ODY New Books Collection

Shadow Ticket

"Milwaukee 1932, the Great Depression going full blast, repeal of Prohibition just around the corner, Al Capone in the federal pen, the private investigation business shifting from labor-management relations to the more domestic kind. Hicks McTaggart, a one-time strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he's found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine case, locating and bringing back the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune who's taken a mind to go wandering. By the time Hicks catches up with her he will find himself entangled with Nazis, Soviet agents, British counterspies, swing musicians, practitioners of the paranormal, outlaw motorcyclists, and the troubles that come with each of them."-- Provided by publisher

The Secret of Secrets

"Robert Langdon, esteemed professor of symbology, travels to Prague to attend a groundbreaking lecture by Katherine Solomon--a prominent noetic scientist with whom he has recently begun a relationship. Katherine is on the verge of publishing an explosive book that contains startling discoveries about the nature of human consciousness and threatens to disrupt centuries of established belief. But a brutal murder catapults the trip into chaos, and Katherine suddenly disappears along with her manuscript. Langdon finds himself targeted by a powerful organization and hunted by a chilling assailant sprung from Prague's most ancient mythology. As the plot expands into London and New York, Langdon desperately searches for Katherine . . . and for answers. In a thrilling race through the dual worlds of futuristic science and mystical lore, he uncovers a shocking truth about a secret project that will forever change the way we think about the human mind." -- Dust jacket flap

Not Quite Dead yet

"The #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder - now a hit Netflix series - returns with her first novel for adults: a twisty thriller about a young woman trying to solve her own murder." -- Provided by publisher

New York Trilogy

"New York Trilogy is comprised of three, long, multi-sequence poems ("A-Train/Ziggurat/Elegy," "Ozone Journal," and "No Sign") that first appeared in Peter Balakian's last three books with this Press: Ziggurat (2010), Ozone Journal (2015, winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and No Sign (2022). As a long poem, the trilogy explores a number of cataclysmic events of our time, including the Armenian Genocide, Hiroshima and the Vietnam War, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, conflicts in the Middle East, and the geo-climate crisis. The poems follow the journey of a persona that evolves from a series of experiences in New York in the 1970s and 80s and into the first decade of the new century. It registers both personal and historical perspectives, creating layers of memory in the form of a dialogue between past and present, self and other, exploring political violence, art and music, love, divorce, and personal loss. As a book-length work of poetry, New York Trilogy joins the tradition of American long poems that includes works such as Hart Crane's The Bridge, William Carlos Williams's Paterson, and Charles Olson's Maximus Poems. Its appearance will be a publishing event."-- Provided by publisher

Near Flesh

"A previously unpublished collection of stories about motherhood, violence, and desire, from the cult icon Katherine Dunn, the author of Geek Love." -- Provided by publisher

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

"When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated, yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that only served to drive Sonia and Sunny apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India, fearing she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists." -- Provided by publisher

Listening to the Law

"From Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a glimpse of her journey to the Court and an account of her approach to the Constitution since her confirmation hearing, Americans have peppered Justice Amy Coney Barrett with questions. How has she adjusted to the Court? What is it like to be a Supreme Court justice with school-age children? Do the justices get along? What does her normal day look like? How does the Court get its cases? How does it decide them? How does she decide? In Listening to the Law, Justice Barrett answers these questions and more. She lays out her role (and daily life) as a justice, touching on everything from her deliberation process to dealing with media scrutiny. With the warmth and clarity that made her a popular law professor, she brings to life the making of the Constitution and explains her approach to interpreting its text. Whether sharing stories of clerking for Justice Scalia or walking readers through prominent cases, she invites readers to wrestle with originalism and to embrace the rich heritage of our Constitution." -- Provided by publisher

The Impossible Fortune

"The unmissable new mystery in the Thursday Murder Club series from #1 New York Times bestselling author Richard Osman." -- Provided by publisher

House of Smoke

"The James Beard Award-winning author of The Potlikker Papers tells the story of how food and restaurants helped him heal from the racism ingrained in his Southern roots-and give him hope for the possibility of reckoning with our nation's painful history."-- Provided by publisher

Discontent

"On the surface, Marisa's life looks enviable. She lives in a beautiful apartment in the center of Madrid, she has a hot neighbor who is always around to sleep with her, and she's quickly risen through the ranks at a successful advertising agency. And yet she's drowning in a dark hole of existential dread induced by the banality of corporate life. Marisa hates her job and everyone at it. She spends her working hours locked in her office hiding from her coworkers, bingeing YouTube videos, and getting high on tranquilizers. When she has the time, she escapes to her favorite museum where she contemplates the meaning of life while staring at Hieronymus Bosch paintings, or trying to get hit by a car so she can go on disability. But Marisa's dubious success, which is largely built on lies and work she's stolen from other people, is in danger of being exposed when she's forced to go on her company's team-building retreat. Isolated in the Segovia forests, haunted by the deeply buried memory of a former coworker, and surrounded by psychopathic bosses, overzealous coworkers, flirty retreat staff, and an excess of drugs, Marisa finds herself acting on her wildest impulses and is pushed to the brink of a complete spiral."-- Provided by publisher

The Conservative Frontier

"West Texas cities like Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland, and Odessa, as well as smaller towns like Monahans, Dalhart, and Childress, have long been identified by political operatives as some of the most conservative places in America. In The Conservative Frontier, historian Jeff Roche asks why that is and looks to history for answers. Focusing on the decades between the 1870s and the 1970s, Roche illuminates the distinct political culture of West Texas through a series of episodes and portraits that reveal a larger history of the region. While most sections of the book are anchored by some form of electoral contest, for the most part Roche concentrates on the social and cultural conditions in which political events took place. His cast of characters, as a result, moves beyond well known figures like George H.W. Bush to include lumber barons, rebellious football coaches, small-town newspaper editors, the breakfast cereal tycoon who founded America's only capitalist utopia, and many others. The people and places Roche studies are dominated by a belief system that he calls 'cowboy conservatism.' An ideology born on the old cattle frontier that spread across the North American prairies with the cattle business, cowboy conservatism was a powerful formative influence on the development of the politics of West Texas. Developed within the entrepreneurial and proto-libertarian culture of nineteenth-century Texas ranchers and boosted by the cult of the cowboy that later came to dominate American popular media, cowboy conservatism drew upon the mythology, iconography, and language of the western frontier to express a long and complicated set of ideas--including white supremacy, religious fundamentalism, anti-statism, and a fierce devotion to both individualism and small-town ideas about responsibility to community."-- Provided by publisher

Cécé

Cécé La Flamme, as she's known by her loyal Facebook friends, captures photographs of still bodies. Figures scorched and bruised, left to the rubble of the Cité of Divine Power. When she posts an image of a corpse, Cécé's followers skyrocket. "Nothing got more attention than a good corpse that was nice and warm or already rotting." Just beside visions of rot and neglect, she posts pictures of her toes, gullies crisscrossing the cité, and her own lips painted blue. With every image, Cécé seeks control and wants to create a frank, intimate record of the terror in her cité. Cécé's world begins and ends with the cité - a slum peopled by gangs, yelping kids, grandmothers, junkies, and preachers. The very gate that encloses the cité was constructed by militant gang members. First boss Freddy, then Joël, then Jules César rule the gang that holds the cité in a chokehold. Sharp, sincere, and desperate, Cécé cleaves life for herself out of social media, sex work, and attempts at friendship with other women. When an American journalist offers to buy the rights to Cécé's photographs, she demands double the cash. When an abusive former client dies, she wears hot pink to his funeral.-- Provided by publisher

The Blood in Winter

"In 1641, England exits a plague-ridden and politically unstable summer having reached a semblance of peace: the English and Scottish armies have disbanded, legislation has passed to ensure Parliament will continue to sit and the people are tentatively optimistic. But King Charles I is not satisfied with peace -- he wants revenge. So begins England's winter of discontent. As revolutionary sects of London begin to generate new ideas about democracy, as radical new religious groups seek power and as Ireland explodes into revolt, Charles hatches a plan to restore his absolute rule. On January 4, 1642, he marches on Westminster, seeking to arrest and impeach five Members of Parliament--and so sets in motion a series of events that will lead to bloodshed and war, changing a nation forever. 'The Blood in Winter' tells this story: that of an English people's great political awakening." -- Book jacket flap

Workhorse

"A richly drawn, unsettling, and wickedly funny story of envy and ambition set against the glamor and privilege of media and high society in New York City at its height. At the turn of the millennium, editorial assistant Clodagh "Clo" Harmon wants nothing more than to rise through the ranks at the world's most prestigious fashion magazine. There's just one problem: She doesn't have the right pedigree. Instead, Clo is a "workhorse" surrounded by beautiful, wealthy, impossibly well-connected "show horses" who get ahead without effort, including her beguiling cubicle-mate, Davis Lawrence, the daughter of a beloved but fading Broadway actress. Harry Wood, Davis's boarding school classmate and a reporter with visions of his own media empire, might be Clo's ally in gaming the system-or he might be the only thing standing between Clo and her rightful place at the top. In a career punctuated by moments of high absurdity, sudden windfalls, and devastating reversals of fortune, Clo wades across boundaries, taking ever greater and more dangerous risks to become the important person she wants to be within the confines of a world where female ambition remains cloaked. But who really is Clo underneath all the borrowed designer clothes and studied manners-and who are we if we share her desires? Hilariously observant and insightful, Workhorse is a brilliant page-turner about what it means to be in thrall to wealth, beauty, and influence, and the outrageous sacrifices women must make for the sake of success." -- Provided by publisher

The Wilderness

"Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood--overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences--swoops in and stays. Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January's got a relationship with a 'good' man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life. As these friends move from the late 2000's into the late 2020's, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another--amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life. The Wilderness is Angela Flournoy's masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship."-- Provided by publisher

The Wasp Trap

"A dinner party in a beautiful Notting Hill townhouse turns into a sinister game as six old friends are forced to spill their darkest secrets... or else. Six friends reunite in London to celebrate the life of their recently deceased ex-employer, a professor that brought them together in 1999 to help build a dating website based on psychological testing. But what is meant to be a night of bittersweet nostalgia soon becomes a twisted and deadly game. The old friends are given an ultimatum: reveal their darkest secrets to the group or pick each other off one-by-one. It soon becomes clear that their current predicament is related to their shared past. The love questionnaire they helped develop in 1999 for the dating site was also turned into a tool for weeding out psychopaths: The Wasp Trap. This experiment and the other tragic events of that summer long ago may help reveal the truth behind a killer hiding in plain sight. Alternating between the past and present with a colorful ensemble of characters, The Wasp Trap is a fast-paced and twisty thrill ride [...]." -- Provided by publisher

The Tragedy of True Crime

"In 2001, John J. Lennon killed a man on a Brooklyn street. Now he's a journalist, working from behind bars, trying to make sense of it all. The Tragedy of True Crime is a first-person journalistic account of the lives of four men who have killed, written by a man who has killed. John J. Lennon entered the New York prison system with a sentence of twenty-eight years to life, but after he stepped into a writing workshop at Attica Correctional Facility, his whole life changed. Reporting from the cellblock and the prison yard, Lennon challenges our obsession with true crime by telling the full life stories of men now serving time for the lives they took. The men have completely different backgrounds--Robert Chambers, a preppy Manhattanite turned true crime celebrity; Milton E. Jones, a burglar coaxed into something far darker; and Michael Shane Hale, a gay man caught in a crime of passion--and all are searching to find meaning and redemption behind bars. Lennon's reporting is intertwined with the story of his own journey from a young man seduced by the infamous gangster culture of New York City to a celebrated prison journalist. The same desire echoes throughout the four lives: to become more than murderers. A first of its kind book of immersive prison journalism, The Tragedy of True Crime poses fundamental questions about the stories we tell and who gets to tell them. What essential truth do we lose when we don't consider all that comes before an act of unthinkable violence? And what happens to the convicted after the cell gate locks?" -- Provided by publisher

Super Agers

"One of the most respected, celebrated, and influential medical researchers in the world gives a guided tour of the revolution in longevity science that is exploding now. This is an evidence-based approach to longevity in a market drenched in snake oil-Eric Topol doesn't promise a silver bullet to magically stop the aging process, he shows how preventing the development of killer chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease, cancer and neurodegeneration is completely changing what "old age" can be. And we can start long before middle age--or long after. Dr. Topol shows how and why you can deal with chronic problems now instead of waiting until it is too late. Breakthrough treatments have been developed from new tools, new understanding of how our personal genomes work, and what AI can see in our health data. We can now engineer cells, build proteins and find drugs that make us live longer, better. Many of these treatments are on the shelf now--or soon will be--and improving fast. Our author is the ultimate guide because he participated in developing and testing many of them. The first part of the book "The New Age of Healthspan" describes inspiring patients aged 90+, sets out the dimensions of the new advances in the treatments of age related diseases, and details an expanded definition of what a healthy lifestyle means now--good sleep, diet, exercise, sure, but much beyond. He calls it Lifestyle+. He then turns to the "Chronic Killers"--Obesity/Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer, and Neurodegeneration. Parts on the "Big Collateral Implications" and "Thinking Ahead" follow and include ways we might eventually come to reverse the aging process itself."-- Provided by publisher

Picket Line

"Chino de la Cruz and Paco Rojas seem well-mannered, at least for Chicanos, to the white cops that pull them over for littering on the long drive from California to Trinity, Texas. So well-mannered, in fact, that Captain Frank McKellan lets them off with a warning and recommends them a job at Stanzik Farms, the largest independent melon grower in the area. But Chino and Paco didn't drive all this way for work. Instead, Chino is looking for a mysterious man, Vincent Mora, whose new Valley Agricultural Workers Association is causing a scene striking against the farm owners. Stanzik's fields and Mora's union bring together a cast of unlikely characters: Connie Chavez, a former picker and blossoming revolutionary who leads with a bullhorn and a fearless mouth; Bud Davis, a white Xavier University student working for spending money; Harold Ritchie, a local marine-turned-cop; Luis Tamez, a striker whose grandson served with Harold in Vietnam; and many more, including the pragmatic Chino, who finds himself pulled irrevocably into the cause. Some are neighbors, others just passing through. Some know each other well, or at least thought they did...before the picket line."-- From publisher's description

On Antisemitism

"From one of our most eminent historians, a penetrating and timely examination of how the meaning of antisemitism has mutated, with unexpected and troubling consequences What are we talking about when we talk about antisemitism? For most of its history it was understood to be a menace from the political Right, the province of ethno-nativists who built on Christendom's long-standing suspicion of its tiny Jewish population and infused it with racist pseudo-science. When the twentieth century began, the vast majority of the world's Jews lived in Europe. For them, there was no confusion about where the threat of antisemitic politics lay, a threat that culminated in the nightmare of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Now, in a piercingly brilliant book that ranges from the term's invention in the late nineteenth century to the present, Mark Mazower argues the landscape is very different. More than four-fifths of the world's Jews live in two countries, Israel and the United States, and the former's military dominance of its region is guaranteed by the latter. Before the Second World War, Jews were a minority apart and drawn by opposition to fascism into an alliance with other oppressed peoples. Today, in contrast, Jews are considered "white," and for today's anti-colonialists, Israel's treatment of the Palestinians has become a critical issue. The old Left solidarity is a thing of the past; indeed, the loudest voices decrying antisemitism see it coming from the Left, not the Right. Mazower clearly and carefully shows us how we got here, navigating this minefield through a history that seeks to illuminate rather than to blame, demonstrating how the rise of a pessimistic post-Holocaust sensibility, along with growing international criticism of Israel, produced a gradual conflation of the interests of Jews and the Jewish state. Half a century ago few people believed that antisemitism had anything to do with hostility to Israel; today mainstream Jewish voices often equate the two. The word remains the same, but its meaning has changed. The tragedy, Mazower argues, is that antisemitism persists. If it can be found on the far Left, it still is a much graver danger from those forces on the Right chanting "Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville and their ilk. If we allow the charge to be applied too loosely and widely to shut down legitimate argument, we are only delegitimizing the term, and threatening to break something essential in how democracies function. On Antisemitism is a vitally important attempt to draw that necessary line." -- Provided by publisher