ODY New Books Collection

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

After the Flood

A study of the later career of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, focusing on his creative output from 1991 through 2023. Drawing on materials from the Bob Dylan Archive in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as published and unpublished lyrics, liner notes, recordings, films, and prose works, the book examines Dylan's artistic development during this period. Organized thematically and chronologically, it analyzes his albums, performances, and writings within broader historical and cultural contexts, including references to American history, world literature, and popular music traditions. The volume positions Dylan's later work as a significant phase in his career and explores its literary, musical, and historical dimensions.

The Tree of Light and Flowers

"Jane Whitefield is used to protecting vulnerable people, but after she gives birth, the fugitives she must rescue are her own family. A violent car crash brings on the premature birth of the baby that Jane Whitefield and her husband have hoped for, but it also shatters the period of calm in their lives like an earthquake triggering a tectonic shift. Within weeks, Jane's peaceful time as a new mother in a safe, harmonious home starts to revert to her harrowing previous life. She had spent over a decade rescuing and sheltering people from dangerous foes, taking them to new locations, and teaching them to live under new identities. It was something that she'd hoped to never have to do again. Nearly simultaneously, as though the events were connected, people who are thousands of miles apart in vastly different circumstances start to move. Some of them are in terrible need of help finding a route to safety. Some are dedicated to serving justice. Others are determined to capture the woman who makes people disappear so they can force her to reveal where their potential victims are now. All of these travelers are soon on their way to the old house in western New York. Suddenly the people requiring Jane's special skills include not only multiple fugitives, but also Jane herself, her husband, and their newborn, as the danger she faces comes from people who know how to find her. She'll need to use everything she's ever learned in order to survive." -- Publisher's website

Still Life

"These 10 sharp yet deeply human stories show how people from all walks of life can end up on the wrong side of the law, regardless of their intentions. A compelling portrait of modern Sweden that speaks to universal questions about crime and morality, from the internationally bestselling author of Quicksand. A police officer fresh out of the academy becomes acutely aware of the deadly consequences of prejudice and how biases color our actions, leading us to justify faulty choices. A teenager has lost her voice and resorts to violence to get heard, even against those she loves. A university student breaks a law on a night of youthful revelry, which soon has fatal consequences that plunge those involved into an abyss of remorse. A mother commits the very same crime her son is being prosecuted for, in order to protect him. A man extends a helping hand in defiance of state restrictions, keeping a refugee safe from the harsh Swedish winter and deportation. With her unique and prominent voice in Swedish literature, Malin Persson Giolito sheds light on the lives of people at all levels of the society through these ten thought-provoking and emotionally charged stories. She delivers a poignant portrayal of societal failure, vividly illustrating that actions driven by good intentions may still be considered criminal in the eyes of the law, underscoring that the legal system doesn't always shield those who need protection the most"-- Provided by publisher

Son of Nobody

"The most famous stories of the Trojan War and its aftermath are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. But these were not the only tales of the war sung to ancient audiences by bards-there were others, now vanished but for echoes and fragments, collected in what has come to be known as the Epic Cycle. One such tale is the Psoad: an epic that follows the son of a goatherd, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight on the beaches of Troy. Psoas meets his doom, and the epic poem of his life is lost to time--until another man on a foreign shore, a Canadian academic studying at Oxford, discovers its relics thirty centuries later. A truly daring feat of imagination, SON OF NOBODY is a novel composed in two voices: the first, a series of fragments from antiquity that tell the story of Troy from a lost, alt-Homeric tradition; the second, the voice of a modern-day scholar, Harlow Donne, who assembles and comments on these fragments while navigating a conflict of his own. Obsessed with his discovery, Donne still can't seem to let go of his family's past--he weaves together the tale of uncovering ancient papyri, faded codices, and broken cuneiform tablets with memories of his daughter as a child and his wife before their separation. Donne translates and writes in the heartfelt modes of Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Ares, god of war, as the parallel stories offer a poignant glimpse into both the follies of failed relationships and of battle. SON OF NOBODY upends the regal perspective of traditional epics, and by grappling with questions of ambition, family, and responsibility in both the ancient and the modern worlds, it shows 'that the past is never done with, that always there are parallels and returns and repetitions, always the song continues."-- Provided by publisher

Paradiso 17

"The intimate, sweeping tale of one man's restless search for home the world over, as the pendulum of fate swings between loss and life, grief and euphoria, regret and hope. All his life, exile has been the shadow stitched to the sole of Sufien's shoe. Born in Palestine on the precipice of 1948's Nakba, Sufien is forced to leave the only home he's ever known, the one on the hill with a beautiful blue door. This is the precise moment when time stops making sense. He spends the rest of his life propelled forward, always on the way-although in search of what, he is never quite sure. In the dusty, oil-rich desert of Kuwait, he meets his first love and decides he must leave his family. In a small Italian university town, he spends his youth wrapped up in the sweet promise of the West and the forgetful assurance of wine. When life takes him to a gritty New York, he discovers his true vocation and falls for a Jewish woman born into a wholly different world. Finally, he finds himself recalled to the wild, vast open skies of the desert, in Arizona. Sufien's life spans friendships lost and maintained, a stint selling leathers at a tanner's stall, the ineffable company of cats, and the freedom of the open road, the glowing pride of fatherhood, Sufi myths, prophetic dreams, and visions of the afterlife-and always, always, no matter how far he chases joy, the sweet, treacherous song of a balcony urging him to fly, to fall, to fall. The lyrical pages of Paradiso 17 weave in and out of time and space, beginning at the end and ending at the beginning. They are haunting, haunted with grief, struck through, as Dante once wrote, with "the arrow that the bow of exile / shoots first," and yet they throb with light-not just the light that Sufien sees as he approaches his own end, but the brilliant light of a life lived. Like all of our dead, Sufien still tries to speak, the book begins. Listen, this is his story." -- Provided by publisher

Night Night Fawn

"In a cluttered rent-controlled apartment in the middle of Manhattan, Barbara Rosenberg - old world yenta, committed homophobe, accomplished jazzercizer - is terminally ill, high on opioids, and writing the story of her life. Forget about her late husband, her career as the receptionist for an Upper East Side plastic surgeon, and her failed aspirations to be an actress. What she really wants to talk about are her unhinged thoughts on gender, Karl Marx, Jewish diaspora, and her two great disappointing loves: an estranged trans son and a long lost best friend whose betrayal haunts Barbara still. As she descends further into delirium and illness, Barbara's theories get wilder, and her circumstances put her on a crash course with these intimates once again." -- Provided by publisher

My Grandfather, the Master Detective

"He's not your average Grandpa. As a lover of classic crime stories, it's no surprise that schoolteacher Kaede encounters everyday mysteries more often than your typical twenty-seven-year-old. Solving them is another matter, though. For that, she turns to her beloved grandfather, who retains a keen sharpness of mind despite his dementia, and who was once a key member of The Waseda Mystery Club. From impossible locked room murders to confounding missing persons cases, the grandfather-granddaughter duo 'weave' stories to get to the bottom of every mystery. But all the while, an insidious shadow from Kaede's past slowly closes in on her . . . Steeped in references to classic crime from Christie to Chesterton to Poe, this Tokyo-set escapist mystery will capture your imagination." -- from dust jacket

Money beyond Borders

"Doubts about the international dominance of the dollar are only growing amid worries about tariffs, political dysfunction, and fraying international alliances. Will the dollar continue to reign supreme? In Money Beyond Borders, the leading authority on international currencies, Barry Eichengreen, puts the dollar's prospects in deep historical perspective by chronicling the entire history of cross-border currencies, from the invention of coins in the seventh century BCE to the cryptocurrencies of today and the central bank digital currencies of tomorrow. Money Beyond Borders recounts how Greek and Roman coins became the first true international currencies. It tells how the Florentine gold florin became the "greenback of the Renaissance," and how it was succeeded by Spanish silver and a Dutch fiat currency. The book explains why the British pound dominated the international economy in the nineteenth century, why the dollar rose to the top during World War II, and why the dollar has survived predictions of the imminent loss of its preeminence since the 1970s.The long history of international currencies shows that the same factors that encourage their widespread use eventually lead to their abandonment. Money Beyond Borders makes a powerful case that the dollar is now on the downside of this cycle, and it considers who the winners and losers will be when there is flight away from the greenback. Revealing important patterns in the life cycles of international currencies over the past 2,500 years, the book offers valuable lessons and insights about how currencies rise -- and why they fall." -- From publisher

Metropolitans

A love letter to a franchise and a thrilling study of New York City, Metropolitans traces the electric and calamitous history of the New York Mets. Metropolitans is for Mets fans, New York partisans, and everyone interested in the Mobius strip dynamic of sports and politics, the history of the national game, or the beautiful contradiction of baseball itself: a middle-class game owned by billionaires, in which the players--like the spectators--look to traverse the diamond and ultimately safely escape its many dangers. Along the way, A.M. Gittlitz re-introduces us to an eccentric cast of Metsian characters: Joan Payson, the first woman to buy a Major League Baseball team; a young Tom Seaver with an interest in progressive politics; and the contentious but beloved Mike Piazza. Gittlitz leads us through baseball's amateur beginnings to the Mets' first heady World Series on the heels of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements that many Mets players participated in. He guides us to the bad boy years, the exploitative development of farm academies in developing nations, and their inglorious purchase by a new breed of capitalist-- even after which they remained lovable losers. Metropolitans brilliantly shows us that sports have long been a site of political struggle, rousing class consciousness, and animating fights for racial equality. From purportedly calming riots in '69 to producing some of the greatest chokes in sporting history, from integration to desperate labor struggle against franchise owners, Metropolitans makes a deeply humane and convincing argument for the fascinating singularity of the New York Mets--and why they are not just the team of the counterculture, the freaks, and the losers, but the beloved team of anyone with a beating heart.

Lake Effect

"It's 1977 and an air of restlessness has settled on the residents of Cambridge Road in Rochester, New York, a place long fueled by the booming fortunes of Kodak and Xerox and, for some, the mores of the Catholic church. When Nina Larkin is given a copy of The Joy of Sex by her newly divorced friend, she can no longer dismiss the nearly nonexistent intimacy of her marriage. Just as her oldest child, Clara, is falling in love for the first time, Nina finds herself longing for the forbidden: a midlife awakening. An intoxicating fling with a prominent neighbor brings Nina a freedom she never thought possible-but also risks the reputations of both families and unravels Clara's world, just as she stands on the threshold of adulthood. Years later, Clara, now a successful food stylist in New York City, has never been able to move past the long-ago scandal. Drawn back home by the pull of a family wedding and wrestling with her own demons, she makes a pivotal decision that turns her life upside down. Written with Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's signature humor and insight, Lake Effect is a wise and probing look at love and desire, mothers and daughters, loss and grief, and what we owe the people we love most."-- Provided by publisher

Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!

"Global icon Liza Minnelli shares her inspiring story: stepping out from the long shadow of a mega-star mother and legendary film director father, fighting a lifetime battle with addiction, and emerging from it all to become a once-in-a-lifetime artist. Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! is the autobiography of EGOT icon Liza Minnelli. This fascinating, untold story reveals the intimate truth of the only child born to Hollywood legends Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland. For the first time, here is Liza up close: raw, strong, sexy, hilarious, and heartbreaking. Liza decided at the age of 16 that 'sympathy is my mother's business. I give people joy.' That veil of joy, however, masks a lifelong struggle with Substance Use Disorder ('SUD', which Liza inherited from her mother's branch of her family), boundless love to give and an equal need to receive it, broken marriages, multiple miscarriages, and hospitalizations--the highs and lows of unparalleled artistic success and lifelong friendships, as well as chronic anxiety and the threat of financial ruin. Despite every challenge, Liza's is a life wrapped in laughter and her tremendous capacity to give and receive love. Today at nearly 80, she opens her heart, mind, and memories, sharing secrets we never knew. Liza's book celebrates supreme artistry and, more importantly, her human rights activism. 'It's time to tell the truth,' Liza says, 'and help people heal, as I have, one day at a time.'"-- Provided by publisher

A Good Person

"An electric debut from a rising-star screenwriter about a millennial antihero who seeks revenge on her ex-situationship with a drunken hex, only for him to actually die the next day. Lillian and Henry have very much been enjoying each other's company the last few months, and quite frantically in bed. Even though Lillian's plain Jane of a best friend Jamie still frustratingly calls it "a situationship," she doesn't know anything. Lillian will lock Henry down--and she has a plan. Everyone knows you have to be strategic about these things. After all, it's clear Henry's hooked on her sexually deviant ways. So when Henry blindsides her with a breakup instead of the love declaration she told herself was on its way, Lillian exacts revenge by performing a drunken hex. There's a little wrinkle, though: Henry actually ends up dead the next morning, and Lillian becomes a prime suspect in his murder case. As the Boston police begin investigating Henry's death, Lillian quickly learns she wasn't the only woman in his life--and to cope with this reckoning, she plunges into a new obsession: stalking the long-term girlfriend Henry left behind. Desperate to control the narrative around her relationship with Henry, her season of mourning, and where she was the night he died, Lillian's chaotic pursuit for recognition (but only in all the right ways) takes her to ever darker places, and slowly she begins to uncover a reality she dearly wishes had stayed under wraps."-- Provided by publisher

Everybody's
Fly

"An electrifying memoir from a pioneering cultural icon whose fearless creativity reshaped the worlds of art, music, and style."-- Provided by publisher

Cave Mountain

In 2001, a six-year-old girl disappeared on Cave Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks, prompting one of the largest search-and-rescue efforts in the state's history. After she was found, her account of encountering an "imaginary friend" in the woods raised unsettling questions. More than two decades earlier, another young girl vanished in the same wilderness under circumstances involving a religious group, allegations of manipulation, violence, and apocalyptic beliefs. Blending investigative reporting with elements of memoir and regional history, Cave Mountain examines the connections between the two cases while exploring themes of faith and skepticism, memory, survival, and the cultural landscape of northern Arkansas

The Best Dog in the World

"Fourteen beloved authors celebrate the life-changing bond with their canine companions in this heartwarming essay collection..."-- Provided by publisher

A Bad, Bad Place

"If it hadn't been for her wee stupid dog Sid Vicious, 12-year-old Janey Devine might never have stumbled upon the corpse of Samantha Watson. And then maybe she'd still be able to sleep at night. And maybe her nana wouldn't be so worried sick all the time. And maybe Billy "The Ghost" Watson, a notorious gangster, wouldn't be on her tail--for it's Billy's daughter who was left for dead on those train tracks, and now Billy wants answers. Fear and gossip spread through the tight-knit community of Possilpark, Glasgow, and while Janey swears she can't remember the details of that morning, the cops think she's hiding something--and indeed, there's something she knows that she's not quite ready to tell anyone else, not even her nana, who won't rest until this whole thing is behind them." -- Provided by publisher