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Science and medicine biography, History, Science and technology
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From the bestselling author of A Sense of the World comes this dramatic, globe-spanning and meticulously-researched story of two scientific…
rivals and their race to survey all life on Earth.In the 18th century, two men dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Their approaches could not have been more different. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster's flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France's royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Both began believing their work to be difficult, but not impossible—how could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species? Stunned by life's diversity, both fell far short of their goal. But in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, on humanity's role in shaping the fate of our planet and on humanity itself. The rivalry between these two unique, driven individuals created reverberations that still echo today. Linnaeus, with the help of acolyte explorers he called "apostles" (only half of whom returned alive), gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate and homo sapiens—but he also denied species change and promulgated racist pseudo-science. Buffon coined the term reproduction, formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, and argued passionately against prejudice. It was a clash that, during their lifetimes, Buffon seemed to be winning. But their posthumous fates would take a very different turn.With elegant, propulsive prose grounded in more than a decade of research, featuring appearances by Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin and Charles Darwin, bestselling author Jason Roberts tells an unforgettable true-life tale of intertwined lives and enduring legacies, tracing an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day.
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Biography, Literature biography, Journals and memoirs
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From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on…
his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him.Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.
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Historical fiction, LGBTQ+ fiction, Serious and literary fiction
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"Curiosities is pure delight. Anne Fleming draws us in so that we feel we are living the characters&’ lives, whether…
braving the North Atlantic on a sailing ship, or stealing away for a forbidden tryst in the English countryside. And she does it all with a light touch that has the reader dancing through peril and pleasure." —Ann-Marie MacDonald"Curiosities arrives like a little sun from another period to warm the reader with the joy and pleasure of knowledge, even as it illuminates the terrors and confusion that arise from ignorance. Wonders and disasters tumble over fractured lives and loves, but Fleming&’s conjuring of the past alive in our present is so deft and sure it might be witchcraft. I loved this book." —Marina EndicottThis sparkling, genre-bending novel opens with amateur historian Anne, who has a passion for research into the murkier corners of England in the 1600s. In an archive, Anne has stumbled across an obscure memoir, one that hints at an intricate tapestry of secret lives and loves. The full story eventually weaves together five manuscripts, each a different thread in the same strange tale: The Plague descends upon a village, and two children, Joan and Thomasina, are the only survivors. They bond with each other and with "Old Nut," a woman who lives in the forest nearby. But when relatives return, Old Nut is accused of witchcraft and condemned to death. Joan is hired as a maid to well-educated Lady Margaret Long—and, being lively and curious, soon becomes a beloved companion. Thomasina is sent on a perilous voyage to Virginia, where she adopts boys' clothing and navigates life as a male. Years later, Tom and Joan find each other and fall in love—but are discovered, naked, by a clergyman. Horrified, he believes there can only be one explanation for Tom's "unmanned" state: Joan is a witch and, like Old Nut years ago, must be tried for sorcery. It falls upon Anne, reading between faded pages and centuries, to uncover the fate of the lovers—and add her own contemporary line of "truth" to this tale from a time when there were no labels for who Tom and Joan might be.
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Serious and literary fiction, Indigenous peoples fiction, Suspense and thrillers
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The Giller Prize-longlisted author of Avenue of Champions returns with a frenetic, propulsive crime thriller that doubles as a sharp…
critique of modern activism and challenges readers to consider what &“Land Back&” might really look like.Meet Isidore &“Ezzy&” Desjarlais and Grey Ginther: two distant Métis cousins making the most of Grey&’s uncle&’s old trailer, passing their days playing endless games of cribbage and cracking cans of cheap beer in between. Grey, once a passionate advocate for change, has been hardened and turned cynical by an activist culture she thinks has turned performative and lazy. One night, though, she has a revelation, and enlists Ezzy, who is hopelessly devoted to her but eager to avoid the authorities after a life in and out of the group home system and jail, for a bold yet dangerous political mission: capture a herd of bison from a national park and set them free in downtown Edmonton, disrupting the churn of settler routine. But as Grey becomes increasingly single-minded in her newfound calling, their act of protest puts the pair and those close to them in peril, with devastating and sometimes fatal consequences.For readers drawn to the electric storytelling of Morgan Talty and the taut register of Stephen Graham Jones, Conor Kerr&’s Prairie Edge is at once a gripping, darkly funny caper and a raw reckoning with the wounds that persist across generations.
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Multi-cultural fiction, Serious and literary fiction, Historical fiction
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Here is groundbreaking, dazzling debut fiction from one of Canada's most exciting and admired writers.Canisia Lubrin's debut fiction is that…
rare work of art—a brilliant, startlingly original book that combines immense literary and political force. Its structure is deceptively simple: it departs from the infamous real-life &“Code Noir,&” a set of historical decrees originally passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The original Code had fifty-nine articles; Code Noir has fifty-nine linked fictions—vivid, unforgettable, multi-layered fragments filled with globe-wise characters who desire to live beyond the ruins of the past. Ranging in style from contemporary realism to dystopia, from futuristic fantasy to historical fiction, this inventive, shape-shifting braid of stories exists far beyond the enclosures of official decrees. This is a timely, daring, virtuosic book by a young literary star. The stories are accompanied by black-and-white drawings—one at the start of each fiction—by acclaimed visual artist Torkwase Dyson.
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Suspense and thrillers
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Rune Sarasin is about to learn just how quickly the life of a jewel thief can spiral out of control.……
Seven days are all it takes for Rune Sarasin’s life to completely derail. It starts with a routine heist: lifting a pouch of rubies from the Bangkok hotel room of wealthy smuggler Charles Lemaire. Rune nearly gets caught when Lemaire’s goons give chase, but she manages to escape with her boyfriend Kit. Then Kit delivers some terrifying news: his teenage sister Madee has gone missing. They track her cell phone to the dangerous Khlong Toei slum, but the trail ends there. The night gets even worse when Rune realizes she lost the pouch of gems somewhere in the slum while searching for Madee. Charles Lemaire is the wrong man to mess with. He is a perfectionist when it comes to both his attire and his crimes, and he isn’t afraid to kill to get what he wants. When he catches up to Rune and Kit, he gives Rune an ultimatum: return his rubies or she will never see her boyfriend again. Now Rune must race against time to either recover the lost gems or find something even more valuable with which to ransom Kit back from Lemaire. But she also still needs to find out what happened to Madee. As Rune investigates deeper into the shadows of the Khlong Toei slum, she uncovers a web of crime with consequences far more insidious than just one missing girl and a handful of stolen rubies. Hurtling from the back alleys of Bangkok to the glamorous auction houses of New York City, Mailan Doquang’s heart-pounding debut will leave readers questioning just how far they would go for the ones they love.
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Women biography
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Love, betrayal, and a secret war: the untold story of two elite agents, one Canadian, one British, who became one…
of the most decorated couples of WWII.On opposite sides of the pond, Sonia Butt, an adventurous young British woman, and Guy d&’Artois, a French-Canadian soldier and thunderstorm of a man, are preparing for war.From different worlds, their lives first intersect during clandestine training to become agents with Winston Churchill&’s secret army, the Special Operations Executive. As the world&’s deadliest conflict to date unfolds, Sonia and Guy learn how to parachute into enemy territory, how to kill, blow up rail lines, and eventually . . . how to love each other. But not long after their hasty marriage, their love is tested by separation, by a titanic invasion—and by indiscretion.Writing in vivid, heart-stopping prose, Ayed follows Sonia as she plunges into Nazi-occupied France and slinks into black market restaurants to throw off occupying Nazi forces, while at the same time participating in sabotage operations against them; and as Guy, in another corner of France, trains hundreds into a resistance army.Reconstructed from hours of unpublished interviews and hundreds of archival and personal documents, the story Ayed tells is about the ravaging costs of war paid for disproportionately by the young. But more than anything, The War We Won Apart is a story about love: two secret agents who were supposed to land in enemy territory together, but were fated to fight the war apart.
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General fiction
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*A TIME MAGAZINE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024 **AN OPRAH DAILY MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024**AN OBSERVER 2024 PICK**A GUARDIAN…
2024 PICK*'One of those rare novels which a reader doesn't merely read but lives through with the characters . . . Claire Messud is a magnificent storyteller' Yiyun LiJune 1940. As Paris falls to the Germans, Gaston Cassar - honorable servant of France, devoted husband and father, currently posted as naval attache in Salonica - bids farewell to his beloved wife, aunt and children, placing his faith in God that they will be reunited after the war. But escaping the violence of that cataclysm is not the same as emerging unscathed. The family will never again be whole.A work of breathtaking historical sweep and vivid psychological intimacy, This Strange Eventful History charts the Cassars' unfolding story as its members move between Salonica and Algeria, the US, Cuba, Canada, Argentina, Australia and France - their itinerary shaped as much by a search for an elusive wholeness, as by the imperatives of politics, faith, family, industry and desire.
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General fiction, Serious and literary fiction
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Crafted by the exhilarating mind of Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy, Parade disturbs and defines the novel.Midway through his life,…
an artist begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success.In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. The attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas.When a woman dies, her children confront her legacy: the stories she told, the roles she assigned to them, the ways she withheld her love. Her death is a kind of freedom.An artist takes on a series of pseudonyms to conceal his work from his mother and father. His brother does the opposite. They share the same parents, but they have inherited different things.Parade is a story that confronts and demolishes the conventions of storytelling. It surges past the limits of identity, character and plot to tell a true story—about art, family, morality, gender and how we compose ourselves. A writer and a visionary like no other, Rachel Cusk turns language upside down to show us our world as it really is.
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Politics and government biography, History, Politics and government
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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!"Shuster crafts an intimate account of the Russian invasion, which vividly captures Zelensky’s transformation from a…
clean-cut funnyman into a war hero out of central casting." --New York Times Book Review; Editors' Choice Selection“The Showman surpasses all similar efforts to date and is set to be the standard by which all other works on Mr. Zelensky and Ukraine’s wartime politics will be judged." —Wall Street JournalA monumental account of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the forging of a leader, The Showman provides an insider’s perspective on the war reshaping our world, based on unprecedented access to Volodymyr Zelensky and the high command in Kyiv.Time correspondent Simon Shuster chronicles the life and leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky from the dressing rooms of his variety shows to the muddy trenches of Ukraine’s war with Russia. Based on four years of reporting; extensive travels with President Zelensky to the front; and dozens of interviews with him, his wife, his friends and enemies, his advisers, ministers and military commanders, Shuster tells the intimate and revealing story of the president’s evolution from a slapstick actor to a symbol of resilience.In their most candid accounts of the war so far, members of Zelensky’s inner circle show how the president’s character changed under the strains of leadership and the horrors he witnessed each day. His wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska, describes her escape from Kyiv with their children, her life on the run, and the tensions that emerged in her marriage as she struggled to return to a meaningful role in the administration. Ukraine’s top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, shares the untold story of his fraught relationship with the president and the subsequent consequences.Reflecting on their own regrets and critical decisions, Zelensky and his senior aides open up about the causes of the Russian invasion and how it may have been avoided. They describe with astonishing frankness how their peace talks with Vladimir Putin fell apart and how their faith in the U.S. faltered, both under Donald Trump and Joe Biden.The Showman provides the first inside account of Zelensky’s life amid the invasion, offering a clear-eyed view of his failures to prepare for it and his willingness to silence dissent under martial law. What emerges is a complex picture of a man struggling to break what he sees as a historical cycle of oppression that began generations before he was born. Even as the war drags on, Zelensky lays out his vision for its future course and, through his actions, demonstrates his strategy for countering the Russians and keeping the West on his side.The Showman, as a work of eyewitness journalism, provides an essential perspective on the war defining our age, resulting in a riveting, vivid portrait of the invasion as experienced by its number one target and improbable hero.
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Family stories, Historical fiction, Historical romance
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OPRAH&’S BOOK CLUB PICK * Named a Most Anticipated Book by The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, The Washington…
Post, The Financial Times, Good Housekeeping, and more.From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín&’s most popular work twenty years later.Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony&’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades. One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office doing her accounting, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony&’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis&’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín&’s novel so riveting.Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis&’ life are thunderous and dangerous, and there&’s no one more deft than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she&’d lost.
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Music biography, Women biography, United States history, Criticism, Music
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*An Observer Best New Biographies of 2024*Celebrated NPR music critic Ann Powers explores the life and career of Joni Mitchell…
in a lyrical style as fascinating and ethereal as the songs of the artist herself..“What you are about to read is not a standard account of the life and work of Joni Mitchell. Instead, it’s a tale of long journeying through a life that changed popular music: of a homesick wanderer forging ahead on routes of her own invention, and of me on her trail, heading toward the ringing of her voice.”—From the introductionFor decades, Joni Mitchell’s life and music have enraptured listeners. One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Mitchell has inspired countless musicians—from peers like James Taylor, to inheritors like Prince and Brandi Carlile—and authors, who have dissected her music and her life in their writing. At the same time, Mitchell has always been a force beckoning us still closer, as—with the other arm—she pushes us away. Given this, music critic Ann Powers wondered if there was another way to draw insights from the life of this singular musician who never stops moving, never stops experimenting.In Traveling, Powers seeks to understand Mitchell through her myriad journeys. Through extensive interviews with Mitchell's peers and deep archival research, she takes readers to rural Canada, mapping the singer’s childhood battle with polio. She charts the course of Mitchell’s musical evolution, ranging from early folk to jazz fusion to experimentation with pop synthetics. She follows the winding road of Mitchell’s collaborations with other greats, and the loves that emerged along the way, all the way through to the remarkable return of Mitchell to music-making after the 2015 aneurysm that nearly took her life.Along this journey, Powers’ wide-ranging musings on the artist’s life and career reconsider the biographer’s role and the way it twines against the reality of a fan. In doing so, Traveling illustrates the shifting nature of biography, and the ultimate contradiction of celebrity: that an icon cannot truly, completely be known to a fan.Kaleidoscopic in scope, and intimate in its detail, Traveling is a fresh and fascinating addition to the Joni Mitchell canon, written by a biographer in full command of her gifts who asks as much of herself as of her subject.
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History
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A NEW STATESMAN 'BEST BOOK OF 2023' A SPECTATOR 'BOOK OF THE YEAR' 2023 A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023…
'From plans for flying machines to philosophy - the remarkable joy of jotting things down' 'Book of the Day', Guardian 'A fine book on a fabulous subject' Daily Telegraph 'A fascinating study of notebooks through history ... beautifully written and a complete delight to dip in to or read from cover to cover' Alexander McCall Smith, Books of the Year, New Statesman 'Surprisingly revealing ... despite what Apple, Evernote and the like might try to tell us, the best cognitive tool available to us today was invented in the counting houses of Renaissance Florence' The Sunday Times The first history of the notebook, a simple invention that changed the way the world thinks. We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did this simple invention come from? How did they revolutionise our lives, and why are they such powerful tools for creativity? And how can using a notebook help you change the way you think? In this wide-ranging story, Roland Allen reveals all the answers. Ranging from the bustling markets of medieval Florence to the quiet studies of our greatest thinkers, he follows a trail of dazzling ideas, revealing how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking. He tells the notebook stories of artists like Leonardo and Frida Kahlo, scientists from Isaac Newton to Marie Curie, and writers from Chaucer to Henry James. We watch Darwin developing his theory of evolution in tiny pocketbooks, see Agatha Christie plotting a hundred murders in scrappy exercise books, and learn how Bruce Chatwin unwittingly inspired the creation of the Moleskine.On the way we meet a host of cooks, kings, sailors, fishermen, musicians, engineers, politicians, adventurers and mathematicians, who all used their notebooks as a space for thinking and to shape the modern world. In an age of AI and digital overload, the humble notebook is more relevant than ever. Allen shows how bullet points can combat ADHD, journals can ease PTSD, and patient diaries soften the trauma of reawakening from coma. The everyday act of moving a pen across paper can have profound consequences, changing the way we think and feel: making us more creative, more productive - and happier.
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Journals and memoirs, Death and bereavement, Self help
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After the sudden death of her husband, a woman unearths surprising revelations about the man she was married to for…
seventeen years. A compulsively readable, darkly funny, posthumous love story about loss, grief, and unresolved relationships.Jessica Waite&’s successful, charismatic husband, Sean, is on his way home from a business trip when he collapses in a Houston airport. Having begun the day as a wife, by noon she is a widow and the sole living parent to their nine-year-old son. The day after Sean&’s funeral, Jessica receives a box of his personal effects and discovers the secrets her husband had been hiding—including drug abuse, compulsive spending, infidelity, and a massive porn cache. Jessica hides these revelations from her grief-stricken son while also trying to erase Sean from her own life. She rids their bedroom of his belongings. She grants herself a &“divorce.&” She conceives a revenge plan to unleash on Christmas Eve. But when things start happening that Jessica can&’t explain—like signs from beyond and strange coincidences pointing her in the direction of forgiveness— she is forced to choose: Endure the bitter aftermath of her old life? Or reconsider her views? Written with dark humor in the vein of Liz Feldman&’s series Dead to Me and Jennette McCurdy&’s I&’m Glad My Mom Died, The Widow&’s Guide to Dead Bastards is a searing and hilarious memoir that asks the question: Does death signify the end of a relationship, or can there be an afterlife epilogue?
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General fiction, Serious and literary fiction
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The second novel by Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Michelle Winters teems with hot towel shaves and the steady thrum of…
female rage. Spurred by adolescent trauma, Louise adopts a life of hardcore punk violence until she stumbles into a job at a mysterious men’s hair salon, where her unique relationship with her clientele shows her a more perfect world—or so it seems. When that world is overturned, she flees to a marina on the East Coast, where she lives free from reminders of her past—except the duffle-bagged ones she jettisons nightly in a forsaken cove. But on the day of the Tragically Hip’s 2016 farewell performance in Kingston, a man surfaces from the Bay of Fundy, rousing long-dormant urges and giving Louise an unexpected gift: the chance to make things right. Funny, warm, and furious, Hair for Men is a subversive exploration of gender, forgiveness, and chucking convention.
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Canadian non-fiction, Indigenous peoples history, General non-fiction
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From Tanya Talaga, the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of Seven Fallen Feathers, comes a riveting exploration of her family’s…
story and a retelling of the history of the country we now call Canada For generations, Indigenous People have known that their family members disappeared, many of them after being sent to residential schools, “Indian hospitals” and asylums through a coordinated system designed to destroy who the First Nations, Métis and Inuit people are. This is one of Canada’s greatest open secrets, an unhealed wound that until recently lay hidden by shame and abandonment. The Knowing is the unfolding of Canadian history unlike anything we have ever read before. Award-winning and bestselling Anishinaabe author Tanya Talaga retells the history of this country as only she can—through an Indigenous lens, beginning with the life of her great-great grandmother Annie Carpenter and her family as they experienced decades of government- and Church-sanctioned enfranchisement and genocide. Deeply personal and meticulously researched, The Knowing is a seminal unravelling of the centuries-long oppression of Indigenous People that continues to reverberate in these communities today.
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Historical biography, Women biography
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The masterful narration of a daughter's decades-long quest to understand her extraordinary mother, who was born in Lenin's Soviet Union, served…
as a combat soldier in the Red Army, and endured three years of Nazi captivity—but never revealed her darkest secrets.As a child, Roxana Spicer would sometimes wake to the sound of the Red Army choir. She would tip-toe downstairs to find her mother, cigarette in one hand and Black Russian in the other, singing along. Roxana would keep her company, and wonder....Everyone in their village knew Agnes Spicer was Russian, that she had been a captive of the Nazis. And that was all they knew, because Agnes kept her secrets close: how she managed to escape Germany, what the tattoo on her arm meant, even her real name. Discovering the truth about her beloved, charismatic, volatile mother became Roxana's obsession. Throughout her career as a journalist and documentarian, between investigations across Canada and around the world, she always went home to ask her mother more questions, often while filming. Roxana also took every chance to visit the few places that she did know played a role in her mother's story: Bad Salzuflen, Germany, home to POW slave labourers during the war; notorious concentration camps; and Russia. Under Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the early years of Putin, she was able to find people, places, and documents that are now—perhaps forever—lost again. The Traitor's Daughter is intimate and exhaustively researched, vividly conversational, and shot through with Agnes Spicer's irrepressible, fiery personality. It is a true labour of love as well as a triumph of blending personal biography with sweeping history.
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Biography, LGBTQ+ biography, Journals and memoirs
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"Here is my disconnect: the private and public self. My mind and body. The real person and curated spectacle. .…
. . Are there actual roots with which to fasten this performance to anything real?"As a transnational and transracial adoptee, Jenny Heijun Wills has spent her life navigating the fraught spaces of ethnicity and belonging. As a pan-polyam individual, she lives between types of family—adopted, biological, chosen—and "community"; heternormativity and queerness; commitment and a constellation of love. And as a parent with a lifelong eating disorder, who self-harms to cope with mental illness, her love language is to feed, but daily she wishes her body would disappear. These facets of Wills' being have served as the anchors she once clung to and the harsh parameters of what others now imagine she can be.Everything and Nothing At All weaves together a lifetime of literary criticism, cultural study, and a personal history into a staggering tapestry of knowledge. And though the experiences of accumulating this knowledge have often been shot through with pain, Wills spins these threads into priceless gold—a radical, fearless vision of kinship and family. Devastating, illuminating, and beautifully crafted, these essays breathe life into the ambiguities and excesses of Wills' self, transforming them into something more—something that could be everything.
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Folklore, fables and fairy tales, Fantasy
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must…
uncover their secrets before it&’s too late, in this heartwarming, enchanting second installment of the Emily Wilde series.Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore who just wrote the world&’s first comprehensive encyclopaedia of faeries. She&’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Ones on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival Wendell Bambleby. Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He&’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother and in search of a door back to his realm. And despite Emily&’s feelings for Bambleby, she&’s not ready to accept his proposal of marriage: Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and dangers. She also has a new project to focus on: a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by his mother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambleby&’s realm and the key to freeing him from his family&’s dark plans.But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors and of her own heart.Book Two of the Emily Wilde SeriesDon&’t miss any of Heather Fawcett&’s charming Emily Wilde series:EMILY WILDE&’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAERIES • EMILY WILDE&’S MAP OF THE OTHERLANDS • EMILY WILDE&’S COMPENDIUM OF LOST TALES
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General fiction, Serious and literary fiction
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
A &“masterly&” (The New York Times), &“riveting&” (The Atlantic) novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile, from the Booker…
Prize–nominated and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return &“[A] personal, deeply felt work . . . looping back and forth through time and memory, building on itself in a process of gradual expansion and revelation . . . quite simply, dazzling&” —Toronto StarThe trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and although nothing does, we continue, inside our dream.One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zawa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.There, thrust into an open society that is light years away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode in tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, an exile, unable to leave England. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would mark them for death.When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zawa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him, but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautiful work of literature by an author working at the peak of his powers.