ODY New Books Collection

All Systems Red

"A murderous android discovers itself in 'All Systems Red', a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial intelligence. In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied 'droid -- a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as 'Murderbot.' Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth." -- Provided by publisher

Bees, and after

"The 119th winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize places science at the heart of his powerful poems. For John Liles, science and the natural world form a route into the workings of love, of grief, and of joy in the thrum of life. Judge Rae Armantrout calls his poems 'dense, sonically gorgeous studies of various natural things and creatures, including light, bees, minerals, shellfish and crabs, insects, and the workings (and failure) of the heart.' Written under the shadow of our changing climate, Liles's poems are tender elegies but also praise-songs for the continual unfolding richness of the world. Writes Liles, 'oh unending animal, / you go where / the light goes.'" --Amazon.ca

Bowling with Corpses & Other Strange Tales From Lands Unknown

"This anthology features eight fantasy stories blending elements of the supernatural, myth, and dark fantasy written and illustrated by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. Inspired by folklore, the collection includes tales such as a quest for a long-dead sorcerer, to a pirate girl who makes a deal with the devil, to the titular boy who wins a grim prize in a game with some undead interlopers, and more. Mignola builds a brand-new world filled with the weird, wicked and whimsical in this volume that will delight longtime Hellboy fans and new readers alike."-- Provided by publisher

The Story of Witches

Delve into the beguiling history of witches and uncover a fascinating world laden with myth, magic and superstition. The Story of Witches offers a tantalising insight into the dark past and modern fascination with the occult in its many forms. Demonic and deviant or liberated and revered, witches have cast a compelling spell over the cultural zeitgeist for hundreds of years, often occupying a space at the forefront of art and culture. In this enchantingly illustrated book, Willow Winsham separates fact from fiction by exploring the demonisation and reclamation of witches throughout history.

Theory & Practice

A new novel of startling intelligence from prizewinning Australian author Michelle de Kretser, following a writer looking back on her young adulthood and grappling with what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art. It's 1986, and "beautiful, radical ideas" are in the air. The narrator of Theory & Practice, a young woman originally from Sri Lanka, arrives in Melbourne for graduate school to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In the bohemian neighborhood of St. Kilda she meets artists, activists, students--and Kit. He claims to be in a "deconstructed relationship." They become lovers, and the narrator's feminism comes up against her jealousy. Meanwhile, an entry in Woolf's diary upends what the narrator knows about her literary idol, and throws her own work into disarray. What happens when our desires run contrary to our beliefs? What should we do when the failings of revered figures come to light? Who is shamed when the truth is told? Michelle de Kretser's new novel offers a spellbinding meditation on the moral complexities that arise in the gap between our values and our lives.

Strike

"Historian Sarah E. Bond retells the traditional story of Ancient Rome, revealing how groups of ancient workers unified, connected, and protested as they helped build an empire From plebeians refusing to join the Roman army to bakers withholding bread, this is the first book to explore how Roman workers used strikes, boycotts, riots, and rebellion to get their voices--and their labor--acknowledged. Sarah E. Bond explores Ancient Rome from a new angle to show that the history of labor conflicts and collective action goes back thousands of years, uncovering a world far more similar to our own than we realize. Workers often turned to their associations for solidarity and shared identity in the ancient world. Some of these groups even negotiated contracts, wages, and work conditions in a manner similar to modern labor unions. As the world begins to consider the value--and indeed the necessity--of unionization to protect workers, this book demonstrates that we can learn valuable lessons from ancient laborers and from attempts by the Roman government to limit their freedom." -- Provided by publisher

Stone Yard Devotional

"Burnt 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 rural Australia. 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 signaling 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."-- Provided by publisher

Seeking Shelter

"In the tradition of Evicted and Invisible Child, Jeff Hobbs masterfully explores America's housing crisis through the real-life story of Evelyn. This is Hobbs's first book since The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace that focuses on a single character and her extraordinarily illuminating journey. In 2018, poverty and domestic violence cast Evelyn and her children into the urban wilderness of Los Angeles, where she avoids the family crisis network that offers no clear pathway for her children to remain together and in a decent school. For the next five years, Evelyn works full time as a waitress yet remains unable to afford legitimate housing or qualify for government aid. All the while she strives to provide stability, education, loving memories, and college aspirations for her children even as they sleep in motels and in her car, living in fear of both her ex and the nation's largest child welfare agency. Eventually Evelyn encounters Wendi Gaines, a recently trained social worker who decades earlier survived her own abusive marriage and housing crisis. Evelyn becomes one of Wendi's first clients, and the relationship transforms them both. Told from the perspectives of Evelyn, Wendi, and Evelyn's teenaged son, Orlando, Seeking Shelter is a powerful and urgent exploration of the issues of homelessness, poverty, and education in America-a must-read for anyone interested in understanding not just social inequality and economic disparity in our society but also the power of a mother's love and vision for her kids."-- Provided by publisher

A Season of Light

"A tightly bound Nigerian family living in Florida navigate wounds passed down from generation to generation."-- Provided by publisher

Right-Wing Women

"Andrea Dworkin's Right-Wing Women is a crucial and deeply illuminating analysis of the right's position on abortion, homosexuality, antisemitism, female poverty, and antifeminism."-- Provided by publisher

John Soane's
Cabinet of Curiosities

An in-depth study that sheds a fascinating new light on Sir John Soane (1753-1837) and his world-renowned collection. Sir John Soane's architecture has enjoyed a revival of interest over the last seventy years, yet Soane as a collector, the strategy behind and motivation for Soane's bequest to the nation has remained largely unexplored. While Soane referred to the display of objects in his house and museum as "studies for my own mind," he never explained what he meant by this, and the ambiguity surrounding his motivation remains perennially fascinating. This book illuminates a side of Soane's personality unfamiliar to most students of his life and work by examining key strands in his collection and what they reveal about Soane and the psychology of collecting. Topics include the display of antiquities; his fascination with ruins, both literal and figurative; his singular response to Gothic architecture; and his investment in modern British painting and sculpture. These aspects are bookended by an introductory biographical chapter that highlights the ways in which his family and career informed his collecting habits as well as an epilogue that analyzes the challenges of turning a private house and collection into a public museum.

A Hudson Valley Reckoning

"A Hudson Valley Reckoning tells the story of northern slavery from the perspectives of two intertwined families. Debra Bruno's Dutch ancestors were enslavers, while Eleanor C. Mire's ancestors descended from those enslaved by Bruno's family. Despite their dark history, the two found a way to honor those whose stories had been lost."-- Provided by publisher

Homes for Living

"A tale of two NYC affordable housing co-ops' struggle over privatization, public goods, and the future of American housing."-- Provided by publisher

Heretic

"In the beginning was the Word," reads the Gospel of John. This sentence and the words of all four gospels are central to the teachings of the Christian church and have shaped Western art, literature, and language, and the Western mind. Yet in the years after the death of Christ, there was not merely one word, nor any consensus as to who Jesus was or why he had mattered. There were many different Jesuses: the Jesus who scorned his parents and harmed those who opposed him; the Jesus who sold his twin into slavery; the Jesus who had someone crucified in his stead. Moreover, in the early years of the millennium, there were many other saviors, many sons of gods who healed the wounded and cured the sick. But as Christianity spread, they were pronounced unacceptable--even heretical--and they faded from view. Now, in Heretic, Catherine Nixey tells their extraordinary and thrilling story, one of plurality, power, and chance. It is a story about what might have been."-- Dust jacket flap

Hello Stranger

"Explores modern queer romance and the expansive possibilities of ephemeral intimacies. Hello Stranger is a book about chance encounters--at a bar, through social media, in a bathhouse--and what a stranger can reveal about who we are and who we could still yet be. A stranger, after all, is a site of endless possibilities. As Manuel Betancourt looks back on his past relationships, he turns to characters and narratives that helped him question notions of what monogamy and coupledom (and relationships and marriage) can and should look like. From films like Before Sunrise and Cruising to the poetry of Frank O'Hara and the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, Betancourt uses pop culture to make sense of the alluring prospect of forging intimacies with strangers--even, or especially, the strangers within ourselves."-- Amazon.com

Dust and Light

This essay collection from the National Book Award--winning writer examines how historical facts inspire fiction, exploring the craft of transforming history into narrative through reflections on renowned authors and the writer's own process.

Death Takes Me

"A city is always a cemetery. When a professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a man in a dark alley, she finds a stark warning scrawled on the brick wall beside the body, written in coral nail polish: "Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert." After reporting the crime to the police, the professor becomes the lead informant of the case, led by a detective with a newfound obsession with poetry and a long list of failures on her back. But what has the professor really seen? As more bodies of men are found across the city, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems, and if they are facing a darker stream of violence spreading throughout the city. Death Takes Me is a thrilling masterpiece of literary fiction that flips the traditional crime narrative on its head, in a world where death is rampant and violence is gendered. Written in sentences as sharp as the cuts on the bodies of the victims - a word which, in Spanish, is always feminine - Death Takes Me unfolds with the charged logic of a dream, moving from the professor's classroom into the slippery worlds of Latin American poetry and art, as it explores with masterful imagination the unstable terrains of desire and sexuality"-- Provided by publisher

Casualties of Truth

"Prudence Wright seems to have it all: a loving husband, Davis; a spacious home in Washington, DC; and the past glories of a successful career at McKinsey, which now enables her to dedicate her days to her autistic son Roland. When she and Davis head out for dinner with one of Davis's new colleagues on a stormy summer evening filled with startling and unwelcome interruptions, Prudence has little reason to think that certain details of her history might arise sometime between cocktails and the appetizer course. Yet when Davis's colleague turns out to be Matshediso, a man from Prudence's past, she is transported back to the formative months she spent as a law student in South Africa in 1996. As an intern at a Johannesburg law firm, Prudence attended sessions of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings, which uncovered the many horrors and human rights abuses of the Apartheid state, and which fundamentally shaped her sense of righteousness and justice. Prudence experienced personal horrors in South Africa as well, long hidden and now at risk of coming to light. When Matshediso finally reveals the real reason behind his sudden reappearance, he will force Prudence to examine her most deeply held beliefs and to excavate inner reserves of resilience and strength...With keen insight and gripping tension, Casualties of Truth explosively mines questions of whether we are ever truly able to remove the stains of our past and how we may attempt to reconcile with unquestionable wrongs."-- Provided by publisher

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

"A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones."-- Provided by publisher

Brother Brontë

"Two women fight to save their dystopian border town--and literature--in this gonzo near-future adventure. The year is 2038, and the formerly bustling town of Three Rivers, Texas, is a surreal wasteland. Under the authoritarian thumb of its tech industrialist mayor, Pablo Henry Crick, the town has outlawed reading and forced most of the town's mothers to work as indentured laborers at the Big Tex Fish Cannery, which poisons the atmosphere and lines Crick's pockets. Scraping by in this godforsaken landscape are best friends Prosperina and Neftalí--the latter of whom, one of the town's last literate citizens, hides and reads the books of the mysterious renegade author Jazzmin Monelle Rivas, whose last novel, Brother Brontë, is finally in Neftalí's possession. But after a series of increasingly violent atrocities committed by Crick's forces, Neftalí and Prosperina, with the help of a wounded bengal tigress, three scheming triplets, and an underground network of rebel tías, rise up to reclaim their city--and in the process, unlock Rivas's connection to Three Rivers itself. An adventure that only the acclaimed Fernando A. Flores could dream up, Brother Brontë is a mordant, gonzo romp through a ruined world that, in its dysfunction, tyranny, and disparity, nonetheless feels uncannily like our own. With his most ambitious book yet, Flores once again bends what fiction can do, in the process crafting a moving and unforgettable story of perseverance."-- Publisher's website