In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. Among them are Seamus, a frustrated young poet; Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicate her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who “didn’t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection.” As each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives --- a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.

In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. Among them are Seamus, a frustrated young poet; Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicate her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who “didn’t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection.” As each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives --- a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.

The Booker Prize finalist and widely acclaimed author of REAL LIFE and FILTHY ANIMALS returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women at a crossroads.

In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. At the group’s center are Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicates her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who “didn’t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection.”

These three are buffeted by a cast of poets, artists, landlords, meat-packing workers and mathematicians who populate the cafes, classrooms and food-service kitchens of Iowa City, sometimes to violent and electrifying consequence. Finally, as each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives --- a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.

A novel of friendship and chosen family, THE LATE AMERICANS asks fresh questions about love and sex, ambition and precarity, and about how human beings can bruise one another while trying to find themselves. It is Brandon Taylor’s richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life.

Audiobook available, read by Kevin R. Free

It’s June 2021, and Arkady Renko knows that Russia is preparing to invade and subsequently annex Ukraine as it did Crimea in 2014. He is, however, preoccupied with other grievances. His longtime lover, Tatiana Petrovna, has deserted him for her work as an investigative reporter. And he is having trouble with his dexterity and balance. A visit to his doctor reveals that these are symptoms for Parkinson’s disease. Rather than dwell on his diagnosis, he throws himself into another case. An acquaintance has asked him to find his daughter, Karina, an anti-Putin activist who has disappeared. In the course of the investigation, Arkady falls for Karina's roommate, Elena, a Tatar from Ukraine. Later, in Crimea, Tatiana reemerges to complicate Arkady’s new romance.

It’s June 2021, and Arkady Renko knows that Russia is preparing to invade and subsequently annex Ukraine as it did Crimea in 2014. He is, however, preoccupied with other grievances. His longtime lover, Tatiana Petrovna, has deserted him for her work as an investigative reporter. And he is having trouble with his dexterity and balance. A visit to his doctor reveals that these are symptoms for Parkinson’s disease. Rather than dwell on his diagnosis, he throws himself into another case. An acquaintance has asked him to find his daughter, Karina, an anti-Putin activist who has disappeared. In the course of the investigation, Arkady falls for Karina's roommate, Elena, a Tatar from Ukraine. Later, in Crimea, Tatiana reemerges to complicate Arkady’s new romance.

Detective Arkady Renko --- “one of the most compelling figures in modern fiction” (USA Today) --- risks his life when he heads to Ukraine shortly before the Russian invasion to find an anti-Putin activist who has mysteriously disappeared.

Martin Cruz Smith has written nine previous novels featuring Arkady Renko, one of modern detective fiction’s most popular characters. These novels, beginning with 1981’s international sensation GORKY PARK, have collectively traced Russia's evolution over the last half-century. Now, with INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, Smith focuses on the fraught and frenzied days leading up to Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.

It’s June 2021, and Arkady knows that Russia is preparing to invade and subsequently annex Ukraine as it did Crimea in 2014. He is, however, preoccupied with other grievances. His longtime lover, Tatiana Petrovna, has deserted him for her work as an investigative reporter. His corrupt boss has relegated him to a desk job. And he is having trouble with his dexterity and balance. A visit to his doctor reveals that these are symptoms for Parkinson’s disease.

This is an ingenious autobiographical conceit, as Martin Cruz Smith has Parkinson’s, and is able through Arkady to movingly describe his own experience with the disease. Parkinson’s hasn’t stopped Smith from his work, and neither does it stop Arkady. Rather than dwell on his diagnosis, he throws himself into another case.

An acquaintance has asked him to find his daughter, Karina, an anti-Putin activist who has disappeared. In the course of the investigation, Arkady falls for Karina's roommate, Elena, a Tatar from Ukraine. The search leads them to Kyiv, where rumblings of an armed conflict grow louder. Later, in Crimea, Tatiana reemerges to complicate Arkady’s new romance. And as he gets closer to locating Karina, Arkady discovers something that threatens his life as well as the lives of both Elena and Tatiana.

Few fiction writers have better captured contemporary Russia with more insight or authenticity than Martin Cruz Smith. He does the same here for Ukraine and the events that preceded Russia’s invasion. INDEPENDENCE SQUARE is a timely and uniquely personal mystery novel-meets-political thriller by a master of the form.

Audiobook available, read by Jeremy Bobb

In 1950s Dublin, young history scholar Rosa Jacobs is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it’s the victim’s older sister Molly, an established journalist, who discovers a lead that could crack open the case. One of Rosa’s friends, it turns out, is from a powerful German family that arrived in Ireland under mysterious circumstances shortly after World War II. But as Quirke and Strafford close in, their personal lives may put the case --- and everyone involved --- in peril, including Quirke’s own daughter.

In 1950s Dublin, young history scholar Rosa Jacobs is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it’s the victim’s older sister Molly, an established journalist, who discovers a lead that could crack open the case. One of Rosa’s friends, it turns out, is from a powerful German family that arrived in Ireland under mysterious circumstances shortly after World War II. But as Quirke and Strafford close in, their personal lives may put the case --- and everyone involved --- in peril, including Quirke’s own daughter.

Booker Prize winner and “Irish master” (New Yorker) John Banville’s most ambitious crime novel yet brings two detectives together to solve a globe-spanning mystery.

In 1950s Dublin, young history scholar Rosa Jacobs is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it’s the victim’s older sister Molly, an established journalist, who discovers a lead that could crack open the case.

One of Rosa’s friends, it turns out, is from a powerful German family that arrived in Ireland under mysterious circumstances shortly after World War II. But as Quirke and Strafford close in, their personal lives may put the case --- and everyone involved --- in peril, including Quirke’s own daughter.

Spanning the mountaintops of Italy, the front lines of World War II Bavaria, the gritty streets of Dublin and other unexpected locales, THE LOCK-UP is an ambitious and arresting mystery by one of the world’s most celebrated authors.

Audiobook available, read by John Lee

Denied a dog, a baby and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like “jewelry, living jewelry” to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young “Burmie” she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival. In BLUE SKIES, T.C. Boyle transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family is struggling to adapt to the “new normal,” in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope.

Denied a dog, a baby and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like “jewelry, living jewelry” to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young “Burmie” she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival. In BLUE SKIES, T.C. Boyle transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family is struggling to adapt to the “new normal,” in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope.

From bestselling novelist T.C. Boyle, a satirical yet ultimately moving send-up of contemporary American life in the glare of climate change.

Denied a dog, a baby and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like “jewelry, living jewelry” to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young “Burmie” she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival.

“Brilliantly imaginative...in a terrifying way” (Annie Proulx), BLUE SKIES follows in the tradition of T.C. Boyle’s finest novels, combining high-octane plotting with mordant wit and shrewd social commentary. Here Boyle, one of the most inventive voices in contemporary fiction, transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family --- including her eco-warrior parents, Ottilie and Frank; her brother, Cooper, an entomologist; and her frat-boy-turned-husband, Todd --- are struggling to adapt to the “new normal,” in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope.

But there’s more than meets the eye to this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the banal façade of 21st-century Californians and Floridians attempting to preserve normalcy in the face of violent weather perturbations is a caricature of materialist American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planet’s future. From pet bees and cricket-dependent diets to massive species die-off and pummeling hurricanes, BLUE SKIES deftly explores the often volatile relationships between humans and their habitats, in which “the only truism seems to be that things always get worse.”

An eco-thriller with teeth, Boyle’s BLUE SKIES is at once a tragicomic satire and a prescient novel that captures the absurdity and “inexpressible sadness at the heart of everything.”

Audiobook available, read by Alyssa Bresnahan