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Flesh: a novel
By David Szalay. 2025
"From Booker Prize-shortlisted author David Szalay, a stunning and visceral portrait of a life full of attraction, desire, strength, fragility,…
and hurt. 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."
These summer storms
By Sarah MacLean. 2025
From author Sarah MacLean, a razor-sharp, wildly sexy novel about a wealthy New England family’s long-overdue reckoning . . .…
and the one week that threatens to tear them apart. Alice Storm hasn’t been welcome at her family’s magnificent private island off the Rhode Island coast in five years—not since she was cast out and built her life beyond the Storm name, influence, and untold billions. But the shocking death of her larger-than-life father changes everything. Alice plans to keep her head down, pay her final respects (such as they are), and leave the minute the funeral is over. Unfortunately, her father had other plans. The eccentric, manipulative patriarch left his family a final challenge—an inheritance game designed to upend their world. The rules are clear: spend one week on the island, complete their assigned tasks, and receive the inheritance. But a whole week on Storm Island is no easy task for Alice. Every corner of the sprawling old house is bursting with chaos: Her older sister’s secret love affair. Her brother’s unyielding arrogance. Her younger sister’s constant analysis of the vibes . Her mother’s cold judgment. And all under the stern, watchful gaze of Jack Dean, her father’s intriguing and too-handsome second-in-command. It will be a miracle if Alice manages to escape unscathed. A smart and tender story about the transformative power of grief, love, and family, this luscious novel explores past secrets, present truths, and futures forged in the wake of wild summer storms
Heartwood
By Amity Gaige. 2025
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK! "You will open this book and you will…
not stop reading." —Jenna Bush Hager "A riveting wilderness suspense novel by a novelist at the height of her powers" (Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Candy House ), Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine. In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie's disappearance may not be accidental. Heartwood is a "gem of a thousand facets—suspenseful, transporting, tender, and ultimately soul-mending," (Megan Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning ) that tells the story of a lost hiker's odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character's interior journey. The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found. At its core, Heartwood is a redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love
The loneliness of sonia and sunny: A novel
By Kiran Desai. 2025
A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and…
family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss. When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that served only to drive Sonia and Sunny apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India. She fears that she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists
Stone Yard Devotional
By Charlotte Wood. 2023
The new novel by Charlotte Wood, the Stella Prize-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.A fearless…
exploration of forgiveness, grief and the complicated beauty of female friendship.Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, finding solace 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. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of her new life, she ruminates on her childhood in the nearby town, turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget.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.'Both profound and addictively entertaining. I loved it'CLARE CHAMBERS, bestselling author of Small Pleasures'Beautiful, strange and otherworldly'PAULA HAWKINS, bestselling author of A Slow Fire Burning'Subtly powerful and utterly engrossing'CLAIRE FULLER, bestselling author of Unsettled Ground(P) 2023 Allen & Unwin
Stone Yard Devotional
By Charlotte Wood. 2023
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
The Sisters: 'One of this summer’s most buzzed-about novels' - Financial Times
By Jonas Hassen Khemiri. 2025
'One of the best novels I've ever read about the complexities of mixed heritage'New Yorker'I really loved this book .…
. . a novel to sink into'New York Times'Superb . . . one of those books you live inside and miss when it's over'Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost'A moving appraisal of family, language, and the spiritual developments that accrue over a life'Raven Leilani, author of Luster'A thoroughly fascinating story about sibling rivalry, loyalty, and love'Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove'If you welcome this novel into your mind, it will warm and transform you'Tess Gunty, author of the Rabbit Hutch'Astonishing . . . every character - every sentence - is startlingly, indubitably alive'Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies'His masterpiece . . . life overflows its pages'Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have NothingMEET THE MIKKOLA SISTERS: INA, EVELYN, AND ANASTASIA.Their mother is a Tunisian saleswoman, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organizer. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. And Anastasia is moody, chaotic, quick to anger.Ina meets her future husband when she's dragged to a New Year's party by her sisters, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actress. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life.Following them from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. His life intersects with the sisters across decades and continents, from Stockholm to Tunis and New York. When Evelyn disappears, it's Jonas who tracks her down - and helps her to break a curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for years. But in the process, a shocking revelation changes everything.Narrated in six parts, each spanning a period ranging from a year to a day to a single minute, The Sisters is a vivid, epic family saga of the highest order - an addictively entertaining tour de force.Perfect for fans of Coco Mellors and Jonathan Franzen
We Do Not Part: A Novel
By Null Han Kang. 2025
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.
Playworld: A Novel
By Null Adam Ross. 2025
"Starting off 2025 with a novel this terrific gives me hope for the whole year." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post"A…
gorgeous cat's cradle of a book . . . The swirling vapors of Holden Caulfield are present in Playworld, for sure, but also Lolita, Willy Loman, Garp." —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review"Extraordinary . . . A beguiling ode to a lost era . . . Line for line the book is a revelation." —Leigh Haber, Los Angeles TimesA big and big-hearted novel—one enthralling, transformative year in the life of a child actor coming of age in a bygone Manhattan, from the critically acclaimed author of Mr. Peanut&“In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was thirty-six, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didn&’t seem strange at the time.&” Griffin Hurt is in over his head. Between his role as Peter Proton on the hit TV show The Nuclear Family and the pressure of high school at New York's elite Boyd Prep—along with the increasingly compromising demands of his wrestling coach—he's teetering on the edge of collapse. Then comes Naomi Shah, twenty-two years Griffin&’s senior. Unwilling to lay his burdens on his shrink—whom he shares with his father, mother, and younger brother, Oren—Griffin soon finds himself in the back of Naomi&’s Mercedes sedan, again and again, confessing all to the one person who might do him the most harm. Less a bildungsroman than a story of miseducation, Playworld is a novel of epic proportions, bursting with laughter and heartache. Adam Ross immerses us in the life of Griffin and his loving (yet disintegrating) family while seeming to evoke the entirety of Manhattan and the ethos of an era—with Jimmy Carter on his way out and a B-list celebrity named Ronald Reagan on his way in. Surrounded by adults who embody the age&’s excesses—and who seem to care little about what their children are up to—Griffin is left to himself to find the line between youth and maturity, dependence and love, acting and truly grappling with life.
Lonely Crowds: A Novel
By Stephanie Wambugu. 2025
Luster meets The Idiot in this riveting debut novel about a volatile friendship between two outsiders who escape their bleak childhoods and enter the…
glamorous early '90s art world in New York City, where only one of them can make it. Ruth, an only child of recent immigrants to New England, lives in an emotionally cold home and attends the local Catholic girl&’s school on a scholarship. Maria, a beautiful orphan whose Panamanian mother dies by suicide and is taken care of by an ill, unloving aunt, is one of the only other students attending the school on a scholarship. Ruth is drawn forcefully into Maria&’s orbit, and they fall into an easy, yet intense, friendship. Her devotion to her charming and bright new friend opens up her previously sheltered world. While Maria, charismatic and aware of her ability to influence others, eases into her full self, embracing her sexuality and her desire to be an artist, Ruth is mostly content to follow her around: to college and then into the early-nineties art world of New York City. There, ambition and competition threaten to rupture their friendship, while strong and unspoken forces pull them together over the years. Whereas Maria finds early success in New York City as an artist, Ruth stumbles along the fringes of the art world, pulled toward a quieter life of work and marriage. As their lives converge and diverge, they meet in one final and fateful confrontation. Ruth and Maria's decades-long friendship interrogates the nature of intimacy, desire, class and time. What does it mean to be an artist and to be true to oneself? What does it mean to give up on an obsession? Marking the arrival of a sensational new literary talent, Lonely Crowds challenges us to reckon honestly with our own ambitions and the lives we hope to lead.
The Good Liar: A Novel
By Denise Mina. 2025
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?
August Lane
By Regina Black. 2025
From the author of The Art of Scandal comes a small town romance about the visibility of Black women&’s voices…
in country music, for readers of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev. Every Thursday night, former country music heartthrob Luke Randall has to sing &“Another Love Song.&” God, he hates that song. But performing his lone hit at an interstate motel lounge is the only regular money he still has. Following another lackluster performance at the rock bottom of his career, Luke receives the opportunity of his dreams, opening for his childhood idol—90&’s era Black country music star, JoJo Lane, who&’s being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But the concert is in Arcadia, Arkansas, the small hometown he swore he&’d never see again. Going back means facing a painful past of abuse and neglect. It also means facing JoJo&’s daughter, August Lane—the woman who wrote the lyrics he&’s always claimed as his own. August also hates that song. But she hates Luke Randall even more. When he shows up ten years too late to apologize for his betrayal, she isn&’t interested in making amends. Instead, she threatens to expose his lies unless he co-writes a new song with her and performs it at the concert, something she hopes will launch her out of her mother's shadow and into a songwriting career of her own. Desperate to keep his secret, Luke agrees to put on the rogue performance, despite the risk of losing his shot at a new record deal. When Luke&’s guitar reunites with August&’s soulful alto, neither can deny that the passionate bond they formed as teenagers is still there. As the concert nears, August will have to choose between an overdue public reckoning with the boy who betrayed her, or trusting the man he&’s become to write a different love song.
Katabasis: A Novel
By R. F Kuang. 2025
Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York…
Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own. Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek: The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld. Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world. That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams…. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion. With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like. But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies… or lead to their doom. New York Times Bestseller
These Summer Storms
By Sarah MacLean. 2025
'Deliciously impossible to put down' JODI PICOULT'Powerful, tragic, and beautiful. Is there anything Sarah MacLean can't do?' ASHLEY POSTONFrom bestselling…
author Sarah MacLean comes a sharp, sexy novel about a family's long-overdue reckoning with hidden desires, destructive secrets . . . and one week that threatens to tear them apart.Alice Storm isn't like her siblings. While the rest stayed to battle for their parents' approval, and their billions, she walked away, building a life beyond her family's reach. Nothing could induce her to come back. Nothing except the shocking death of her father.Now back on the family's private island off the Rhode Island coast, she plans to keep her head down, pay the last of her respects, and leave.But her father had other plans.The manipulative patriarch left behind a final challenge: an inheritance game designed to unravel the Storm family in ways both petty and life-altering. The rules are simple: stay on the island for one week, complete the tasks, receive the inheritance.But a week on Storm Island may destroy Alice. The family home seethes with dysfunction, and then there's Jack Dean-her father's infuriatingly attractive second-in-command, watching her every move.Alice just wants to survive the week. But the Storm legacy isn't done with her yet.'Money, sex, and intrigue . . . unputdownable from beginning to end' CHRISTINA LAUREN'From the first rumbles of thunder to the torrential downpour, MacLean takes readers for a wild ride!' ABBY JIMENEZ
Heart the Lover: A Novel
By Lily King. 2025
“Lily King is one of our great literary treasures.”—Madeline MillerFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers comes an intimate and…
sweeping new novel of love and friendship—a journey into the heart of youth and middle age, desire and loss, and the intricate bonds that shape our livesOur bright narrator is a college senior quietly dreaming of becoming a writer when she meets Sam and Yash, best friends and the golden boys of the English Department. Top-of-the-class Honors students, they live at the stately home of a favorite professor on sabbatical and can banter about Joyce and Fitzgerald like a game of rapid-fire tennis. The two nickname her Jordan and invite her into their magnetic world where her college experience is forever altered. As graduation approaches, the lines between love and friendship blur, and Jordan finds herself caught in a life-changing triangle.Decades later, her writing career is thriving, but motherhood is full of challenges. When she receives unexpected news that brings the past crashing into the present, Jordan returns to a world she thought she left behind. Written with the superb wit and emotional sensitivity fans and critics have come to adore, King explores a tangled lattice of friendship, love, family and uncertainty that celebrates how we love, who we love, and all the complexity a single heart can hold.
Heartwood (A Read with Jenna Pick): A Novel
By Amity Gaige. 2025
&“The best thriller of 2025.&” —The Boston Globe * &“Genius.&” —The Washington Post &“A literary thriller of the highest order&”…
(Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Couple), Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time after an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie&’s disappearance may not be accidental. Heartwood is a &“gem of a thousand facets—suspenseful, transporting, tender, and ultimately soul-mending,&” (Megan Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning) that tells the story of a lost hiker&’s odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character&’s interior journey. The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found. At its core, Heartwood is an &“unputdownable&” (Real Simple) and redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love.
On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)
By Solvej Balle. 2022
"A literary phenomenon nearly forty years in the making, and a speculative masterwork" (New York Magazine), Balle’s epic On the…
Calculation of Volume in Book III introduces new thrills to the adventures of Tara Selter’s endless November day SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE In the marvelous third installment of Balle’s "astonishing" (The Washington Post) septology, Tara’s November 18th transforms when she discovers that she is no longer alone in her endless autumnal day. For she has met someone who remembers, and who knows as well as she does that "it is autumn, but that we’re not heading into winter. That spring and summer will not follow. That the reds and yellows of the trees are here to stay. That yesterday doesn’t mean the seventeenth of November, that tomorrow means the eighteenth, and that the nineteenth is a day we may never see." Where Book I and II focused on a single woman’s involuntary journey away from her life and her loved ones and into the chasm of time, Book III brings us back into the realm of companionship, with all its thrills, odd quirks, and a sense of mutual bewilderment at having to relearn how to exist alongside others in a shared reality. And then of course, what of Tara’s husband Thomas, still sitting alone day after day, entirely unawares, in their house in Clarion-sous-Bois, waiting for his wife to return? Blending poetry and philosophical inquiry with rich reflections on our discombobulating times, Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume asks us to consider: What is a single person’s responsibility to humanity and to the preservation of this world?
Trip: A Novel
By Amie Barrodale. 2025
A woman embarks on an odyssey through the afterlife to help her son, who is literally and figuratively lost at…
sea: a hilarious and deeply moving voyage of the body and the mind.Sandra dies suddenly at a death conference in Nepal attended by academics and mystics. Days later, back in America, her teenage son, Trip, runs away with a man who picks him up on the side of a road. Sandra tries to get a message back to Trip through the mystics, but the mystics are distracted, and her son and the strange man set out to sea.Amie Barrodale’s first novel features restless souls, Buddhist deities, divorcees in recovery programs, arguing academics, uncomprehending school principals, and treatment centers for troubled teenagers. It journeys from body to body, through life and death and back again. It tells the story of a mother and son who find other people hard to understand and who are themselves misunderstood. Guiding this wild, unpredictable journey is deep devotion: the desire to save a child and to be a good mother despite it all.Wide-eyed with wonder, blazingly funny and achingly moving, Trip brings us the deeper meaning of The Tibetan Book of the Dead: the past is a memory, the future is a projection, the present is gone before we can see it.
Perfection
By Vincenzo Latronico. 2022
A 2025 International Booker Prize Longlist NomineeA scathing, provocative novel about contemporary existence by a rising star in Italian literature."One…
of Europe&’s most talented young writers, Latronico has written the great Berlin novel we&’ve all been waiting for." —Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker staff journalistAnna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital "creatives" exploring the excitements of the city, freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online. At first, they reasonably deduce that they've turned their passion for aesthetics into a viable, even enviable career, but the years go by, and Anna and Tom grow bored. As their friends move back home or move on, so their own work and sex life—and the life of Berlin itself—begin to lose their luster. An attempt to put their politics into action fizzles in embarrassed self-doubt. Edging closer to forty, they try living as digital nomads only to discover that, wherever they go, "the brand of oat milk in their flat whites was the same." Perfection—Vincenzo Latronico's first book to be translated into English—is a scathing novel about contemporary existence, a tale of two people gradually waking up to find themselves in various traps, wondering how it all came to be. Was it a lack of foresight, or were they just born too late?
Isola: A Novel
By Allegra Goodman. 2025
REESE&’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • &“A shocking story, made all the more stunning by the fact that…
it has its roots in true history.&”—Jodi Picoult, author of By Any Other Name &“A new generation of survival story . . . an extraordinary book that reads like a thriller, written with the care of the most delicate psychological and historical fiction.&”—Vogue (Best of 2025 Preview)A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in this &“lushly painted&” (People) historical epic of love, faith, and defiance from the bestselling author of Sam.A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, KIRKUS REVIEWS • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE AMERICAN LIBRARY IN PARIS BOOK AWARDHeir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes a unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island.Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she&’d never before needed.Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.