZEVIN, New York Times bestselling author of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"Land of Milk and Honey is truly exceptional."–ROXANE GAY, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist&“A sharp, sensual piece of art.&”–RAVEN LEILANI, New York Times bestselling author of LusterThe award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the worldA smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world&’s troubles.There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef&’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.
Same Bed Different Dreams: A Novel
By Ed Park. 2023
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • A wild, sweeping novel that imagines an alternate secret history of Korea and the traces it leaves…
on the present—loaded with assassins and mad poets, RPGs and slasher films, pop bands and the perils of social media&“Your view of twentieth-century history will be enlarged and altered. . . . A Gravity&’s Rainbow for another war, an unfinished war.&” —Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of SolitudeWINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE • ONE OF PUBLISHERS WEEKLY&’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS&’ CHOICEA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Public Library, Polygon, Kirkus Reviews In 1919, far-flung patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, though, and after Japan&’s defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the tragic North-South split that remains today.But what if the KPG still existed—now working toward a unified Korea, secretly pulling levers to further its aims? Same Bed Different Dreams weaves together three distinct narrative voices with an archive of mysterious images, and twists reality like a kaleidoscope. Korean history, American pop culture, and our tech-fraught lives come together in this extraordinary and unforgettable novel.Soon Sheen, a former writer now employed by the tech behemoth GLOAT, comes into possession of an unfinished book seemingly authored by the KPG. The manuscript is a riveting revisionist history, connecting famous names and obscure bit players to the KPG&’s grand project—everyone from Syngman Rhee and architect-poet Yi Sang to Jack London and Marilyn Monroe. M*A*S*H is in here, too, as are the Moonies and a history of violence extending from the assassination of President McKinley to the Reagan-era downing of a passenger plane that puts the world on the brink of war.From the acclaimed author of Personal Days, Same Bed Different Dreams is a raucously funny feat of imagination and a thrilling meld of history and fiction that pulls readers into another dimension—one in which utopia is possible.
Bright Young Women: A Novel
By Jessica Knoll. 2023
Don&’t miss this &“breakneck thriller&” that examines &“our culture&’s obsession with serial killers and true crime&” (Harper&’s Bazaar) as it…
follows two women on the pursuit of justice against all odds. &“A fascinating look at true crime and tabloid culture that&’s as thoughtful as it is gripping&” (People). A New York Times Notable Book of 2023 New York Times Editors&’ Choice Instant New York Times Bestseller A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post, Harper&’s Bazaar, Kirkus Reviews, CrimeReads, Booklist, and more! An Edgar Award Finalist for Best NovelMasterfully blending elements of psychological suspense and true crime, Jessica Knoll—bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and the writer behind the Netflix adaptation starring Mila Kunis—delivers an &“unflinching and evocative&” (Laura Dave, New York Times bestselling author) thriller in Bright Young Women. The book opens on a Saturday night in 1978, hours before a soon-to-be-infamous murderer descends upon a Florida sorority house with deadly results. The lives of those who survive, including a sorority president and key witness, Pamela Schumacher, are forever changed. Across the country, Tina Cannon is convinced her missing friend was targeted by the man the papers refer to as the All-American Sex Killer—and that he&’s struck again. Determined to find justice, the two join forces as their search for answers leads to a final, shocking confrontation. With award-winning storytelling, &“Bright Young Women doesn&’t put its focus on the murderer. It&’s more interested in his victims—and the survivors who are on a mission to catch him before he kills again&” (Time). Blisteringly paced, it is a &“compelling, almost hypnotic read and I loved it with a passion&” (Lisa Jewell, New York Times bestselling author).
Kantika: A Novel
By Elizabeth Graver. 2023
A dazzling Sephardic multigenerational saga that moves from Istanbul to Barcelona, Havana, and New York, exploring displacement, endurance, and family…
as home.A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, Kantika—“song” in Ladino—follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way—a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge—her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own and whose challenges pit new family against old.Exploring identity, place and exile, Kantika also reveals how the female body—in work, art and love—serves as a site of both suffering and joy. A haunting, inspiring meditation on the tenacity of women, this lush, lyrical novel from Elizabeth Graver celebrates the insistence on seizing beauty and grabbing hold of one’s one and only life.
Yellowface: A Novel
By R. F. Kuang. 2023
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • EXCERPT TO NEW NOVEL KATABASIS!“Hard to put down, harder to…
forget.” — Stephen KingWhite lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting psychological thriller from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel.Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars in the world of literary fiction. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.With its totally immersive first-person voice from a masterfully crafted unreliable narrator, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
King: A Life
By Jonathan Eig. 2023
WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHYA finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award | Named one…
of the ten best books of 2023 by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and TimeA New York Times bestseller and notable book of 2023 | One of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2023One of The New Yorker’s essential reads of 2023 | A Christian Science Monitor best book of the year | One of Air Mail’s twelve best books of 2023A Washington Post and national indie bestseller | One of Publishers Weekly’s best nonfiction books of 2023 | One of Smithsonian magazine’s ten best books of 2023“Supple, penetrating, heartstring-pulling and compulsively readable . . . Eig’s book is worthy of its subject.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)“[King is] infused with the narrative energy of a thriller . . . The most compelling account of King’s life in a generation.” —Mark Whitaker, The Washington Post“No book could be more timely than Jonathan Eig’s sweeping and majestic new King . . . Eig has created 2023′s most vital tome.” —Will Bunch, The Philadelphia InquirerHailed by The New York Times as “the new definitive biography,” King mixes revelatory new research with accessible storytelling to offer an MLK for our times.Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs
Biography of X: A Novel
By Catherine Lacey. 2005
Named a Best Book of March by Apple Books and Amazon, and a Most Anticipated Book by The New York…
Times, Esquire, The Guardian, TIME, Buzzfeed, Electric Literature, Lit Hub and Chicago Review of Books"A major novel, and a notably audacious one." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times "It feels fairly rare for a novel to be hugely intelligent and moving and fun in equal measure, but with Biography of X, Catherine Lacey somehow—magically—makes the nearly impossible look easy." —Lauren GroffFrom one of our fiercest stylists, a roaring epic chronicling the life, times, and secrets of a notorious artist.When X—an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification. A masterfully constructed literary adventure complete with original images assembled by X’s widow, Biography of X follows a grieving wife seeking to understand the woman who enthralled her. CM traces X’s peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America's divided territories, and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from Bowie and Waits to Sontag and Acker. And when she finally understands the scope of X’s defining artistic project, CM realizes her wife’s deceptions were far crueler than she imagined.Pulsing with suspense and intellect while blending nonfiction and fiction, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love. In her most ambitious novel yet, Catherine Lacey, one of our most acclaimed literary innovators, pushes her craft to its highest level, introducing us to an unforgettable character who, in her tantalizing mystery, shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.
The Reformatory: A Novel
By Tananarive Due. 2023
*Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner * New York Times Notable Book * Locus Award Finalist * Winner of the…
Bram Stoker Award and the Shirley Jackson Award * &“You&’re in for a treat...one of those books you can&’t put down...Due hit it out of the park.&” —Stephen King A gripping, page-turning &“masterpiece&” (Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman) set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he&’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.Gracetown, Florida June 1950 Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie&’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory. Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it&’s too late. The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
By Siddharth Kara. 2023
The revelatory Pulitzer Prize finalist for General Nonfiction, New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, shortlisted for the Financial Times…
Best Business Book of the Year Award.An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation—and the moral implications that affect us all.Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo—because we are all implicated.
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
By Ilyon Woo. 2023
Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Biography &“A rich narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from…
Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class, and disability to hide in public on their journey to the North, where they became famous abolitionists while evading bounty hunters.&” —The Pulitzer Prizes Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, and Oprah DailyIn 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles criss-crossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line and the stakes never higher.With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, Master Slave Husband Wife is an American love story—one that would challenge the nation&’s core precepts of life, liberty, and justice for all—one that challenges us even now.
The Deluge
By Stephen Markley. 2022
A New York Times Notable Book &“This book is, simply put, a modern classic. If you read it, you'll never…
forget it. Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting.&” —Stephen King From the bestselling author of Ohio, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity.In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come. From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity&’s last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir
By Safiya Sinclair. 2023
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner A New York Times Notable Book A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club…
Pick! A Best Book of 2023 by the New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, Vulture, Shelf Awareness, Goodreads, Esquire, The Atlantic, NPR, and Barack Obama With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author&’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father&’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair&’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman&’s highest virtue was her obedience. In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya&’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father&’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya&’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them. How to Say Babylon is Sinclair&’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.