ODY New Books Collection

White River Crossing

"A ragged fur peddler arrives at a remote outpost of the Hudson Bay Company in the winter of 1766 with a lump of gold, claiming that there is plenty more like it further north at a place called Ox Lake. The outpost's chief factor, Magnus Norton, dreams of instant riches and launches a secret and perilous expedition to find the treasure and bring it back. Led by a family of native guides, the party of prospectors includes Norton's brutish deputy, John Shaw, and Thomas Hearn, the insular and intellectual first mate from the factory's whaling sloop. During their long journey north, Shaw's callousness and arrogance lead him to commit an act of sexual violence whose disastrous consequences will only fully emerge once they reach their final destination. There, amidst the bleak beauty of the Barren Grounds, as Norton's carefully crafted plans begin to fall apart and the brutal arctic winter starts to descend, Hearn is forced to make a choice that will define his character and determine his future forever. Utterly captivating, White River Crossing transports us back to the furthest edges of the eighteenth-century British empire where two radically different worlds-indigenous and European-collide with calamitous and deadly results."-- Provided by publisher

The War within a War

An examination of the relationship between the Vietnam War and the civil rights struggle in the United States, focusing on the experiences of African Americans during the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on the lives of soldiers, medical personnel, journalists, activists, artists, and political leaders, the work explores how military service in Vietnam intersected with domestic movements for racial equality. Through individual narratives and broader historical context, the book analyzes the social, political, and cultural forces that shaped the era and assesses the war's impact on race relations in the United States.

The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts

"In the aftermath of her mother's death, Eleanor is unmoored. For years, her mother orchestrated every detail of her life--from meals, to laundry, to finances--as Eleanor focused on her career as an online therapist. Left to navigate the world on her own, Eleanor clings to her mother's final directive: use her inheritance to buy a house. Desperate to obey her mother one last time, Eleanor impulsively buys a model home in a valley-turned-construction site, a picturesque development steeped in a shadowy history. It feels like a fresh start, until the rain comes--an endless, torrential downpour. As water seeps in through the house's cracks, the line between what is real and what is not begins to blur. Haunted by the stories of her clients, a stream of workmen and bureaucrats she can't trust, and visions of ghosts from her past and present, Eleanor's reality unravels, and she is forced to reckon with the secrets she's buried and the choices she's made."-- Provided by publisher

State of Ridicule

"This will be the first proper history of English satire, from its origins in the late medieval period to the present day. This book is a history of political satire in English literature, from the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century. The aim is to present a coherent history of what has been an everchanging, complex series of literary traditions that we refer to as satire, from its beginnings in various kinds of medieval grotesque up to the proliferation of the modern novel. Author Dan Sperrin presents interesting and original insights into the satirist's paradoxical situation at both the periphery and the centre of culture. The text is organised chronologically by period and is concentrated upon canonical figures - including Chaucer, Dryden, Swift, Pope, Johnson and Dickens - but also including more obscure writers in such a way as to be focused enough to tell a story but broad enough to include variation, of which there is decidedly a great deal by the very nature of what the author describes as a mercurial literary form. Satire, as Sperrin demonstrates, often takes aim at grand narratives and comprehensive taxonomies, and the book accounts for eccentricity and individuality as a matter of principle."-- Provided by publisher

Simple Heart

This novel follows Nana, a Korean-born playwright who was adopted as a child and raised in France. When she becomes pregnant, she begins to reflect on questions of identity, family history, and belonging. Around the same time, a filmmaker proposes creating a documentary about her life. Prompted by a desire to learn more about her origins, Nana travels to Seoul, where she encounters people and situations that lead her to reconsider memories from her childhood and adoption. As she prepares for motherhood, she examines her connections to both her birth country and her adoptive home. The narrative explores themes of international adoption, cultural identity, and family relationships, while also referencing historical and social contexts, including the presence of the United States Armed Forces in South Korea.

Red Dawn Over China

From renowned, prize-winning historian Frank Dikotter, a commanding new history of China's path to Communism.

The Optimists

"Mr. Keating is an extraordinary teacher: brilliant, dedicated, and possibly a few pages ahead in a book no one else is reading. He's a magician, able to enchant fourteen-year-olds into a love of writing and literature. Yet no student has lived up to the promise of their potential more than Clara Hightower. Over the course of three decades, Clara goes from kindergarten thief to a high school genius, Silicon Valley celebrity, and, finally, animal rights activist turned terrorist. But to tell Clara's story, Mr. Keating must tell his own, including his courtship and marriage, his dreams of writing and comedy, his days in the classroom in lower Manhattan and his rivalry and friendship with his head of school, and his eventual stroke and the isolation that follows."-- Provided by publisher

Now I Surrender

"A visionary novelist imagines the fiercely fought end of an epoch of almost unimaginable freedom and radically recasts the story of how the West was "won." In the contested borderlands between Mexico and the United States, a woman flees into the desert after a devastating raid on her dead husband's ranch. A lieutenant colonel in service to the fledgling Republic, sent in pursuit of cattle rustlers, discovers he's on the trail of a more dramatic abduction. Decades later, with political ambitions on the line, the American and Mexican militaries try to maneuver Geronimo, the most legendary of Apache warriors, into surrender. In our own day, a family travels through the region in search of a truer version of the past. Orchestrated with a stunningly imagined cast of characters, both historical and purely fictional, their storylines playing out in multiple eras, Now I Surrender is Álvaro Enrigue's most expansive and impassioned novel yet. Part epic, part alt-Western, it weaves past and present, myth and history, into a searing elegy for a way of life that was an incarnation of true liberty -- and an homage to the spark in us that still thrills to its memory." -- Provided by publisher

The Midnight Taxi

"When one of her fares turns up dead in her backseat, a Sri Lankan American taxi driver works off the clock to clear her name in this mystery novel by debut author Yosha Gunasekera. Siriwathi Perera doesn't quite know where she's going in life. She never expected to be a taxicab driver in New York City, struggling to make ends meet and still living with her parents at twenty-eight. The true-crime podcasts that keep Siri company as she drives don't do much to make up for the legal career she imagined for herself, or the brother she's grieving. When public defender Amaya Fernando gets into her cab, they make a quick connection through their shared Sri Lankan roots. Siri, whose social circle is limited to her grade-school best friend, Alex, thinks things might finally be looking up with this new potential friendship. But she's suddenly dropped into her own true crime when she discovers her next passenger murdered in the backseat, and she has to call Amaya sooner than she'd expected. Pinned as the obvious and only suspect, and desperate to clear her name, Siri chases down leads across the boroughs of New York City with Amaya's help. But with her court date looming, they have just five days to find out who really killed the midnight passenger--or Siri's life will be over before she can even truly live it." -- Provided by publisher

It's
on You

Two decades ago, behavioral economics burst from academia to the halls of power, on both sides of the Atlantic, with the promise that correcting individual biases could help transform society. The hope was that governments could deploy a new approach to addressing society's deepest challenges, from inadequate retirement planning to climate change--gently, but cleverly, nudging people to make choices for their own good and the good of the planet. It was all very convenient, and false. As behavioral scientists Nick Chater and George Loewenstein show in It's on You, nudges rarely work, and divert us from policies that do. For example, being nudged to switch to green energy doesn't cut carbon, and it distracts from the real challenge of building a low-carbon economy. It's on You shows how the rich and powerful have repeatedly used a clever sleight of hand: blaming individuals for social problems, with behavioral economics an unwitting accomplice, while lobbying against the systemic changes that could actually help. Rather than trying to "fix" the victims of bad policies, real progress requires rewriting the social and economic rulebook for the common good. -- Amazon.com

Good People

"The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Prosperous, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye. When an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling and the family is thrust into the court of public opinion. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade? Like a literary game of ping-pong, Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, it is a riveting, provocative, and haunting story of family—sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times." -- book jacket

The Four Heavens

"Maya history was seemingly lost forever when the first Europeans encountered the great ruins of ancient cities in what is today Mexico and Central America. Today, with the recent decipherment of their ancient writings, the story of the Maya can now be told from their perspective. Stuart traces the rapid emergence of permanent settlements in the rainforest, which gave rise to monumental architecture and a flourishing urbanism and ushered in the Classic period of Maya civilization beginning in the mid-second century CE. He reveals a world of majestic royal courts tightly bound together by marriages, shifting alliances, and warfare, much of it driven by the ambitions of two major dynasties, the Kanuls and Mutuls. Stuart describes how the long-standing rivalry between these two great houses shaped the fates of the surrounding kingdoms and may have set the stage for "the Great Rupture" of the ninth century, when the royal courts buckled under the weight of internal strife, social unrest, and environmental crisis, transforming Maya civilization yet again. The Four Heavens brings to life the cultural and visual splendor of the ancient Maya, drawing on the oldest indigenous texts of the Americas and the latest archaeological discoveries to present an entirely new history of this spectacular civilization. Renowned historian and archaeologist David Stuart, who has made groundbreaking contributions to the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics, shows how there was no single rise and fall of the Maya but a series of births and collapses over a breathtaking span of nearly three millennia."

Field Notes From an Extinction

"Written in the form of a 19th-century notebook of ornithological observations, Field Notes from an Extinction follows the life and work of one Ignatius Green, a fictitious English scientist dispatched by the Royal Society to the remote island of Tor Mor off the northern Irish coast. Green, a widower, is single-minded and self-righteous, brilliant and bumbling. He is determined to set the scientific record straight on the mating rituals, feeding and care of hatchlings, and other minutiae he can gather about the Great Auk (pinguinus impennis). Green's world is shattered when his monthly goods delivery arrives ravaged by the local Irish townsmen. His fury at their impertinence is matched only by his dismay at finding a small child amid the shipment--dirty, abandoned, mute, and utterly feral and unmanageable. Worse, the locals are growing restless and hungry. And there is talk sweeping the land of a terrifying woman with unnatural power. Green fights for his survival against brigands and hunger and, most fearsome, the resolve of a fierce and angry child. And, perhaps, for a wider understanding of family amidst roiling societal unrest." -- Provided by publisher

Blood Relay

"Choctaw Detective Perry Antelope has been with her partner, Sophia Burns, for only six months. Perry is a seasoned investigator while the ex-Olympian shot putter Sophia is a former street-smart policeofficer. Together, they are an intrepid pair with an established record of success. But when Perry and Sophia are called to investigate the disappearance of Dels Billy, a beloved women's Indian Horse Relay rider, they quickly realize that it's not as cut-and-dry as anything they've faced before. Piece by piece, they uncover unsettling connections between Dels's disappearance and a series of unsolved abductions of women from Oklahoma reservations. But the perpetrator always seems to be one step ahead, and Perry soon finds herself--and her family--in the crosshairs of a ruthless killer. Despite her husband's pleas for her to drop the case, Perry is determined to prevent Dels from becoming another statistic. As the investigation deepens, Perry and Sophia follow a tangled web of clues that point to a close-to-home plot more chilling than they could have imagined. Torn between her family's safety and her duty to her community, Perry must race against the clock, and across tribal Nations, to find Dels before her murderous abductor can carry out their sinister plan."-- Provided by publisher

Blood and Treasure

"Wars are expensive, both in human terms and monetary ones. But while warfare might be costly it has also, at times, been an important driver of economic change and progress. Over the long span of history nothing has shaped human institutions - and thus the process of economic development - as much as war and violence. Wars made states and states made wars. As the costs of warfighting grew, so did state structures, taxation systems, and national markets for debt. And as warfare became ever more destructive, the incentive for governments to resort to it changed too. Blood and Treasure looks at the history and economics of warfare from the Viking Age to the war in Ukraine, examining how incentives and institutions have changed over time. It surveys how warfare helped drive Europe's rise to global prominence, and it explains how the total wars of the twentieth century required a new type of strategy, one that took economics seriously. Underpinning this riveting narrative is a focus on how and why the economics of conflict have changed over time. This is a story of how economics can help to explain the motivations of war, and how understanding the history of warfare can help explain modern economics."-- publisher's description, from dust jacket

The Writer's
Room

"Virginia Woolf famously wrote in A Room of One's Own that "it is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry." Writers have worked in all kinds of places, from garrets and sheds to boarding houses, bathrooms, and even while on the move. What is it that fascinates us about the writer's room? This book takes readers inside literature's creative spaces to explore this tantalizing question. Beginning with her own secondhand writing desk, Katie da Cunha Lewin invites us to consider how these environments embody the craft of writing and shape the literary works we love. She paints vivid portraits of Woolf's garden room at Monk's House, Emily Brontë's shared table in the parsonage, Sigmund Freud's study with its legendary couch, and the bustling Parisian cafés where Ernest Hemingway crafted stories in notebooks. She dismantles the familiar furniture of the writer's room to cast it in a surprising new light, from the hotel rooms where Maya Angelou wrote poetry to the busses where Lauren Elkin wrote on her phone to the kitchen tables around which Audre Lorde and the founders of Women of Color Press convened. Lyrical, insightful, and rich with personal insights, The Writer's Room reveals how these spaces are brimming with possibilities, shaping the creative process of authors and capturing the imaginations of readers."-- Provided by Publisher

World Cup Fever

In World Cup Fever, Simon Kuper explores the history and cultural impact of the FIFA World Cup through his personal experiences attending nine tournaments since 1990. The book traces the evolution of the World Cup from its inaugural event in 1930 in Montevideo to contemporary tournaments, highlighting changes in professionalism, globalization, media coverage, and the broader social, political, and economic contexts surrounding the games. Through a combination of reporting, historical analysis, and first-hand observation, Kuper examines how soccer reflects and influences cultural identity, national pride, and global connections.

Why I Am Not an Atheist

"Twenty-five years ago, celebrated author (and cradle Catholic) Christopher Beha gave up on God. Helped along by a reading of Bertrand Russell's classic text Why I Am Not a Christian, he became a committed atheist, certain that his days of belief were behind him. A youthful brush with mortality soon set Beha on a decades-long quest for meaning in a godless world. Why I Am Not an Atheist tells the story of this search for secular answers to what Immanuel Kant called the most urgent human questions: What can I know? What must I do? What may I hope? Along the way, Beha traces the development of what he understands to be the two major atheist worldviews: scientific materialism and romantic idealism. Beha's passage through these rival forms of atheism leads him to the surprising conclusion that faith--particularly faith in a created order in which each human life has a meaningful part--preserves the best of both traditions while offering a complete and coherent picture of reality. This magisterial investigation of the heights of human intellectual achievement is at once deeply personal and universal--grounded in decades of reading and thinking about the problems of suffering, mortality, and ultimate meaning. Why I Am Not an Atheist is not a polemic on behalf of belief but a record of Beha's long engagement with the enduring human questions, and a call for readers to take up these questions for themselves."-- Publisher's website

What Boys Learn

Over the course of a single weekend, two teenage girls are found dead in an affluent Chicago suburb. As the community responds to the deaths, Abby Rosso, a high school counselor at the girls' school, begins to question whether her son may have had undisclosed connections to them. Her concerns are shaped by her professional experience and by personal history, including a family member's past criminal conviction. As Abby investigates the circumstances surrounding the deaths, she reflects on patterns of behavior, memory, and responsibility, while confronting uncertainties about her own perceptions and decisions as a parent. What Boys Learn examines family dynamics, community response to violence, and the influence of gender and upbringing through a psychological lens.

Vigil

"Not for the first time, Jill 'Doll' Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion. She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this one, she soon discovers, isn't like the others. The powerful K.J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn't it? Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man's room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone's postdeath future. With the wisdom, playfulness, and explosive imagination we've come to expect, George Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time--the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress--and, in the process, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution." -- Provided by publisher