ODY New Books Collection

Take Me with You

College professor Jesse del Ruth has been abandoned. Thirty years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband Norman get out of bed late one night, walk into their Joshua Tree backyard, step into a strange beam of light and ... disappear. How could Norman desert him after a lifetime together? Where did he go? And, most confoundingly ... will he ever return? Jesse knew they were longing for something, both feeling stuck. But had Norman been so stuck that his only option was to leave Jesse behind? As Jesse struggles to understand Norman's disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality. Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back? Or is this an opportunity for reinvention? When Norman's sister Lally lands on Jesse's doorstep with an urgent request, Norman's absence becomes even more profound. Add to Jesse's grief and confusion a conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman's disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure. With his husband missing and the world closing in, all eyes are on Jesse. Before he can understand how Norman could leave it all behind, Jesse must confront what it means to stay.

Stolen Revolution

"A deeply moving portrait of the lives of Iranians across five decades, from the Iranian Revolution to the inspiring Woman Life Freedom protests, tracing the promise of the revolution, its betrayal by forces of autocracy, and a people's undying spirit of resistance. The 1979 revolution in Iran swept aside a monarchy, fueled by a people's dreams of social justice and political freedom. But the movement's leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and his acolytes instead built a system that served their narrow faction and worsened beyond imagination the brutality and corruption that had existed under the Shah. Stolen Revolution follows six Iranians who, together, have lived the arc of modern Iranian history: -Mehdi Karroubi, a devotee of Khomeini, rose to the heights of power before being cast out of the inner circle. He spurred the revolution's first calls for reform. -Hila Sedighi, a young activist, gave voice through her poetry to her peers' hopes during the reform years and ultimately voiced their shattered dreams. -Said Rahmani, a successful global tech entrepreneur, returned to Iran to spark a start-up boom in his native country and encountered a ruthless security state that wanted his company for itself. -Amir Moghadam, an ambitious government bureaucrat, witnessed corruption and graft on a scale that impelled him to take enormous risks to expose the truth. -Rozhin Yousefzade and Kosar Eftekhari, both born in the 1990s, escaped their gendered destinies by leaving their hometowns for Tehran where they joined a mass movement in confrontation with a ferocious state apparatus: the Woman Life Freedom protests. Each paid an enormous price. Through a vivid and harrowing narrative, Stolen Revolution offers a visceral understanding of contemporary Iran, of life in a modern autocracy, and of the Iranian people's undying fight for a better future."-- Provided by publisher

Score

"You never forget your first love. Isn't that what they say? Verity Hill knows this truth intimately. She didn't simply miss Wright 'Monk' Bellamy when they parted ways in college. She's haunted by his touch. Every kiss, any lover since-it's a shadow of what they had. Time heals all wounds. Isn't that what they say? Monk doesn't believe that for a second. He wasn't simply betrayed when he and Verity split. He was devastated, with parts of him left behind in the ruins of all that was destroyed. More than a decade after their disastrous breakup, Verity and Monk must work together on the set of an epic Harlem Renaissance biopic. With Monk, now a world-class musician, creating the score, and Verity, an award-winning screenwriter, penning the script, there's Oscar buzz before shooting even begins. This once-in-a-lifetime project could catapult them both to new heights, but can they put the past behind them for the sake of the film...for the sake of something more?" -- Provided by publisher

The Rolling Stones

All great music is a threat. What is there left to say about The Rolling Stones? A hell of a lot, it turns out. Bob Spitz has brought his indefatigable energy and five decades of experiences in the fields and hollows of rock 'n' roll to bear on his five-year journey to reexamine one of popular music's greatest stories. There are myriad revisions to the conventional narrative that underscore just how much the band has been in control of their story, up to now--small example: No, Muddy Waters was not mopping the floors at Chess Records when the Stones showed up. But in a larger sense, as with the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, Spitz's greatest gift is for the big picture. He knows where the magic is, and why it is. He is as clear-eyed a connoisseur of the show business, the spectacle and the collateral damage of this whirlwind as anyone alive, and that lucid gaze pierces a lot of encrusted myth. But the ultimate goal is to connect with a creative force whose power shows no signs of fading, over sixty years on. At its heart the story is about two boys, Mick and Keith, and their unique, fraught, alchemical bond, often tested, never sundered. The Glimmer Twins and the bandmates, like Charlie Watts, who found their groove in relation to this double star, made the trip intact, while those who struggled, like Brian Jones and Mick Taylor, were chewed up and spit out. This is a story with many dark corners, including a surprising number of deaths. But whether Jagger and Richards sold their souls to the devil at the crossroads for blues greatness or just squeezed their heroes for every drop of inspiration, in the end their connection to their music and to each other put them in a category of one, where they very much remain. -- From dust jacket

Project Maven

"The dramatic story of the secretive decade-long Pentagon campaign to deliver America into the age of AI warfare."-- Publisher

Presence

"A vibrant history of women's bodies, expertise, and work." -- Provided by publisher

The Perfect Moment

"It's 1988, the final year of the Reagan presidency, and the curtain is closing on the Cold War. In the absence of external adversaries, the American public is on the precipice of war with itself. The religious right, newly ascendant and emboldened, is determined to seize control of America's future. And the first battles will be fought over, of all things, contemporary art. In The Perfect Moment, cultural historian Isaac Butler reexamines this pivotal, misunderstood American era. Archconservatives like Jesse Helms, Pat Buchanan, and Pat Robertson fixed their sights on artists including Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, and Karen Finley, capitalizing on the provocative politics of their work to stir a nascent evangelical coalition into moral panic. It was at this moment, Butler argues, that the far right perfected the tactics it still uses today to whip its base into frenzy-from banning books and sanitizing American history, to spreading medical misinformation. All too relevant today, The Perfect Moment is an incisive and meticulously researched account of this crucial period and a stirring ode to the power of the creative spirit."-- Provided by publisher

A Pair of Aces

Assistant district attorney Eunice Carter, Manhattan's first Black female prosecutor, develops a strategy to prosecute organized crime boss Charles 'Lucky' Luciano by targeting his involvement in prostitution rather than his more visible criminal enterprises. Unable to build the case alone, she forms an uneasy alliance with brothel owner Polly Adler, whose workers have been endangered by Luciano's expanding control. Drawing on a network of women from sharply different social worlds, the two gather evidence against Luciano while risking retaliation from the criminal organization. Set in New York City, the novel centers on the collaboration that leads to a landmark organized crime trial.

On the Origin of Sex

"Let's talk about sex. Not boring, human sex, but the endlessly fascinating, varied, and complex forms of reproduction in the rest of the natural world. Biologist Lixing Sun has spent decades researching sexual reproduction and evolution using behavioral experiments, genetic testing, and mathematical and computer modeling. In On the Origin of Sex, he reveals the wild and weird world of how creatures reproduce. In slime molds, sex can involve dozens -- or even hundreds -- of mating types, or proto-sexes. Among certain algae, nearly every individual can mate with almost any other -- a veritable free-for-all. Meanwhile, whiptail lizards and California condors are just two among the many vertebrate species capable of parthenogenesis. Clownfish sequentially change from male to female, and bearded dragons can undergo temperature-dependent sex reversal, all of which challenge the notion that sex is binary and fixed in the natural world."-- Provided by publisher

Nerve Damage

"A riotous revenge novel about a woman's quest to escape her stalker ex-boyfriend-by stalking him herself."-- Provided by publisher

The Midnight Train

"When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop? No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. To see what kind of person you really were. For Wilbur his best days were with Maggie, the love of his life. On his honeymoon in Venice. Before he gave it all away. He wishes he could go back and live differently. But to do so risks everything . . . A magical, time-travelling love story, from the world of The Midnight Library."-- Provided by publisher

The Man Who Stole the Gods

"Amidst the chaos of Cambodia's brutal genocide, a new crime wave emerged -- one that would sweep across borders and entangle the world's most prestigious art institutions. Priceless treasures of the ancient Khmer Empire, the civilization that produced Angkor Wat, vanished from sacred temples, looted by smugglers and trafficked into the hands of elite collectors. At the center of it all was a man named Douglas Latchford. Known later as 'Dynamite Doug' for the ruthless methods used to extract statues from temple ruins, Latchford orchestrated one of history's most audacious cultural heists. From dusty Cambodian villages to the glittering auction houses of London and New York and institutions like the Met, he played a double game -- posing as an expert on Khmer art while secretly flooding the market with stolen antiquities. In The Man Who Stole the Gods, award-winning journalist Matthew Campbell unravels the gripping, stranger-than-fiction story of Latchford's criminal enterprise, and a global conspiracy of greed, corruption, and complicity -- one that involves some of the world's most powerful museums, collectors, and auction houses. A masterful blend of true crime, history, and investigative journalism, The Man Who Stole the Gods is the definitive account of one man's greed, an industry's complicity, and the fight to expose the truth and restore stolen treasures to their rightful home." -- Provided by publisher

Love and Death in the American Novel

"Leslie A. Fiedler's Love and Death in the American Novel is a study of American fiction from its beginnings up through the 1960s. In this tour de force from the great mid-twentieth-century era of literary criticism, Fiedler argues that American literature is gothic at heart, marked by a terror of sexuality and an obsession with violence, escape, and death. The American writer, he says, confronts a world that is 'without a significant history or a substantial past; a world which had left behind the terror of Europe not for the innocence it dreamed of, but for new and special guilts associated with the rape of nature and the exploitation of dark-skinned people.' Fiedler's own book, as brilliantly written as it is provocatively conceived, is itself a contribution to American literature. His puckish suggestion is that we read it 'not as a conventional scholarly book--or an eccentric one--but a kind of gothic novel (complete with touches of black humor) whose subject is American experience as recorded in our classic fiction.'" -- Back cover

List of All Possible Desires

A dazzling novel in stories from a master of the form that follows the Royal family across generations of obsession, betrayal, and reinvention. In postwar Paris, a boy is seduced by his mysterious nanny into a world of adult secrets. In 1950s New York, a young woman struggles to protect her stroke-stricken charge as bruises multiply on the woman's body. In the 1970s, a fragile cousin wanders into the Royals' jazz-soaked townhouse, where music, sex, and ruin intertwine. And at the heart of these stories is Rainey Royal herself, coming of age in Greenwich Village, inventing herself as an artist through the tumult of the '70s and '80s. By turns shocking, erotic, and deeply humane, List of All Possible Desires is a haunting portrait of family and history-written with Landis's trademark intensity and precision. This publication is joined by expanded reissues of the other two books in the Rainey Royal Cycle, the novel in stories Normal People Don't Live Like This and the novel Rainey Royal. Each book stands on its own, but together they echo and amplify one another, creating one of the richest and most intense worlds in contemporary American fiction.

Land

"The award-winning, bestselling author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait returns with a soaring historical novel set in Ireland in the years before and after the Great Hunger."-- Provided by publisher

Lady Chatterley's
Lover

"Constance Reid, Lady Chatterley, is a young woman trapped in an unfulfilling marriage to an aristocrat whose war wounds have left him paralyzed. After her husband demands that she provide him with an heir, she enters into a liaison with their gamekeeper, a working-class man named Oliver Mellors. As their illicit relationship grows in tenderness, mutual respect, and sensual passion, Constance discovers that true fulfillment requires a real connection of both mind and body. Shocking to its original audience for its cross-class romance as well as for its explicit depictions of sex, the novel has long been hailed as the summit of Lawrence's artistic achievement and one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century." -- Amazon

Honey in Her Veins

"Arthur Connoway desperately wants to free himself from the monster inhabiting his mind. Instead, he is rapidly losing control of it following his mother's death. In a last-ditch effort to feel whole again--and to lay his mother's memory to rest--Arthur decides to return to the quiet bee farm he once called home, hoping their sacred honey can heal him in more ways than one. Eight years ago, Eva Moreau's flora magic caused a terrible accident, harming her father in the process. Now, she's desperate to find a way to heal him, but her attempts only seem to do the opposite. If she could just learn to control her magic, she might be able to save her father and leave the past behind. When Arthur returns to town looking for absolution, Eva once again loses control of her magic, putting everyone she loves in danger. Together, the pair decides to trek to the source of her family's magic to find a cure for both Arthur and her father. But there's a mysterious ghost haunting the forest, and it won't let Arthur and Eva leave the woods without confronting the secrets of their past ..."--Amazon website

Glyph

"Ghosts don't exist. They don't. End of. Story, however. It is haunting. Everything tells it. It all starts when Petra and her little sister Patch hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost. Is it imaginary? Is it real? Then it all starts again thirty years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom. What to do? She phones her sister. In a chiaroscuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, Glyph asks if we're attending to the history that's made us and to the history we're making. A funny, warm and clear-eyed take on where we are now, Glyph is about what our imaginations are for and how, in a broken, brutal and divided time, we rekindle care, solidarity, resistance and openness. This antiwar novel, Ali Smith's most soulful, playful and vital yet, is a work of lightness that goes deep to counter the forces currently flattening the modern world." -- Book jacket flap

Girl's
Girl

"One summer shatters the balance between three best friends, forcing them to confront the line between friendship and attraction. Fifteen-year-old Mina's whole world is her two best friends, but after an unexpected first kiss, the established dynamics of their trio quickly unravel. Everything that was once shared openly, from clothes to secrets, now feels impossibly fragile. Loyalties shift and tensions simmer across the long days of this pivotal summer, where the girls have nowhere new to go and everything new to feel. Looking back, an adult Mina traces the undercurrents of longing that shaped her first experience of desire. The rituals of girlhood -- gossip, selfies, sleepovers, and videogames -- become threads in a delicate, volatile web of intimacy, in which everything feels achingly fleeting and permanently etched. Loving one person, Mina learns, can shift the way we love everyone else -- including ourselves. Bold, vulnerable, and sharply funny, Girl's Girl is a sundrenched and dewy snapshot of modern girl culture set in the blaze of one suburban Midwest summer." -- Provided by publisher

The Future of the Past

"As the wooden piles under Amsterdam begin to rot, water levels rise in Venice. The 4,500-year-old ruins of Mohenjo-daro flood in Pakistan. Compaction of peat soil in northern England is causing Hadrian's Wall to collapse. The bricks of excavated Babylon are exploding as a result of increasing salt levels. Melting permafrost in Siberia is endangering the ancient burial mounds of the Scythian civilization. In the US, hurricanes have partially destroyed the heritage of New Orleans and Puerto Rico, while the 2019 wildfires forced the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to close. The climate crisis is threatening historical heritage all over the world, with higher temperatures, more storms and fires and, of course, rising sea levels. Monuments, buildings, inner cities and cultural landscapes are at risk, and museums such as the Louvre have already started relocating parts of their collections to climate-proof storage facilities. Written by a highly regarded art historian, The Future of the Past addresses this urgent issue and asks us to include the fate of beauty in our conversations on climate change. Extreme weather means we have to approach history in new ways. Historical heritage now confronts us not only with the past, but also the future." -- Book jacket