ODY New Books Collection

Sorrowful Mysteries

"In 1917, in Fátima, Portugal, three shepherd children claimed that the Virgin Mary appeared before them and spoke the words, "Do not be afraid." Stephen Harrigan first heard the story of Our Lady of Fátima when he was a young boy in Texas in the 1950's, struggling to come to grips with a religion, Catholicism, that captured him, thrilled him, and simultaneously terrified him, as well as with the notion of sin and of what actually happened in Fátima in the early part of the 20th century, one of the most important mysteries in the Catholic pantheon. Sorrowful Mysteries is a detailed and extraordinary examination of the appearance of Our Lady of Fátima, an attempt to unravel and put into perspective the lives of the three children--how it changed them and what happened to them after the life-altering event, a peering into the Catholic religion itself, and Harrigan's own personal relationship with the power of his childhood religion."-- Provided by publisher

Sleep

"Every parent exists inside of two families simultaneously--the one she was born into, and the one she has made. Ten-year-old Margaret hides beneath a blackberry bush in her family's verdant backyard while her brother hunts for her in a game of flashlight tag. Hers is a childhood of sunlit swimming pools and Saturday morning pancakes and a devoted best friend, but her family life requires careful maintenance. Her mother can be as brittle and exacting as she is loving, and her father and brother assume familiar, if uncomfortable, models of masculinity. Then late one summer, everything changes. After a series of confusing transgressions, the simple pleasures of suburban life, and of girlhood, slip away. Twenty-five years later, Margaret hides under her bed, waiting for her young daughters to find her in a game of hide and seek. She's newly divorced and navigating her life as a co-parent, while discovering the pleasures of a new lover. But some part of her is still under the blackberry bush, punched out of time. Called upon to be a mother to her daughters, and a daughter to her mother, she must reckon with the echoes and refractions between the past and the present, what it means to make a child feel safe, and how much of our lives are our own, alone."-- Provided by publisher

The Six

"When RMS Titanic sank on a cold night in 1912, barely seven hundred people escaped with their lives. Among them were six Chinese men. Arriving in New York, these six were met with suspicion and slander. Fewer than twenty-four hours later, they were expelled from the country and vanished. When historian Steven Schwankert first stumbledacross the fact that eight Chinese nationals were onboard, of whom all but two survived, he couldn't believe that there could still be untold personal histories from the Titanic. Now, at last, their story can be told. The result of meticulous research, a dogged investigation, and interviews with family members, The Six is an epic journey across continents that reveals the full story of these six forgotten survivors. Who were Ah Lam, Chang Chip, Cheong Foo, Fang Lang (or Fong Wing Sun), Lee Bing, and Ling Hee?"--Provided by publisher

Saving Orchids

"Until recently myriad lifeforms enriched our lives. In parts of the United States, listening to a night-time chorus of frogs in the neighborhood marsh was a normal part of childhood. During the day, children would search for tadpoles, just steps away from native Lady's Tresses orchids. Year by year, the chorus became quieter, and the marshes changed. Today, only a few frogs and orchids remain. Is this the world we want our children to inherit? Do we want orchids to slip through our fingers, and eventually to vanish? The answer is "no" for the intrepid orchid conservationists whom biologists Philip Seaton and Lawrence Zettler introduce in this inspiring and beautifully illustrated book. During the past three decades, Seaton and Zettler have traveled the globe, from Madagascar to Florida, studying orchids and the people protecting them. Readers learn the basic science of plant evolution, pollination, and reproduction to see how the orchid family became both the pinnacle of plant evolution--with upward of 27,000 species--and a canary in the coal mine for environmental degradation. Starting with a history of exploitation, of orchid fever and the looting of the tropics for their botanical treasures, the book ends with hope. Although the current perilous state of the environment can't be ignored, all around the world people are saving orchids."-- Provided by publisher

Sad Tiger

"Sad Tiger is built on the facts of a series of devastating events. Neige Sinno was seven years old when her stepfather started sexually abusing her. At 19, she decided to break the silence that is so common in all cultures around sexual violence. This led to a public trial and prison for her stepfather and Sinno started a new life in Mexico. Through the construction of a fragmented narrative, Sinno explores the different facets of memory - her own, her mother's, as well as her abusive stepfather's; and of abuse itself in all its monstrosity and banality. Her account is woven together with a close reading of literary works by Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Christine Angot, and Virginie Despentes among others. Sad Tiger - the title inspired by William Blake's poem "The Tyger" - is a literary exploration into how to speak about the unspeakable. In this extraordinary book there is an abiding concern: how to protect others from what the author herself endured? In the midst of so much darkness, an answer reads crystal clear: by speaking up and asking questions. A striking, shocking, and necessary masterpiece."-- Provided by publisher

Run for the Hills

"An unexpected road trip across America brings a family together in this raucous and moving new novel from the bestselling author of Nothing to See Here. Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it's just been Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While she sometimes admits it's a bit lonely, and a less exciting a life than she imagined for herself, it's mostly ok. Mostly. Then one day, Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she's his half-sister. Reuben--left behind by their dad thirty years ago--has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of other half siblings. And he wants Mad to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all. As Mad and Rube--and eventually the others--share stories of their father, who behaved so differently in each life he created, they begin to question what he was looking for with each new incarnation. Who are they to each other? What kind of man will they find? And how will these new relationships change Mad's previously solitary life on the farm? Infused with deadpan wit, zany hijinks, and enormous heart, Run For the Hills is a sibling story like none other--a novel about a family forged under the most unlikely circumstances, and united by hope in an unknown future."-- Provided by publisher

Pronoun Trouble

"The nature of language is to shift and evolve-but every so often, a new usage creates a whole lot of consternation. These days, pronouns are throwing curve balls, and it matters, because pronoun habits die hard. If you need a refresher from eighth grade English: pronouns are short, used endlessly, and serve to point and direct, to orient us as to what is meant about who. Him, not her. Me, not you. Pronouns get a heavy workout, and as such, they become part of our hardwiring. To mess with our pronouns is to mess with us. But many of today's hot button controversies are nonsense. The singular "they" has been with us since the 1400s and appears in Shakespeare. In fact, many of the supposedly iron-clad rules of grammar are up for debate (Billy and me went to the store is perfectly acceptable!), and with tasty trivia, unexpected twists, and the weird quirks of early and contemporary English, McWhorter guides readers on a journey of how our whole collection of these little words emerged and has changed over time."-- Provided by publisher

Precious Rubbish

"If an exorcism can ever be slow and quiet, then every panel I've finished has felt something like an exorcism. The gutters give me space to make sense of things: to connect dots and close gaps. To remember." Kayla E.'s Precious Rubbish is an experimental graphic memoir drawn in a style that references the aesthetics of mid-century children's comics and tells the story of a childhood shaped by maternal emotional dysregulation, rural poverty, and incest. The author's childhood is portrayed as a collection of short-form comics and gag panels punctuated by interactive elements like paper dolls, satirical advertisements, games, and puzzles."-- Publisher

The Pilgrimage

"An erotic nightmare of Catholic longing, guilt, and desire and a banned classic of modern Irish literature...Wealthy and devout, Michael and Julia Glynn are the envy of their neighbors and the model Irish Catholic couple, bearing Michael's increasingly painful and crippling arthritis with stoicism. In hope of a miracle, their priest suggests a family pilgrimage to Lourdes. Yet these pious holiday plans are thrown into disarray when anonymous, obscene letters begin to arrive, full of terrible accusations. Banned in Ireland on its first publication in 1961, Broderick's debut arrived "like an incendiary device" (Sunday Independent). The Pilgrimage anticipated the deep shifts that would soon turn the country's theocratic society upside down. It is a darkly comic, blasphemous, and sexually charged chamber drama laying bare the hypocrisies of a small Irish town "as watchful as the jungle," and teetering on the brink of catastrophe..." -- Provided by publisher

A Physical Education

"A Physical Education traces Casey Johnston's journey of calorie restriction and obsessive cardio--making herself small in almost every way--to finding healing through the (unexpected) practice of lifting weights. As she progresses, carrying groceries and closing heavy doors become easier. As she diligently practices checking in with how she feels, she begins to question not only how she has treated her body, but how she sees herself and the world. This growth also fuels a deeper understanding: how the mainstream messaging she received about women's bodies has seeped into almost every other area of her life. Combining wit, rage, and a reporter's eye for detail, Johnston recounts how she learned the process of rupture, rest, and repair-not just within her cells and muscles, but within her spirit. A love letter to the science of female strength, this is a book for anyone who's ever longed to return home to their own body." -- Provided by publisher

The Party's
Interests Come First

"China's leader, Xi Jinping, is one of the most powerful individuals in the world - and one of the least understood. Much can be learned, however, about both Xi Jinping and the nature of the party he leads from the memory and legacy of his father, the revolutionary Xi Zhongxun (1913-2002). The elder Xi served the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for more than seven decades. He worked at the right-hand of prominent leaders Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang. He helped build the Communist base area that saved Mao Zedong in 1935, and he initiated the Special Economic Zones that launched China into the reform era after Mao's death. He led the Party's United Front efforts toward Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Taiwanese. And though in 1989 he initially sought to avoid violence, he ultimately supported the Party's crackdown on the Tiananmen protesters. The Party's Interests Come First is the first biography of Xi Zhongxun written in English. This biography is at once a sweeping story of the Chinese revolution and the first several decades of the People's Republic of China, and a deeply personal story about making sense of one's own identity within a larger political context. Drawing on an array of new documents, interviews, diaries, and periodicals, Joseph Torigian vividly tells the life story of Xi Zhongxun, a man who spent his entire life struggling to balance his own feelings with the Party's demands. Through the eyes of Xi Jinping's father, Torigian reveals the extraordinary organizational, ideological, and coercive power of the CCP - and the terrible cost in human suffering that comes with it."-- Provided by publisher

Our Beautiful Boys

"Vikram Shastri has always been a good kid. He’s got a 4.6 GPA, listens to his parents, barely hits the parties, and is on track for a fancy college. But when he gets the chance to play on his high school football team, his world suddenly starts to shift. Basking in their recent victory, Vikram and his teammates Diego and MJ attend a party at an abandoned house in the Southern California foothills, located right below three ancient caves. They find themselves lost in the dark of night in one of the caves, carried away by male bravado, with a classmate who has annoyed them for years. But when the kid emerges with injuries that prove to be more serious than the all-star boys intended, they are suspended for the rest of the season, and the boys’ parents are brought in to manage the situation. As the parents try to protect their boys, they are also managing their own complicated family and professional lives. While the parents work with, and against, one another to figure out the truth about that night, the boys must come to terms with how much of their own secrets they’re willing to reveal to clear their names. Insightful and deeply human, Our Beautiful Boys is about race and class, parents trying to raise good boys in our fraught times, and the conflict we find when all of these slam together. It’s about the kids inside each parent and the games the world makes each of us play." -- Penguin Random House

Original Sin

"[A]n unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden's run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline -- amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration. In Greek tragedy, the protagonist's effort to avoid his fate is what seals his fate. In 2024, American politics became a Greek tragedy. Joe Biden launched his successful 2020 bid for the White House with the stated goal of saving the nation from a second Trump presidential term. He, his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations. At his debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, the consequences of that deception were exposed to the world. It was shocking and upsetting. Now the full, unsettling truth is being told for the first time. Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson take us behind closed doors and into private conversations between the heaviest of hitters, revealing how big the problem was and how many people knew about it. From White House staffers at the highest to lowest levels, to leaders of Congress and the Cabinet, from governors to donors and Hollywood players, the truth is finally being told. What you will learn makes President Biden's decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless--a desperate bet that went bust -- and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents. The story the authors tell raises fundamental issues of accountability and responsibility that will continue for decades. The irony is biting: In the name of defeating what they called an existential threat to democracy, Biden and his inner circle ensured it, tossing aside his implicit promise to serve for only one term, denying the existence of health issues the nation had been watching for years, dooming the Democrats to defeat. The decision to run again, the Original Sin of this president, led to a campaign of denial and gaslighting, leading directly to Donald Trump's return to power and all that has happened as a consequence. Rarely does hubris meet nemesis more explosively. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, Original Sin is essential reading." -- Provided by publisher

No Less Strange or Wonderful

"Celebrated author and artist A. Kendra Greene's No Less Strange or Wonderful is a brilliant and generous meditation-on the complex wonder of being alive, on how to pay attention to even the tiniest (sometimes strangest) details that glitter with insight, whimsy, and deep humanity, if only we'd really look. In twenty-six sparkling essays, illuminated through both text and image, Greene is trying to make sense-of anything, really-but especially the things that matter most in life: love, connection, death, grief, the universe, meaning, nothingness, and everythingness. Through a series of encounters with strangers, children, and animals, the wild merges with the domestic; the everyday meets the sublime. Each essay returns readers to our smallest moments and our largest ones in a book that makes us realize-through its exuberant language, its playful curation, and its delightful associative leapfrogging-that they are, in fact, one in the same."-- Provided by publisher

The Next One Is for You

"Northern Ireland, 1975. Violence has erupted on the streets of Belfast. After years as a sleepy, guerrilla army, the IRA is clashing with Loyalist gangs and heavily armed British soldiers. But the Troubles have spilled beyond the small island: An ocean away, in the heart of Philadelphia's Irish enclave, a teenage girl finds a letter in her mailbox. Inside is a bullet, and the message is clear: The next one is for you or your family. As celebrated New York Times reporter Ali Watkins reveals in this exquisitely reported nonfiction thriller, the conflict in Northern Ireland might have gone very differently had it not been for a small, ragtag band of carpenters, family men, and fugitives in the United States. The Philadelphia Five, as they came to be known, supplied the Irish Republican Army at its moment of greatest need, bolstering the fight for a united Ireland but fueling the Troubles at an untold cost. This small group of Irish nationalists smuggled hundreds of rifles, rocket launchers, explosives, and armor-piercing bullets across the Atlantic Ocean and into Northern Ireland. Whether they were skimming money from innocuous-seeming charities, coolly slipping weapons into hidden compartments of vans and houses, or scouring local graveyards for the names of dead Irishmen to use on federal firearm forms, the gunrunners approached their mission--to unite Ireland under one flag, by any means necessary--with ruthless poise, even as European and American investigators closed in, members of their own movement began to turn on them, and bodies stacked up on all sides. A gripping tale of crime, rebellion, and the hazy line between them, The Next One Is for You is the definitive account of America's hand in the Troubles--a conflict whose resonance is still felt today, in the United States and Ireland alike." -- Amazon

The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto

"In October 2008, someone going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto posted a white paper outlining "a peer-to-peer electronic cash system" called Bitcoin to an arcane listserv populated by Cypherpunks. ... Nakamoto's Bitcoin at first seemed destined to fulfill the dreams of fringe 1990s utopians for a currency set free from governments and big banks. Yet after he disappeared, his creation took on a strange new life in the financial markets, where rampant speculation fueled a vision of crypto as a potential windfall, inviting charlatans and scammers and opening a vast gulf between Bitcoin's idealistic origins and its troubled reputation. But who was Nakamoto? Whoever he was could rightly claim to have invented one of the most important technologies of the new century. And Nakamoto was a billionaire--his Bitcoin wallet held an untouched eleven-figure fortune waiting to be claimed. ... Tracking leads from London to Oslo to Los Angeles, from coastal Australia to the Arizona desert, he takes readers through a rogues' gallery tour of Nakamoto suspects--from benevolent geniuses like cryptographer Hal Finney to difficult ones like a reclusive polymath known to his followers only as Jim; from the mercurial Australian Craig Wright, who claims to be Nakamoto, to a secret team at the National Security Agency." -- Jacket

My Name Is Emilia Del Valle

"In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman. To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of seventeen, she begins to publish pulp fiction using a man's pen name. When these fictional worlds can no longer satisfy her sense of adventure, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at The Daily Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan. As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, as does Eric, and while there, she meets her estranged father and delves into the violent confrontation in the country where her roots lie. As she and Eric discover love, the war escalates and Emilia finds herself in extreme danger, fearing for her life and questioning her identity and her destiny." -- Provided by publisher

Mark Twain

"Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America's first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn't long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize. In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care. After establishing himself as a journalist, satirist, and lecturer, he eventually settled in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, where he went on to write The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He threw himself into the hurly-burly of American culture and emerged as the nation's most notable political pundit. At the same time, his madcap business ventures eventually bankrupted him; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play. Drawing on Twain's bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose career reflected the country's westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars, and who was the most important white author of his generation to grapple so fully with the legacy of slavery. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain's writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer's talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history." -- Jacket flap

The Manor of Dreams

"Mexican Gothic meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in Christina Li's haunting novel about the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it. They say what you don't know can't hurt you. But silence can be deadly. Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career and live out the rest of her life as a recluse. Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood home: Vivian's sprawling, Southern California garden estate. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead--one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement. In hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. Amidst the grief and paranoia of this unhappy reunion, Vivian's daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother's life, only to realize they are being haunted by something much more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth about the last fateful summer they spent in the house, or will they cling to their secrets until it's too late? Told in dual timelines, spanning three generations, and brimming with forbidden romance, betrayal, ambition and sacrifice, The Manor of Dreams is a thrilling family gothic that examines the true cost of the American dream--and what happens when the roots we set down in this country turn to rot."-- Provided by publisher

The Lost Orchid

"Sarah Bilston follows the colorful characters and fateful dramas of orchid mania, the nineteenth-century craze among European and North American collectors vying to own the world's most coveted flowers. Focusing on the hunt for the so-called lost orchid, Bilston reveals the enormous human and environmental cost of a colonial obsession."-- Provided by publisher