ODY New Books Collection

Earth 7

Well, that's about it for the story of planet Earth, poor Earth, reduced to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, life and love persist, even in the most unexpected, inhospitable places. Two women meet on a beach of artificial sand. One was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other may or may not be a robot. Their love-or any love-seems so unlikely. Earth is severely depopulated. Some people have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue eternal life as digital code. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts-and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that a future person may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Quixotic? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do? By the end of Unferth's wild, poetic, revelatory, and slyly philosophical novel, the reader has traveled to the very edges of the cosmos as a "soul globule" and between grains of sand as a microscopic tardigrade.

Drayton and Mackenzie

"One of the most acclaimed UK titles of 2025 now comes to North America - a magnificent novel about friendship, ambition, and the forces shaping the twenty-first century. James Drayton has always found things too easy. Ambitious, brilliant, disciplined-he graduates with a top first from Oxford and is on track to become the youngest ever partner at leading management consultancy McKinsey. His former classmate Roland Mackenzie, on the other hand, is an impulsive dreamer: charming and restless, his boundless enthusiasm matched only by his knack for self-sabotage. When Roland takes a job at the same firm as James, the two men only vaguely remember one another. But as the financial crisis starts to unfold, a chance encounter sparks an idea, and an unlikely partnership begins to take shape. Sent to Scotland to shutter offices and lay off hundreds of workers, James and Roland begin to wonder: What if they were made for more than this? What if they could build something grand and lasting-something that might even change the world? By turns intimate and panoramic, Drayton and Mackenzie is a deeply intelligent novel about ambition, friendship, and the forces shaping the twenty-first century-the story of two men caught in, and determined to master, the tides of history." -- Provided by publisher

The Dog's
Gaze

"Long before the phrase man's best friend became common parlance, dogs were already standing beside us in art as in life. In The Dog's Gaze, the historian Thomas W. Laqueur invites us to explore why they feature more than any other animal in the ways in which we picture ourselves and our stories. Dogs have been ubiquitous in the worldmaking of visual artists as far back as the Paleolithic age. Looking across the Western tradition, from Giotto to Goya and Rubens to Rego, Laqueur shows what their presence-as hunting partners, beloved friends, and even conduits to the afterlife-reveals about our own ways of seeing and how we want to be remembered. Far from being mere motifs, dogs are an integral and intentional element of the images in which they appear: They provide narrative coherence; they look out and bear witness, often on the artist's behalf; they illuminate our understanding of morality and melancholy and some, like us, become celebrities. Indeed, as Laqueur reveals, dogs in art are our social doppelgängers, our companions in looking and being. Richly illustrated and lovingly written, The Dog's Gaze is a unique visual history that examines the remarkable social bond between two species, shedding new light on the human condition through the eyes of our canine companions." -- Front book flap

A Deadly Episode

Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne is dead. Or, rather, the actor playing him in the film adaptation of The World is Murder is. Rising star David Caine has been stabbed, and it seems that everyone on the set had a motive. Caine had just fired his PA. He had fallen out with his director, slept with the screenwriter, humiliated his co-star and dropped his agent days before he was about to sign a multi-million-dollar deal to appear in the next Spider-Man movie. But what if Caine's murderer had made a mistake? What if it was the real Hawthorne who was the intended victim? For it turns out that the brilliant detective may have got it wrong ten years earlier. An innocent man has died in jail. And perhaps someone has decided that Hawthorne must pay the price.

Contrapposto

"Cricket Dibb, born on the American prairie, has no particular prospects or ambitions until, in grade school, he realizes he can draw. He soon meets a girl, Olympia Argyros, one year older, who is captivating and brilliant and far more worldly. Recognizing his talent, she convinces him to deface, with profound vulgarity, a popular playground. Under her direction, he does it willingly, already in love, and thus begins a sixty-five-year entwining between Cricket and Olympia, encompassing friendship, working partnership and love affair. Together they go to art school--an experience of dubious value--and then navigate the art world for the next fifty years, together and apart." -- Jacket

Body Double

"In this Hitchcockian literary thriller, two women who fall in love and move in together begin to resemble each other, while elsewhere a young woman who transcribes recordings for a ghostwriter receives a strange message that will upend her life."-- Provided by publisher

The American School of Spies

Examines the activities of a group of American archaeologists, classicists, and scholars who served with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. Focusing on the team known as the "Greek Desk," the book describes their intelligence work in Nazi-occupied Greece and their efforts, in cooperation with Greek allies, to protect archaeological sites, monuments, and cultural artifacts from looting and destruction.

American Rambler

"As a child, Isaac Fitzgerald was captivated by Johnny Appleseed, drawn to the legend by family ties, his father's larger-than-life stories, and a shared restlessness to leave home and discover what lay beyond. In American Rambler, he sets out on a year-long journey to follow Appleseed's path, walking (okay, sometimes driving, and at one point, even floating downstream) from Massachusetts to Indiana. On this journey, Fitzgerald turns a childhood fascination into a profound reckoning of loss and grief, ritual and faith, grimy gas station bathrooms and scenic apple picking. He is followed by a mysterious creature, camps in hostile environments, trespasses more than once, and is warmed by the generosity of strangers at every turn. A moving blend of memoir, history, and travelogue, American Rambler is at once an ode to the American heartland, a meditation on escaping the breakneck pace of modern life, and a clear-eyed look at the myths--often violent, sometimes hopeful, frequently romanticized--at the very core of American identity and history."-- Provided by publisher

America, U.S.a.

"America, U.S.A., deliberately formulated and beautifully written, details a heart-wrenching exploration of America's legacy. It is a magnificently complex combination of lessons and voices -- from W.E.B. DuBois and John Dos Passos to Herman Melville and Martin Luther King, Jr.-- that, together, paint a sprawling and honest tableau of the United States, its complicated past, and ever more tenuous future. Glaude's is a powerful voice of conscience in our tumultuous world. He pulls no punches, calling on us to interrogate our conceptions of innocence and freedom and the stories we tell ourselves about our past and present. Centered around the major celebrations of America's milestone birthdays across 250 years of history, the book offers a riveting look at the battles over who has a stake in writing the American story. Devastatingly candid, profoundly moving, and deeply reflective, America, U.S.A. is a shining meditation on how we must reckon with a grim past in order to strive for the better angels of our future."-- Provided by publisher

Magadh

"Magadh, Shrikant Verma's masterpiece, takes its name from the ancient Indian kingdom of Magadh, which rose to prominence in the sixth to second centuries BCE. First published in Hindi in 1984, it is widely regarded as one of the most important works of modern Indian poetry. A chorus of narrators - commoners, statesmen, nameless wanderers--pieces together the histories of ancient cities and kingdoms on the Indian subcontinent, their rise to splendor, their decline and eventual fall. In poems that are stark and urgent yet richly allusive, Verma lays bare these kingdoms' tales of corruption, guilt, ignorance, and arrogance. Rahul Soni's landmark translation, finally available in the United States, stays faithful to the spareness and the haunting, incantatory cadences of the original text, revealing how startlingly prescient Magadh remains today."-- Provided by publisher

The Plunge

"In the wake of her fiance's shocking death, Liv flees to New York, where she seeks refuge in the apartment on an old mentor. Broken and lonely, she ventures to a party one night and sees him: Damon, her magnetic former neighbor. At his side is Isabel, a beguiling older widow whose presence intrigues and unsettles her. Desperate for escape, Liv is drawn into their charged dynamic and becomes entangled in their dazzling lives. But when an investigative journalist invades their inner circle, threatening to expose a shattering secret from her past, Liv begins to unravel. She embarks on an all-consuming affair with Damon, complicated by her deepening bond with Isabel. Over the course of one scorching summer--moving from Manhattan to the North Fork to Lake Como--their lives collide in a dangerous game of desire and betrayal that pushes them to an explosive edge."-- Jacket flap

The Yahoo Boys

When his mother started emailing with a handsome American soldier who promised to send gold bars to her Madrid apartment, the journalist Carlos Barragán came face to face with the human toll of online romance fraud. After tracing the emails to an IP address in Nigeria, he set off on a journey to Lagos to find his mother's scammer, where he stumbled on a much bigger story. There, in a crowded and impoverished neighborhood in the midst of Africa's largest city, he encountered thousands of young men engaged in romance scamming. They call themselves "Yahoo Boys," and each year they catfish millions of dollars from lonely victims overseas, building a dizzying local economy from their phones ... Some Yahoo Boys attain the status of folk heroes, buying houses and cars with the money they make, while others become dependent on drugs and "cash out" -- successfully scam a victim -- only to lose it all. Through the Yahoo Boys' twisting fortunes, Barragán discovers the psychological tactics they perfect, the brutal economic realities that drive them, and the moral dilemmas they confront.

What God Kept for Himself

"Umberto Grassi recovers a radical critique, suppressed by the Inquisition. A wave of 16th-18th century Italians claimed that Adam and Eve had angered God by engaging in sodomy-sexual practice reserved for the divine. The heresy was politically potent, buttressing the common belief that elites invented Christian morality to enforce social control."-- Provided by publisher

What Came West

"Author of the New York Times Notable The Great Glass Sea ("The most unexpected second book by a writer of note to appear in years." -John Freeman, Boston Globe) returns with a gripping adventure story that probes the expansive, shifting wilds of the Sierra Nevada during the Gold Rush. Since childhood, Silas Hall has never been at ease with people. Only alone in nature, can he find peace. He is relentlessly bullied by classmates and even proximity to his own family fills him with dread. Still, despite his increasing isolation from others, he manages to forge a connection with Delia, a non-verbal housekeeper, and is surprised by the strength of the bond he feels with the child they come to share. But as his son, Elisha, grows up, even that closeness becomes more than Silas can bear. So, he leaves his family to travel west, journeying ever farther in search of a life in which he might belong. Under the cover of the wilderness, Silas burrows deeper into seclusion. By late 1840, he is one of few white people to have crossed the Sierra Nevada, where he coexists with the native Nisenan villagers at a mutually wary distance. But this fragile peace is disrupted when the promises of the Gold Rush bring a sudden flood of other whites west, leading Silas to commit an act of violence that will drive the last chapter of his life and incur upon the world he loves the full wrath of the world he fled. In interweaving parts, one a third-person account of Silas's flight from the manhunt that pursues him and the other an epistolary narrative from Silas to his abandoned, What Came West confronts different forms of American inheritance: the yearning for freedom and the grandeur of the wild, the corrupting nature of greed, the unforgiving ideals of Manifest Destiny, and the environmental destruction and genocide wrought upon native peoples living on the land that would become known as "Gold Country." What Came West is the story of a soul split after a defining moment and the ways in which one man tries to save himself and the world he loves as it vanishes beneath his feet." -- Provided by publisher

The Vivisectors

"In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by nature, where power is held in a fragile balance between academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, the reclusive narrator of The Vivisectors spends her days propping up the career of her needy and fraudulent professor boss. Then a controversy ruptures her careful routine: Adam, a contrarian student and an obsession of the boss, comes into heated conflict with a young professor, with both men claiming discrimination. The crisis subsumes the university, though the narrator is unmoved--not even the attempted suicide of her estranged mother has been enough to dispel her lack of engagement with the world. But when her boss commands her to befriend Adam, the narrator finds herself both caught up in the events threatening to tear the city apart and increasingly drawn to the alluring student at the heart of it all."-- Provided by publisher

View From the East Wing

"Jill Biden became First Lady at a complicated moment in US history, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the shadow of the January 6 insurrection. These were the circumstances under which she set up office in the East Wing, where she hit the ground running. Throughout her husband's presidency, Jill remained a tireless advocate for her causes, including women's health, military families, vaccine awareness, cancer initiatives, and education. She made history as the first-ever First Lady to hold an outside job while her husband was in office, continuing to work as a professor at a nearby community college. Yet all the while, she saw herself as an ordinary woman living an extraordinary life. In 'View from the East Wing', Jill shares her White House experiences for the first time, in her own words. She reflects on the Biden presidency and its impact on her family. She brings you behind the scenes, from Camp David to Air Force One, from grading papers in the Rose Garden to witnessing the abrupt end of her husband's bid for reelection. This is the story of a woman dedicated to her roles as a wife, mother, grandmother, teacher--and First Lady of the United States."-- Provided by publisher

Transcendent

Laverne Cox is a powerhouse in the fight for transgender rights and representation--but her path from a struggling trans actress to a cultural movement was anything but easy. Surviving a childhood full of trauma, dealing with depression, and working at a drag restaurant in New York City for seven years, Laverne was turning 40 and felt it was time to throw in the towel when it came to being a Hollywood star--then she booked the character of Sophia Burset in Orange is the New Black. She made history as the first openly transgender person nominated for a Primetime Emmy, starred in a range of high-profile shows, and became the first transgender person to win a Daytime Emmy as executive producer on Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word. In this book, you will experience life in Laverne's shoes, from her childhood abuse to making her big break, dealing with Hollywood bureaucracy, and finding her voice through the chaos of it all.

Tipping Out of Trouble

"How can we successfully transition towards a sustainable future? Drawing on broad insights from science and history, Marten Scheffer reveals how societies have transformed in the past and sets out a roadmap for how we might steer ourselves away from collapse-and toward renewal." -- Provided by publisher

This Is Not about Running

"Few women have ever run 800 meters in under two minutes. Even fewer people have taken on running's abusive training culture and won. Mary Cain has done both. She emerged as a running phenom at age 12, a straight-A student obsessed with Greco-Roman mythology and the freedom she felt when she ran fast. Like any middle-schooler, she just wanted to fit in, so she learned to run through the discomfort of hard training sessions, and the confusion of her coaches' and teammates' bullying. And she was overjoyed when, at 16, Alberto Salazar called to invite her to train with the famed Nike Oregon Project. Cain was poised to transform the sport, Salazar told her. She resolved to hold on to his favor, even as he insisted she lose weight and push through the pain of emerging injury. For years, she excelled, setting records against elite runners twice her age. The Olympics were in her sights. But off the track, Cain was crumbling. She snuck granola bars in the middle of the night and sank into a deep depression as injury after injury set in. Finally, she left the Oregon Project, telling herself she just needed a break. A chorus rang out across the running community: What happened to Mary Cain? Now, with her suit against Nike behind her, Cain is ready to share her side of the story--and to flip the script on abuse in youth sports. She draws on her diaries from this wrenching period of abuse to show, with clarity we rarely see, how young minds respond to the win-at-all-costs culture that pervades youth sports today. By turns raw, wry, and impassioned, This Is Not About Running is a fierce memoir of the damage wrought when we prioritize competition over mental health." -- Provided by publisher

The Theater

"In the tradition of John Hersey's Hiroshima, a terse and piercing look at a critical episode in the Ukraine War, from the award-winning author of They Will Have to Die Now. In March of 2022, three weeks after invading Ukraine, Russian forces bombed the shelter housed in the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theater, in the city of Mariupol. The bombing stands, to this day, as the single worst act of mass civilian killing of the war. This book tells the story of the group of ordinary Ukrainians--workers, teachers, actors--who built that shelter, giving succor to thousands of their countrypeople, before it was destroyed. Their audacity and humor and humanity in the midst of the siege of Mariupol, against impossible odds, will leave readers inspired, amused, and devastated. Their story is the story of a young republic and its struggle to survive."-- Provided by publisher