ODY New Books Collection

More than Enough

"High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club, which is why they've become her closest friends and, along with the support of her veterinarian husband, the bedrock of her life. Her private school students, her fraught relationship with mother, her struggles with IVF--Polly's book club friends have heard it all. But when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. Despite it seeming clear that this match is a mistake, Polly cannot help combing through her own family history for answers. Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways."-- Provided by publisher

The Life You Want

"Adam Phillips, the foremost psychoanalytic writer of our time, plays with ideas about the lives we want."-- Provided by publisher

I Give You My Silence

"In his final novel, the Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa returns to his native Peru."-- Provided by publisher

Her Last Breath

"After years of excuses, Tess has finally agreed to go caving with her best friend, Allie. Their lives have diverged sharply since high school--Allie is a self-made travel influencer, while Tess is a shy (and claustrophobic) legal assistant struggling to pay for law school. Maybe Tess is a little jealous of Allie's globe-trotting lifestyle, but who wouldn't be? As Tess and Allie descend into the depths, they realize they're not alone. A stranger who claims to be a fellow caver harasses them. Confident, take-no-shit Allie insults the guy--and he retaliates. Soon, Tess is trapped inside a narrow crawl space hundreds of feet underground, fighting to stay alive. Twenty-four hours later, as a hospitalized Tess recounts her harrowing story of survival, the detective interviewing her shares new and shocking secrets about Allie's true past. Together, they begin to suspect the brutal attack wasn't so random after all. Who was Allie, really? Why did this man target them? And did Tess really leave the danger behind when she escaped the cave?"-- Dust jacket flap

The Golden Boy

"After an involuntary retirement from his high-flying Hollywood career, Stafford Hopkins has retreated to a luxury estate on Maui, along with his wife Agnes, both grimly resigned to life in a paradise where neither feels fully at home. Stafford is ready to retreat into himself, too, when a letter arrives with shocking news. Stafford has been named guardian of four children he didn't know existed: the grandchildren of his late childhood friend, Bobby Shepherd, whose ghost Stafford can no longer ignore. Returning to both the hardscrabble farming town and the dark secret he'd tried to forget for decades, Stafford is forced to confront his past in order to rebuild his future--and to redirect the fates of his family and the four young people suddenly in his care. Slyly funny and deeply moving, The Golden Boy is a captivating debut about love, mercy, and second chances." -- Provided by publisher

A Far-Flung Life

"Remote Western Australia, 1958: here, for generations, the MacBrides have lived on a vast sheep station, Meredith Downs. It is a million acres, an ocean of arid land. On an ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered. And then, tragedy revisits when a twist of consequences claims the life of one sibling, and leads another to give up everything for the sake of an innocent child. Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide. The secrets at the heart of this gutting and beautiful story force him to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness."-- Provided by publisher

El Paso

"From New York Times reporter Jazmine Ulloa, a sweeping human history of El Paso, revealing violence, power, and privilege at play in America's most famous border town. El Paso has been called the "Ellis Island" of America's southern border, a mountain pass cum border town cum bifurcated metropolis where past meets future, and disadvantage meets opportunity, or so the promise goes. El Paso is an extraordinary, can't-look-away reported history; it uses deep research and dozens of new interviews to blow away the myth of this place, where Mexico's Juarez and America's El Paso intertwine. It charts the history of El Paso through five families. From the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican Repatriation, to the shifting immigration laws under Reagan and Trump and the violence and bloodshed brought on by the drug war, El Paso captures a place often misunderstood or forgotten by the rest of the country, and the world. El Paso is a brave new work of narrative nonfiction that gives new voice and perspective to history that has long been checked at the border, or told through the lens of white men alone. Ulloa draws upon meticulous research and reporting and stunning historical detail to craft the intimate narratives of an unforgettable cast of characters."-- Provided by publisher

Crucible

"Already the gateway for illegal Canadian liquor during Prohibition, the Motor City becomes a crucible for American class conflict during the Great Depression, with an army of laid off Ford workers drifting into the ranks of the burgeoning union movement -- Henry Ford's worst nightmare. To keep the hundreds of thousands still employed by him in thrall, the man who was formerly 'America's favorite tycoon' recruits black laborers migrating from the deep South to serve as 'strike insurance', and gives Harry Bennett, pugnacious as he is diminutive, free reign over the legion of barroom brawlers and ex-cons who make up the company's 'Security Department'. The Model T mogul has also bought a sizable chunk of Brazil's Amazonian rainforest, vowing to grow his own rubber for tires, but stubbornly refusing to include a botanist in his troop of would-be jungle tamers. As a series of biological plagues descend on the Fordlandia plantation, the racial melting pot he has created in Detroit begins to boil over, and not even the Sage of Dearborn can control the forces that have been unleashed. The novel's cast -- Ford workers black and white and their families, young radicals, cynical newsmen, gangsters, Brazilian rubber tappers, cameos from boxer Joe Louis and muralist Diego Rivera -- create the tapestry of differing points of view that John Sayles has become famous for, the events portrayed fundamental to the country we live in today." -- Book jacket

The Complex

"A brilliant, sweeping, tour de force moving between America and modern India, following the illicit liaisons, real estate dramas, political ambitions, and mortal betrayals of one prominent Delhi family." -- Provided by publisher

Chosen Land

"In the United States today, there is no faith more dominant than Christianity. In Chosen Land, historian Matthew Avery Sutton chronicles Christians' five-hundred-year endeavor to turn North America into their version of the kingdom of God, revealing the fruitful and dynamic entanglement between the history of America and the history of American Christianity. In the centuries after Christianity first arrived on American shores, colonizers and colonized from New England to Spanish California practiced many varieties of the faith. After the founding of the United States, the nation's lack of a state religion forced new and evolving strains of Christianity to battle for potential adherents, as they still do to this day. As American Christianity has bent, fractured, and adapted to changing times, Christian belief has shaped everything from the promise of Manifest Destiny to Ronald Reagan's approach to the Cold War, the rise of the Southern Lost Cause narrative to the triumphs of the civil rights movement. A landmark work of narrative synthesis tracing the faith's major figures and currents, Chosen Land confirms the unique place that American Christianity, always both steadfast and precarious, occupies at the center of our shared history."-- Dust jacket flap

Brawler

"Read alone, each story in Lauren Groff's electric collection is an individual triumph-bold, agile, and packed with power. Read together, they hum in exhilarating resonance. Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region-from New England to Florida to California-these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans' dark and light angels. 'In every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death,' one character tells us. Among those we see caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling, a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult, a mother blinded by the loss of her family, and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by the double edges of other people's good intentions, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can. Anchored by profound insight into human nature, Brawler reveals the repeated turning points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and what it takes to survive." -- Front jacket flap

The Banker Who Made America

"If you haven't followed the money, chances are you don't know the real story of America and its revolution. Nothing gives a clearer insight into this history than the life of early America's dominant merchant trader, first bank president, and first central banker, Thomas Willing. In this book, Richard Vague shows how Willing bankrolled--and in the process helped save--the Revolution and then fundamentally shaped the financial architecture of the young Republic."-- Front jacket flap

The AI Illusion

"Discover the truth behind AI's most dangerous myth: that machines can truly create. In The AI Illusion: Why Machines Aren't Creative, Luc Julia, co-creator of Siri and Chief Scientific Officer for the Renault Group, dismantles the hype surrounding generative AI by revealing what these technologies can actually do (as of today) versus what their promoters claim. Drawing on over 35 years' experience in the tech industry, Julia exposes the fundamental truth that generative AI doesn't create - it recombines existing data in response to prompts, producing impressive but ultimately derivative outputs that lack genuine creativity and understanding. This essential guide takes readers on a comprehensive journey through AI's past, present, and future, systematically debunking seven pervasive myths that shape public perception of artificial intelligence. Julia examines the technical limitations, societal implications, and environmental costs of generative AI while providing practical insights into how these tools function and where they're headed." -- Publisher's website

So Old, so Young

"Six Friends. Five Parties. Twenty Years... How did we get So Old, So Young? From Grant Ginder, the bestselling author of The People We Hate at the Wedding, comes a novel of impending millennial middle age that is part love story, part tragic comedy. Five parties over the course of two decades bring six college friends together, exploring the ways we can run from and cling to our friends in love, life, and death. For Marco and Mia, Sasha and Theo, Richie and Adam, the one constant in life after college together has been change. New jobs. New cities. New spouses. New children. Through it all, one thing they thought would always stay the same is their friendship. But time has a way of breaking even the strongest bonds and testing what we thought we knew. From East Village apartment parties and disastrous destination weddings to fortieth birthdays and suburban backyard barbecues, Grant Ginder's resonant, funny, and deeply moving novel is a story about the growing pains of the millennial generation, and a celebration of how love can shift, stumble, and grow into something bigger than we ever could have imagined."-- Provided by publisher

Saraswati

"Centuries ago, the myths say, the holy river Saraswati flowed through what is now Northern India. But when Satnam arrives in his ancestral village for his grandmother's funeral, he is astonished to find water in the long-dry well behind her house. The discovery sets in motion a contentious scheme to unearth the lost river and build a gleaming new city on its banks, and Satnam - adrift from his job, girlfriend and flat back in London - soon finds himself swept up in this ferment of Hindu nationalist pride.As the river alters Satnam's course, so it reveals buried ties to six distant relatives scattered across the globe - from an ambitious writer with her eye on legacy to a Kenyan archaeologist to a Bollywood stunt double - who are brought together in a rapidly changing India. Brimming with love, lush, violence and loss, Gurnaik Johal's magisterial debut deftly animates the passions that bind us to our histories, our lands and each other."--Publisher

Reproductive Wrongs

"Where do damaging ideas about women come from? The belief that granting women reproductive freedom poses a threat to a natural order, to "traditional" values, is a myth that has long dominated American politics, providing justification for increasing control over women's bodies and lives. It could not be further from the truth. In Reproductive Wrongs, acclaimed translator and independent scholar Sarah Ruden exposes how an ideology that vilified women in service of authoritarianism and power took hold. Beginning with Ovid's poetry, commissioned by Augustus, first emperor of Rome, and continuing through today, to the memoirs of an evangelical American "abortion survivor," Ruden shows how a doctrine of brutality against women was both invented and propagated. Reproductive Wrongs hinges on seven works that each marked key moments in this feminist, literary history of the West: The Pastoral Epistles introduced near-totalitarian measures to force childbearing in the early days of Christianity; The Hammer of the Witches outlined a program for demonizing women's fertility, justifying mass torture and killing during the Inquisition; And, Charles Dickens' The Chimes glorified the virtues of a large family, providing moral cover for a government campaign to raise birth-rates, thus filling a need for low-wage laborers in Industrial Britain. Illuminating, and vital, Reproductive Wrongs unearths the evolution of a deep radicalism that still rages into the 21st century, when half of the US population is once again threatened with restricted freedoms and totalitarian law."-- Provided by publisher

Muv

The story of the "seventh Mitford woman," a long-overlooked figure in the Mitford canon--told in full for the first time. Everyone knows about the six flamboyant Mitford girls but in fact there were seven remarkable women in the famous family--the seventh was "Muv," Lady Sydney Redesdale, the mother of the notorious sisters. Too often portrayed as different from them and outside the girl gang, she was really the original and much of her daughters' strong will, self-confidence, and extremism came from her. Sydney Redesdale was a divisive figure both among her daughters and subsequent biographers. Until their deaths, her girls were still squabbling over what she was really like, their differing views of her persisted for even longer than the political divides between them. Each daughter wanted to control the narrative and they wrote competing novels, memoirs and letters to vindicate their perspective. For Nancy and Jessica, she was a scapegoat. For Unity, Diana, Debo and Pam, she was a saint. Biographers have been equally divided about how she should be portrayed. Many wondered how such exceptional children could spring from such ordinary parents, but was Sydney really so "ordinary?" The story of her life at the heart of one of Britain's most famous families is told in full here for the first time and is a missing piece in understanding one of the twentieth century's most complex and fascinating families.

A Great Act of Love

"Van Diemen's Land, 1839. A young woman of means arrives in Hobart, Australia, with a boy in her care. Leasing an old cottage next to an abandoned vineyard, Caroline Douglas must navigate an insular colony of exiles and opportunists and invent a new life on this island of extreme seasons and wild beauty. But Caroline is carrying a secret of such magnitude that it has led her to cross the world. It will take all she is made of to bring it into the light. A Great Act of Love is a spellbinding story that soars from the French Revolution to London and New York on an epic voyage to Tasmania. Here is a story of a family with champagne in their blood, and an enterprising woman determined to rewrite their legacy. The lives of Caroline, her father, and the residents of the island will collide in devastating and profound ways." -- Amazon.com

The Disappearing Act

"The writer M has lived in the city of B ever since her homeland declared war on a neighboring state. While in exile, she is unable to write and suffers from loneliness, shame, and despair. But then M is invited to give a reading at a literary festival in a nearby country, and after a series of missed connections and mishaps, including losing her phone, she finds herself all alone in the wrong coastal town. She feels a flicker of liberation-the possibility of starting over-but memories of childhood, books, films and tarot cards pull her back, the last fragments of a vanishing world. Then she meets a troupe of circus performers who invite her to join them ... In this brief interlude, severed from reality, it seems as if M may finally escape from herself, from her past, from her nationality. Written in rich and hypnotic prose, The Disappearing Act oscillates between reality and dream, between an oppressive present and a lost past, between life and literature." -- Provided by publisher

Days of Love and Rage

"From Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist Anand Gopal, a mesmerizing and powerful account of six Syrians fighting for a better world, in the tradition of classic works by Philip Gourevitch and Katherine Boo. In 2011, in a northern Syrian city, a small group of men and women began a movement that overthrew one of the world's most brutal dictatorships. For the next eighteen months, citizens of Manbij carried out one of the most remarkable experiments in democracy in modern times. Days of Love and Rage details the powerfully intimate narratives of men and women who led this struggle, and who experience the highs of camaraderie and the lows of betrayal: a pair of best friends torn apart by political polarization, a mother who stands up to male dominance, a worker who risks everything for the dream of equality. Anand Gopal immerses you in the world of a single city in the throes of revolution, and lays bare the danger that inequality poses to democracy. But this book transcends the particulars of one terrible conflict to tell the sweeping story of democracy and rising authoritarianism in our times. It is, above all, an account of the best and worst of humanity. Both tragic and inspiring, Days of Love and Rage is a story of our enduring human need for freedom, security, dignity, community, love, and hope." -- Provided by publisher