Adult

When Tochi Onyebuchi realized that his acclaimed science fiction and fantasy storytelling career had been centrally preoccupied with race, it prompted him to consider his responsibilities as a Black writer in the Internet age. Excavating the Internet of the late 1990s and early 2000s, RACEBOOK explores how the writer and public intellectual Onyebuchi is today was formed in that crucible. Beginning with the current moment when everything, including personal identity, is a matter of dispute, and tracing his online persona in reverse chronological order back to Web 1.0’s promises of greater equality and a bright digital future, Onyebuchi deftly examines the evolution of internet culture and the ways that culture has shifted in the ensuing decades. 

Following his “resurrection walk” and need for a new direction, Mickey Haller turns to public interest litigation, filing a civil lawsuit against an artificial intelligence company whose chatbot told a 16-year-old boy that it was okay for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for her disloyalty. Representing the victim’s family, Mickey’s case explores the mostly unregulated and exploding AI business and the lack of training guardrails. Along the way he joins up with a journalist named Jack McEvoy, who wants to be a fly on the wall during the trial in order to write a book about it. But Mickey puts him to work going through the mountain of printed discovery materials in the case. McEvoy’s digging ultimately delivers the key witness, a whistleblower who has been too afraid to speak up. The case is fraught with danger because billions are at stake.

THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER combines Harper Lee’s early short fiction and later nonfiction in a volume that offers an unprecedented look at the development of her inimitable voice. Covering territory from the Alabama schoolyards of Lee’s youth to the luncheonettes and movie houses of midcentury Manhattan, the book invites still-vital conversations about politics, equality, travel, love, fiction, art, the American South, and what it means to lead an engaged and creative life. This collection comes with an introduction by Casey Cep, Lee’s appointed biographer, which provides illuminating background for our reading of these stories and connects them both to Lee’s life and to her two novels, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and GO SET A WATCHMAN.

Every member of The House --- the most exclusive sorority on campus --- and all its alumni are beautiful, high-achieving and universally respected. After a freshman year she would like to forget, sophomore Nina Kaur knows that being one of the chosen few accepted into The House is the first step in her path to the brightest possible future. Meanwhile, adjunct professor Dr. Sloane Hartley is struggling to return to work after accepting a demotion to support her partner's new position at the cutthroat University. When invited to be The House’s academic liaison, Sloane enviously drinks in the way the alumnae seem to have it all, achieving a level of collective perfection that she so desperately craves. As Nina and Sloane each get drawn deeper into the arcane rituals of the sisterhood, they learn that living well comes with bloody costs.

Joe McGinniss was a paradox: a brilliant writer whose dazzling achievements were overshadowed by personal demons. At age 26, he became the youngest living person to top the New York Times bestseller list, for his book THE SELLING OF THE PRESIDENT, about Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign. Shortly after, he walked out on his wife and their three young children. His oldest son, Joe McGinniss Jr., went on to become a writer himself, known for his critically acclaimed novels THE DELIVERY MAN and CAROUSEL COURT. In DAMAGED PEOPLE, McGinniss Jr. vividly recounts his affectionate yet stormy relationship with his famous father, capturing moments of tenderness and humor amid the chaos and tension.

In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together --- building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of 20 years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume. In STRANGERS, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal.

1869. Tibet is closed to Europeans, an infuriating obstruction for the rap­idly expanding British Empire. In response, Britain begins training Indians --- permitted to cross borders that white men may not --- to undertake illicit, dangerous surveying expeditions into Tibet. Balram is one such surveyor-spy, an Indian schoolteacher who, for several years, has worked for the British, often alongside his dearest friend, Gyan. But Gyan went missing on his last expedition and is rumored to be imprisoned within Tibet. Desperate to rescue his friend, Balram agrees to guide an English captain on a foolhardy mission: After years of paying others to do the exploring, the captain, disguised as a monk, wants to personally chart a river that runs through southern Tibet. Their path will cross fatefully with that of another Westerner in disguise, 50-year-old Katherine.

At midcentury, everyone knew Bennett Cerf: witty, beloved, middle-aged panelist on "What’s My Line?" whom TV brought into America’s homes each week. They didn’t know the handsome, driven, paradoxical young man of the 1920s who’d vowed to become a great publisher, and a decade later, was. By then, he’d signed Eugene O’Neill, Gertrude Stein and William Faulkner, and had fought the landmark censorship case that gave Americans the freedom to read James Joyce’s ULYSSES. Using interviews with more than 200 individuals; deeply researched archival material; and letters from private collections not previously available, this book recalls Bennett Cerf to vibrant life, bringing booklovers into his world and time, finally giving a true American original his due.

By 1942, Winston Churchill found himself facing a vastly different war than the one he’d inherited from Neville Chamberlain back in 1940. In the East, the Soviets were now a co-belligerent (if not exactly a firm ally). And the aid he’d so longed for from across the Atlantic had finally arrived, when Pearl Harbor pushed America to end its “dithering and buggering about.” But with Parliament and the public losing faith in him, Churchill had to manage a war that now stretched into the Pacific and Indian Oceans, threatening Britain’s colonies, all the while negotiating a new relationship with Roosevelt and Stalin --- two jostling, unpredictable comrades-in-arms fully prepared to carve up the world to their own satisfaction. In this sequel to his prizewinning BRITAIN AT BAY, Alan Allport completes his superlative history of Britain’s role in World War II.

A young woman takes stock after the burglary of her apartment. A teenager becomes obsessed with the obituaries in a weekly magazine. Grandchildren mourn the grandparents who loved them and the grandparents who didn’t. Painters and almost-painters try to distinguish Good Art from Bad Art. People grapple with life-altering illness, unrequited love, and promises they have every intention of keeping. Some win the lottery. Others don’t. In these sinewy, thoughtful stories, celebrated New Yorker contributor Camille Bordas delves into the mysteries of life, death and all that happens in between. At once darkly funny and poignantly self-aware, Bordas’ writing offers a window into our shared, flawed humanity without insisting on a perfect understanding of our experiences.