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Strange things happen in Fell, New York. A mysterious drowning at the town’s roadside motel. The unexplained death of a young girl whose body is left by the railroad tracks. For the Esmie siblings --- Violet, Vail and Dodie --- the final straw was the shocking disappearance of their little brother. It started as a normal game of hide-and-seek. The three closed their eyes and counted to 10 while Ben went to hide. But this time, they never found their brother. As their parents grew increasingly distant, Violet, Vail and Dodie were each haunted by visions and frightening events that made them leave town and never look back. Violet still sees dead people --- spirits who remind her of Sister, the menacing presence that terrorized her for years. And now, after two decades running from their past, it’s time for a homecoming.
Chuck Klosterman did not write this book to deepen your appreciation of football. He’s not trying to help you become that person at the party, or to teach you how to make better bets, or to validate any preexisting views you might have about the sport (positive or negative). Football does, in fact, do all of those things. But not in the way such things have been done in the past. Cultural theorists talk about hyperobjects --- phenomena that bulk so large that their true dimensions are hidden in plain sight. In 2023, 93 of the 100 most-watched programs on U.S. television were NFL football games. This is not an anomaly. This is how society is best understood. Football is not merely the country’s most popular sport; it is ingrained in almost everything that explains what America is, even for those who barely pay attention. Klosterman gets to the bottom of all of it.
When record executive Theo meets the Future Saints, they’re bombing at a dive bar in their hometown. Since the tragic death of their manager, the band has been in a downward spiral. Theo has been dispatched to coax a new --- and successful --- album out of them, or else let them go. He is immediately struck by Hannah, the group’s impetuous lead singer, who replaces their California pop with gut-wrenching rock. When this new music goes viral, striking an unexpected chord with fans, Theo puts his career on the line to give the Saints one last shot at success with a new tour, new record and new start. But Hannah’s grief has larger consequences for the group, and her increasingly destructive antics become a distraction as she and her sister, Ginny --- her lifelong partner in crime --- undermine Theo at every turn.
It’s 1979 in Yorkshire, England, and 12-year-old Miv is panicking. Life has been complicated since her mom got sick, and now her dad is talking about wanting to move their family away from the town Miv has lived in her whole life --- because of the murders. Young women are dying, and no one knows who the culprit might be. But as far as Miv is concerned, leaving Yorkshire and her best friend, Sharon, simply isn't an option. Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all. So Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a list of all the suspicious people and things on their street. But their search for the truth reveals more secrets in their neighborhood, within their families --- and between each other --- than they ever thought possible.
Darcy’s life turned out better than she ever could have imagined. She is a librarian at the local branch, while her wife, Joy, runs a book binding service. Between the two of them, there is no more room on their shelves with their ample book collections, various knickknacks and bobbles, and dried bouquets. Rounding out their ideal life is two cats and a sun-soaked house by the lake. But when Darcy receives the news that her ex-boyfriend, Ben, has passed away, she spirals into a pit of guilt and regret, resulting in a mental breakdown and medical leave from the library. When she returns to work, she is met by unrest in her community and protests surrounding intellectual freedom, resulting in a call for book bans and a second look at the branch’s upcoming DEI programs.
Summer, 1986. The Creel sisters, Georgie Ayyar and Agatha Krishna, welcome their aunt, uncle and young cousin --- newly arrived from India --- into their house in rural Wyoming where they’ll all live together. Because this is what families do. That is, until the sisters decide that it’s time for their uncle to die. According to Georgie, the British are to blame. And to understand why, you need to hear her story. She details the violence hiding in their house and history, her once-unshakeable bond with Agatha Krishna, and her understanding of herself as an Indian-American in the heart of the West. Her account is, at every turn, cheeky, unflinching and infectiously inflected with the trappings of teendom, including the magazine quizzes that help her make sense of her life.
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.
Already the gateway for illegal Canadian liquor during Prohibition, the Motor City becomes a crucible for American class conflict during the Great Depression, with an army of laid-off Ford workers drifting into the ranks of the burgeoning union movement. To keep the hundreds of thousands still employed by Henry Ford in thrall, he recruits black laborers migrating from the deep South to serve as “strike insurance.” The Model T mogul also has bought a sizable chunk of Brazil's Amazonian rainforest, vowing to grow his own rubber for tires, but stubbornly refusing to include a botanist in his troop of would-be jungle tamers. As a series of biological plagues descend on the Fordlandia plantation, the racial melting pot he has created in Detroit begins to boil over, and not even the Sage of Dearborn can control the forces that have been unleashed.
Over one terrible weekend, two teenage girls are found dead in a wealthy Chicago suburb. As the community mourns, Abby Rosso, the girls’ high school counselor, begins to suspect that her son was secretly involved in their lives --- and possibly their deaths. Abby doesn’t want to believe Benjamin hurt anyone. But she’s seen the warning signs before. Two decades ago, her brother was imprisoned for a disturbing crime --- he was only a little older than Benjamin is now. And Abby has more troubling memories from her own adolescence that confirm what boys and men are capable of. As Abby searches for the truth about what happened to her students, she’s forced to face the question: Has she been making excuses for Benjamin for years?
Val McDermid has always had a soft spot for winter: the bitter clarity of a crisp cold day, the crunch of frost on fallen leaves, and the chance to be enveloped in big jumpers and thick socks. In WINTER, McDermid takes us on an adventure through the season, from the frosty streets of Edinburgh to the windblown Scottish coast, from Bonfire Night and Christmas to Burns Night and Up Helly Aa. Recalling in parallel memories from her own childhood --- of skating over frozen lakes and carving a “neep” (rutabaga) for Halloween to being taken to see her first real Christmas tree in the town square --- McDermid offers a wise and enchanting meditation on winter and its ever-changing, sometimes ephemeral, traditions.
