ODY New Books Collection

The Good Liar

"A year ago, a father and his fiancée were brutally murdered in their opulent London townhouse, sparking the most high-profile murder investigation in recent history. Blood spatter expert Doctor Claudia O'Sheil's evidence put the killer behind bars--or so everyone believes. But since the trial, Claudia's learned a horrific truth: her evidence and her testimony were wrong. And someone she knows made sure of it. Now, as she takes the stage to give a career-defining speech before London's elite, Claudia faces a devastating choice. Protect her children and her career with her continued complicity, or blow the whole conspiracy apart and reveal the truth: not only is the real murderer still out there, but they're in the audience. As Claudia steps toward the microphone, she revisits that fateful night. What really happened? And what will Claudia say?"-- Provided by publisher

Race against Terror

"When federal prosecutors Dave Bitkower and Shreve Ariail get the call from the FBI that the Italians have known terrorist Spin Ghul in custody, they immediately recognize the stakes of the situation. Determined to deliver justice for the soldiers killed in combat, they must traverse the globe, uncovering facts and evidence from thousands of miles away on a remote battlefield in Afghanistan. Through intense reporting and meticulous recreation, from the battlefield to the courthouse, [this book] tells the story of a man radicalized to enact violence, of the courageous soldiers who risked their lives for each other, and the diverse set of law enforcement, intelligence, and military personnel who work tirelessly to stay one step ahead of disaster."-- Provided by publisher

1929

"From the bestselling author of Too big to fail, "the definitive history of the 2008 banking crisis," comes a spellbinding narrative of the most infamous stock market crash in history. With the depth of a classic history and the drama of a thriller, 1929 unravels the greed, blind optimism, and human folly that led to an era-defining collapse-one with ripple effects that still shape our society today. In 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation. But behind the flashing ticker tapes and panicked traders, another drama unfolded-one of visionaries and fraudsters, titans and dreamers, euphoria and ruin. With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivete in an endless boom led to disaster. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today's world-where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again. This is not just a story about money. 1929 is a tale of power, psychology, and the seductive illusion that "this time is different." It's about disregarded alarm bells, financiers who fell from grace, and skeptics who saw the crash coming-only to be dismissed until it was too late. Hailed as a landmark book, Too Big to Fail reimagined how financial crises are told. Now, with 1929, Sorkin delivers an immersive, electrifying account of the most pivotal market collapse of all time-with lessons that remain as urgent as ever. More than just a history, 1929 is a crucial blueprint for understanding the cycles of speculation, the forces that drive financial upheaval, and the warning signs we ignore at our peril." -- Provided by publisher

When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...

"Common knowledge is necessary for coordination, for making arbitrary but complementary choices like driving on the right, using paper currency, and coalescing behind a political leader or movement. It's also necessary for social coordination: everything from rendezvousing at a time and place to speaking the same language to forming enduring relationships of friendship, romance, or authority. Humans have a sixth sense for common knowledge, and we create it with signals like laughter, tears, blushing, eye contact, and blunt speech. But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge -- to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can't know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room. Pinker shows how the hidden logic of common knowledge can make sense of many of life's enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretense of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. Artists and humorists have long mined the intrigues of common knowledge, and Pinker liberally uses their novels, jokes, cartoons, films, and sitcom dialogues to illuminate social life's tragedies and comedies. Along the way he answers questions like: Why do people hoard toilet paper at the first sign of an emergency? Why are Super Bowl ads filled with ads for crypto? Why, in American presidential primary voting, do citizens typically select the candidate they believe is preferred by others rather than their favorite? Why did Russian authorities arrest a protester who carried a blank sign? Why is it so hard for nervous lovers to say goodbye at the end of a phone call? Why does everyone agree that if we were completely honest all the time, life would be unbearable? Consistently riveting in explaining the paradoxes of human behavior, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows... invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other's heads and the harmonies, hypocrisies, and outrages that result." -- Dust jacket

The Wayfinder

The Wayfinder is a novel set in the Polynesian islands of the South Pacific during the height of the Tu'i Tonga Empire. At its heart is Korero, a young girl chosen to save her people from the brink of starvation. Her quest takes her from her remote island home on a daring seafaring journey across a vast ocean empire built on power, consumption, and bloodshed. Far from a conventional swashbuckling adventure, The Wayfinder weaves a narrative about survival, self-discovery, and the history of the Tongan people. In this monumental literary work, Adam Johnson explores themes of indigeneity, ecological balance, and the resilience of humanity in the face of scarcity.

The Waterbearers

"A sharp, tender, sweeping history of three single Black mothers-the author's grandmother, mother, and the author herself-interwoven with the stories of the Black women they saw on the screen and heard on the radio every day. Here is a masterpiece of life writing by a thrilling new voice, a writer who will remake how we think of generations. We begin in a house along a bayou in Texas, a home bought and paid for-and run-by the author's grandmother. Betty Jean spent twenty summers in the swamplands of Louisiana as a cotton tenant farmer before going north to Texas in the Great Migration. It was there that she would raise her eleven children, most by different fathers whom she rarely kept around. "If she tended the land and the laundry," Bonét writes, "what were the uses of a man?" Mama Connie, one of those eleven, grew up under her mother's controlling hand and struggled to forgive, vowing that her life would be different. But when it came to having children of her own, she was more like Betty Jean than she cared to admit. She made her home just a few blocks away, and received the same nickname as her mother, the "Black Widow." And, like her mother before her, Connie's sweat was the founding salt of her own universe. Today, Sasha Bonét, like each woman before her, wrangles with the pull of her mother's orbit, the austerity and love from which it came. She is the first in her family to look to the past in order to radically reimagine her future, and the future of her daughter. In fostering a community of motherhood, Bonét interrogates all aspects of being a mother-escape and promise, burden, assent, and rebellion-not just for those who came before her, but for those Black women with whom society is acquainted, too: Nina Simone; Oprah Winfrey; Audre Lorde, and Darnella Fraiser, who filmed the murder of George Floyd and mobilized the world"-- Provided by publisher

Water Mirror Echo

"More than a half-century after his passing, Bruce Lee is as towering a figure to people around the world as ever. On his path to becoming a global icon, he popularized martial arts in the West, became a bridge to people and cultures from the East, and just as he was set to conquer Hollywood once and for all, he died of cerebral edema at age thirty-two. It's no wonder that Bruce Lee's legend has only bloomed in the decades since. Yet, in so many ways, his legend has eclipsed the man. Forgotten is the stark reality of the baby boy born in segregated San Francisco, who spent his youth in war-ravaged, fight-crazy Hong Kong. Forgotten is the curious teenager who found his way back to America, where he embraced West Coast counterculture and meshed it with the Asian worldviews and philosophies that reared him. Forgotten is the man whose very presence broke barriers and helped shape the idea of what being an Asian in America is, at the very dawn of Asian America. Water Mirror Echo-a title inspired by Bruce Lee's own way of moving, being and responding to the world-is a page-turning and powerful reminder. At the helm is Jeff Chang, the award-winning author of Can't Stop Won't Stop, whose writing on culture, politics, the arts and music have made him one of the most acclaimed and distinctive voices of our time. In his hands, Bruce Lee's story brims with authenticity. Now, based on in-depth interviews with Lee's closest intimates, thousands of newly available personal documents, and featuring dozens of unseen photographs from the family's archive, Chang does the nearly impossible. He reveals the man behind the enduring iconography and stirringly shows Lee's growing fame ushering in something that's turned out to be even more enduring: the creation of Asian America."-- Provided by publisher

Venetian Vespers

Everything was a puzzle, everything a trap set to mystify and hinder me. 1899. As the new century approaches, English hack-writer Evelyn Dolman marries Laura Rensselaer, the daughter of a wealthy American plutocrat. But in the midst of a mysterious rift between Laura and her father, Evelyn's plans of a substantial inheritance are thrown into doubt. As the unhappy newlyweds travel to Venice at Palazzo Dioscuri--the ancestral home of the charming but treacherous Count Barbarigo--a series of seemingly otherworldly occurrences exacerbate Evelyn's already frayed nerves: is it just the sea mist blanketing the floating city or is he losing his mind?

True Nature

"Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), a visionary writer and thinker, was a person of myriad contradictions. After his teenage demand that his name be removed from the Social Register, Matthiessen nonetheless attended Yale and cut his teeth in postwar Paris, working for the CIA and founding the now famous literary magazine The Paris Review with George Plimpton; he then made his living as a fisherman on Long Island while becoming a writer, whose promising early fiction (garnering him invitations to drinks with top New York editors) soon existed alongside such works as his now-classic Wildlife in America (1959), arguably the first significant 'environmental writing,' before that movement and category even existed (with its damning of white colonizers, too, before that was the norm). His pursuit of spiritual and cultural understandings took him to the far-flung and diverse horizons, from his famous 'Snow Leopard' journey in the Himalayas to his travels with biologists in the Serengeti, his canoeing through rapids in the Amazon in search of a Miocene-epoch fossil, his embedding with the Hadza people in Tanzania, his lifelong battle to get justice for the wrongly accused Native American prisoner Leonard Peltier. Meanwhile, Matthiessen, a sensitive champion of people's rights, was a philanderer and an inattentive father; he was an ever unsatisfied seeker yet a devoted practitioner and teacher of Zen. Episodes in this amazing life are given page-turning immediacy by the brilliant Lance Richardson, who reveals throughout the ways that Matthiessen's uncanny gifts and drive toward his subject matter allowed him to discover deeper connections between ecological decline, racism, and labor exploitation, between the Vietnam war and political corruption-to see clearly, so far ahead of his time and ours, that 'in a damaged human habitat, all problems merge.'"-- Provided by publisher

Powerfully Likeable

"Women the world over struggle to find a comfortable way to communicate with authority but yet still be liked by a crowd. We grapple with being ambitious without seeming strident, giving direction without being too assertive, and holding our ground without upsetting the peace. We strategize before meetings, second-guess in bathroom stalls, text outfit options to our best friends, and try to anticipate every possible variable of our performance. This tricky business is what world champion debater and executive coach, Kate Mason, calls "communicating while female" and frankly, it seems like it's impossible to get it right. Until now. In Powerfully Likeable, Mason explains that being influential and well-liked is not an either/or proposition. Furthermore, she shows that to have it both ways, women don't have to imitate what men do; gaining respect doesn't mean having the loudest voice in the room or the firmest handshake. Instead, the key is to choose communication tools that amplify what makes you unique-whether that be warmth, humor, competitiveness, or a love of data-and wield your power from a place of authenticity. From personal presentation style and negotiation to handling adversarial conversations and becoming your own best advocate, Mason offers a game-changing toolkit of strategies to choose from and make your own, including: Scripts for owning your accomplishments instead of downplaying them and defending your ideas without being defensive. How to use clear logic, evidence, and debate strategies to ask and answer clear questions without appearing 'difficult.' Tips for overcoming "Imposing Syndrome"-the disease of playing small and not taking up space-and channeling warmth as an alternative to deference in conversation. How to regulate your body language, voice, and your words to find your true communicative power. A paradigm-shifting guide to dismantling and thinking beyond communication stereotypes, Powerfully Likeable will help you unleash your creative power and energy and embark on a journey of success on your own terms." -- Provided by publisher

Nobody's
Girl

"The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words--until now. In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody's Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity. Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell's grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of Nobody's Girl preserve her voice--and her legacy--forever." -- Provided by publisher

Mothers

"When the kidnapping of a little girl shocks the Mexican capital, the lives of two very different women become forever intertwined. Gloria Felipe lives a comfortable upper-class life with her husband and five children. Nuria Valencia comes from a working-class background and has been desperately trying to get pregnant in order to save her marriage. After traditional methods produce no results, she subjects herself to horrific fertility treatments designed and administered by men, and ultimately tries to adopt but is rejected on the basis that a woman in her early thirties is too old to adopt a baby. Failed time and again by the system and about to lose hope, she is presented with an opportunity that seems almost too good to be true. Through the eyes of a wry unnamed narrator, we witness the battle of the Felipe family to recover their youngest member and the anguished attempts of the Valencia family to save their daughter from potential danger." -- Provided by publisher

The Means of Prediction

"An eye-opening examination of how power-not technology-will define life with AI. AI is inescapable, from its mundane uses online to its increasingly consequential decision-making in courtrooms, employment interviews, and wars. The ubiquity of AI is so great that it's even produced public resignation-a sense that the technology is our shared fate. As economist Maximilian Kasy shows in The Means of Prediction, artificial intelligence, far from being an unstoppable force, is irrevocably shaped by human decisions-choices made to date by the ownership class steering its development and deployment. Kasy shows that the technology of AI is not complex. It is insidious, however, in its capacity to steer results to its owners' wants and ends. Kasy clearly and accessibly explains the fundamental principles on which AI works, and in doing so, reveals that the real conflict isn't between humans and machines, but between those who control the machines and the rest of us. The Means of Prediction offers a powerful vision of the future of AI: a future not shaped by technology, but by the technology's owners. Amid a deluge of debates about technical details, new possibilities, and social problems, Kasy cuts to the core issue: who controls AI's objectives, and how is this control maintained? The answer lies in what he calls "the means of prediction," or the essential resources required for building AI systems: data, computing power, expertise, and energy. As Kasy shows, in a world already defined by inequality, one of humanity's most consequential technologies in centuries has been and will be steered by those already in power. Against those stakes, Kasy offers an elegant framework both for understanding AI's capabilities and for designing its public control. He makes a compelling case for democratic control over AI objectives as the answer to mounting concerns about AI's risks and harms. The Means of Prediction is a revelation, both an expert undressing of a technology that has masqueraded as more complicated and a compelling call for public oversight of this transformative technology"-- Provided by publisher

The Harlem Book of the Dead

James Van Der Zee was an African-American photographer who specialized in funerals. This book includes many of his photographs, with his comments. The text, by Camille Billops, is primarily an interview with the artist at the age of 91. Includes poetry by Owen Dodson inspired by some of the photos.

Guilty by Definition

"When an anonymous letter is delivered to the Clarendon English Dictionary, it puzzles the team of lexicographers working there. It soon becomes clear that this is not the usual eccentric enquiry. The letter hints at secrets, lies, and a particular year. For Martha Thornhill, the new Senior Editor, the date can mean only one the summer her brilliant, beautiful older sister Charlie went missing. After a decade spent living abroad, Martha has returned to her father, her home, and the city whose institutions have defined her family. But the ghosts she had thought to be at rest seem to have been waiting for her to return. When more letters arrive and the team pulls apart the clues within them, the questions become more insistent and troubling. Charlie had been keeping a powerful secret, but as the mystery of her disappearance starts to unravel, someone is trying to lead the lexicographers to the truth, while another is desperate to keep it buried." -- Provided by publisher

A Guardian and a Thief

In a near-future Kolkata ravaged by floods and decay, Ma is preparing to leave for a new life in America with her young daughter, Mishti, and her aging father, Dadu. Their visas and passports finally secured, they're just days away from joining Ma's husband in Michigan-- until Ma's purse, holding all their precious documents, is stolen. The theft shatters their hopes and alters their lives forever. The story unfolds from two perspectives: Ma's desperate struggle to recover what's lost and Boomba's, the impoverished thief whose act of survival sets tragedy in motion. Through their intertwined fates, Megha Majumdar delivers a powerful and compassionate portrait of love, loss, and endurance amid poverty and corruption in a world on the brink of collapse.

Goliath's
Curse

A vast and unprecedented survey of societal collapse -- stretching from the Bronze Age to the age of silicon -- that digs through the ruins of fallen societies to understand the root causes of their downfall and the most dire consequences for our future. Stepping back to look at our precariously interdependent global society of today -- with the threat of nuclear war ever present and the world heating up faster than it did before the Great Permian Extinction, which wiped away 80-90 percent of life on Earth -- one couldn't be blamed for asking : Will we make it? Addressing this question with the seriousness it demands, Cambridge scholar Luke Kemp conducts a historical autopsy that stretches across five millennia, and more than 440 societal lifespans, from the first Egyptian dynasty to the modern-day United Kingdom, using the latest discoveries from archaeology and anthropology to reveal profound and often counterintuitive insights into why exactly societies fail. While books like Jared Diamond's Collapse zoom in on only a few case studies, Kemp's embrace of a 'deep systems' approach, availing himself of the largest dataset possible, allows him to discover the broader trends, and deeper causes, of collapse that pose future risks -- without abandoning the gripping historical narratives that bring these pages alive. Goliath's Curse is a stark reminder that there are both bright and dark sides to societal collapse -- that it is not necessarily a reversion to chaos or a dark age -- and that making a more resilient world may well mean making a more just one.

Furious Minds

"Donald Trump is not a big thinker, but his 2016 presidential victory presented a grand opportunity for people who are, and it set off a radicalization and reconfiguration of the American conservative intellectual world. In Furious Minds, Laura Field, who spent close to a decade in conservative academic circles, chronicles the rise of the New Right--the network of academics, public intellectuals, and influencers who provide ideological fuel to Trumpism. This movement includes figures such as Patrick Deneen, Christopher Rufo, Peter Thiel, and JD Vance. Their agenda is built to last, and it has dire long-term implications for liberal democracy. The New Right has precedents in American history, but it is distinct for its youthfulness, misogyny, and extraordinary successes--most notably the elevation of Vance to the vice presidency. The movement--which draws together associates of the right-wing Claremont Institute, National Conservatives, Postliberals, and the Hard Right--advocates nationalist economics, tight borders, isolationism, and reactionary social values. It helped to strategize January 6th and created Project 2025. But above all, the New Right is engaged in a vast culture war against modern liberal pluralism. It is determined to harness state power and use it in new, illiberal ways, from college campuses to the international scene--all driven by the fantasy of restoring a pure America." -- Publisher description

All the Cool Girls Get Fired

"Turn losing your job into an epic comeback with this unfiltered, comprehensive, GPS guide to rebuilding your career on your terms. So, you got fired, laid off, restructured, canned. Welcome to the club, baby! In today's seismically changing job market, getting fired doesn't automatically mean you failed; it's a rite of passage. With their decades of experience in high-stakes leadership roles, Laura Brown and Kristina O'Neill know firsthand the challenges-and thrilling opportunities-that come with losing a job, no matter where you are in your career. They've been through the shock, grief, anger, and confusion, and they're here to help you navigate the experience. All the Cool Girls Get Fired is both a roadmap and a mindset shift-a pragmatic, empowering and humorous way to make lemonade from lemons. With candor, humor, actionable advice, and exclusive "I've been there," interviews from inspirational women, All the Cool Girls Get Fired challenges outdated corner office perceptions of career success. From coping mechanisms and self-care practices to networking strategies and reinvention techniques, the book is a comprehensive GPS to navigate the path of career recovery and bounce back with more professional mojo than ever." -- ONIX annotation

The Book of I

"The year is 825 CE. In the aftermath of a vicious attack by raiders from the north, an unlikely trio finds themselves the lone survivors on a remote Scottish isle. Still breathing are young Brother Martin, the only resident of the local monastery to escape martyrdom; Una, a beekeeper and mead maker who has been relieved of her violent husband during the slaughter; and Grimur, an aging Norseman who claws his way out of the hasty grave his fellow raiders left him in, thinking him dead. As the seasons pass in this wild and lonely setting, their inherent distrust of each other melts into a complex meditation on the distances and bonds between them." -- Provided by publisher