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Rooms for Vanishing

"A prismatic, mind-bending family epic about the splintering of a Jewish family from Vienna-exploring the weight of exile and how grief twists our sense of the impossible. Everyone had been survived into different futures and I would never see any of them again. I could sense this. I would hear them in their separate rooms, within their separate lives, but I would not be able to cross over to meet them. In Rooms for Vanishing, the violence of war has fractured the universe for the Altermans, a Jewish family from Vienna. Moving across decades, and across the world, the novel finds the Altermans alone in their separate futures, haunted by the loss of their loved ones, each certain that they are the sole survivor of their family. Sonja, the daughter, has gone in search of her husband, who has disappeared into London; Fania, the mother, is confronted with her doppelganger in the basement of a Montreal hotel; Moses, the son, is followed by the ghost of his best friend and eventually returns to Prague to make peace with the dead; and, finally, Arnold, the father, dares to believe that his long-lost daughter might be alive after he receives a message from an Englishwoman claiming to be Sonja. Through their stories, we come to see how-amid profound loss and the madness of grief-ghosts are made momentarily real. Spellbinding and profound, Rooms for Vanishing explores the boundary between desire and reality; this is a singular work that masterfully considers the possibility of magic, and the dangerous and impossible hope for a different history."-- Provided by publisher

The Creativity Choice

"Anyone who has ever participated in a brainstorming session will know that most of us do not lack ideas. Yet, many people never breathe life into these ideas. To turn inspiration into real achievement, you must decide to act--and then decide to act again and again, despite obstacles, until your thoughts take shape and come to life. This is what psychologist Zorana Ivcevic Pringle calls the creativity choice. Drawing on decades of research into the science of creativity, The Creativity Choice teaches readers how to bring ideas out of your mind and into the world. With stories ranging from an entrepreneur who built a national nonprofit, to a YouTuber who turned a hobby into a professional career, to a business leader who established a company culture of innovation, Pringle illuminates how people make creative ideas happen. She shows what it takes to get started, the psychological and emotional tools needed to navigate the creative process, and the social conditions that allow creativity to succeed. Through this book, you'll learn how to bridge the gap between having the first spark of an idea and actually doing something with it."-- Publisher description

Matriarch

"Tina Knowles, the mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles, and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined, self-possessed, self-aware, and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that. Matriarch begins with a precocious, if unruly, little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston, the youngest of seven. She is in love with her world, with extended family on every other porch and the sounds of Motown and the lapping beach always within earshot. But as the realities of race and the limitations of girlhood set in, she begins to dream of the world beyond. Her instincts and impulsive nature drive her far beyond the shores of Texas to discover the life awaiting her on the other side of childhood. That life's journey-through grief and tragedy, creative and romantic risks and turmoil, the nurturing of superstar offspring and of her own special gifts-is the remarkable story she shares with readers here. This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, of loss and perseverance, and of the kind of creativity, audacity, and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. It's one brilliant woman's intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America--and the wisdom that women pass on to each other, mothers to daughters, across generations."-- Provided by publisher

Story of a Murder

Reexamines the infamous Crippen Murder through the perspectives of three women: Dr. Crippen's first wife Charlotte, his mistress Ethel, and Belle Elmore, whose death propelled the case, offering a fresh, multifaceted view of their lives and roles in a crime that captivated Edwardian society.

Your Steps on the Stairs

"Heady and unsettling, a couple's new life in Lisbon unravels in this psychological thriller from one of Spain's most celebrated writers. A man travels to Lisbon ahead of his wife to prepare their newly purchased home, while she stays in New York to oversee a research project on the neuroscience of memory and fear. Leaving behind a phase of their relationship indelibly marked by 9/11, he revels in the Portuguese capital's temperate weather and the neighborhood's calm, meticulously planning the details of their future. Yet beneath the peace and quiet of this routine, he feels a growing unease he can't explain. Is it the similarity between the two cities, and the two apartments? A mysterious threat waiting in the wings? A brilliant, deceptively simple novel of psychological suspense, Your Steps on the Stairs explores how our emotions and memories shape our perception of reality. With his subtle, masterful style, Antonio Muñoz Molina lays bare the fragility of the stories we so carefully craft about ourselves."-- Provided by publisher

There Is No Place for Us

"The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America's booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one. In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country's "Black Mecca" after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children -- and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation's working homeless. Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation's hidden homeless -- omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem."-- Provided by publisher

Syme's
Letter Writer

"A literary jaunt in praise of the lost art of letter writing that explores a cultural history and the undeniable thrill of old-school correspondence-from New Yorker culture writer Rachel Syme. Inspired by a bestselling turn-of-the-century correspondence handbook penned by a snooty Victorian who had strong opinions on how to lick a stamp, Rachel Syme has rewritten the staid rules of yore for today's letter writers. Syme insists you must stuff your envelopes with flat frivolities (tip: never glitter!), ask before you perfume a parcel, and cultivate your own ritual around keeping up with your correspondence. Immerse yourself in this epistolary bric-a-brac celebrating the intimate (whimsical! expressive!) art of written correspondence, covering every part of the process from courting and keeping a pen pal down to buying the best nibs for your refurbished vintage fountain pen. As you read fragments of letters from some of contemporary history's most iconic figures-Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Audre Lorde and Pat Parker, Virginia Woolf, MFK Fisher, Diana Vreeland, Octavia Butler-take note of how to write about the weather without being a total snooze, how to write a letter like a poet, and how to infuse your writing with a glamorous mystique. Learn about Julia Child's lifelong pen pal, Maya Angelou's penchant for hotel stationery, and the importance of choosing a signature paper that captures your essence. After all, the words you write on paper, no matter how limited the audience, can offer comfort, shared sorrow, cathartic rage, hard-earned insight, refreshing strangeness, absurd silliness, understanding, peace, beauty-and often all of those things all mixed up at the same time."-- Provided by publisher

Second Life

"'Before I was pregnant, I was a person.' The long awaited debut memoir about the convergence of parenthood and technology from the beloved New York Times critic. In 2016, when Amanda arrived at the New York Times to become its correspondent for Internet culture, a colleague asked her a question that sounded like a riddle: 'On the Internet, how do you know what's really real?' He had been looking for a literal answer, but Amanda recognized the question as something more profound, an irresolvable provocation that defines the experience of life in the digital age. For more than a decade, Amanda has been on the reality beat, living the contradictions of the Internet even as she has tried to make sense of them. But when she discovered she was pregnant with her first child, who later received a prenatal diagnosis of Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome--a genetic disorder--she was unexpectedly rattled by a digital identity crisis all her own, vulnerable to the world of apps, gadgets, bloggers, online forums, and advertisers, all closing in, telling her what to do and how to feel. They promised that her new life--and by extension, her child's--would be so much better if she bought this or that, tried this or that. As the Internet sought to remap her body and her mind, Amanda's guiding question became ever more urgent: what is 'real life' when creating a life? Second Life is a trenchant look at parenting in early 21st-century America, when humans stopped being raised by villages or even families but rather by a constant onslaught of information. It is a funny, heartbreaking, and surreal examination of fertility apps, the history of ultrasound technologies, prenatal genetic testing, rare disease Facebook groups, baby memes, cultural representations of parenting, gender reveal videos, trendy sleep gurus, 'freebirth' influencers, mommy marketers, culminating in a polemic on how to conceive of a real life in the digital age. Page by page, Amanda reveals the unspoken ways that our lives are being fractured and reconstituted by technology, all through the exacting lens of her intensely personal story."-- Provided by publisher

Paper of Wreckage

"By the 1970s, the country's oldest continuously published newspaper had fallen on hard times, just like its nearly bankrupt hometown. When the New York Post was sold to a largely unknown Australian named Rupert Murdoch in 1976, staffers hoped it would be the start of a new golden age for the paper. Now, after the nearly fifty years Murdoch has owned the tabloid, American culture reflects what Murdoch first started in the 1970s: a celebrity-focused, noisy, one-sided media empire that reached its zenith with Fox News. Drawing on extensive interviews with key players and in-depth research, this eye-opening, wildly entertaining oral history shows us how we got to this point. It's a rollicking tale full of bad behavior, inflated egos, and a corporate culture that rewarded skirting the rules and breaking norms. But working there was never boring and now, you can discover the entire remarkable true story of America's favorite tabloid newspaper."

The Ocean's
Menagerie

"Hundred-year-old giant clams, coral kingdoms the size and shape of cities, and jellyfish that glow in the dark: ocean invertebrates are among the oldest and most diverse organisms on earth, bending our rules of land-based biology. Although often overlooked, the spineless creatures of the deep contain 600 million years of adaptation to problems of disease, energy consumption, nutrition, and defense. In The Ocean's Menagerie, world-renowned marine ecologist Dr. Drew Harvell takes us from Hawaii to the Salish Sea, from St. Croix to Indonesia, to uncover the incredible underwater "superpowers" of spineless creatures: we meet corals many times stronger than steel or concrete, sponges who create potent chemical compounds to fight off disease, and sea stars that act as gardeners for coastlines, keeping all the other nearby species in perfect balance. As our planet changes fast, the biomedical, engineering, and energy innovations of these wonderous creatures hold ever more important secrets to our own survival. The Ocean's Menagerie is a tale of biological marvels, a story of a woman's passionate connection to a career in science, and a call to arms to protect the world's most ancient ecosystems."-- Provided by publisher

Mỹ Documents

"Ursula, Alvin, Jen, and Duncan grew up as cousins in the sprawling Nguyen family, but the truth about their family is much more complicated. As young adults, they're on the precipice of new ventures--Ursula as a budding journalist in Manhattan, Alvin as an engineering intern for Google, Jen as a naive freshman at NYU, and Duncan as a promising newcomer on his high school football team. Their lives are upended when a series of violent, senseless attacks across America create a national panic, prompting a government policy forcing Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. Jen and Duncan are sent with their mother to Camp Tacoma while Ursula and Alvin receive exemptions. Cut off entirely from the outside world, Jen and Duncan try to withstand long dusty days in camp, forced to work jobs they hate and acclimate to life without the internet. That is until Jen discovers a way to get messages to the outside. Her first instinct is to reach out to Ursula, who sees this as an opportunity to tell the world about the horrors of detention--and bolster her own reporting career in the process. Informed by real-life events from Japanese incarceration, the Vietnam War, and modern-day immigrant detention, Kevin Nguyen gives us a version of reality only a few degrees away from our own--much too close for comfort. Moving and finely attuned to both the brutalities and mundanities of racism in America, Mỹ Documents is a strangely funny and touching portrait of American ambition, fear, and family. The story of the Nguyens is one of resilience and how we return to each other, and to ourselves, after tragedy."-- Provided by publisher

In My Remaining Years

"A collection of darkly humorous, intensely personal essays by cult fave and multi-hyphenate artist Jean Grae In My Remaining Years, by creative juggernaut Jean Grae, debunks the myth that coming-of-age narratives should be reserved for the kids, providing a much-needed rallying cry for those of us still trying to figure it out in our forties. These laugh-out-loud essays cover everything from aging gracefully (with and without botox), what happens when you look for community and almost start a cult, befriending childhood demons (Hi Mumm-ra!), gender fluidity in middle age, the cost of being too fabulous, and the various gymnastics we do to avoid becoming our parents, taking us from her childhood in 1980s New York City to present-day Baltimore. In these pages, Jean captures magic in a bottle, distilling the feeling of hanging out with your smartest, funniest, and most brutally honest best friend."-- Provided by publisher

I Regret Almost Everything

"The entertaining, irreverent, and surprisingly moving memoir by the visionary restaurateur behind such iconic New York institutions as Balthazar and Pastis ... taking us from his gritty London childhood in the fifties to his serendipitous arrival in New York, where hefounded the era-defining establishments the Odeon, Cafe Luxembourg,and Nell's. Eloquent and opinionated, Keith McNally writes about the angst of being a child actor, his lack of insights from travelingoverland to Kathmandu at nineteen, the instability of his two marriages and family relationships, his devastating stroke, and his Instagram notoriety."-- Provided by publisher

The Golden Hour

"A personal and cultural exploration of the struggles between art and business at the heart of modern Hollywood, through the eyes of the talent that shaped it. Matthew Specktor grew up in the film industry: the son of legendary CAA superagent Fred Specktor, his childhood was one where Beau Bridges came over for dinner, Martin Sheen's daughter was his close friend, and Marlon Brando left long messages on the family answering machine. He would eventually spend time working in Hollywood himself, first as a reluctant studio executive and later as a screenwriter. Now, with The Golden Hour, Specktor blends memoir, cultural criticism, and narrative history to tell the story of the modern motion picture industry--illuminating the conflict between art and business that has played out over the last seventy-five years in Hollywood. Braiding his own story with that of his father, mother (a talented screenwriter whose career was cut short), and figures ranging from Jack Nicholson to CAA's Michael Ovitz, Specktor reveals how Hollywood became a laboratory for the eternal struggle between art, labor, and capital. Beginning with the rise of Music Corporation of America in the 1950s, The Golden Hour lays out a series of clashes between fathers and sons, talent agents and studio heads, artists, activists, unions, and corporations. With vivid prose and immersive scenes, Specktor shows how Hollywood grew from the epicenter of American cultural life to a full-fledged multinational concern-and what this shift has meant for the nation's place in the world. At once a book about the movie business and an intimate family drama, The Golden Hour is a sweeping portrait of the American Century."-- Provided by publisher

Foreign Fruit

"What begins as curiosity about the origins of the orange soon becomes a far-reaching odyssey of citrus for Katie Goh. Goh follows the complicated history of the orange from east to west and west to east, from a luxury item of European kings and Chinese emperors to a modest fruit people take for granted. This investigation parallels Goh's powerful search into her own heritage. Growing up queer in a Chinese-Malaysian-Irish household in the north of Ireland, Goh felt herself at odds with the culture and politics around her. As a teenager, Goh visits her ancestral home in Longyan, China, with her family to better understand her roots, but doesn't find the easy, digestible answers she hoped for. In her midtwenties, when her grandmother falls ill, Goh ventures again to the land of her ancestors, this time to Malaysia, where more questions of self and belonging are raised. In her travels and reflections, she navigates histories that she wants to understand, but has never truly felt a part of. Like the story of the orange, Goh finds that easy and extractable explanations-even about a seemingly simple fruit-are impossible. The story that unfolds is Goh's incredible endeavor to flesh out these contradictions, to unpeel the layers of personhood; a reflection on identity through the cipher of the orange. Along the way, the orange becomes so much more than just a fruit-it emerges as a symbol, a metaphor, and a guide. Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange is a searching, wide-ranging, seamless weaving of storytelling with research and a meditative, deeply moving encounter with the orange and the self."-- Provided by publisher

The Fate of the Day

"The first twenty-one months of the American Revolution, which began at Lexington and ended at Princeton, was the story of a ragged group of militiamen and soldiers fighting to forge a new nation. By the winter of 1777, the exhausted Continental Army could claim only that it had barely escaped annihilation by the world's most formidable fighting force. Two years into the war, King George III is as determined as ever to bring his rebellious colonies to heel. But the king's task is now far more complicated: fighting a determined enemy on the other side of the Atlantic has become ruinously expensive, and spies tell him that the French and Spanish are threatening to join forces with the Americans. Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson provides a riveting narrative covering the middle years of the Revolution. Stationed in Paris, Benjamin Franklin woos the French. In Pennsylvania, George Washington pleads with Congress to deliver the money, men, and matériel he needs to continue the fight. In New York, General William Howe, the commander of the greatest army the British have ever sent overseas, plans a new campaign against the Americans -- even as he is no longer certain that he can win this searing, bloody war. The months and years that follow bring epic battles at Brandywine, Saratoga, Monmouth, and Charleston; an infamous winter of misery at Valley Forge; and yet more appeals for sacrifice by every American committed to the struggle for freedom. Timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolution, Atkinson's brilliant account of the lethal conflict between the Americans and the British offers not only deeply researched and spectacularly dramatic history, but also a new perspective on the demands that a democracy makes on its citizens." -- Jacket flap

Counting Backwards

"A middle-aged couple struggles with the husband's descent into early-onset Lewy Body dementia in this profound and deeply moving novel shot through with Kirshenbaum's lacerating humor. It begins with hallucinations. From their living room window, Leo sees a man on stilts, an acting troupe, a pair of swans paddling on the street. Initially, Leo believes the visions are related to visual impairment-they are something he and his wife, Addie, can joke about. Then, he starts to experience occasional, but fleeting, oddities that mimic myriad brain disorders: aphasia, the inability to perform simple tasks, Capgras Syndrome, audial hallucinations he believes to be real. The doctors have no answers. Leo, a scientist, and Addie, a collage artist, had a loving and happy marriage. But as his periods of lucidity become rarer, Addie finds herself less and less able to cope. Eventually, Leo is diagnosed with Lewy Body disease. Life expectancy ranges from 3 to 20 years. A decidedly uncharacteristic act of violence makes it clear that he cannot come home. He moves first to an assisted living facility and then to a small apartment with a caretaker where, over time, he descends into full cognitive decline. Addie's agony, anger, and guilt result in self-imposed isolation, which mirrors Leo's diminished life. And so for years, all she can do is watch him die-too soon, and yet not soon enough. Kirshenbaum captures the couple's final years, months, and days in short scenes that burn with despair, humor, and rage, tracking the brutal destruction of the disease, as well the moments of love and beauty that still exist for them amid the larger tides of loss."-- Provided by publisher

The Acid Queen

"Rosemary Woodruff Leary has been known only as the wife of Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor-turned-psychedelic high priest, whose jailbreak captivated the counterculture and whose life on the run with Rosemary inflamed the government. But Rosemary was more than a mere accessory. She was a beatnik, a psychonaut, and a true believer who tested the limits of her mind and the expectations for women of her time. Long overlooked by those who have venerated her husband, Rosemary spent her life on the forefront of the counterculture, working with Leary on his books and speeches, sewing his clothing, and shaping--for better and for worse--the media's narrative about LSD. Ultimately, Rosemary sacrificed everything for the safety of her fellow psychedelic pioneers and the preservation of her husband's legacy. Drawing from a wealth of interviews, diaries, archives, and unpublished sources, Susannah Cahalan writes the definitive portrait of Rosemary Woodruff Leary, reclaiming her narrative and her voice from those who dismissed her." -- Provided by publisher

Rare Tongues

"Languages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulting loss of a rich linguistic tapestry reflecting unique perspectives and ways of life. Rare Tongues tells the stories of the world's rare and vanishing languages, revealing how each is a living testament to human resilience, adaptability, and the perennial quest for identity. Taking readers on a captivating journey of discovery, Lorna Gibb explores the histories of languages under threat or already extinct as well as those in resurgence, shedding light on their origins, development, and distinctive voices. She travels the globe--from Australia and Finland to India, the Canary Islands, Namibia, Scotland, and Paraguay--showing how these languages are not mere words and syntax but keepers of diverse worldviews, sites of ethnic conflict, and a means for finding surprising commonalities. Readers learn the basics of how various language systems work--with vowels and consonants, whistles and clicks, tonal inflections, or hand signs--and how this kaleidoscope of self-expression carries vital information about our planet, Indigenous cultures and tradition, and the history and evolution of humankind."-- Provided by publisher

Stereophonic

"An epic play with music that examines the human costs of the quest for artistic greatness. The place: Sausalito. The time: the mid-1970s. The carpet: brown shag. Stereophonic brings us inside the cloistered world of a recording studio as a rock band on the brink of superstardom attempts to create their sophomore album. The ensuing pressures open up cracks in the band's once-easy camaraderie, and spats over issues like tempo and song length begin to reveal deeper problems in the band's foundation. Running on a diet of booze, sleep deprivation, and a giant bag of cocaine, interpersonal relationships are pushed to the breaking point as a process that was meant to last a few weeks becomes a neverending slog. With original songs by Arcade Fire's Will Butler, David Adjmi's play is an electrifying portrait of a band wracked with division and disillusionment that nevertheless might be on the verge of creating a masterpiece."-- Provided by publisher

Enough Is Enuf

"A brief and humorous 500-year history of the Simplified Spelling Movement from advocates like Ben Franklin, C. S. Lewis, and Mark Twain to texts and Twitter."-- Provided by publisher

City of Fiction

"In the early 20th century, China is a land undergoing a momentous social and cultural shift, with a thousand-year-old empire crumbling and the nation on the brink of modernity. Against this backdrop, a quiet man from the North embarks on a perilous journey to a Southern city in the grip of a savage snowstorm. He carries with him a newborn baby: he is looking for the child's mother and a city that isn't there. This is a story of two people: a man who finds unexpected success after having journeyed to the hometown of the woman who abandoned him; and the woman he is searching for, who mysteriously disappeared to embark on her own eventful journey. This is a story about vanished crafts and ancient customs, about violence, love, and friendship. Above all, it's a story about change and about storytelling itself, full of vivid characters, ranging from bandits to vengeful potentates, from prostitutes to deceitful soothsayers, and surprising twists--an epic tale, as inexorable as time itself and as gripping asa classic adventure story."-- Provided by publisher

Fair Play

"A group of friends gather at an Airbnb on New Year's Eve. It is Benjamin's birthday, and his sister Abigail is throwing him a jazz-age Murder Mystery themed party. As the night plays out, champagne is drunk, hors d'oeuvres consumed, and relationships forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses the wrong person; someone else's heart is broken. In the morning, all of them wake up--except Benjamin. As Abigail attempts to wrap her mind around her brother's death, an eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin's killer. In this mansion, suddenly complete with a butler, gardener and housekeeper, everyone is a suspect, and nothing is quite as it seems. Will the culprit be revealed? And how can Abigail, now alone, piece herself back together in the wake of this loss?"-- Provided by publisher

Atavists

"The word atavism, coined by a botanist and popularized by a criminologist, refers to the resurfacing of a primitive evolutionary trait or urge in a modern being. This inventive collection from Lydia Millet offers overlapping tales of urges ranging from rage to jealousy to yearning―a fluent triumph of storytelling, rich in ideas and emotions both petty and grand. The titular atavists include an underachieving, bewildered young bartender; a middle-aged mother convinced her gentle son-in-law is fixated on geriatric porn; a bodybuilder with an incel’s fantasy life; an arrogant academic accused of plagiarism; and an empty-nester dad determined to host refugees in a tiny house in his backyard. As they pick away at the splitting seams in American culture, Millet’s characters shimmer with the sense of powerlessness we share in an era of mass overwhelm. A beautician in a waxing salon faces a sudden resurgence of grief in the midst of a bikini Brazilian; a couple sets up a camera to find out who’s been slipping homophobic letters into their mailbox; a jilted urban planner stalks a man she met on a dating app. In its rich warp and weft of humiliations and human error, Atavists returns to the trenchant, playful social commentary that made A Children’s Bible a runaway hit. In these stories sharp observations of middle-class mores and sanctimony give way to moments of raw exposure and longing: Atavists performs an uncanny fictional magic, full of revelation but also hilarious, unpretentious, and warm." -- Amazon