ODY New Books Collection

Seek the Traitor's
Son

Elegy Ahn did not ask for destiny to find her. She is happy with her life as a soldier, defending her small country from the Talusar, a powerful nation that worships a deadly Fever. A fever that blesses half of its victims with mysterious gifts. But then Elegy is summoned to hear a prophecy--her, and the most ruthless of Talusar generals, Rava Vidar. Brought face to face, they learn that one of them will lead their people to victory over the other ... but they don't know which. And at the center of both of their fates: a man. A man who, Elegy is told, she will fall in love with. In just one day, Elegy's old life--her job, her purpose, and her future--is over. She and Rava are destined to collide, with the fate of their nations hanging in the balance. And when they do, only one will be left standing. Elegy intends to make sure it's her.-- Front book flap

Riverwork

"A lost river, a lost aunt, a found literary life: from the cult-favourite poet and author of The Baudelaire Fractal comes a glittering and erudite new novel of Paris. Some ruins are invisible. Under the pavements of Paris there lies buried an ancient river, the Bièvre. For years, Lucy Frost has walked along these streets, unaware of the water and history under her feet, on her way to clean the apartments of Paris's academic class. As she begins to study and transcribe the inherited notebooks and papers of her great-aunt, a teacher and researcher who disappeared years earlier, she commits to continuing her aunt's youthful research on the Bièvre, mining the river's documentary traces in the works of Rousseau, Rabelais, Hugo, Chateaubriand, and the like. She uncovers a history of industry: paper mills, dyeing workshops, tanneries, and textile manufacturers - and laundries. She finds resonances of her own labour in the history of the river's laundresses. On stolen time at work, and in her insomniac hours of nightwriting, she fills notebooks with these woven stories and descriptions of obsolete sites, textiles, cosmologies, and voices, constructing her own forms of relation with the lost. Riverwork unearths not just an urban river but also a philosophy of research and the archive, a politics of hydrology, an ontology of ageing and belatedness, and a consideration of the unrepresented labour of women, past and present. Along the way it brings to life, in pyrotechnic prose, a long-gone Paris and both its domestic workers and its writers."-- Provided by publisher

RFK Jr.

"A revelatory portrait of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chronicling his battles with addiction and his astonishing journey from entitled scion to environmental activist to a prominent member of the president's cabinet, based on RFK Jr.'s secret journals and the author's interviews with dozens of sources close to him."-- Provided by publisher

Rasputin Swims the Potomac

Reporter Clarence Thomas Jr. is looking for a great story, former country music teen star Faith Spack has parlayed her fame into a job at the White House, and the two-term incumbent president is campaigning for a constitutionally dubious third term. After an outbreak at a campaign rally, a mysterious new pandemic of "weeping sickness" sweeps the nation, threatening the president's hold on the Oval Office. Desperate to retain power, he enlists the mystical pro wrestler Rasputin to help ensure his reelection and guarantee additional seasons of his presidential reality TV show, The Real West Wing. But as Rasputin's appeal threatens to exceed the president's, and the wrestler's supposedly supernatural powers start to seem like the real thing, the campaign finds itself trapped in a spandex-clad destiny no number of executive orders can control, one in which both Clarence and Faith are compelled to play increasingly large parts. Hilarious, compelling, and tragically relevant, Rasputin Swims the Potomac is both an escape and a warning, a scathing satire that explores the twists and turns of American democracy as it hurtles toward authoritarianism.

Radical Duke

When Danielle Allen unearthed a parchment of the Declaration of Independence buried away in Sussex, England, little did she know that she had discovered a story of historical magnitude that would alter our understanding of British and American history. Revealing that the Age of Revolution began earlier than we thought--not with the Boston patriots nor with the Parisian Jacobins, but in Britain itself--Allen demonstrates in Radical Duke that the rights of man, the theory of revolution, and calls for popular sovereignty all emerged from the radical energies of London before they spread across the Atlantic and the Channel. At the center of this new age was Charles Lennox, the progressive Third Duke of Richmond, a rarely cited historical figure who becomes the biographical focus of Allen's groundbreaking work. Even with royal blood coursing through his veins, the handsome, gallivanting Duke (1735-1806) preferred to rub shoulders with ordinary folk--supporting the rights of jurors, freedom of the press, and religious toleration. As Allen shows, from 1767 to 1782, he was England's leading voice of opposition to the Crown, and, as the leader of the Sussex militia, even a threat to the King's power. But the Duke did not challenge the Crown alone. The archives have long hidden the covert alliance between the young Duke and his age-mate Thomas Paine, the future author of Common Sense. While working as an obscure tax collector, Paine was engaged by the Duke to contribute to the most influential but anonymous newspaper essays of the age, The Letters of Junius, which spawned sedition trials, defined the rights of man, and brought England to the brink of revolution. Along with a small cadre of radicals, Paine and the Duke fired hearts across two continents and secretly stoked a burgeoning political movement. Throughout Radical Duke, Allen sets the record straight. Through archival evidence, confirmed with computational tools, she reveals the anonymous authors of the inflammatory Junius letters; she also identifies a new Paine work, his first book, The Juryman's Touchstone, cowritten in 1771. In the end, the Duke swerved. He did not advocate the overthrow of the monarchy but remained loyal to both Crown and people, launching an age of reform. With her penetrating prose, Allen resuscitates a seminal political figure who has been egregiously neglected throughout history.

Prestige Drama

"In Derry, the locals are already in a twist about the arrival of Hollywood actress Monica Logue to research her role for a show about the Troubles--and then she goes missing. Everyone has a story to tell--about Monica's possible whereabouts, and about the historic events that brought her here in the first place: the show's screenwriter, desperate for this last shot at success; the grieving mother whose story he's adapting; the ex-IRA member who knows the price of survival; the local psychic who's seen too much... Prestige Drama brings to life a chorus of characters as they locate themselves in Monica's disappearance, and in the truth about their own history."-- Front cover flap

Polar War

Russian spies. Nuclear submarines. Sabotaged pipelines. Undersea communications severed in the dark of night. The fastest-warming place on earth--where apartment buildings, hospitals, and homes crumble daily as permafrost melts and villages get washed away by rising seas--the Arctic stands at the crossroads of geopolitical ambition and environmental catastrophe. As climate change thaws the northern latitudes, opening once ice-bound shipping lanes and access to natural resources, the world's military powers are rushing to stake their claims in this increasingly strategic region. We've entered a new cold war--and every day it grows hotter. In Polar War, Kenneth R. Rosen takes readers on an extraordinary journey across the changing face of the far north. Through intimate portraits of scientists, soldiers, and Indigenous community leaders representing the interests of twenty-one countries across four continents, he witnesses firsthand how rising temperatures and growing tensions are reshaping life above and below the Arctic Circle. He finds himself on the trail of Navy SEALs training for arctic warfare, embarks on Coast Guard patrols monitoring Russian incursions, participates in close-quarter-combat training aboard foreign icebreakers in the Arctic sea ice, and visits remote research stations where international cooperation is giving way to espionage and the search for long-frozen biological weapons. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and three years of reporting from the frontlines of climate change and great power competition, Rosen blends incisive analysis with the vivid immediacy of a travelogue. His deeply researched and personal accounts capture the diverse landscapes, people, and conflicted interests that define this complex northern region. The result is both an elegy for a vanishing landscape and an urgent warning about how the race for Arctic dominance could spark the next global conflict.

Poking the Squid

"The secret sex lives of animals are not so secret anymore, thanks to this brilliant, punchy illustrated guide to how the other 99.99% get it on. In delightful watercolor comics of pregnant seahorse dads, spider oral sex, and the four-headed echidna penis, Perrin Roosevelt Ireland takes us on a wild biodiversity ride through queerness, infidelity, consent, divorce, sex change, and even sexual cannibalism in the animal world. Poking the Squid illustrates the splendid diversity of nature's eroticism. For too long, science has prudishly obscured the wildly creative kinkiness of animal sexual behavior. But Poking the Squid celebrates how assumptions about sex are shifting. Ireland interviews researchers probing the leading edge of animal reproductive biology and, with the help of her cats Ursula and Pudge, brings readers along as she learns the latest discoveries that implode traditional notions of sex roles, relationships, and just who is mounting whom. These researchers are making dolphin vaginal popsicles, retrieving sperm packets from male squid mouths, and documenting dolphin orgies. From the externalized clitoris of the spotted hyena to mating-by-fusion in anglerfish, Poking the Squid draws on decades of feminist and queer theory to show that sexual diversity is biodiversity, and boisterous boinking is only natural. Ireland reminds us that we humans, from habitat destruction to climate change, impact all of animal life, including their private lives. Yet Earth's sexual ecosystem is filled with joy, resilience, and vitality--a balm to climate grief and a reason to protect all forms of nature's pleasure. And by illuminating and celebrating animal diversity, Poking the Squid invites us to embrace our own." -- Provided by publisher

One State under God

"One State Under God is the first broad, synthetic history of religion in Texas, a critical narrative that weaves together the many strands of religion in the state. This story begins with prehistoric Texans, and moves on to tell the intertwined religious histories of Comanche warriors, Spanish invaders, irreligious Anglo colonists, slaves, slaveholders, freethinking frontiersmen, prohibitionists, agrarian insurgents, Latino farmworkers, and Muslim immigrants, as well as the equally colorful and attention-grabbing fundamentalists and religious politicians that the state has become known for. Religion dominates the landscape (literally, in the form of giant crosses) of Texas, shapes culture, and determines state politics. While recent history gives the impression that Texas was naturally and inevitably a religious state, Locke argues that it was not always so, from the struggles of isolated Catholic parishes in New Spain, to the prohibition of Protestant churches, to the popularity of free thought amongst newly arrived immigrants." -- Provided by publisher

On Eating

"As a girl, I ate like a king. So begins beloved author, journalist, and influencer Alicia Kennedy's captivating new book. On Eating is more than a memoir; in true Alicia Kennedy style, it is also on desire, on the roles of women "in the kitchen," on domesticity, on diaspora, on foodways and food sovereignty, on home and how we find home through food, on how food can help us bring us back to those we love. Beautifully rooted in place-from Long Island (on oysters, on martinis) to San Juan (on plantains, on sugar), On Eating is not only a provocative bildungsroman and a celebration of appetite, it also challenges each of us to consider our own relationship with food, and how our need to eat-to live-impacts the world. Ultimately, On Eating is a paean to food and those who grow and cook it, asking the urgent questions in our world today about what and how we eat." -- Provided by publisher

My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein

"In contemporary Paris, a narrator and two companions explore the life and work of Gertrude Stein: a subversive imagining of a truly subversive female artist."-- Provided by publisher

My World Is Melting

"Norwegian journalist Line Nagell Ylvisåker lives with her family in Longyearbyen, the world?s most northerly town. The settlement is in Svalbard, an archipelago in a region where temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on the planet. In 2015, a devastating avalanche struck the town center, claiming the lives of a young girl and a father. The following autumn brought rain and landslides. When winter arrived, a second avalanche smashed into yet more of Longyearbyen?s homes. The recurring storms and mild weather begin to make Line feel worried. What is happening to her town and to the Arctic? In search of answers, she talks to a meteorologist who was herself buried in the first avalanche. She visits a trapper who has spent 40 inhospitable winters in Svalbard. She follows the sea currents and weather systems; hunts for the fossils of Svalbard's ancient forests; and encounters three polar bears while out hiking with her children. Along the way, she records the changes Longyearbyen has been through and reflects on the paradoxes of a town built on coal mining and tourism." -- Author's website

Mutiny

"The story of a disillusioned generation that set out to reclaim its dignity and take on corporate America. In recent years, young college grads have faced an alarming reality: crushing debt, unemployment, and jobs below their qualifications. They are frustrated that the time and money they invested in a degree have failed to bring about the opportunities they were promised. The anger of this college-educated working class began to boil over during the Covid pandemic, when workers at companies like Apple and Starbucks shocked corporate America by voting to unionize. Not long after, the veteran New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber met Chaya Barrett, an astute college grad and eight-year Apple employee who had helped organize her coworkers at an Apple store near Baltimore. While following Barrett and her cohort as their seemingly spontaneous rebellions spread far and wide--from college-educated workers at Apple stores and Starbucks cafés, through video-game studios, and even to Hollywood writers' rooms--Scheiber realized he was witnessing something deep and lasting. Mutiny is the revelatory account of a generation made confident by their historic educational achievements, only to become disillusioned when their degrees yielded far less than they were taught to expect. With striking empathy, Scheiber paints a vivid portrait of this new working class while telling the dramatic story of its revolt against the status quo. He describes how recent developments like the proliferation of artificial intelligence and the war in Gaza have further fueled its discontent, and he explains why the college-educated working class will continue to demand change in the workplace, in cities like New York, and in national politics for years to come." -- Provided by publisher

Men like Ours

"From brilliant new voice in fiction Bindu Bansinath, a darkly funny and moving story about death, life, and community in a South Asian suburban enclave of New Jersey. When Matthew Pillai is found dead, slumped over the wheel of his BMW, the women of Willow Road are roped into the investigation of their friend's death. At the center of the case are the Sharmas -- Anita, a widow whose husband introduced Matthew to the neighborhood, and her boundary-pushing daughter, Leila, who called him Uncle. To Anita, who has been in freefall since her arrival in America as a young woman, Matthew's presence offered hope, including a promise of betterment for Leila. The truth, however, is far stranger. In this darkly funny debut, the women of Willow Road find that despite their internecine quarrels, casual backstabbing, and generational feuds, in the end, there is no one to turn to but each other." -- Provided by publisher

The Lost Soldiers

"Fresh from the case of the stolen heart, one that shattered his belief in the regime he works for, Samson Kolechko is confronted by a new mystery that borders on the impossible. A troop of Red Army soldiers has disappeared without a trace while visiting a banya, a traditional Ukrainian bathhouse, in the heart of Kyiv. Their abandoned boots and uniforms are the only proof that they ever existed. Faced with such a fantastical conundrum, Samson must resort to a fantastical investigation method: stitching his operative severed ear into a bathhouse worker's jacket, he is able to eavesdrop on his every move. But he discovers far more than he bargained for, further complicating matters when he uncovers human remains in the stoves and the presence of a sinister religious cult in the city. With his quick-witted new wife Nadezhda at his side, Samson must not only solve the case but navigate the political turmoil that still grips Kyiv as civil war looms and trust between neighbors and comrades is eroded day by day. In this third volume, Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine's greatest living novelist, and a true master of absurd storytelling, vividly depicts a city filled with political turbulence and eccentric characters--and draws playful parallels with the present day."-- Provided by publisher

Look What You Made Me Do

"'Every successful marriage has its own private language.' So it is for baby boomer Kate and her beloved architect husband Jack, thirty years into their seemingly idyllic metropolitan North London life. And so it is for spiky millennial screenwriter Phoebe and her charming loafer of a partner, Tony. But when Phoebe's steamy television series Cheating becomes the year's most talked-about show, Kate thinks she sees in it details and intimacies of her marriage that only she and her husband could possibly have known. Who has betrayed whom? Who has stolen whose story--and why? A black comedy of love, trust, resentment, and entitlement, Look What You Made Me Do is the sharply observed and suspenseful story of two very different women from two very different generations, entangled in a battle only one of them can win."-- Amazon.com

Last Seen

"Seven years ago, two boys went missing in the ocean-and only one was brought to shore. The sandbank, an isolated peninsula dotted with beach huts, was scarred forever. Sarah's son survived all those years ago. But on the anniversary of the accident, he disappears without trace. As new secrets begin to surface, the sandbank hums with tension and unanswered questions. Sarah's search grows more desperate and she starts to mistrust everyone she knows-and she's right to. In this summer community where everyone knows each other, someone saw everything on that fateful day seven years ago. And they'll do anything to keep the truth buried." -- Provided by publisher

The Last Movement

An intimate portrait of genius, love, and betrayal at the end of Gustav Mahler's life. In the spring of 1910, Gustav Mahler--wrapped in a wool blanket--sits on the deck of the Amerika, sailing back to Europe. The ocean around him is gray and endless, the air sharp with wind and steel. Not yet fifty, Mahler is already a legend: in Vienna and New York, audiences fight for tickets to see the restless, small man who commands the most stubborn orchestra in the world. Yet his fame is shadowed by illness. His body is failing, his wife Alma has fallen in love with another man: the young architect Walter Gropius. Mahler has begged, humiliated himself, tried everything to keep her. Nothing worked, except the certainty of his approaching death. Alma has stayed, tending to him with care, perhaps to ease his final passage. On board, Mahler reflects on life, art, and above all, love. Finalist for the Deutscher Buchpreis and one of the most acclaimed German novels of recent years, Robert Seethaler's The Last Movement is a haunting, tender portrait of a great artist confronting his farewell to life.

The Last Contract of Isako

"Isako is a legendary swordswoman, but every legend must come to an end. When her long-time client unexpectedly retires, she plans to follow--to walk out into the frozen wasteland of their planet with her family enriched by her death. But when she's offered a final mission, she can't refuse, especially when she realizes who lies at the center of it all: Martim, her last--and worst--apprentice, who's somehow made his way to the top. As she's thrust into a world of corporate espionage and shadowy secrets, what she uncovers could forever change humanity's existence among the stars."-- Provided by publisher

Lady C

"D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is one of the best-known and most resonant works of the twentieth century. Originally considered obscene and unpublishable in numerous countries, its scandalous story of class divide and the English countryside is infamous. But, since the 1920s, we have repeatedly re-created Lady Chatterley, from film and TV to music and tourism. Guy Cuthbertson tells the colorful story of the novel's journey through the last hundred years. He examines how the book has been read, adapted, and reimagined across the globe, from the United States to Japan, and explores the 1960 'Chatterley trial'--a key moment in the struggle for freedom of expression. It might have been burnt and derided, laughed at and defaced, but Lawrence's novel has crept into all walks of life. Whether the book, or its influence, be good or bad, we live in a world that Lady Chatterley's Lover helped to create."-- Publisher's website