“Sometimes there’s nothing better on earth than someone asking you a question.” – Lisa Taddeo, Three Women
FICTION
Animal by Lisa Taddeo ★
Honestly, sometimes I think it’s the only recourse. Killing men in times like these.
Joan has spent a lifetime enduring the cruel acts of men. But when one of them commits a shocking act of violence in front of her, she flees New York City in search of Alice, the only person alive who can help her make sense of her past. In the sweltering hills above Los Angeles, Joan unravels the horrific event she witnessed as a child—that has haunted her every waking moment—while forging the power to finally strike back.
Here is the electrifying debut novel from Lisa Taddeo, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Three Women, which was named to more than thirty best-of-the-year lists and hailed as “a dazzling achievement” (Los Angeles Times) and “a heartbreaking, gripping, astonishing masterpiece” (Esquire). Animal is a depiction of female rage at its rawest, and a visceral exploration of the fallout from a male-dominated society. With writing that scorches and mesmerizes, Taddeo illustrates one woman’s exhilarating transformation from prey into predator.
Description from Goodreads.
“Intoxicating… It’s impossible to talk about Animal without talking about 2019’s Three Women. That book, which follows the sexual and emotional lives of women, became the kind of cultural phenomenon that will forever follow Lisa Taddeo. Animal flows out of its predecessor, but where Women deals with the perils of heteronormative gender politics, Animal deals in the ways the system pushes women to the brink; and where Women is in conversation with #MeToo, Animal is in conversation with the anger that follows the reckoning.” – Entertainment Weekly
“Propulsive, erotic, emotional… Joan is almost impossible to look away from on every page… As full of sensuality, amorality, and drama as its riveting narrator.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Taddeo creates impressive suspense… A provocative novel of sex, love, and rage for readers drawn to psychologically rich, feminist literary fiction.” – Booklist
“A brilliant if uncomfortable provocation, sometimes messily intense but willing to take risks; likely to stir talk—and argument… For readers, the result is relentless but never wearing, not preachment but real lived pain, and akin to standing in a hurricane with razor blades flying. There’s blood at the end—and a glimmer of self-affirmation.” – Library Journal
Available Formats:
Print Book | eBook
Slipping by Mohamed Kheir
Under mysterious circumstances, Seif, a struggling journalist, is introduced to a source for a new story: a former exile with an encyclopedic knowledge of the country’s obscure, magical spaces. Together–as tourist and guide–they step into a world hidden in plain sight.
In Alexandria, they wait as trains bear down on them at the intersection of several busy lines; they follow a set of stairs down to the edge of the Nile and cross the water on foot; and down south, they sit before a bare cave wall, a cinema of private visions. What begins as a fantastical excursion through a fractured nation quickly winds its way inward, as Seif begins to piece together the mysteries of his own past, including what happened to Alya, his girlfriend with the gift of singing sounds. Seif alone confronts the interconnectedness of his own traumas with Egypt’s following the Arab Spring and its hallucinatory days of revolutionary potential.
Musical and parabolic, Slipping seeks nothing less than to accept the world in all its mystery. An innovative novel that searches for meaning within the haze of trauma, it generously portrays the overlooked miracles of everyday life, and attempts to reconcile past failures–both personal and societal–with a daunting future. Delicately translated from Arabic by Robin Moger, this is a profound introduction to the imagination of Mohamed Kheir, one of the most exciting writers working in Egypt today.
Description from Goodreads.
“Enchanting… Kheir demonstrates a marvelous imagination and harnesses the magic of storytelling. Readers are in for a treat.” – Publishers Weekly
“The world of Slipping, Mohamed Kheir’s challenging, fantastical novel set in post-Arab Spring Egypt, is one where the boundaries between history and myth, dreaming and waking, are constantly in flux… Only Kheir’s intricate prose, and Robin Moger’s deft translation from the Arabic, could tell this story; this is the book that all the indie booksellers I know are raving about right now, and with good reason.” – Literary Hub
“Haunting… Kheir’s masterful storytelling not only encourages, but almost necessitates, rereading. Slipping is a novel about the fragility in all things: society, love, even reality.” – Foreword Reviews
Available Formats:
Hoopla eBook
One Two Three by Laurie Frankel
In a town where nothing ever changes, suddenly everything does…
Everyone knows everyone in the tiny town of Bourne, but the Mitchell triplets are especially beloved. Mirabel is the smartest person anyone knows, and no one doubts it just because she can’t speak. Monday is the town’s purveyor of books now that the library’s closed―tell her the book you think you want, and she’ll pull the one you actually do from the microwave or her sock drawer. Mab’s job is hardest of all: get good grades, get into college, get out of Bourne.
For a few weeks seventeen years ago, Bourne was national news when its water turned green. The girls have come of age watching their mother’s endless fight for justice. But just when it seems life might go on the same forever, the first moving truck anyone’s seen in years pulls up and unloads new residents and old secrets. Soon, the Mitchell sisters are taking on a system stacked against them and uncovering mysteries buried longer than they’ve been alive. Because it’s hard to let go of the past when the past won’t let go of you.
Three unforgettable narrators join together here to tell a spellbinding story with wit, wonder, and deep affection. As she did in This Is How It Always Is, Laurie Frankel has written a laugh-out-loud-on-one-page-grab-a-tissue-the-next novel, as only she can, about how expanding our notions of normal makes the world a better place for everyone and how when days are darkest, it’s our daughters who will save us all.
Description from Goodreads.
“[S]harp plotting―with several surprising reversals―and memorable characters reflect a deep imagination that adds texture and complexity… Readers will be captivated by this story of adversity and resilience.” – Publishers Weekly
“One Two Three is a coming-of-age story that examines intergenerational trauma, sisterhood, and agency. Frankel creates unique personalities for One, Two, and Three and builds a memorable world in Bourne.” – Booklist
“Frankel has given us another socially conscious 21st-century fable in a voice that is part pastor, part political speechwriter, and part Fannie Flagg. Clever, charming, and always on message.” – Kirkus Reviews
Available Formats:
Print Book | Audiobook | Playaway | eBook | eAudiobook
Legends of the North Cascades by Jonathan Evison
Dave Cartwright has had enough. After three tours in Iraq he has come home to Vigilante Falls in Washington State only to find that he feels incapable of connecting to the people and the place that once defined him. Most days, his love for his seven-year-old daughter, Bella, is the only thing keeping him going. When tragedy strikes, Dave makes a dramatic decision: he will take Bella to live in a cave in the wilderness of the North Cascades.
So begins a compelling adventure, a story of a father and daughter attempting to cope with a breathtaking but harsh environment. Once they are settled in the cave, Bella retreats into a different world, that of a mother and son who had lived in that same space, but thousands of years before, at the end of last Ice Age. As the two dramas begin to merge, a timeless odyssey unfolds, both as a meditation on the perils of isolation and an exploration of humans’ indelible struggle to survive.
Perfect for readers of Peter Heller’s novels or Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone, Legends of the North Cascades is Jonathan Evison’s return to sweeping, multicharacter narratives like his New York Times bestseller West of Here and is an immensely satisfying read.
Description from Goodreads.
“Evison’s majestic and panoramic latest conjures the beauty, power, and unforgiving nature of the Cascade Mountains in alternating narratives separated by thousands of years. Evison masterfully delivers a subtle yet pointed commentary on how society marginalizes veterans and how we profess to admire yet distrust the individualist ethos while also offering a profound meditation on the human spirit.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Engaging… This modern back-to-the-land story feels like John Krakauer’s Into the Wild meets Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear, a combination that makes for a compelling read in its appreciation of the monumental properties of nature and recognition of the history of humans in the North Cascades.” – Library Journal
“Evison delivers an intimate… story of grief and parenthood with characters from two distant millennia… Evison’s empathetic vision offers much to consider about the limits of parental authority and the capacity for both physical and emotional survival.” – Publishers Weekly
Available Formats:
Print Book | eBook | Hoopla eBook | Hoopla eAudiobook
Should We Stay or Should We Go by Lionel Shriver
When her father dies, Kay Wilkinson can’t cry. Over ten years, Alzheimer’s had steadily eroded this erudite man into a paranoid lunatic. Surely one’s own father passing should never come as such a relief.
Both medical professionals, Kay and her husband Cyril have seen too many elderly patients in similar states of decay. Although healthy and vital in their early fifties, the couple fears what may lie ahead. Determined to die with dignity, Cyril makes a modest proposal. To spare themselves and their loved ones such a humiliating and protracted decline, they should agree to commit suicide together once they’ve both turned eighty. When their deal is sealed, the spouses are blithely looking forward to another three decades together.
But then they turn eighty.
By turns hilarious and touching, playful and grave, Should We Stay or Should We Go portrays twelve parallel universes, each exploring a possible future for Kay and Cyril. Were they to cut life artificially short, what would they miss out on? Something terrific? Or something terrible? Might they end up in a home? A fabulous luxury retirement village, or a Cuckoo’s Nest sort of home? Might being demented end up being rather fun? What future for humanity awaits—the end of civilization, or a Valhalla of peace and prosperity? What if cryogenics were really to work? What if scientists finally cure aging?
Both timely and timeless, Lionel Shriver addresses serious themes—the compromises of longevity, the challenge of living a long life and still going out in style—with an uncannily light touch. Weaving in a host of contemporary issues, from Brexit and mass migration to the coronavirus, Shriver has pulled off a rollicking page-turner in which we never have to mourn perished characters, because they’ll be alive and kicking in the very next chapter.
Description from Goodreads.
“…wildly inventive and sometimes hilarious… The fugue-like pleasures of the novel, as key passages and images recur in ever-shifting patterns with ever-differing outcomes, are intense. That makes Should We Stay or Should We Go a delight to read.” – Seattle Times
“Shriver delivers on a high-concept premise full of alternative narratives based around themes of illness and aging… Readers will be entranced by Shriver’s freewheeling meditation on mortality and human agency.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Her best novel since The Post-Birthday World… A return to form, merging Shriver’s better instincts as both novelist and social critic.” – Kirkus Reviews
Available Formats:
Print Book | eBook
Transmutation: Stories by Alex DiFrancesco
Building on the success of All City, here is a wry, and at the same time dark and risk-taking, story collection from author (and baker) Alex DiFrancesco that pushes the boundaries of transgender awareness and filial bonds. Here is the hate between 16-year-old Junie, who is transitioning, and their mom’s boyfriend Chad when the family moves into Chad’s house on Lake Erie. And here is the love being tested between Sawyer and his dad, who named his boat after his child and resists changing it from Sara to Sawyer now. There is DiFrancesco’s willingness to enter lands that are violent and comfortless in some of these stories, testing the limits of what it means to be human, sometimes returning stronger and wiser and sometimes not returning at all as their characters surge forward into unknown spaces.
Description from Goodreads.
“This memorable collection of short stories displays the wild talent of Alex DiFrancesco to push boundaries and explore the imagination while simultaneously comforting and strengthening their readers.” – Ms.
“This beautiful collection of stories features trans and queer characters across many times and places. Some of the stories have magical elements; others are straight-up realistic. They’re about family and first love, growing up, queer community, and the weird disconnect between the world as it is and the world as we experience it. DiFrancesco’s writing is gorgeous. There’s an eerie beauty in each of these stories, and the characters all feel strikingly real.” – BookRiot
Available Formats:
Hoopla eBook
SUSPENSE
I Don’t Forgive You by Aggie Blum Thompson
An accomplished photographer and the devoted mom of an adorable little boy, Allie Ross has just moved to an upscale DC suburb, the kind of place where parenting feels like a competitive sport. Allie’s desperate to make a good first impression. Then she’s framed for murder.
It all starts at a neighborhood party when a local dad corners Allie and calls her by an old, forgotten nickname from her dark past. The next day, he is found dead.
Soon, the police are knocking at her door, grilling her about a supposed Tinder relationship with the man, and pulling up texts between them. She learns quickly that she’s been hacked and someone is impersonating her online. Her reputation–socially and professionally–is at stake; even her husband starts to doubt her. As the killer closes in, Allie must reach back into a past she vowed to forget in order to learn the shocking truth of who is destroying her life.
Description from Goodreads.
“[A] strong debut… [readers] won’t be able to put down the book until they discover the culprit. Thompson is off to a solid start.” – Publishers Weekly
“…unsettling, disturbing, and eerily relatable… There’s nothing better than a dark, twisted thriller that keeps readers flipping pages looking for answers; one that forces us to change our mind numerous times throughout the story. I Don’t Forgive You is one of those books.” – Mystery & Suspense
“In crime reporter Thompson’s gripping fiction debut, Allie is welcomed to her wealthy new neighborhood by being framed for murder. The spot-on depictions of modern parenthood and suburban life make this story even more suspenseful, as Allie tries to find the real murderer before her entire life is destroyed.” – Library Journal
Available Formats:
Print Book
The Disappearing Act by Catherine Steadman
Once a year, actors from across the globe descend on the smog and sunshine of Los Angeles for pilot season. Every cable network and studio looking to fill the rosters of their new shows enticing a fresh batch of young hopefuls, anxious, desperate and willing to do whatever it takes to make it. Careers will be made, dreams will be realized, stars will be born. And some will be snuffed out.
British star Mia Eliot has landed leading roles in costume dramas in her native country, but now it’s time for Hollywood to take her to the next level. Mia flies across the Atlantic to join the hoard of talent scrambling for their big breaks. She’s a fish out of water in the ruthlessly competitive and faceless world of back-to-back auditioning. Then one day she meets Emily, another actress from out of town and a kindred spirit. Emily is friendly and genuine and reassuringly doesn’t seem to be taking any of it too seriously. She stands out in a conveyor-belt world of fellow auditionees. But a simple favor turns dark when Emily disappears and Mia realizes she was the last person to see her, and the woman who knocks on Mia’s door the following day claiming to be her new friend isn’t the woman Mia remembers at all.
All Mia has to go on is the memory of a girl she met only once… and the suffocating feeling that something terrible has happened. Worse still, the police don’t believe her when she claims the real Emily has gone missing. So Mia is forced to risk the role of a lifetime to try to uncover the truth about Emily, a gamble that will force her to question her own sanity as the truth goes beyond anything she could ever have imagined.
Actress and author Catherine Steadman has written a gripping thriller set in a world close to home that asks the question: In a city where dreams really do come true, how far would you go to make the unreal real?
Description from Goodreads.
“Page-turning… tackles the dark side of Hollywood.” – Entertainment Weekly
“Entertaining… authentic movie business details and nicely developed characters… This tale of Hollywood glamour, cruelty, and myth is sure to win Steadman new fans.” – Publishers Weekly
“Ethel Barrymore described Hollywood as ‘a glaring, gaudy, nightmarish set erected in the desert.’ That hasn’t changed much, as we see in this engrossing thriller… Steadman, both an author and an actress, deftly brings her talent for characterization to her writing, combining an engaging mystery with a meaty look at the question of what is real in a land of make-believe. This glittering narrative with a totally beguiling protagonist makes for an absolutely perfect beach read.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
Print Book | Audiobook | eBook | eAudiobook
A Dark and Secret Place by Jen Williams
When prodigal daughter Heather Evans returns to her family home after her mother’s baffling suicide, she makes an alarming discovery–stacks and stacks of carefully preserved letters from notorious serial killer Michael Reave. The “Red Wolf,” as he was dubbed by the press, has been in prison for over twenty years, serving a life sentence for the gruesome and ritualistic murders of several women across the country, although he has always protested his innocence. The police have had no reason to listen, yet Heather isn’t the only one to have cause to re-examine the murders. The body of a young woman has just been found, dismembered and placed inside a tree, the corpse planted with flowers. Just as the Red Wolf once did.
What did Heather’s mother know? Why did she kill herself? And with the monstrous Red Wolf safely locked inside a maximum security prison, who is stalking young women now? Teaming up with DI Ben Parker, Heather hopes to get some answers for herself and for the newest victims of this depraved murderer. Yet to do that, she must speak to Michael Reave herself, and expose herself to truths she may not be ready to face. Something dark is walking in the woods, and it knows her all too well.
Description from Goodreads.
“Thoroughly addicitve… Fans of Alex North and CJ Tudor should get their hands on this one ASAP.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Williams uses lyrical storytelling to create an ominous story full of chilling moments… [it will] make you want to leave the lights on at night.” – Mystery & Suspense
“Twists and turns that keep the reader engaged, you’ll be shocked right up until the very end.” – Red Carpet Crash
Available Formats:
Hoopla eBook | Hoopla eAudiobook
MYSTERY
Castle Shade by Laurie R. King
The queen is Marie of Roumania: the doubly royal granddaughter to Victoria, Empress of the British Empire, and Alexander II, Tsar of Russia. A famous beauty who was married at seventeen into Roumania’s young dynasty, Marie had beguiled the Paris Peace Conference into returning her adopted country’s long-lost provinces, single-handedly transforming Roumania from a backwater into a force.
The castle is Bran: a tall, quirky, ancient structure perched on high rocks overlooking the border between Roumania and its newly regained territory of Transylvania. The castle was a gift to Queen Marie, a thanks from her people, and she loves it as she loves her own children.
The threat is… now, that is less clear. Shadowy figures, vague whispers, the fears of girls, dangers that may only be accidents. But this is a land of long memory and hidden corners, a land that had known Vlad the Impaler, a land from whose churchyards the shades creep.
When Queen Marie calls, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are as dubious as they are reluctant. But a young girl is involved, and a beautiful queen. Surely it won’t take long to shine light on this unlikely case of what would seem to be strigoi?
Or, as they are known in the West… vampires.
Description from Goodreads.
“…thrilling… King smoothly slips in fascinating historical details about the life of Marie of Roumania, all the while keeping the plot galloping along at high speed. This is a treat for old fans and newcomers alike.” – Publishers Weekly
“Each book in the Russell and Holmes series is a treat for a history geek like me… The novels are extremely atmospheric, making me feel I had visited the far-flung places and times in each adventure.” – Mystery & Suspense
Available Formats:
eBook
Ruby Red Herring by Tracy Gardner
After their parents’ deaths, Avery Ayers and her teenaged sister, Tilly, take over the family business, Antiquities & Artifacts Appraised. Life in Lilac Grove is filled with jewels, tapestries, paintings… and the antics of eccentric Aunt Midge. But their world is rocked when they learn that the theft of a priceless ruby may be connected to their parents’ demise.
The trouble starts when the Museum of Antiquities hires Avery to appraise a rare, resplendent ruby. It bears a striking similarity to a stone in the museum’s bejeweled dragon’s-head medallion. One of the dragon’s ruby eyes was stolen long ago–replaced with a fake. Now, Avery’s colleagues–pompous Sir Robert Lane and fatherly Micah Abbott–suspect they may have the missing gem. But facets of the case remain cloudy. Detective Art Smith is snooping around. Another body turns up. And Avery finds mysterious notes that, impossibly, seem to be written by her father.
Accompanied by her Afghan hound, Avery enlists Art’s help in cutting the list of suspects who might have polished off her parents and swiped the jewel. Was it art collector Oliver Renell? Curator Nate Brennan? Actor Tyler Chadwick? Or was the theft an inside job, perpetrated by someone all too close to Avery? If she can’t find the culprit, Lilac Grove may be the setting for Avery’s own death.
Description from Goodreads.
“A lively combination of mystery, romance, and gemology that will appeal to fans of Jane K. Cleland and Paige Shelton.” – Kirkus Reviews
Available Formats:
Hoopla eBook | Hoopla eAudiobook
ROMANCE
Pack Up the Moon by Kristan Higgins
Joshua and Lauren are the perfect couple. Newly married, they’re wildly in love, each on a successful and rewarding career path. Then Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
As Lauren’s disease progresses, Joshua struggles to make the most of the time he has left with his wife and to come to terms with his future–a future without the only woman he’s ever loved. He’s so consumed with finding a way to avoid the inevitable ending that he never imagines his life after Lauren.
But Lauren has a plan to keep her husband moving forward. A plan hidden in the letters she leaves him. In those letters, one for every month in the year after her death, Lauren leads Joshua on a journey through pain, anger, and denial. It’s a journey that will take Joshua from his attempt at a dinner party for family and friends to getting rid of their bed… from a visit with a psychic medium to a kiss with a woman who isn’t Lauren. As his grief makes room for laughter and new relationships, Joshua learns Lauren’s most valuable lesson: The path to happiness doesn’t follow a straight line.
Sometimes heartbreaking, often funny, and always uplifting, this novel from New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins illuminates how life’s greatest joys are often hiding in plain sight.
Description from Goodreads.
“A moving and life-affirming portrait of grief that’s sure to bring the tears.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Higgins is a master of snappy dialogue, and her characters are authentic and relatable—a must for this type of novel. The heart of the story is tragic, but just like real life, there’s humor hidden in the darkest moments. This warm, bighearted story about grief, family, and the redemptive power of love will appeal to fans of Katherine Center and Jennifer Weiner.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Perfect pacing and plotting lift Higgins’s masterly latest. This is going to break (and restore) plenty of hearts.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
Print Book | eBook
HISTORICAL FICTION
Night Came with Many Stars by Simon Van Booy
“What you give in this world,” an old man tells his grandson, “will be given back to you.” Those words illuminate the actions within this unforgettable novel and its connected characters.
A young man survives two nearly fatal accidents. A Black family saves an orphaned white boy. A pregnant teenager is rescued by the side of the road. An autistic teenager is given his first job. Each incident grows in meaning and power over many decades as we see connections sometimes felt but not always apparent to the people themselves. “Everything was moving,” observes Samuel (Carol’s grandson) in the Kentucky woods. “An invisible force that was everywhere, and made everything touch.”
Told by a master storyteller, Night Came with Many Stars is a rare novel that reveals how wondrous, mysterious, and magically connected life can be–the light Simon Van Booy creates in this novel illuminates our own lives.
Description from Goodreads.
“Not to miss!” – USA Today
“Kindness and raw luck undergird Night Came with Many Stars―echoing the trials and windfalls of Oliver Twist or David Copperfield. And like Dickens’s young heroes, Van Booy’s determined souls act with their whole hearts―as does this brave, fierce novel―to earn what good may come.” – Boston Globe
“Cycles of racism, violence, and misogyny are disrupted by the grace-filled actions of friends, relatives, and strangers… This well-crafted and often serendipitous saga recognizes that family cannot be escaped but can be expanded.” – Kirkus Reviews
Available Formats:
Hoopla eAudiobook
SCI-FI & FANTASY
Rabbits by Terry Miles
It’s an average work day. You’ve been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air–4:44 pm. You go to check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize it is April 4th–4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?
Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses our global reality as its canvas. Since the game first started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. Their identities are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more deadly the game becomes. Players have died in the past–and the body count is rising.
And now the eleventh round is about to begin. Enter K–a Rabbits obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, the alleged winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts or the whole world will pay the price.
Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing. Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline and Eleven begins. And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake.
Description from Goodreads.
“Seemingly benign coincidences become clues to a mind-bending scavenger hunt in [Terry] Miles’s outstanding debut technothriller… Miles masterfully combines mystery, danger, and scientific theory to bring the game to life until readers are just as caught up in searching for the next clue as the characters themselves. It’s a wild ride and it proves impossible to put down.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“A twisty, timey-wimey roller coaster that morphs seamlessly from treasure hunt to conspiracy thriller to escape room.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
Print Book
NONFICTION
The Plague Year: America in the Time of COVID by Lawrence Wright
Beginning with the absolutely critical first moments of the outbreak in China, and ending with an epilogue on the vaccine rollout and the unprecedented events between the election of Joseph Biden and his inauguration, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year surges forward with essential information–and fascinating historical parallels–examining the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wright takes us inside the CDC, where the first round of faulty test kits cost America precious time; inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with great skepticism; into a COVID ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from Little Africa, South Carolina; into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs; and even inside the human body, diving deep into the science of just how the virus and vaccines function, with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaxxer movement.
In turns steely eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, comical, and always precise, Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew. His full accounting does honor to the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus, revealing America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential.
Description from Goodreads.
“…immersive and richly detailed…” – Publishers Weekly
“Maddening and sobering—as comprehensive an account of the first year of the pandemic as we’ve yet seen… In his characteristically rigorous and engrossing style, Wright documents innumerable episodes of ineptitude and malfeasance…” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Wright propels the story with dramatic set pieces… Wright’s scope includes the murder of George Floyd, the presidential election and all that made 2020 so momentous.” – New York Times
Available Formats:
Print Book | eBook | eAudiobook
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles
In a display case in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture sits a rough cotton bag, called Ashley’s Sack, embroidered with just a handful of words that evoke a sweeping family story of loss and of love, passed down through generations.
In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose gave this sack filled with a few precious items to her daughter, Ashley, as a token of love and to try to ensure Ashley’s survival as well. Soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the bag in spare yet haunting language—including Rose’s wish that “It be filled with my Love always.” Now, in this illuminating, deeply moving new book inspired by Rose’s gift to Ashley, historian Tiya Miles carefully unearths these women’s faint presence in archival records and draws on objects and art, to follow the paths of their lives—and the lives of so many women like them—in a singular and revelatory history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States.
All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and of love passed down through generations of women against steep odds. It honors the creativity and fierce resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties even when official systems refused to do so.
Description from Goodreads.
“[A] brilliant and compassionate account… A strikingly vivid account of the impact of connection on this family and others.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Filled with rare, archival photographs of objects from the era, this volume is a natural choice for book clubs and a must-buy for public and academic libraries alike.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“MacArthur fellow Miles paints an evocative portrait of slavery and Black family life in this exquisitely crafted history… Filling gaps in the historical record with the documented experiences of Harriet Jacobs, Elizabeth Keckley, and other enslaved women, Miles brilliantly shows how material items possessed the ‘ability to house and communicate… emotions like love, values like family, states of being like freedom.’ This elegant narrative is a treasure trove of insight and emotion.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
Print Book | eBook | eAudiobook
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Byran Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford
Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it’s no surprise that its myths bite deep. There’s no piece of history more important to Texans than the Battle of the Alamo, when Davy Crockett and a band of rebels went down in a blaze of glory fighting for independence from Mexico, losing the battle but setting Texas up to win the war. However, that version of events, as Forget the Alamo definitively shows, owes more to fantasy than reality. Just as the site of the Alamo was left in ruins for decades, its story was forgotten and twisted over time, with the contributions of Tejanos, Texans of Mexican origin who fought alongside the Anglo rebels, scrubbed from the record, and the origin of the conflict over Mexico’s push to abolish slavery papered over. Forget the Alamo provocatively explains the true story of the battle against the backdrop of Texas’s struggle for independence, then shows us how the sausage of myth got made in the Jim Crow South of the late 19th and early 20th century. As uncomfortable as it may be to hear, celebrating the Alamo has long had an echo of celebrating whiteness.
In the last forty-some years, waves of revisionists have come at this topic, and at times have made real progress toward a more nuanced and inclusive story that doesn’t alienate anyone. But we are not living in one of those times; the fight over the Alamo’s meaning has become more pitched than ever in the past few years, even violent, as Texas’s future begins to look more and more different from its past. It’s the perfect time for a wise and generous-spirited book that shines the bright light of the truth into a place that’s gotten awfully dark.
Description from Goodreads.
“A zesty, journalistic, half history, half sendup about the battle of the Alamo and the myths that cling to it… Burrough, Tomlinson, and Stanford, all Texans, succeed brilliantly in their intent… this lively book is sure to cause plenty of interesting conversations in Texas. An iconoclastic, romping, bull’s-eye volley at an enduring sacred cow—popular history at its most engaging and insightful.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“…sets out to restore some nuance and complexity to this historical period…” – New York Times
Available Formats:
Print Book | eBook
To Write as If Already Dead by Kate Zambreno
To Write As If Already Dead circles around Kate Zambreno’s failed attempts to write a study of Hervé Guibert’s To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life. In this diaristic, transgressive work, the first in a cycle written in the years preceding his death, Guibert documents with speed and intensity his diagnosis and disintegration from AIDS and elegizes a character based on Michel Foucault.
The first half of To Write As If Already Dead is a novella in the mode of a detective story, searching after the mysterious disappearance of an online friendship after an intense dialogue on anonymity, names, language, and connection. The second half, a notebook documenting the doubled history of two bodies amid another historical plague, continues the meditation on friendship, solitude, time, mortality, precarity, art, and literature.
Throughout this rigorous, mischievous, thrilling not-quite study, Guibert lingers as a ghost companion. Zambreno, who has been pushing the boundaries of literary form for a decade, investigates his methods by adopting them, offering a keen sense of the energy and confessional force of Guibert’s work, an ode to his slippery, scarcely classifiable genre. The book asks, as Foucault once did, “What is an author?” Zambreno infuses this question with new urgency, exploring it through the anxieties of the internet age, the ethics of friendship, and “the facts of the body” illness, pregnancy, and death.
Description from Goodreads.
“A fascinating, ambitious, unforgettable work.” – Literary Hub
“Zambreno writes with breathtaking clarity while untangling refreshing, sometimes daunting, concepts.” – The Longest Chapter
“[Zambreno] has some of [Guibert’s] acidity, his charisma, his meditativeness, his improvisational grace. She has, too, his comfort with slipperiness, both in terms of subjectivity―is Guibert the ‘I’ of his novels?―and of form… Despite its elliptical style, Zambreno’s book cultivates patience, a digressive but ruminative mode that goes beyond close reading of Guibert toward an actual embodiment of his voice.” – 4Columns