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

Following their daughter's mysterious disappearance, Ryan and Elsie Delaney have taken the LAPD forensic lab hostage and given law enforcement an ultimatum: Find their daughter, Tilly, or they will destroy all the evidence they can find to other cold cases. Detective Charlie Hoskins has been undercover in a deadly motorcycle gang for five years. With his cover blown, he has no choice but to find Tilly himself or lose everything he's worked for as the lab burns. Lynette Lamb was a police officer --- until yesterday, when she was fired before her first beat. Figuring out what happened to Tilly is her one and only chance at rejoining the career she's prepared her whole life for. Hoskins and Lamb will have to team up to solve this cold case before the situation explodes.

Following their daughter's mysterious disappearance, Ryan and Elsie Delaney have taken the LAPD forensic lab hostage and given law enforcement an ultimatum: Find their daughter, Tilly, or they will destroy all the evidence they can find to other cold cases. Detective Charlie Hoskins has been undercover in a deadly motorcycle gang for five years. With his cover blown, he has no choice but to find Tilly himself or lose everything he's worked for as the lab burns. Lynette Lamb was a police officer --- until yesterday, when she was fired before her first beat. Figuring out what happened to Tilly is her one and only chance at rejoining the career she's prepared her whole life for. Hoskins and Lamb will have to team up to solve this cold case before the situation explodes.

A pair of desperate parents. A man on the run. A rookie cop.

Four people with everything on the line.

What will be left in the ashes of the next 24 hours?

Following their daughter's mysterious disappearance, Ryan and Elsie Delaney have taken the LAPD forensic lab hostage, and have given law enforcement an ultimatum: Find their daughter, Tilly, or they will destroy all the evidence they can find to other cold cases.

Detective Charlie Hoskins has been undercover in a deadly motorcycle gang for five years. With his cover blown, he has no choice but to find Tilly himself, or lose everything he's worked for as the lab burns.

Lynette Lamb was a police officer --- until yesterday, when she was fired before her first beat. Figuring out what happened to Tilly is her one and only chance at rejoining the career she's prepared her whole life for.

Hoskins and Lamb will have to team up to solve this cold case, and will have to move fast --- before the situation explodes.

Audiobook available, read by Jay Aaseng

1964: Christaphine is 20 years old and determined to make a home and a life for her and her husband, Tommy. But when Christaphine discovers Tommy and his friends on the verge of committing a horrible crime, she does what she has to do to stop them. Afterwards, she knows she can't ever go home again. So she disappears. Fifty years later: When Clemmie's neighbor, Muffin, drags her from Sunday morning service at Trinity Hill Church, convinced that the man she's just spotted across the aisle is a dangerous figure from her past, at first Clemmie thinks she's being dramatic. But as Muffin reveals to Clemmie what happened in the middle of a field in South Carolina five decades ago, Clemmie realizes her friend has been keeping dark secrets --- just as Clemmie herself has.

1964: Christaphine is 20 years old and determined to make a home and a life for her and her husband, Tommy. But when Christaphine discovers Tommy and his friends on the verge of committing a horrible crime, she does what she has to do to stop them. Afterwards, she knows she can't ever go home again. So she disappears. Fifty years later: When Clemmie's neighbor, Muffin, drags her from Sunday morning service at Trinity Hill Church, convinced that the man she's just spotted across the aisle is a dangerous figure from her past, at first Clemmie thinks she's being dramatic. But as Muffin reveals to Clemmie what happened in the middle of a field in South Carolina five decades ago, Clemmie realizes her friend has been keeping dark secrets --- just as Clemmie herself has.

Beloved international bestselling author Caroline B. Cooney captures the technicolor complicated human heart in this literary Southern mystery about one secret afternoon in 1964 when a young wife barreling down a dirt road in her station wagon chooses not to be a bystander.

Until this Sunday, Muffin never looked back.

1964: Christaphine is 20 years old, newly married, and determined to make a home and a life for her and her husband, Tommy. But when Christaphine discovers Tommy and his friends on the verge of committing a horrible crime, she does what she has to do to stop them. Afterwards, she knows she can't ever go home again --- so she disappears...until this Sunday.

Fifty years later: When Clemmie's neighbor, Muffin, drags her from Sunday morning service at Trinity Hill Church, convinced that the man she's just spotted across the aisle is a dangerous figure from her past, at first Clemmie thinks she's being dramatic. But as Muffin reveals to Clemmie what happened in the middle of a field in South Carolina five decades ago, Clemmie realizes her friend has been keeping dark secrets --- just as Clemmie herself has. And the secrets that belong to both women are not the kind that can be revealed without dire consequences.

Audiobook available, read by Mary Boyer

For decades, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder has been a fierce advocate reporting on the darkest social issues that impact women's lives. WOMEN WE BURIED, WOMEN WE BURNED is her own story. When eight-year-old Rachel's mother died, her distraught father thrust the family into extreme evangelicalism. After a childhood marked by silent rage, teenage Rachel became outwardly furious. She was expelled from school and home at age 16. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college and eventually traveling the globe. Survival became her reporter's beat. In places like India, Tibet, Niger and Cambodia, she witnessed those who had been through the unimaginable choosing hope over despair.

For decades, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder has been a fierce advocate reporting on the darkest social issues that impact women's lives. WOMEN WE BURIED, WOMEN WE BURNED is her own story. When eight-year-old Rachel's mother died, her distraught father thrust the family into extreme evangelicalism. After a childhood marked by silent rage, teenage Rachel became outwardly furious. She was expelled from school and home at age 16. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college and eventually traveling the globe. Survival became her reporter's beat. In places like India, Tibet, Niger and Cambodia, she witnessed those who had been through the unimaginable choosing hope over despair.

For decades, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder has been a fierce advocate reporting on the darkest social issues that impact women's lives. WOMEN WE BURIED, WOMEN WE BURNED is her own story.

When eight-year-old Rachel's mother died, her distraught father thrust the family into extreme evangelicalism. After a childhood marked by silent rage, teenage Rachel became outwardly furious. She was expelled from school and home at age 16. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college and eventually traveling the globe.

Survival became her reporter's beat. In places like India, Tibet, Niger and Cambodia, she witnessed those who had been through the unimaginable choosing hope over despair. She returned to the States more appreciative of complexity, more generous, and open to the healing that would come from a most unexpected place.

A struggling songwriter and Lyft driver, Adam Zantz’s life changes when he accepts a ride request in Malibu and 1970s music icon Annie Linden enters his vehicle. Bonding during that initial ride, the two quickly go off app. Over the next three years, Adam becomes her exclusive driver, and Annie listens to his music. Then Annie disappears, and her body washes up under a pier. Left with a final cryptic text --- “come to my arms” --- a grieving Adam plays amateur detective, only to be charged as accomplice-after-the-fact. Desperate to clear his name and discover who killed the one person who believed in his music when no one else in his life did, Adam digs deep into Annie’s past and comes to question how well he (or anyone else) knew her --- if at all.

A struggling songwriter and Lyft driver, Adam Zantz’s life changes when he accepts a ride request in Malibu and 1970s music icon Annie Linden enters his vehicle. Bonding during that initial ride, the two quickly go off app. Over the next three years, Adam becomes her exclusive driver, and Annie listens to his music. Then Annie disappears, and her body washes up under a pier. Left with a final cryptic text --- “come to my arms” --- a grieving Adam plays amateur detective, only to be charged as accomplice-after-the-fact. Desperate to clear his name and discover who killed the one person who believed in his music when no one else in his life did, Adam digs deep into Annie’s past and comes to question how well he (or anyone else) knew her --- if at all.

A gritty, fast-paced neo-noir that explores the consumptive nature of fame, celebrity and motherhood through the lens of a driver lost in the gig economy.

A struggling songwriter and Lyft driver, Adam Zantz’s life changes when he accepts a ride request in Malibu and 1970s music icon Annie Linden enters his dented VW Jetta. Bonding during that initial ride, the two quickly go off app. Over the next three years, Adam becomes her exclusive driver and Annie listens to his music, encouraging Adam even as he finds himself driving more often than songwriting.

Then Annie disappears, and her body washes up under a pier. Left with a final, cryptic text --- “come to my arms” --- a grieving Adam plays amateur detective, only to be charged as accomplice-after-the-fact. Desperate to clear his name and discover who killed the one person who believed in his music when no one else in his life did, Adam digs deep into Annie’s past, turning up an old guitar teacher, sworn enemies and lovers, and a long-held secret that spills into the dark world of a shocking underground Men’s Rights movement. As he drives the outskirts of Los Angeles in California, Adam comes to question how well he, or anyone else, knew Annie --- if at all. 

THE LAST SONGBIRD is a poignant novel about love, obsession, the price of fame and the burden of broken dreams, with a shifting, twisting plot that's full of unexpected turns.

Sassy, streetwise Sammy is a teenage girl who is falling through the cracks. Neglected by an alcoholic mother, the problems she endures at school and home lead her into the hands of adults who don't have her best interests in mind. Meanwhile, in a small village in Eastern Europe, preternaturally beautiful and naïve Nico is about to turn 13. As her family falls upon desperate times, her father is approached to marry her off. Consequently, Nico is shuttled across the border into Ireland, where she and Sammy find one another in their new home, a suburban brothel. As Nico and Sammy journey into this dark underbelly and out the other side, their friendship --- and the unexpected acts of kindness they give and receive --- form a potent bond.

Sassy, streetwise Sammy is a teenage girl who is falling through the cracks. Neglected by an alcoholic mother, the problems she endures at school and home lead her into the hands of adults who don't have her best interests in mind. Meanwhile, in a small village in Eastern Europe, preternaturally beautiful and naïve Nico is about to turn 13. As her family falls upon desperate times, her father is approached to marry her off. Consequently, Nico is shuttled across the border into Ireland, where she and Sammy find one another in their new home, a suburban brothel. As Nico and Sammy journey into this dark underbelly and out the other side, their friendship --- and the unexpected acts of kindness they give and receive --- form a potent bond.

Thrown together by a harrowing twist of fate, two girls will find hope and redemption in friendship in this award-winning, emotional gut punch of a novel from the author of BRIGHT BURNING THINGS.

Sassy, streetwise Sammy is a teenage girl who is falling through the cracks. Neglected by an alcoholic mother, the problems she endures at school and home lead her into the hands of adults who don't have her best interests in mind. Failed by them at every turn, Sammy acts out, seeking attention from boys, then men, when what she wants most is protection.

Meanwhile, in a small village in Eastern Europe, preternaturally beautiful and naïve Nico is about to turn 13 and as her family falls upon desperate times, her father is approached to marry her off. Her family knows that the nice life this stranger seems to be offering Nico is too good to be true, but they and Nico hope for the best as she’s shuttled across the border into Ireland, where she and Sammy find one another in their new home, a suburban brothel.

As Nico and Sammy journey into this dark underbelly and out the other side, their friendship --- and the unexpected acts of kindness they give and receive --- form a potent bond.

Heartbreaking and breathtakingly beautiful, CLOUD GIRLS exposes the failings of polite society and the cruelty that exists beneath its surface, yet reminds us that goodness and love can flourish in the darkest times.

Audiobook available, read by Barrie Kreinik and Jennifer Fitzgerald