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Politics and government, Journals and memoirs
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"From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the…
heart of an empire that doesn't consider you fully human. On October 25th, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: "One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this." This tweet was viewed more than ten million times. One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This chronicles the deep fracture that has occurred for Black, brown, Indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in Western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse"
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Journals and memoirs, Literature biography, Women biography, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
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How does the greatest writer of our time tell her own story? Raised by scientifically minded parents, Margaret Atwood spent…
most of each year in the wild forests of northern Quebec, where her entomologist father and independent, resourceful mother created an unfettered and nomadic childhood, sometimes isolated but also thrilling and beautiful. From this unconventional start, Margaret unfolds the story of her life, linking key moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel school year that would inspire Cat’s Eye to the unease of 1980s Berlin, where she began The Handmaid’s Tale . In pages alive with the natural world, reading and books, major political turning points, and her lifelong love for the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood stars, and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel. As she explores her past, Margaret reveals more and more about her writing, the connections between real life and art—and the workings of one of our very greatest imaginations
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Serious and literary fiction, Mysteries and crime stories, General fiction
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István grows up alone with his mother in a small town in Hungary. He is hard to know, uncommunicative and…
defined, mostly, by what happens to him. He seems to go along with whatever comes his way, and a lot does come his way, some of it in unmanageable doses: sex, prison, the army, some lowly jobs that take him from Hungary to London. It's here that a chance encounter changes his course completely. Leaving his modest beginnings behind, he suddenly finds himself among the super-rich. But just as he is slowly feeling comfortable in this new environment, the precarious edifice starts crumbling beneath him, until finally it comes crashing down altogether. In Flesh, Szalay has conjured a character who is unknowable and blunt, yet fully realized and somehow incredibly loveable. This is a story of a life, about a body in the world, and an epic tale of one man's unpredictable rise and inevitable downfall.
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Historical biography, Journals and memoirs, European history
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'A powerful, eloquent and deeply affecting book. I loved it' EDMUND DE WAAL'Tender, evocative and deeply moving' JONATHAN FREEDLAND'Profound, elegiac…
and fascinating... I zipped through it' PHILIPPE SANDS'Compelling' DAILY MAIL, BOOK OF THE WEEK'I SEEK A KIND PERSON WHO WILL EDUCATE MY INTELLIGENT BOY, AGED 11.' In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out adverts offering their children into the safe keeping of readers of a British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. The right words in the right order could mean the difference between life and death.Eighty-three years later, Guardian journalist Julian Borger comes across the advert that saved his father, Robert, from the Nazis. Robert had kept this a secret, like almost everything else about his traumatic Viennese childhood, until he took his own life. Drawn to the shadows of his family's past and starting with nothing but a page of newspaper adverts, Borger traces the remarkable stories of his father, the other advertised children and their families, each thrown into the maelstrom of a world at war.From a Viennese radio shop to the Shanghai ghetto, internment camps and family homes across Britain, the deep forests and concentration camps of Nazi Germany, smugglers saving Jewish lives in Holland, an improbable French Resistance cell, and a redemptive story of survival in New York, Borger unearths the astonishing journeys of the children at the hands of fate, their stories of trauma and the kindness of strangers.I Seek a Kind Person is a gripping family memoir of grief, courage and hope, connecting us with multiple generations, distant continents and the hidden histories of our almost unimaginable past.
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Historical fiction, General fiction, Family stories, Serious and literary fiction, Suspense and thrillers
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THE NEW NOVEL BY THE STELLA PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE WEEKEND AND THE NATURAL WAY OF THINGSA book of the…
year for the Sydney Morning Herald and ABCA fearless exploration of forgiveness, grief and the complicated beauty of female friendship'Both profound and addictively entertaining. I loved it' CLARE CHAMBERS, bestselling author of Small Pleasures'A masterful novel of quiet force'GUARDIAN 'Beautiful, strange and otherworldly' PAULA HAWKINS, bestselling author of A Slow Fire Burning'The consistently brilliant Wood delivers yet again'SYDNEY MORNING HERALD 'It's remarkable. I'm still trying to figure out how she pulled it off. The best thing she's done'TIM WINTON, author of The Shepherd's Hut'Magnificent and radical . . . It gripped me from the opening line to the very last'AGE'No words can quite convey how much I loved this book'KAREN JOY FOWLER, author of Booth'Extraordinary . . . a stunning work of fiction from a major writer who keeps getting better'AUSTRALIAN'Subtly powerful and utterly engrossing' CLAIRE FULLER, bestselling author of Unsettled Ground'It extends and deepens Wood's already remarkable achievements as a novelist in powerful and often profound ways'SATURDAY PAPERBurnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Australian outback. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past.PRAISE FOR CHARLOTTE WOOD'S THE WEEKEND A Sunday Times 'Best Book for Summer 2021'A Times, Observer, Independent, Daily Express and Good Housekeeping Book of the Year'So great I am struggling to find the words to do it justice . . . Wood is an agonisingly gifted writer. I am now going to read all her other books'MARIAN KEYES'A rare pleasure'SUNDAY TIMES'A perfect, funny, insightful novel about women, friendship and ageing'NINA STIBBE'Glorious . . . Charlotte Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout'GUARDIAN'Riveting'ELIZABETH DAY'Triumphantly brings to life the honest inner lives of women'INDEPENDENT'A lovely, lively, intelligent, funny book'TESSA HADLEY'These women are so alive on the page, it is impossible not to feel a kinship and intimacy with each of them'DAILY EXPRESS'Hypnotic and profoundly unsettling . . . Masterful'ROSAMUND LUPTON
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Journals and memoirs, Women biography, Death and bereavement
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A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey to peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of …
Horse.Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz - just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy - collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha's Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert's Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.
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LGBTQ+ fiction, Historical romance
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From the acclaimed author of Chef's Kiss, a groundbreaking trans Regency romance that's both delightfully witty and refreshingly iconoclastic.&“A Gentleman&’s…
Gentleman is a thoroughly charming confection of a romance. If you&’re looking for a tender, gentle slow burn, this is the book for you.&” —Cat Sebastian, author of We Could Be So GoodThe notoriously eccentric Lord Christopher Eden is a &“man of unusual make&” and even more unusual habits: he prefers to live far from the prying eyes and ears of the ton, and would rather have the comfortable company of his childhood cook and his aged butler than the swarm of servants and hangers-on befitting a man of his station. But Christopher&’s pleasant, if occasionally lonely life is upended when he receives word from his lawyers that, according to his late father&’s will, he must find a wife by the end of the Season if he intends to keep his family&’s fortune and the Eden estate. Christopher cannot imagine a worse fate: as he isn&’t attracted to women, his chances of making a wife happy are slim. Furthermore, if his quest to marry has any hope of succeeding, he must move to London posthaste and acquire some more suitable staff.Enter James Harding, Christopher&’s new, distractingly handsome—if rigidly traditional—valet. After a rocky start, the two strike up a fragile friendship amid the throes of the London Season . . . a friendship that threatens to shatter under the looming shadow of Christopher&’s impending nuptials—and the secrets both men are keeping. With its heady combination of dry wit, slow-burn romance, and a nuanced portrait of trans identity, A Gentleman&’s Gentleman stands to transform the historical romance genre as we know it.
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Fantasy, Ghost and horror stories
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In 1912 a strange confession is given, over several nights, to a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a…
vampire who haunted the fields of the Blackfeet reservation, looking for justice.A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran Pastor is discovered within a wall and what it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to two hundred and seventeen Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed confessions by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shared the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits, this is a bloody history of the American West that has remained untold until now.
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Politics and government biography, United States history, Politics and government
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&“A magnificent achievement—a long, gripping, and enthralling account of the life of America&’s premier conservative polemicist of the twentieth century.&”—Max…
Boot, author of Reagan: His Life and Legend&“A rich, immersive biography exposes the roots of the modern conservative movement through the life of the firebrand writer and commentator who shaped it.&”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors&’ Choice)In 1951, with the publication of God and Man at Yale, a scathing attack on his alma mater, twenty-five-year-old William F. Buckley, Jr., seized the public stage—and commanded it for the next half century as he led a new generation of conservative activists and ideologues to the peak of political power and cultural influence.Ten years before his death in 2008, Buckley chose prize-winning biographer Sam Tanenhaus to tell the full, uncensored story of his life and times, granting him extensive interviews and exclusive access to his most private papers. Thus began a deep investigation into the vast and often hidden universe of Bill Buckley and the modern conservative revolution.Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases: founding editor of National Review, the twentieth century&’s most influential political journal; syndicated columnist, Emmy-winning TV debater, and bestselling spy novelist; ally of Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater; mentor to Ronald Reagan; game-changing candidate for mayor of New York.Tanenhaus also has uncovered the darker trail of Bill Buckley&’s secret exploits, including CIA missions in Latin America, dark collusions with Watergate felon Howard Hunt, and Buckley&’s struggle in his last years to hold together a movement coming apart over the AIDS epidemic, culture wars, and the invasion of Iraq—even as his own media empire was unraveling.At a crucial moment in American history, Buckley offers a gripping and powerfully relevant story about the birth of modern politics and those who shaped it.
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European history, History, True crime
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*Named a Best Book of 2024 by FT * Nominated for the Women's prize for nonfiction*From the Edgar Award–winning author…
of The Haunting of Alma Fielding, the tale of two journalists competing to solve the notorious Christie murders in postwar LondonIn March 1953, London police discovered the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall at 10 Rillington Place, a dingy rowhouse in Notting Hill. On searching the building, they found another body beneath the floorboards, then an array of human bones in the garden. They launched a nationwide manhunt for the tenant of the ground-floor apartment, a softly spoken former policeman named Reg Christie. But they had already investigated a double murder at 10 Rillington Place three years before, and the killer was hanged. Did they get the wrong man?The story was an instant sensation. The star reporter Harry Procter chased after the scoop on Christie. The eminent crime writer Fryn Tennyson Jesse begged her editor to let her cover the case. To Harry and Fryn, Christie seemed a new kind of murderer: he was vacant, impersonal, a creature of a brutish postwar world. Christie liked to watch women, they discovered, and he liked to kill them. They realized that he might also have engineered a terrible miscarriage of justice.In this riveting true story, Kate Summerscale mines the archives to uncover the lives of Christie&’s victims, the tabloid frenzy that their deaths inspired, and the truth about what happened inside the house. What she finds sheds fascinating light on the origins of our fixation with true crime—and suggests a new solution to one of the most notorious cases of the century.
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General fiction, Serious and literary fiction
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THE NEW NOVEL FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE &“[Han Kang&’s] intense poetic prose .…
. . confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.&”—The Nobel Committee for Literature, in the citation for the Nobel Prize &“Unforgettable.&”—Hernan Diaz Han Kang&’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter in Korean history.One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon&’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn&’t yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend&’s house.Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.
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Asian history, Judaism
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A bold, urgent appeal from the acclaimed columnist and political commentator, addressing one of the most important issues of our…
time. In Peter Beinart’s view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew? Beinart imagines an alternate narrative, which would draw on other nations’ efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish tradition. A story in which Israeli Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One that recognizes the danger of venerating states at the expense of human life. Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is a provocative argument that will expand and inform one of the defining conversations of our time. It is a book that only Peter Beinart could write: a passionate yet measured work that brings together his personal experience, his commanding grasp of history, his keen understanding of political and moral dilemmas, and a clear vision for the future. new York Times Bestseller
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United States history, Politics and government, General non-fiction
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"[R]evelatory…Deeply researched and masterfully told." —Brian Goldstone, New York Times Book Review The explosive account of the arson wave that…
hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s—and its legacy today. "Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!" That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color. Yet as historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates in Born in Flames, the most destructive of the fires were not set by residents, as is commonly assumed, but by landlords looking to collect insurance payouts. Driven by perverse incentives—new government-sponsored insurance combined with tanking property values—landlords hired "torches," mostly Black and Brown youth, to set fires in the buildings, sometimes with people still living in them. Tens of thousands of families lost their homes to these blazes, yet for much of the 1970s, tenant vandalism and welfare fraud stood as the prevailing explanations for the arson wave, effectively indemnifying landlords. Ansfield’s book, based on a decade of research, introduces the term "brownlining" for the destructive insurance practices imposed on poor communities of color under the guise of racial redress. Ansfield shows that as the FIRE industries—finance, insurance, and real estate— eclipsed manufacturing in the 1970s, they began profoundly reshaping Black and Brown neighborhoods, seeing them as easy sources of profit. At every step, Ansfield charts the tenant-led resistance movements that sprung up in the Bronx and elsewhere, as well as the explosion of popular culture around the fires, from iconic movies like The Towering Inferno to hit songs such as "Disco Inferno." Ultimately, they show how similarly pernicious dynamics around insurance and race are still at play in our own era, especially in regions most at risk of climate shocks.
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United States history, Politics and government
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On the 250th anniversary of America's founding - a landmark history of the US Constitution for a troubling new era.…
The US Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world - and one of the most difficult to amend. Although nearly twelve thousand amendments have been proposed since 1789, only twenty-seven have ever been ratified. Tellingly, the Constitution has not been meaningfully amended since 1971. Without amendment, the risk of political violence rises. So does the risk of constitutional change by presidential power. Leading Harvard historian Jill Lepore captures the stories of generations of ordinary people who have attempted everything from abolishing the Electoral College to guaranteeing environmental rights, hoping to mend their nation. Recounting the history of America through centuries of efforts to realize the promise of the Constitution, we witness how nearly all those bids have failed.We the People is the sweeping account of a struggle, arguing that the Constitution was never intended to be preserved, but was expected to be gradually altered. At a time when the risk of political violence is all too real, it hints at the prospects for a better, amended America.
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General fiction, Mysteries and crime stories, Women sleuths, Suspense and thrillers
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In this provocative mystery from beloved crime writer Denise Mina, new evidence in an old murder case forces one woman…
to make an impossible choice.WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO TELL THE TRUTH WHEN YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON A LIE? A year ago, a father and his fiancée were brutally murdered in their opulent London townhouse, sparking the most high-profile murder investigation in recent history. Blood spatter expert Doctor Claudia O&’Sheil&’s evidence put the killer behind bars—or so everyone believes. But since the trial, Claudia&’s learned a horrific truth: her evidence and her testimony were wrong. And someone she knows made sure of it. Now, as she takes the stage to give a career-defining speech before London&’s elite, Claudia faces a devastating choice. Protect her children and her career with her continued complicity, or blow the whole conspiracy apart and reveal the truth: not only is the real murderer still out there, but they&’re in the audience. As Claudia steps toward the microphone, she revisits that fateful night. What really happened? And what will Claudia say?
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Family stories, Serious and literary fiction
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Summer&’s Best Beach Reads by The New York Times • Books You Should Read This July by New York magazine…
• Books We&’re Most Excited About by Today • Best Beach Reads by Harper&’s Bazaar • Best Books of Summer by ELLE • Most Anticipated Books of the Summer by Time • Best Summer Reads by Oprah Daily • Books to Read this Summer by The Washington Post &“Yee transforms life&’s most brutal bombshells into spectacular fireworks.&” —Oprah Daily &“A hilarious and life-affirming spin on the divorce novel.&” —New York magazine &“This book is like a boat you get on to drift into magical waters, full of heart and heartbreak, teeming with feeling.&” —Delia Ephron A Chinese American woman spins tragedy into comedy when her life falls apart in a taut, wry debut novel that grapples with grief, motherhood, and myths—perfect for fans of Joan Is Okay and Crying in H Mart.A man and a woman walk into a restaurant. The woman expects a lovely night filled with endless plates of samosas. Instead, she finds out her husband is having an affair with a woman named Maggie. A short while after, her chest starts to ache. She walks into an examination room, where she finds out the pain in her breast isn&’t just heartbreak—it&’s cancer. She decides to call the tumor Maggie. Unfolding in fragments over the course of the ensuing months, Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar follows the narrator as she embarks on a journey of grief, healing, and reclamation. She starts talking to Maggie (the tumor), getting acquainted with her body&’s new inhabitant. She overgenerously creates a &“Guide to My Husband: A User&’s Manual&” for Maggie (the other woman), hoping to ease the process of discovering her ex-husband&’s whims and quirks. She turns her children&’s bedtime stories into retellings of Chinese folklore passed down by her own mother, in an attempt to make them fall in love with their shared culture—and to maybe save herself in the process. In the style of Jenny Offill and the tradition of Nora Ephron&’s hilarious and devastating writing on heartbreak and womanhood, Maggie is a master class in transforming personal tragedy into a form of defiant comedy.
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Politics and government biography, Asian history, History
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From the author of the acclaimed international bestseller Lawrence in Arabia, a stunningly revelatory narrative history of one of the most…
momentous events in modern times and the dawn of the age of religious nationalism.On November 16th, 1977, at a state dinner in the White House, President Jimmy Carter toasted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, Shadow of God on Earth, praising his &“enlightened leadership&” and extolling Iran as &“a stabilizing influence in that part of the world.&” Iran had the world&’s fifth largest army and was awash in billions of dollars in oil revenues. Construction cranes dotted the skyline of its booming capital, Tehran. The regime&’s feared secret police force SAVAK had crushed communist opposition, and the Shah had bought off the conservative Muslim clergy inside the country. He seemed invulnerable, and invaluable to the United States as an ally in the Cold War. Fourteen months later the Shah fled Iran into exile, forced from the throne by a volcanic religious revolution led by a fiery cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini. How could the United States (and other Western allies), which had one of the largest CIA stations in the world and thousands of military personnel in Iran, have been so blind? The spellbinding story Scott Anderson weaves is one of a dictator oblivious to the disdain of his subjects and a superpower blundering into disaster. The Shah emerges as a fascinating, Shakespearean character – a wannabe Richard III unaware of the depth of dissent to his rule, indecisive like Hamlet when action was called for, and at the end Lear-like as he raged against his fate. The Americans made terrible decisions at almost every juncture, from a secret pact designed by Kissinger and Nixon, to dismissing reports from the one diplomat who saw how hated the Shah was by the Iranian people (unlike almost all his colleagues, he spoke Farsi), to Jimmy Carter allowing the Shah to come to America for medical treatment, which set off the hostage crisis which forever damaged American influence in the world. Scott Anderson tells this astonishing tale with the narrative brio, mordant wit, and keen analysis that made his bestselling Lawrence in Arabia one of the key texts in understanding the modern Middle East. Based on voluminous research and dozens of interviews, King of Kings is driven by penetrating portraits of the people involved – the Iranian-American doctor who convinced American officials Khomeini was a moderate; the American teacher who learned of Khomeini&’s influence long before the cleric was even mentioned in official reports; the Shah&’s court minister who kept a detailed diary of all their interactions; the Shah&’s wife Farah who still mourns her lost kingdom; the hypocritical and misguided Jimmy Carter; and the implacable Khomeini who outmaneuvered his foes at every turn. The Iranian Revolution, Anderson convincingly argues, was as world-shattering an event as the French and Russian revolutions. In the Middle East, in India, in Southeast Asia, in Europe, and the United States, the hatred of economically-marginalized, religiously-fervent masses for a wealthy secular elite has led to violence and upheaval – and Iran was the template. King of Kings is a bravura work of history, and a warning.
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Literature biography, Journals and memoirs, Women biography
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Finalist for the Kirkus Prize A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small…
Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces the complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a fierce and formidable force who shaped Arundhati&’s life both as a woman and a writer.Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy&’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as &“my shelter and my storm.&” &“Heart-smashed&” by her mother Mary&’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and &“more than a little ashamed&” by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, &“not because I didn&’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.&” And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author&’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today. With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace—a memoir like no other.
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Poetry
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From the award-winning poet at the height of his career, a book of personal and American experiences, both beautiful and…
troubling, touching on the generative cycle of loss and renewalFollowing on his exquisite Stones, Kevin Young&’s new collection, written over the span of sixteen years, shapes stories of loss and legacy, inspired in part by other lives. After starting in the bayous of his family's Louisiana, Young journeys to further states of mind in &“All Souls,&” evoking &“The whale / who finds the shore / & our poor prayers.&” Another central sequence, &“The Two-Headed Nightingale,&” is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American &“Carolina Twins.&” Born into enslavement, stolen, and then displayed by P. T. Barnum and others, the twins later toured the world as free women, their alto and soprano voices harmonizing their own way. Young&’s poem explores their evolving philosophical selfhood and pluralities: &“As one we sang, /we spake— / She was the body / I the soul / Without one / Perishes the whole.&” In &“Darkling,&” a cycle of poems inspired by Dante&’s Divine Comedy, Young expands and embroiders the circles of Hell, drawing a cosmology of both loneliness and accompaniment, where &“the dead don&’t know / what to do / with themselves.&” Young writes of grief and hope as familiar yet surprising states: &“It&’s like a language, / loss—,&” he writes, &“learnt only / by living—there—.&” Evoking the history of poetry, from the darkling thrush to the darkling plain, Young is defiant and playful on the way through purgatory to a kind of paradise. When he goes, he warns, &“don't dare sing Amazing Grace&”—that &“National / Anthem of Suffering.&” Instead, he suggests, &“When I Fly Away, / Don't dare hold no vigil . . . Just burn the whole / Town on down.&” This collection will stand as one of Young&’s best—his voice shaping sorrow with music, wisdom, heartache, and wit.
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Biography, Family and relationships, General non-fiction
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
The heartrending story of twin sisters torn apart by China&’s one-child policy and the rise of international adoption—from the author…
of the National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy&“Excellent . . . entrancing and disturbing . . . [Demick] is one of our finest chroniclers of East Asia. . . . [Her] characters are richly drawn, and her stories, often reported over a span of years, deliver a rare emotional wallop.&”—The New York TimesOn a warm day in September 2000, a woman named Zanhua gave birth to twin girls in a small hut behind her brother&’s home in China&’s Hunan province. The twins, Fangfang and Shuangjie, were welcome additions to her family but also not her first children. Living under the shadow of China&’s notorious one-child policy, Zanhua and her husband decided to leave one twin in the care of relatives, hoping each toddler on their own might stay under the radar. But, in 2002, Fangfang was violently snatched away. The family worried they would never see her again, but they didn&’t imagine she could be sent as far as the United States. She might as well have been sent to another world.Following stories she wrote as the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, Barbara Demick embarks on a journey that encompasses the origins, shocking cruelty, and long-term impact of China&’s one-child rule; the rise of international adoption and the religious currents that buoyed it; and the exceedingly rare phenomenon of twin separation. Today, Esther—formerly Fangfang—lives in Texas, and Demick brings to vivid life the Christian family that felt called to adopt her, unaware that she had been kidnapped. Through Demick&’s indefatigable reporting, will the long-lost sisters finally reunite—and will they feel whole again?A remarkable window into the volatile, constantly changing China of the last half century and the long-reaching legacy of the country&’s most infamous law, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove is also the moving story of two sisters torn apart by the forces of history and brought together again by their families&’ determination and one reporter&’s dogged work.