ODY New Books Collection

Mutiny

"The story of a disillusioned generation that set out to reclaim its dignity and take on corporate America. In recent years, young college grads have faced an alarming reality: crushing debt, unemployment, and jobs below their qualifications. They are frustrated that the time and money they invested in a degree have failed to bring about the opportunities they were promised. The anger of this college-educated working class began to boil over during the Covid pandemic, when workers at companies like Apple and Starbucks shocked corporate America by voting to unionize. Not long after, the veteran New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber met Chaya Barrett, an astute college grad and eight-year Apple employee who had helped organize her coworkers at an Apple store near Baltimore. While following Barrett and her cohort as their seemingly spontaneous rebellions spread far and wide--from college-educated workers at Apple stores and Starbucks cafés, through video-game studios, and even to Hollywood writers' rooms--Scheiber realized he was witnessing something deep and lasting. Mutiny is the revelatory account of a generation made confident by their historic educational achievements, only to become disillusioned when their degrees yielded far less than they were taught to expect. With striking empathy, Scheiber paints a vivid portrait of this new working class while telling the dramatic story of its revolt against the status quo. He describes how recent developments like the proliferation of artificial intelligence and the war in Gaza have further fueled its discontent, and he explains why the college-educated working class will continue to demand change in the workplace, in cities like New York, and in national politics for years to come." -- Provided by publisher

Men like Ours

"From brilliant new voice in fiction Bindu Bansinath, a darkly funny and moving story about death, life, and community in a South Asian suburban enclave of New Jersey. When Matthew Pillai is found dead, slumped over the wheel of his BMW, the women of Willow Road are roped into the investigation of their friend's death. At the center of the case are the Sharmas -- Anita, a widow whose husband introduced Matthew to the neighborhood, and her boundary-pushing daughter, Leila, who called him Uncle. To Anita, who has been in freefall since her arrival in America as a young woman, Matthew's presence offered hope, including a promise of betterment for Leila. The truth, however, is far stranger. In this darkly funny debut, the women of Willow Road find that despite their internecine quarrels, casual backstabbing, and generational feuds, in the end, there is no one to turn to but each other." -- Provided by publisher

The Lost Soldiers

"Fresh from the case of the stolen heart, one that shattered his belief in the regime he works for, Samson Kolechko is confronted by a new mystery that borders on the impossible. A troop of Red Army soldiers has disappeared without a trace while visiting a banya, a traditional Ukrainian bathhouse, in the heart of Kyiv. Their abandoned boots and uniforms are the only proof that they ever existed. Faced with such a fantastical conundrum, Samson must resort to a fantastical investigation method: stitching his operative severed ear into a bathhouse worker's jacket, he is able to eavesdrop on his every move. But he discovers far more than he bargained for, further complicating matters when he uncovers human remains in the stoves and the presence of a sinister religious cult in the city. With his quick-witted new wife Nadezhda at his side, Samson must not only solve the case but navigate the political turmoil that still grips Kyiv as civil war looms and trust between neighbors and comrades is eroded day by day. In this third volume, Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine's greatest living novelist, and a true master of absurd storytelling, vividly depicts a city filled with political turbulence and eccentric characters--and draws playful parallels with the present day."-- Provided by publisher

Look What You Made Me Do

"'Every successful marriage has its own private language.' So it is for baby boomer Kate and her beloved architect husband Jack, thirty years into their seemingly idyllic metropolitan North London life. And so it is for spiky millennial screenwriter Phoebe and her charming loafer of a partner, Tony. But when Phoebe's steamy television series Cheating becomes the year's most talked-about show, Kate thinks she sees in it details and intimacies of her marriage that only she and her husband could possibly have known. Who has betrayed whom? Who has stolen whose story--and why? A black comedy of love, trust, resentment, and entitlement, Look What You Made Me Do is the sharply observed and suspenseful story of two very different women from two very different generations, entangled in a battle only one of them can win."-- Amazon.com

Last Seen

"Seven years ago, two boys went missing in the ocean-and only one was brought to shore. The sandbank, an isolated peninsula dotted with beach huts, was scarred forever. Sarah's son survived all those years ago. But on the anniversary of the accident, he disappears without trace. As new secrets begin to surface, the sandbank hums with tension and unanswered questions. Sarah's search grows more desperate and she starts to mistrust everyone she knows-and she's right to. In this summer community where everyone knows each other, someone saw everything on that fateful day seven years ago. And they'll do anything to keep the truth buried." -- Provided by publisher

The Last Movement

An intimate portrait of genius, love, and betrayal at the end of Gustav Mahler's life. In the spring of 1910, Gustav Mahler--wrapped in a wool blanket--sits on the deck of the Amerika, sailing back to Europe. The ocean around him is gray and endless, the air sharp with wind and steel. Not yet fifty, Mahler is already a legend: in Vienna and New York, audiences fight for tickets to see the restless, small man who commands the most stubborn orchestra in the world. Yet his fame is shadowed by illness. His body is failing, his wife Alma has fallen in love with another man: the young architect Walter Gropius. Mahler has begged, humiliated himself, tried everything to keep her. Nothing worked, except the certainty of his approaching death. Alma has stayed, tending to him with care, perhaps to ease his final passage. On board, Mahler reflects on life, art, and above all, love. Finalist for the Deutscher Buchpreis and one of the most acclaimed German novels of recent years, Robert Seethaler's The Last Movement is a haunting, tender portrait of a great artist confronting his farewell to life.

The Last Contract of Isako

"Isako is a legendary swordswoman, but every legend must come to an end. When her long-time client unexpectedly retires, she plans to follow--to walk out into the frozen wasteland of their planet with her family enriched by her death. But when she's offered a final mission, she can't refuse, especially when she realizes who lies at the center of it all: Martim, her last--and worst--apprentice, who's somehow made his way to the top. As she's thrust into a world of corporate espionage and shadowy secrets, what she uncovers could forever change humanity's existence among the stars."-- Provided by publisher

Lady C

"D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is one of the best-known and most resonant works of the twentieth century. Originally considered obscene and unpublishable in numerous countries, its scandalous story of class divide and the English countryside is infamous. But, since the 1920s, we have repeatedly re-created Lady Chatterley, from film and TV to music and tourism. Guy Cuthbertson tells the colorful story of the novel's journey through the last hundred years. He examines how the book has been read, adapted, and reimagined across the globe, from the United States to Japan, and explores the 1960 'Chatterley trial'--a key moment in the struggle for freedom of expression. It might have been burnt and derided, laughed at and defaced, but Lawrence's novel has crept into all walks of life. Whether the book, or its influence, be good or bad, we live in a world that Lady Chatterley's Lover helped to create."-- Publisher's website

Israel

"Omer Bartov was born in a kibbutz, grew up in Tel Aviv, and served in the Israel Defense Forces during the Yom Kippur War. He went on to become a leading scholar of the Holocaust before turning his attention to his native country. In a series of widely read essays, he has argued rigorously and passionately against Israel's war in Gaza and the steady erosion of its democratic norms. His early warning that Israel might be at risk of conducting genocide in Gaza and his later judgment that a genocide was under way became topics of international debate. In Israel: What Went Wrong?, Bartov sketches the transformation of Zionism from a movement that sought to emancipate European Jewry from oppression into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism. How is it possible, he asks, that a state founded in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, which brought a Jewish national home widespread approval, stands credibly accused of perpetrating large-scale war crimes? How do we come to terms with the fact that Israel's war of destruction in Gaza was conducted with the support, laced with denial and indifference, of so many of its Jewish citizens? Drawing from several decades of thinking and writing, Bartov explores the present crisis and the urgent questions it has raised. He tracks the origins of Zionism, the intertwining of Israel's independence with Palestinian displacement, the politics of the Holocaust and antisemitism, and a number of new ideas for how Jews and Arabs alike can achieve peace and security. Then, in an essay titled "The Missing Constitution," he discusses Israel's failure to draft a binding national compact, and the escalating consequences of this lost opportunity. The result is a searing critique that assesses the meaning of Zionism and the future of Israel with lucidity and depth." -- Jacket flap

In Defense of Sunlight

In Defense of Sunlight examines current research on the relationship between sunlight exposure and human health. Journalist Rowan Jacobsen reviews scientific studies concerning the potential benefits and risks of sun exposure, including its role in vitamin D production and its possible associations with a range of health conditions. The book discusses the development of public health recommendations on sun protection, considers differing effects of sunlight across populations with varying skin pigmentation, and presents the author's interpretation of emerging research on balancing sun exposure with skin cancer prevention. Written for a general audience, it explores the evolving scientific understanding of sunlight and its implications for health guidance.

How to Survive in the Woods

"Raised by a doomsday prepper and hardened by the start-up world, Emma Sharp has learned how to endure--especially in her marriage to Logan Grant, a charismatic tyrant who keeps her under tight control. To Emma, her marriage is a cage: it keeps her in, but it also keeps her safe. Until it doesn't. When Emma forms an unexpected bond with Logan's former girlfriend, the two women hatch a plan to help Emma take her life back. Destination: the punishing final stretch of the Appalachian Trail known as the Hundred Mile Wilderness. After all, bad things happen in the woods all the time. As the three venture deeper into Maine's backcountry, desire and dread curdle into something unpredictable, dark, and deadly. Someone is lying. Someone is watching. And in the remote heart of the forest, someone is about to be lost... or found."-- Front book flap

Homebound

Cincinnati, 1983. Becks is nineteen, blasting her Walkman and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle is dead. When she discovers the unfinished computer game he left behind, she pours her grief and anger into finishing it: one last collaboration to guide her out of loneliness. Berkeley, 2078. Dr. Tamar Portman is a brilliant scientist wrestling with her responsibility to humanity's precarious future--and to her mysterious creation. But when a project takes her out of academia and into the private sector, the ambitions of powerful people put everything at risk. The Atlantic, 2586. A jaded sea captain, Yesiko, will do whatever it takes to keep Babylon afloat and her fragile crew alive. Until she encounters the one compromise even she may be unwilling to make. And somewhere along the way, there is Chaya: a four-hundred-year-old automaton collecting stories and mining their own memories in a determined search for another life themself. All are bound together by a quest for community--and by a futuristic traveler on a solo mission through space. Front book flap

The Great Betrayal

"A history of the political instability in the Middle East, driven largely by great power conflict, and predictions for the future of the region. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 divided the Middle East into states with unnatural boundaries, drawn by colonial powers with short-term interests and no consideration for the people or future of the region. The century that followed saw bad governance, systemic corruption, geopolitical rivalries, and endless foreign intervention and meddling, effectively redrawing borders by force. While there is no singular cause for instability in the Middle East, Gerges's analysis explains the origins of numerous past and ongoing conflicts to draw conclusions about where the region is heading, using the past to predict the future of Arab politics, religion, and life. The Hundred Years War for the Middle East introduces Gerges's new Middle East, shaped by the changes and discontinuity of present day. He presents five major predictions for the next century: state collapse and the emergence of new states; the present state system enduring with minor alteration; durability of political authoritarianism; a new social contract based on constitutional arrangements; and a combination of both constitutionalism and political authoritarianism. From the Sykes-Picot Agreement to the rise of ISIS, our modern understanding of the key actors, non-state organizations (like Al Qaeda and ISIS), and dominant forces allows us to examine how changing relationships and rising tensions will shape the next century."-- Provided by publisher

A God-Shaped Nation

"Ever since conquistadores claimed Taino land in the name of their Catholic God and New England Puritans formed their strictly Protestant 'city on a hill,' religion has been central to American life. Even as some found religious freedom - Rhode Island welcomed the Quakers, Jews, and Baptists that Massachusetts expelled as dissenters - indigenous people and Africans forced into slavery struggled to protect their religious practices. With the constitutional separation of church and state, it fell to the American people to decide: would they sharpen religion's formidable powers of division, or reimagine its creative possibilities? In A God-Shaped Nation, Brook Wilensky-Lanford follows this essential American tension from first contact through the 2025 inauguration. It is a story of defiance: Anne Hutchinson, preaching against Puritan clergy; Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise serving soft-shell crab to his kosher guests; the Paiute man Wovoka envisioning the Ghost Dance movement in the face of violent government repression. It is also a story of community: Millerites waiting together in vain for Jesus's return on a rainy October night in 1844; Chinese immigrants bringing Daoist and Buddhist gods to their California temples; Mormons pushing westward to build their 'new Zion' in Utah. And in the last fifty years, it has been a story of muscular political power, as the religious right has sought both to shape the present and to paint the past in its own image. At this moment, when religion appears to shape even the most secular aspects of American life, understanding its complex history is more essential than ever. 'It is in history that the very human work of religion happens,' Wilensky-Lanford shows us, 'and in ordinary time that even the most carved-in-stone tenets can and do change.'" -- Publisher, dust jacket flaps

Ghost-Eye

"Past and present collide in a novel about a girl who just might be a "case of the reincarnation type." Varsha Gupta wants fish for lunch. Her family is shocked; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don’t allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Varsha claims she can remember another life, in a mud house by a river where she caught and cooked fish with a different mother. Perplexed, the Guptas turn to Dr. Shoma Bose, a psychologist who has been investigating what are known as "cases of the reincarnation type" for years. But her understanding of the world is changed forever by Varsha's revelations. Half a century later, Varsha's case file catches the attention of a group of environmental activists, and Shoma's nephew Dinu is drawn inexorably into their plans. As Dinu finds himself caught up in the search for Varsha, buried memories of his own past begin to surface. Traveling between late 1960s Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, Amitav Ghosh's Ghost-Eye is an urgent and expansive novel from one of our greatest living storytellers, about family, fate, and our fragile planet." -- Provided by publisher

Follow the Signs

"Description: If you've ever been on either end of the question "What's your sign?" you have Linda Goodman to thank, or blame. America's first New Age celebrity, her 1968 astrology book Sun Signs was the first of its kind to become a New York Times best seller (with over 60 million copies sold) and the advance for her second book, Love Signs, was an unprecedented $2.25 million. Yet, while Linda was teaching the world how to search the skies for clarity, she was also involved in her own mysterious pursuit. In 1973, her daughter was found dead and police declared it a suicide. Linda believed something more unusual was afoot, and spent years depleting her fortune, chasing down leads that might bring her beloved daughter. Many criticized her efforts, and the revolutionary nature of Linda's literary efforts have been largely forgotten since her death in 1995. But what happened to Linda Goodman? This question plagued Courtney Ann LaFaive who discovered Linda's work as a teenager at the public library decades after her heyday. Upon reading Linda's theories that love is "magic" and everyone's "deepest need," LaFaive became a devotee of her work. Later as a doctoral student, LaFaive seeks to redeem Goodman as a literary and spiritual figure in her dissertation. Yet, LaFaive's own impulsive forays into love and marriage compromise everything Linda ever wrote, and LaFaive's attempts to find the truth about Goodman's life run into roadblock after roadblock. In LaFaive's pursuit of the truth about Linda Goodman, Follow the Signs asks what it means when facts become stranger than fiction, wrenching truths come to light, and we must walk away from those we love." -- Provided by publisher

A Flood of Pictures

"When and how did pictures permeate everyday lives in the United States? What happened to those daily lives when they did? And what happened to pictures in the process? This book traces the beginnings of a transformation in cultural life in the US: when widespread circulation of pictures reshaped a culture accustomed to printed and spoken words. In the three decades before the Civil War, the ordinary experiences of a large segment of the population came to include pictures of many kinds, including illustrations in books, pamphlets, and newspapers; photographs on cards; full-sheet printed pictures collected in scrapbooks or albums or hung on walls; posters and broadsheets; spectacular paintings displayed in theatrical venues; and more. Pictures supplemented verbal texts--and in some cases overshadowed them--for conveying news and information; portraying people, places, and events; focusing public discourse; selling things; educating and instructing; generating excitement and aesthetic gratification; promoting and disguising political agendas; shaping social identities; and building and undermining social bonds. This study recovers a time before successful pictorial formulas for mass appeal were established, before an audience habituated to consumption of pictures existed, and before pictures had become thoroughly commodified. The foundations for our picture-saturated twenty-first century can be seen in the developments explored in this book."-- Publisher's description

The Fire Agent

"Born into an aristocratic German Jewish family, Ernst Baerwald is a gifted linguist, talented musician, and fearless idealist. When he's recruited in 1900 to become a spy--his cover working for a company that would become the notorious chemical conglomerate IG Farben--his life becomes an extraordinary adventure spanning two continents, two world wars, and impossible choices that will haunt him forever. From Frankfurt to Milan to Tokyo, Ernst moves through a world of intrigue and passion. He battles Japan's Yakuza while entertaining its royalty and hosts Europe's most brilliant performers. He falls deeply in love . . . with two women. He witnesses the rise of fascism in both Japan and Germany. And when the forces of fascism in Japan meet the horrors of Hitler's Germany, this German Jew faces an impossible choice: destroy the country he loves most or become complicit in unimaginable evil."-- Provided by publisher

The Family Man

"In March of 2023, Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering his wife Maggie and their younger son Paul at Moselle, their home in South Carolina's Lowcountry. By then the story had become headline news across the country, with its revelations of corruption in high places, massive fraud, opioid abuse, fake suicides, suspicious accidents, and the generational recklessness of the wealthy legal dynasty at its center. Featuring a cast of villains ranging from supposedly respectable bankers and lawyers to violent street gang members, the story has, not surprisingly, been the subject of several books and TV shows already. But few have focused on the enigma of Alex Murdaugh himself as brilliantly as James Lasdun's The Family Man. Having covered the case for the New Yorker, where his article became the magazine's most read story of 2023, the acclaimed novelist brings his long-standing interest in the darker drives of the human psyche to an investigation into the serial embezzlements, fatal boat crash and other events leading up to the slaughter at Moselle. Having traveled extensively in the Lowcountry interviewing people involved in the case (including Murdaugh's notorious 'Cousin Eddie') and attending hearings with Murdaugh himself, Lasdun looks at Murdaugh through a series of revelatory perspectives that include recordings of Murdaugh's jail conversations, the literature of criminal psychology, and the murder trial itself, to create a masterful portrait of his subject and an immersive account of the psychological and social processes by which a seemingly loving family man became a 'Family Annihilator.'"-- Provided by publisher

Empire of Skulls

"During the contentious and progressive antebellum era, the Fowler family preached a gospel of self-improvement to a nation eager to embrace its foundational beliefs. For the first time, this new "science" of phrenology offered all Americans the ability to improve their station by unlocking their innate mental and emotional truths. Revered politicians, quirky celebrities, infamous criminals, and social outcasts all found their way to the Fowlers for skull readings. Brimming with the energy to change the world, the Fowlers connected phrenology to practically every aspect of life in the young nation-from abolition to women's rights, temperance to prison reform, spiritualism and mesmerism to vegetarianism and sexual education. But there was a dark side to this fad and to the Fowlers, and soon nefarious forces co-opted this once-hopeful sensation to justify racism and xenophobia. Phrenology's complex history stands as a commentary on the dreams and follies of the American republic. Though phrenology (and the Fowlers) ran afoul of the tide of history, its aspirational insistence on an individual's ability to improve oneself became embedded in the fabric of the nation." -- Provided by publisher