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Corto Maltese

Corto, a modern Ulysses whose wanderings in the early decades of the 20th century take him to the most fascinating places on Earth, is a hard-luck, hard-driving iconoclastic anti-hero who values freedom and independence more than wealth and status. In "Fable of Venice," a riddle from a deceased friend plunges Corto into a phantasmagorical mystery thriller that zigzags between the solidity of dreams and the fluidity of reality. A frantic chase in 1921 Venice ensues, up twisting stairs and down tangled alleys, as Corto vies against Freemasons, occultists, budding fascists, and his friend (suddenly back from the dead) in a mad scramble to secure a mystical emerald that will open the doors of forbidden magic and unravel time and space itself! -- Publisher's site

The Scent of Oranges

"Nancy has spent her whole life on the vibrant and gritty streetsof Victorian London, first as one of Fagin's child pickpockets and now on the arm of violent and mercurial Bill Sikes. Nancy does what she must to get by attuned to the harsh realities of life, but also knows how to find moments of beauty amid the grime, even if it is only the scent and taste of an orange - its miraculous colour and form. When she embarks on a relationship with enigmatic gentleman Mr Rufus, it awakens emotions she's never felt before, and makes a better life feel possible for the first time en she takes cherubic orphan Oliver Twist under her wing, something even more elusive and appealing seems to be within reach: redemption."-- Provided by publisher

Yesteryear

"Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie's followers--all 8 million of them--don't know won't hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They're sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn't simply living the good life, she's living the ideal--and just so happens to be building an empire from it. Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn't hers. Her home, her husband, her children--they're all familiar, but something's off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she's expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible. A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, 'Yesteryear' is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood."-- Publisher's website

The Witch

"Lucie comes from a long line of witches, with powers passed down from mother to daughter. Many of them have hidden or repressed their gifts to appease disgusted or fearful men. But against the wishes of her controlling husband, Lucie initiates her twins into their family's peculiar womanhood when they reach the age of twelve. In a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying rich crimson tears, their powers quickly becoming more potent than their mother's, opening them to liberation and euphoria beyond what Lucie and her foremothers ever considered. Equal parts dreamlike and disquieting, The Witch tells a tale as old as time, with a dark twist: Without looking back, children fly the nest, laying bare the tenuous threads of family that have long threatened to snap. With simmering tension and increasing panic, NDiaye's latest novel in English captures the terror and precarity of motherhood and marriage, and the uncertainty of slowly realizing that your progeny are more dangerous--to the world and to your heart--and freer than you ever could have dreamed." -- Back cover

Unfrozen

"Nowhere is the dual threat of climate change and geopolitical contest felt more strongly than in the Arctic. Sea ice is declining rapidly, wildfires are burning, and permafrost is thawing. All the while, global interest is gathering apace as the region transforms from being a frozen desert into an international waterway. Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds examine the state of the Arctic today, showing how the region is becoming a space of experimentation for everything from Indigenous governance to subsea technologies. Growing geopolitical competition is accompanying environmental disruption. Countries including Russia, China, and the United States are investing in the Arctic and consolidating their interests in strategic access, resource exploitation, and alliance-building. The consequences of this emerging Arctic Anthropocene are truly global--from rising sea levels due to melting glaciers to tensions between great powers determined to protect their territory and resources, and the well-being of Indigenous Peoples who have fought for centuries for rights and recognition." -- Provided by publisher

Under Water

"An intense, atmospheric novel about the devastating power of friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic events. When Marissa loses her mother at five, the most intimate relationship of her life begins. Whisked across the globe to Thailand by her oceanographer father, who is determined to channel his grief into completing his wife's research, she meets Arielle, and a fairytale friendship takes hold. During the week, the girls live at the resort owned by Arielle's parents; on the weekends they join the tight community of researchers on a nearby island they are free to explore, discovering the wonders of its reefs and forests. Together they learn to dive, to hold their breath for minutes at a time, as effortlessly synchronized as the manta rays they come to know by name. Together they learn to swim their way out of danger. But then comes a wave Arielle can't outstrip, bringing Marissa a gutting loss. Years later, Marissa, is back in New York, adrift and haunted by the memory of her friend. Over the course of a single, fateful day, as another cataclysm approaches the oblivious city, she revisits her past and, as memory washes over her, discovers how to sustain herself in a fragile world." -- Provided by publisher

Transcription

"The narrator of Ben Lerner's new novel has traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail 'from the future and the past simultaneously' and who 'reenchants the air' when he speaks. But the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink. He arrives at Thomas's house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and an exploration of fathers and sons, male friendship and rivalry, and the challenges of parenting in a burning world." -- Provided by publisher

Spoiled Milk

"The untimely death of a student at a girls' boarding school turns out to be the first in a haunting series of escalating supernatural events. A thrilling gothic debut about teenage repression, queer desire, and the everyday horror of coming of age. In 1928, Emily Locke's final year at the isolated Briarley School for Girls is derailed when Violet, the school's brightest star, (and a cunning beauty for whom Emily would do anything), falls to her death on her eighteenth birthday. Emily and her buttoned-up rival Evelyn are, for once, in agreement: Violet's death was no accident. There's an obvious culprit, the French schoolmistress with whom Violet was getting a little too close--they need only to prove it. Desperate for answers, Emily and her classmates turn to spiritualism, hoping for a glimpse of wisdom from the great beyond. To their shock, Violet's spirit appears, choosing pious Evelyn as her unlikely medium. And Violet has a warning for them: the danger has just begun. Something deadly is infecting Briarley. It starts with rotten food and curdled milk but quickly grows more threatening. As the body count rises and the students race to save themselves, Emily must confront the fatal forces poisoning the school. Emily's fight for survival forces her to reevaluate everything she knows: about Violet, Evelyn, Briarley, and, ultimately, herself. Avery Curran channels the indelible ambiance and intrigue of the classic boarding school novel while turning the beloved genre on its head in this visceral, exuberant debut." -- Book jacket flap

The Secret History of French Cooking

"This deeply researched cultural and culinary history tells the story of a group of French chefs who, in the late 1960s and 70s revolutionized food culture, first at home and then, quickly, abroad, especially in the United States. The very idea of chef as creator can be traced back to these legends of la nouvelle cuisine: Paul Bocuse, Michel Guerard, and the Troisgros brothers." -- Provided by publisher

A Scandal in Königsberg

"As told by one of our greatest historians, the story of the scandal that took down two Lutheran preachers in the heart of nineteenth-century Prussia -- a chamber piece of cultish esotericism, pseudoscience, and political resistance that conjures up Europe at the end of the age of reason and presages our current age of misinformation. In 1835, Johannes Ebel and Georg Heinrich Diestel were tried for having started a cult. Worse: It was a cult that encouraged scandalous sexual behavior in women, including the daughters of prestigious Prussian families -- causing the deaths of two young women from sexual exhaustion. The trial would absorb and polarize the city of Königsberg for half a decade and ruin the lives and careers of its defendants, despite their eventual legal exoneration. The historical moment it encapsulates -- a Europe reeling from the triumph and horror of a new industrial, imperial era, struggling to decide which principles will reign in the aftermath of Enlightenment reason -- is a fable for our present time of political, social, and existential disquiet. The great Cambridge historian Christopher Clark -- known for The Sleepwalkers, his monumental, defining study of the causes of the First World War -- came across the files containing this story three decades ago; it has been swirling in his mind ever since. In gripping, narrative prose, Clark immerses us in a Königsberg scarred by the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars, where Immanuel Kant had recently inaugurated the theory of consciousness that completely reshaped humanity's understanding of itself -- but where the distinction between reason and fanaticism was now up for grabs. A Scandal in Königsberg is a European history in exquisite miniature -- and a peerless lesson in the theological and philosophical debates that animated the Western world at one of its great moments of transformation. Rich and provocative, A Scandal in Königsberg articulates an unsettling antecedent for our most fiercely litigated contemporary questions of sexual identity, freedom of thought, and who gets to decide what constitutes the truth." -- Provided by publisher

Plastic Inc.

"Plastic is everywhere in our daily lives. But the companies that make it-petrochemical companies which are often subsidiaries of Big Oil like ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical-seem to be hiding in plain sight. For all the vivid coverage of where plastic ends up, there is remarkably little discussion of where it comes from. Plastic, it turns out, is a financial lifeline for oil companies that are concerned about diminishing demand for oil and gas in the future, and these companies are doing everything they can to double and eventually triple plastic production by 2050. Award-winning journalist Beth Gardiner gives readers an up-close look at the plastic industry's relentless growth, its extraordinary profits, its toxic pollution and its hidden role in exacerbating climate change. Every chapter in Plastic Inc brings new revelations, including: how Big Oil invented the idea of recycling, even though they always knew that recycling plastic at scale would never work (and by doing so, they created the playbook that big tobacco and big pharma would later follow); how microplastics are becoming a health crisis; how oil companies have linked with political forces to fight against bans on single use plastic like plastic bags, even creating laws that ban bans; the major characters and personalities behind what amounts to a hidden corporate and political scandal perpetuated over decades. The stories in Plastic Inc will reframe for readers a problem many of us think we understand, but which has deeper roots and a more complicated future than we can have possibly imagined."-- Provided by publisher

The People Can Fly

"What does it mean to be deemed promising in an unjust world? Award-winning poet and MIT professor Dr. Joshua Bennett interrogates this question and offers a more expansive vision of giftedness in this striking, original work. What does promise cost in America? Especially when that promise is seen as grounds to separate us from the communities we cherish, and framed as the key to success, salvation, survival? In The People Can Fly, Dr. Joshua Bennett explores the complex position of Black prodigies in a society that has, all too often, defined blackness as absence, as a lack of inner life. Through this hybrid work of memoir and cultural history, Dr. Bennett shares how his own academic journey reflected the ebb and flow of being seen as both promising and as a problem. He turns to the childhood archives of Malcolm X, Stevie Wonder, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, and others to further explore this theme: highlighting the role of cultural institutions, and loving communities, in shaping the lives of leading lights within African American culture. What's more, Dr. Bennett clarifies how these spaces--these mentors, teachers, friends, and kin--helped defend young people from a world that sought to exclude them from its vision of promise and possibility."-- Front book flap

The Oracle's
Daughter

"On a cool fall night in 1999, twenty-six-year-old Sarah Green crept out of her house, retrieved a backpack from its hiding place, and ran for her life. She was escaping not just the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, a paramilitary religious cult operating out of the New Mexico desert, but also the punishments and cruelty of the cult's leader - her mother, Deborah. In The Oracle's Daughter, Harrison Hill traces the fascinating beginnings and violent end of ACMTC, from its early days as an outgrowth of the 1960s counterculture to its descent into conspiracy-fueled abuse. This is the story of three women - Deborah, the group's founder and self-proclaimed oracle; Maura, one of its first members; and Sarah, Deborah's daughter - bound together by a punitive, baroque set of radical beliefs and practices, including exorcism, kidnapping, and the horrific mistreatment of those who fell out of the leaders' favor. With a dramatic, deeply researched narrative tracing the strange twists and turns of the country's religious development, The Oracle's Daughter illuminates the porous boundary between the fringe and the mainstream - and shows how much more vulnerable we are to extremism than we might like to think." -- Provided by publisher

Mule Boy

"On New Year's Day, 1929, Ondro Prach, the thirteen-year-old son of Slovak immigrants in Pennsylvania coal country, begins a new job as mule boy. He knows the danger-his father died in the mines-but he is proud of his position handling the animal that hauls cartloads of coal from shafts deep within the earth to the surface. After Ondro earns the trust of the miners and the mule in his charge, the room the men are working collapses and their fate is sealed. From that moment onward, Ondro carries the hard memory of that day, a burden that leads to addiction and imprisonment, costing him his family. But, years later, when the miners' loved ones come searching for answers, he finds the strength to share what the men spoke of and prayed for in the pitch black. Told in incantatory prose set to the rhythm of human breath, this sublime novel turns the memento mori into a meditation not only on death but on what it takes to tunnel through darkness and live."-- Provided by publisher

The Meaning of Your Life

"What is the meaning of your life? If you struggle to discern life's meaning, you're not alone. Millions today describe a growing sense of emptiness, a lack of purpose and significance. And there's a reason: Rapid cultural, economic, and technological changes have rewired our brains, reducing our ability to perceive depth and purpose. In The Meaning of Your Life, social scientist Arthur C. Brooks shows you how to push back against these changes and find the meaning you need to live a happy, fulfilling life. Relying on cutting-edge science, he offers practical, evidence-based strategies for breaking free of the powerful trends and personal habits that dull your focus on the why of your life. Drawing on the great philosophers and the world's faith traditions, Brooks argues that everyone can -- and must -- approach life's most important and mysterious questions and provides a blueprint that will help even the most skeptical person find a life of spiritual transcendence, passionate love, and true calling. 'What is the meaning of my life?' is not an unanswerable question, but rather the start of a pilgrimage into unexplored corners of your consciousness. The Meaning of Your Life is your handbook for this journey." -- Book jacket flap

The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution

"A provocative new history of America's Constitution and an urgent call to action for a nation confronted by challenges its founders could never have imagined. The American Revolution occurred at a time when Britain's constitutional order failed to adapt to the extraordinary growth of its colonies. The framers designed an American constitution to succeed where Britain's had faltered, planning for continuous population and territorial expansion that would eventually cross the continent. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, it was already ill-suited for an increasingly urban, industrialized society, and the transformations of the twentieth century have pushed it to a breaking point. This book charts the history and aims of the American Constitution from its origins in an agrarian past to the grave crisis we face today. Mark Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. Peterson's riveting narrative paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose frame of government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age but whose written constitution has changed very little. Marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution reveals how this widening disconnect threatens the very existence of our democracy. It calls for a constitution that sustains the ideals developed over the past thousand years while meeting the challenges of the future."-- Provided by vendor

Luminous Bodies

"In the vein of Georgia (Dawn Tripp) and Matrix (Lauren Groff), the narrative follows Marie from girlhood in Poland to the battlefields of World War I, focusing on her marriage, widowhood, and love affair with physicist Paul Langevin--after which she was ostracized from society and the scientific community. Haunted by self-doubt, she turned to Hertha Ayrton, the scientist and suffragist who drew her back from the brink of suicide. How did Curie endure all this, and still achieve so much? What sustained her rich emotional, sexual, and intellectual life--and what were the costs? Jersild explores these questions in this radiant novel." -- Amazon

In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man

A memoir by Tom Junod examining his relationship with his father and the lasting impact of family dynamics on identity and masculinity. The narrative recounts the author's efforts to understand his father's life, including personal relationships and hidden aspects of his past, while reflecting on themes of memory, family, and self-definition

I Am Agatha

Agatha, a bristly painter fleeing her own darkness, decamps to rural New Mexico to live the reclusive life of a small-town curmudgeon. It is there she meets Alice, a mild widow with a deepening case of dementia who keeps steady vigil at her daughter's backyard grave. Despite Agatha's rough edges and fierce aversion to sentimentality, she surprises herself by falling in love, and her well-worn convictions begin to upend. As Alice's condition worsens, Agatha hatches a plan for them to live together at her remote residence at Mesa Portales. But when Alice's wayward son comes along with different ideas--and Alice suddenly goes missing--Agatha takes matters into her own hands with the help of a faithful thirteen-year-old-neighbor, a pair of shovels, and her trusty pickup, embarking on an unusual mission that calls into question whether some secrets are better kept buried. Sharp, watchful, at once thrillingly perceptive and hidden from herself, Agatha is as imposing as the vast landscape her rustic adobe home overlooks. Loosely inspired by the life of Agnes Martin, I Am Agatha introduces us to this irascible, indelible character who learns--over a stretch of strange, singular days--new ways to fathom life, death, and her own heart.

Fireflies in Winter

"1796. Cora, an orphan newly arrived from Jamaica, has never felt cold like this. In the depths of winter, everyone in her community huddles together in their homes to keep warm. So when she sees a shadow slipping through the trees, Cora thinks her eyes are deceiving her. Until she creeps out into the moonlight and finds the tracks in the snow. Agnes is in hiding. On the run from her former life, she has learned what it takes to survive alone in the wilderness. But she can afford no mistakes. When she first spies the young woman in the woods, she is afraid. Yet Cora is fearless, and their paths are destined to cross. Deep amongst the cedars, Cora and Agnes find a fragile place of safety. But when Agnes's past closes in, they are confronted with the dangerous price of freedom--and of love..."-- Provided by publisher

Beyond Inheritance

"The new science of how DNA mutates over an individual's lifetime, with radical implications for our understanding of health and medicine."-- Provided by publisher

A Beautiful Loan

"In 1985 Dublin, nineteen-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older, worldly man. Introverted and naive, Anna is captivated by Peter’s experience, his wide circle of friends and his thirst for adventure. Her obsessive longing for him leads to marriage and, eventually, a crushing betrayal. When Anna meets a kindhearted Algerian man, she finds herself falling in love with him. Life with Karim offers stability and renewed hope and, slowly, Anna begins to uncover deeper layers of herself. Unfolding over twenty-five years, this is a novel about the loss of innocence, the shame and humiliations of love, and the psychological cost of seeking salvation in others. A Beautiful Loan is a devastating story about what it means to be a woman, as well as a testament to literature’s ability to give us a language when we’re lost for words." -- book jacket

Awake

"At 2:30 a.m. on July 11th, 2020, Jen Hatmaker woke up to her husband of twenty-six years whispering in his phone to another woman from their bed. It was the end of life as she knew it. In the months that followed, she went from being a shiny, funny, popular leader, to a divorced wreck on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds parenting five kids alone with no clue about her own bank accounts. Having led millions of women for over a decade-urging them to embrace authenticity, find radical agency, and create healthy relationships-this seemed nothing less than total failure. In Awake, Jen shares for the first time what happened when she found herself completely lost at sea-and how she made it to shore. In candid, surprisingly funny vignettes spanning forty years of girlhood, marriage, and parenting, Jen lays bare the disorienting upheaval of midlife-the implosion of a marriage, the unraveling of religious and cultural systems, and the grief that accompanies change you didn't ask for. And, drawing on all her resources-from without and from within-Jen dares to question the systems beneath the whole house of cards, and to reckon with the myths, half-truths, and lies that brought her to this point. More than one woman's story, Awake is a critical analysis of the story given to all of us: the story of gender limitations, religious subservience, body shame, self-erasure. With refreshing candor, Jen explores a Midlife Renaissance-grieving what's lost, cherishing possibility, and entering the second half of life wide awake." -- Provided by publisher

Almost Life

"Erica and Laure meet on the steps of the Sacré-Coeur in Paris, 1978. Erica is a student, relishing her first summer abroad before beginning university at home in England. Laure is studying for her PhD at the Sorbonne, drinking and smoking far too much, and sleeping with a married woman. The moment the two women meet, the spark is undeniable, but their encounter turns into far more than a summer of love. It is the beginning of a relationship that will define their lives and every decision they have yet to make... Erica and Laure's love story spans decades, marriage, children, secret trysts, and the agonizing changes--both personal and political--that might mean they can be together, after all. But when life brings them within touching distance again, will they be brave enough to seize a future together?"-- Amazon.com