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"A Thousand Sunny Days" is a Foreword INDIES finalist in Pets (Adult Nonfiction). Phinney’s debut is sprinkled with turns of phrase that experienced writers would envy, adeptly assigning personalities to his canine friends. Proponents of rescuing shelter dogs have a new voice in F. Jason Phinney, whose debut memoir, A...
Finalist for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor. On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. . . . Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few able to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young writer discovers that her editor is in danger, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her f loorboards, and together they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. Powerful and provocative, The Memory Police is a stunning novel about the trauma of loss. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * TIME * CHICAGO TRIBUNE * THE GUARDIAN * ESQUIRE * THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS * FINANCIAL TIMES * LIBRARY JOURNAL * THE A.V. CLUB * KIRKUS REVIEWS * LITERARY HUB American Book Award winner Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781101911815 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Publication Date: 07-28-2020 Pages: 288 Product Dimensions: 5.20(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.90(d)About the Author Yoko Ogawa has won every major Japanese literary award. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, and Zoetrope: All-Story. Her works include The Diving Pool, a collection of three novellas; The Housekeeper and the Professor; Hotel Iris; and Revenge. She lives in Hyogo.Read an Excerpt Read an Excerpt 1 I sometimes wonder what was disappeared first—among all the things that have vanished from the island. “Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here,” my mother used to tell me when I was still a child. “Transparent things, fragrant things . . . fluttery ones, bright ones . . . wonderful things you can’t possibly imagine. “It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is on this island. Things go on disappearing, one by one. It won’t be long now,” she added. “You’ll see for yourself. Something will disappear from your life.” “Is it scary?” I asked her, suddenly anxious. “No, don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt, and you won’t even be particularly sad. One morning you’ll simply wake up and it will be over, before you’ve even realized. Lying still, eyes closed, ears pricked, trying to sense the flow of the morning air, you’ll feel that something has changed from the night before, and you’ll know that you’ve lost something, that something has been disappeared from the island.” My mother would talk like this only when we were in her studio in the basement. It was a large, dusty, rough-floored room, built so close to the river on the north side that you could clearly hear the sound of the current. I would sit on the little stool that was reserved for my use, as my mother, a sculptor, sharpened a chisel or polished a stone with her file and talked on in her quiet voice. “The island is stirred up after a disappearance. People gather in little groups out in the street to talk about their memories of the thing that’s been lost. There are regrets and a certain sadness, and we try to comfort one another. If it’s a physical object that has been disappeared, we gather the remnants up to burn, or bury, or toss into the river. But no one makes much of a fuss, and it’s over in a few days. Soon enough, things are back to normal, as though nothing has happened, and no one can even recall what it was that disappeared.” Then she would interrupt her work to lead me back behind the staircase to an old cabinet with rows of small drawers. “Go ahead, open any one you like.” I would think about my choice for a moment, studying the rusted oval handles. I always hesitated, because I knew what sorts of strange and fascinating things were inside. Here in this secret place, my mother kept hidden many of the things that had been disappeared from the island in the past. When at last I made my choice and opened a drawer, she would smile and place the contents on my outstretched palm. “This is a kind of fabric called ‘ribbon’ that was disappeared when I was just seven years old. You used it to tie up your hair or decorate a skirt. “And this was called a ‘bell.’ Give it a shake—it makes a lovely sound. “Oh, you’ve chosen a good drawer today. That’s called an ‘emerald,’ and it’s the most precious thing I have here. It’s a keepsake from my grandmother. They’re beautiful and terribly valuable, and at one point they were the most highly prized jewels on the island. But their beauty has been forgotten now. “This one is thin and small, but it’s important. When you had something you wanted to tell someone, you would write it down on a piece of paper and paste this ‘stamp’ on it. Then they would deliver it for you, anywhere at all. But that was a long time ago . . .” Ribbon, bell, emerald, stamp. The words that came from my mother’s mouth thrilled me, like the names of little girls from distant countries or new species of plants. As I listened to her talk, it made me happy to imagine a time when all these things had a place here on the island. Yet that was also rather difficult to do. The objects in my palm seemed to cower there, absolutely still, like little animals in hibernation, sending me no signal at all. They often left me with an uncertain feeling, as though I were trying to make images of the clouds in the sky out of modeling clay. When I stood before the secret drawers, I felt I had to concentrate on each word my mother said. My favorite story was the one about “perfume,” a clear liquid in a small glass bottle. The first time my mother placed it in my hand, I thought it was some sort of sugar water, and I started to bring it to my mouth. “No, it’s not to drink,” my mother cried, laughing. “You put just a drop on your neck, like this.” Then she carefully dabbed the bottle behind her ear. “But why would you do that?” I asked, thoroughly puzzled. “Perfume is invisible to the eye, but this little bottle nevertheless contains something quite powerful,” she said. I held it up and studied it. “When you put it on, it has a wonderful smell. It’s a way of charming someone. When I was young, we would use it before we went out with a boy. Choosing the right scent was as important as choosing the right dress—you wanted the boy to like both. This is the perfume I wore when your father and I were courting. We used to meet at a rose garden on the hill south of town, and I had a terrible time finding a fragrance that wouldn’t be overpowered by the flowers. When the wind rustled my hair, I would give him a look as if to ask whether he’d noticed my perfume.” My mother was at her most lively when she talked about this small bottle. “In those days, everyone could smell perfume. Everyone knew how wonderful it was. But no more. It’s not sold anywhere, and no one wants it. It was disappeared the autumn of the year that your father and I were married. We gathered on the banks of the river with our perfume. Then we opened the bottles and poured out their contents, watching the perfume dissolve in the water like some worthless liquid. Some girls held the bottles up to their noses one last time—but the ability to smell the perfume had already faded, along with all memory of what it had meant. The river reeked for two or three days afterward, and some fish died. But no one seemed to notice. You see, the very idea of ‘perfume’ had been disappeared from their heads.” She looked sad as she finished speaking. Then she gathered me up on her lap and let me smell the perfume on her neck. “Well?” she said. But I had no idea what to answer. I could tell that there was some sort of scent there—like the smell of toasting bread or the chlorine from a swimming pool, yet different—but no matter how I tried, no other thought came to mind. My mother waited, but when I said nothing she sighed quietly. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “To you, this is no more than a few drops of water. But it can’t be helped. It’s all but impossible to recall the things we’ve lost on the island once they’re gone.” And with that, she returned the bottle to its drawer. When the clock on the pillar in her studio struck nine, I went up to my room to sleep. My mother returned to work with her hammer and chisel, as the crescent moon shone in the large window. As she kissed me good night, I finally asked the question that had been bothering me for some time. “Mama, why do you remember all the things that have been disappeared? Why can you still smell the ‘perfume’ that everyone else has forgotten?” She looked out through the window for a moment, gazing at the moon, and then brushed some stone dust from her apron. “I suppose because I’m always thinking about them,” she said, her voice a bit hoarse. “But I don’t understand,” I said. “Why are you the only one who hasn’t lost anything? Do you remember everything? Forever?” She looked down, as though this were something sad, so I kissed her again to make her feel better. Show More
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in Science & Technology In its 4.5 billion-year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed...
This is my favorite black skimmer photo that I have taken in all the years following a little-known colony. Every year I select a nest when the parent is on eggs, then follow that same nest until they fledge. I choose one nest because colonies are chaotic; you will miss some shots by pointing the lens at hundreds of birds. One morning I got into position and lay there for an hour until sunrise when a parent flew in directly to feed the baby. The baby was inches away from me, so I couldn’t get the feeding photo. However, after the baby gobbled down the fish, I captured it running up to the parent and displaying the behavior pictured.
A leather-clad grandmother pouts and clutches a pair of handcuffs, while a plus-sized princess flashes a full foot of cleavage. These are just a few of the funny, bizarre and truly terrifying bad glamour shots going viral online.
The NBCC has announced its 30 finalists in six categories — autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry — for the most outstanding books of 2017.
About The Great Believers PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER ALA CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler “A page turner . . . An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis.” —The New York Times Book Review A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster. Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review , The Washington Post , NPR , San Francisco Chronicle , The Boston Globe , Entertainment Weekly , Buzzfeed , The Seattle Times , Bustle , Newsday , AM New York , BookPage , St. Louis Post-Dispatch , Lit Hub , Publishers Weekly , Kirkus Reviews , New York Public Library and Chicago Public Library
"As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu—beautiful, self-assured—departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze—the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor—had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London."—Knopf
"A spectacular debut filled with great characters and heart.” —Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan FINALIST FOR THE 2022 DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE · FINALIST FOR THE BALCONES FICTION PRIZE · LONGLISTED FOR THE HWA DEBUT CROWN AWARD An epic story of love, war, and redemption set against the backdrop of the Korean independence movement, following the intertwined fates of a young girl sold to a courtesan school and the penniless son of a hunter In 1917, deep in the snowy mountains of occupied Korea, an impoverished local hunter on the brink of starvation saves a young Japanese officer from an attacking tiger. In an instant, their fates are connected—and from this encounter unfolds a saga that spans half a century. In the aftermath, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver’s courtesan school, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status. When she befriends an orphan boy named JungHo, who scrapes together a living begging on the streets of Seoul, they form a deep friendship. As they come of age, JungHo is swept up in the revolutionary fight for independence, and Jade becomes a sought-after performer with a new romantic prospect of noble birth. Soon Jade must decide whether she will risk everything for the one who would do the same for her. From the perfumed chambers of a courtesan school in Pyongyang to the glamorous cafes of a modernizing Seoul and the boreal forests of Manchuria, where battles rage, Juhea Kim’s unforgettable characters forge their own destinies as they wager their nation’s. Immersive and elegant, Beasts of a Little Land unveils a world where friends become enemies, enemies become saviors, heroes are persecuted, and beasts take many shapes. A Recommended Read from: USA Today · The Washington Post · Entertainment Weekly · The Today Show · Real Simple · Good Morning America · Harper's Bazaar · Buzzfeed · Fortune · Vulture · Goodreads · Lit Hub · Book Riot · PopSugar · E! Online · Ms. Magazine · Chicago Review of Books · Bustle · The Oregonian · The Millions Product DetailsISBN-13: 9780063093577 Media Type: Hardcover Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Publication Date: 12-07-2021 Pages: 416 Product Dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)About the Author Juhea Kim was born in Incheon, Korea, and moved to Portland, Oregon, at age nine. Her writing has been published in Granta, Guernica, Catapult, ZYZZYVA, and other outlets. She is the founder and editor of Peaceful Dumpling, an online magazine at the intersection of sustainable lifestyle and ecological literature. She earned her BA in art and archaeology from Princeton University. Beasts of a Little Land, her debut novel, will be translated and published around the world. After a decade in New York City, Kim now lives with her two rescue cats in Portland, Oregon.
You'll find recipes for "Pigfiteroles in Mud," "Pandaleines," and more sweets that are almost too adorable to eat.
1998 National Jewish Book Award finalist Pamela S. Nadell mines a wealth of untapped sources to bring us the first complete story of the courageous and committed Jewish women who passionately defended...
The National Book Critics Circle has nominated its 30 finalists for the best books of 2013. But first, a question.
Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it's also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. In this major work of explanatory science and environmental journalism, Pulitzer Prize finalist Dan Egan investigates the past, present, and future of what has been called "the oil of our time."The story of phosphorus spans the globe and vast tracts of human history. First discovered in a seventeenth-century alchemy lab in Hamburg, it soon became a highly sought-after resource. The race to mine phosphorus took people from the battlefields of Waterloo, which were looted for the bones of fallen soldiers, to the fabled guano islands off Peru, the Bone Valley of Florida, and the sand dunes of the Western Sahara. Over the past century, phosphorus has made farming vastly more productive, feeding the enormous increase in the human population. Yet, as Egan harrowingly reports, our overreliance on this vital crop nutrient is today causing toxic algae blooms and "dead zones" in waterways from the coasts of Florida to the Mississippi River basin to the Great Lakes and beyond. Egan also explores the alarming reality that diminishing access to phosphorus poses a threat to the food system worldwide--which risks rising conflict and even war.With The Devil's Element, Egan has written an essential and eye-opening account that urges us to pay attention to one of the most perilous but little-known environmental issues of our time. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781324002666 Media Type: Hardcover Publisher: Norton - W. W. & Company - Inc. Publication Date: 03-07-2023 Pages: 256 Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)About the Author Dan Egan is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. A two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, he lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife and children.
From Brian Greene, one of the world’s leading physicists and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Elegant Universe, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a...
Art.com | We Are Art We exist so you can have the art you love. Art.com gives you easy access to incredible art images and top-notch craftsmanship. High-Quality Framed Art Prints Our high-end framed wall art is printed on premium paper using non-toxic, archival inks that protect against UV light to resist fading. Experience unmatched quality and style as you choose from a wide range of designs to enhance your room décor. Professionally Crafted Framed Wall Art Attention to detail is at the heart of our process, as we exclusively use 100% solid wood frames that include 4-ply white core matboard and durable, frame-grade clear acrylic for clarity, long-lasting protection of the artwork and unrivaled quality. With a thoughtfully selected frame and mat combination, this piece is designed to complement your art and create a visually appealing display. Easy-to-Hang & Ready-to-Display Artwork Each framed art piece comes with hanging hardware affixed to the back of the frame, allowing for easy and convenient installation. Ready to display right out of the box. Handcrafted in the USA. "Pals" by Lars Van de Goor Lars Van de Goor The Print This photographic print leverages sophisticated digital technology to capture a level of detail that is absolutely stunning. The colors are vivid and pure. The high-quality archival paper, a favorite choice among professional photographers, has a refined luster quality. Paper Type: Photographic Print Finished Size: 8" x 12" Arrives by Thu, Apr 25 Product ID: 53346460609A
War of the Foxes: A poet for whom face value represents life at its most treacherous, Richard Siken’s 2004 first collection, Crush, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Thomas Gunn Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Raphael, Saint...
"In the ten essays collected in this volume, Franco Moretti reconstructs the intellectual trajectory of his philosophy of ‘distant reading’. From the evolutionary model of ‘Modern European Literature’, through the geo-cultural dominant of ‘Conjectures on World Literature’ and ‘Planet Hollywood’ to the quantitative findings of ‘Style, inc.’ and the abstract patterns of ‘Network Theory, Plot Analysis’, the book follows two decades of critical explorations that have come to define – well beyond the wildest expectations of its author – a growing field of unorthodox literary studies."—Verso
A British Fantasy Award Winner! A Ditmar Award Winner! A 2021 World Fantasy Award Finalist! A 2020 Crawford Award Finalist An Indie Next Pick! Named a Best of 2020 Pick for NPR Transformation, enchantment, and the emotional truths of family history teem in Kathleen Jennings’ stunning debut, Flyaway. "Kathleen Jennings' prose dazzles, and her magic feels real enough that you might even prick your finger on it."—Kelly Link “An unforgettable tale, as beautiful as it is thorny.” —The New York Times Book Review In a small Western Queensland town, a reserved young woman receives a note from one of her vanished brothers—a note that makes her question memories of their disappearance and her father’s departure. A beguiling story that proves that gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live—and even thrive—under a burning sun, Flyaway introduces readers to Bettina Scott, whose search for the truth throws her into tales of eerie dogs, vanished schools, cursed monsters, and enchanted bottles. Flyaway enchants you with the sly, beautiful darkness of Karen Russell and a world utterly its own. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781250875327 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Tor Publishing Group Publication Date: 04-25-2023 Pages: 176 Product Dimensions: 5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.45(d)About the Author Kathleen Jennings is a writer and illustrator in Brisbane, Australia. She was raised on fairy tales on a cattle station in Western Queensland, and practiced as a translator and a lawyer (which is all stories, isn’t it?) before returning to undertake a Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing (Australian Gothic Literature) at the University of Queensland. Her short stories have appeared on Tor.com, in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, in anthologies from Candlewick, Ticonderoga and Fablecroft Publishing, and elsewhere. Flyaway is her first novel. As an illustrator, she has been shortlisted for one Hugo and three World Fantasy Awards, and has won several Ditmars.
A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Finalist Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Buzzfeed, San...
A gripping account of thirteen women who joined, endured, and, in some cases, escaped life in the Islamic State-based on years of immersive reporting by a Pulitzer Prize finalist. FINALIST FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Among the many books trying to understand the terrifying rise of ISIS,…
The 2021 finalist dishes on her time on the show.
Discover our books that made the "10 Best Books of 2023” list by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.
About Get in Trouble NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • A bewitching story collection from the author of White Cat, Black Dog and The Book of Love , hailed as “the most darkly playful voice in American fiction” (Michael Chabon) and “a national treasure” (Neil Gaiman) “Ridiculously brilliant . . . These stories make you laugh while staring into the void.”— The Boston Globe A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: BuzzFeed, Time, The Washington Post, NPR, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, Toronto Star, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage Kelly Link has won an ardent following for her ability, with each new short story, to take readers deeply into an unforgettable, brilliantly constructed fictional universe. The nine exquisite examples in this collection show her in full command of her formidable powers. In “The Summer People,” a young girl in rural North Carolina serves as uneasy caretaker to the mysterious, never-quite-glimpsed visitors who inhabit the cottage behind her house. In “I Can See Right Through You,” a middle-aged movie star makes a disturbing trip to the Florida swamp where his former on- and off-screen love interest is shooting a ghost-hunting reality show. In “The New Boyfriend,” a suburban slumber party takes an unusual turn, and a teenage friendship is tested, when the spoiled birthday girl opens her big present: a life-size animated doll. Hurricanes, astronauts, evil twins, bootleggers, Ouija boards, iguanas, The Wizard of Oz, superheroes, the Pyramids . . . These are just some of the talismans of an imagination as capacious and as full of wonder as that of any writer today. But as fantastical as these stories can be, they are always grounded by sly humor and an innate generosity of feeling for the frailty—and the hidden strengths—of human beings. In Get in Trouble, this one-of-a-kind talent expands the boundaries of what short fiction can do.
Looking for all the opening round finalist of the Goodreads Choice Awards 2022? We've got them all rounded up for you!
FINALIST FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION WINNER OF THE 2023 ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE, AND THE 2023 O. HENRY PRIZE NAMED ONE OF THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2022 "An endlessly inventive and moving collection from a thrilling and capacious young talent." --Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins. A luminous new collection of stories from a young writer who "has brought his culture's rich history, mythology, and lyricism to American letters." --Sandra Cisneros Pen/Hemingway finalist Jamil Jan Kochai breathes life into his contemporary Afghan characters, moving between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in America. In these arresting stories verging on both comedy and tragedy, often starring young characters whose bravado is matched by their tenderness, Kochai once again captures "a singular, resonant voice, an American teenager raised by Old World Afghan storytellers."* In "Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain," a young man's video game experience turns into a surreal exploration on his own father's memories of war and occupation. Set in Kabul, "Return to Sender" follows two married doctors driven by guilt to leave the US and care for their fellow Afghans, even when their own son disappears. A college student in the US in "Hungry Ricky Daddy" starves himself in protest of Israeli violence against Palestine. And in the title story, "The Haunting of Hajji Hotak," we learn the story of a man codenamed Hajji, from the perspective of a government surveillance worker, who becomes entrenched in the immigrant family's life. The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories is a moving exploration of characters grappling with the ghosts of war and displacement--and one that speaks to the immediate political landscape we reckon with today. *The New York Times Book Review Product DetailsISBN-13: 9780593297216 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group Publication Date: 07-11-2023 Pages: 288 Product Dimensions: 5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)About the Author Jamil Jan Kochai is the author of 99 Nights in Logar, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. He was born in an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, but he originally hails from Logar, Afghanistan. His short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Ploughshares, and The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018. Currently, he is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST | WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE. A landmark history—the sweeping story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early twentieth century. Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of Natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors. Reséndez builds the incisive case that it was mass slavery—more than epidemics—that decimated Indian populations across North America. Through riveting new evidence, including testimonies of courageous priests, rapacious merchants, and Indian captives, The Other Slavery reveals nothing less than a key missing piece of American history. For over two centuries we have fought over, abolished, and tried to come to grips with African American slavery. It is time for the West to confront an entirely separate, equally devastating enslavement we have long failed truly to see. “The Other Slavery is nothing short of an epic recalibration of American history, one that’s long overdue…In addition to his skills as a historian and an investigator, Résendez is a skilled storyteller with a truly remarkable subject. This is historical nonfiction at its most important and most necessary.” — Literary Hub, 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the Decade ““One of the most profound contributions to North American history.”—Los Angeles Times Product DetailsISBN-13: 9780544947108 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Publication Date: 04-18-2017 Pages: 448 Product Dimensions: 5.20(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.20(d)About the Author ANDRÉS RESéNDEZ’s most recent book, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the 2017 Bancroft Prize. He is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, a current Carnegie fellow, and an avid sailor.Read an Excerpt Read an Excerpt 1 Caribbean Debacle Indian slavery poses a fundamental demographic puzzle. The first Europeans in the New World found a thriving archipelago: islands large and small covered by lush vegetation, teeming with insects and birds, and alive with humans. The Caribbean was “a beehive of people” wrote Bartolomé de Las Casas, the most well known of the region’s early chroniclers, who accompanied several expeditions of discovery. “As we saw with our own eyes,” he added, “all of these islands were densely populated with natives called Indians.” The people who greeted Columbus were indeed plentiful. Modern scholars have proposed wildly varying population estimates for the Caribbean, ranging from one hundred thousand to ten million. But while the initial population is debatable, no one doubts the cataclysmic collapse that followed. By the 1550s, a mere sixty years, or two generations, after contact, the Natives so memorably described by Columbus as “affectionate and without malice” and having “very straight legs and no bellies” had ceased to exist as a people, and many Caribbean islands became eerie uninhabited paradises. As every schoolchild knows, epidemic disease was a major reason for this devastation. Europeans introduced pathogens to which the Natives had little or no resistance, triggering “virgin soil” epidemics. It was like “dropping lighted matches into tinder,” wrote Alfred W. Crosby in his pioneering work on the depopulation of early America. Measles, malaria, yellow fever, influenza, and above all smallpox ravaged the indigenous population in deadly bouts that spread across the islands. Surely some Indians succumbed in pitched battles against the white intruders, who, after all, possessed superior steel weapons and unmatched mobility with their horses. But by far the Spaniards’ most devastating weapon was germs. And yet there is a profound disconnection between this biological explanation and what sixteenth-century Europeans reported. The Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, who arrived in the New World in 1502, averred that greed was the reason Christians “murdered on such a vast scale,” killing “anyone and everyone who has shown the slightest sign of resistance,” and subjecting “all males to the harshest and most iniquitous and brutal slavery that man has ever devised for oppressing his fellow-men, treating them, in fact, worse than animals.” It is true that Las Casas was a passionate defender of Indian rights and therefore had every reason to dwell on Spanish brutality. But we do not have to take his word for it. Early chroniclers, crown officials, and settlers all understood the extinction of the Indians as a result of warfare, enslavement, famine, and overwork, as well as disease. King Ferdinand of Spain—no Indian champion and probably the most well-informed individual of that era—believed that so many Natives died in the early years because, lacking beasts of burden, the Spaniards “had forced the Indians to carry excessive loads until they broke them down.” Early sources do not mention smallpox until 1518, a full twenty-six years after Columbus first arrived in the Caribbean. This was no oversight. Sixteenth-century Spaniards were quite familiar with smallpox’s symptoms and lived in constant fear of diseases of any kind. They were keenly aware, for example, that having sex with Indian women could cause el mal de las búas (literally, “the illness of the pustules,” or syphilis), which afflicted several of Columbus’s mariners and spread throughout Italy and Spain immediately on their return. As early as 1493, colonists in the Caribbean also reported an illness that affected both Indians and Spaniards and was characterized by high fevers, body aches, and prostration—clinical signs that point perhaps to swine flu. Influenza is usually benign, although it is capable of mutating into deadlier forms resulting in pandemics. The famous “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918, which wreaked havoc around the world, is only one example. Early Caribbean sources do not describe an influenza pandemic, but merely an influenza-like disease of some concern. There is no mention of smallpox or any other clear episode of mass death among the Natives until a quarter of a century after Columbus’s first voyage. Of course, it is impossible to rule out entirely the possibility of major outbreaks that went unreported, but the documentation suggests that the worst epidemics did not affect the New World immediately. The late arrival of smallpox actually makes perfect sense. Smallpox was endemic in the Old World, which means that the overwhelming majority of Europeans were exposed to the virus in childhood, resulting in one of two outcomes: death or recovery and lifelong immunity. Thus the likelihood of a ship carrying an infected passenger was low. And even if this were to happen, the voyage from Spain to the Caribbean in the sixteenth century lasted five or six weeks, a sufficiently long time in which any infected person would die along the way or become immune (and no longer contagious). There were only two ways for the virus to survive such a long passage. One was for a vessel to carry both a person already infected and a susceptible host who contracted the illness en route and lived long enough to disembark in the Caribbean. The odds of this happening were minuscule—around two percent according to a back-of-the-envelope calculation by the demographer Massimo Livi Bacci. The second possibility was that an infected passenger left behind the live virus in scabs that fell off his body. Since smallpox has now been eliminated from the face of the earth except in some labs, no one really knows how long the virus could have survived outside the body under the conditions of a sixteenth-century sailing vessel. But even if the virus had remained active aboard a Spanish ship that reached the New World, it would still have had to find its way into a suitable host. In short, far from strange, a delayed onset of smallpox in the New World is precisely what we would expect. Well before smallpox was first detected in the Caribbean, the Native islanders found themselves on a path to extinction. “La Isla Española,” the island now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, was the first home of Europeans in the New World. It is a very large landmass, about the size of South Carolina, which at the time of contact was dotted with as many as five or six hundred Indian villages—an extreme dispersion that would have militated against the spread of disease. Typically, these were small settlements of a few extended families, except for a handful of communities that had a thousand people or more—no Aztec or Inca cities, but substantial villages nonetheless. Friar Las Casas put Española’s total population at “more than three million,” but given the island’s carrying capacity, the archaeological remains, and early Spanish population counts, a more realistic number would be perhaps two or three hundred thousand. By 1508, however, that figure had fallen to 60,000; by 1514 it stood at merely 26,000, according to a fairly comprehensive census (no longer guesswork); and by 1517 the number had plunged to just 11,000. In other words, one year before Europeans began reporting smallpox, Española’s Indian population had dwindled to five percent or less of what it had been in 1492. Clearly, the Native islanders were well on their way to a total demographic collapse when smallpox appeared to deliver the coup de grace. Show More
About The Great Believers PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER ALA CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler “A page turner . . . An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis.” —The New York Times Book Review A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster. Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review , The Washington Post , NPR , San Francisco Chronicle , The Boston Globe , Entertainment Weekly , Buzzfeed , The Seattle Times , Bustle , Newsday , AM New York , BookPage , St. Louis Post-Dispatch , Lit Hub , Publishers Weekly , Kirkus Reviews , New York Public Library and Chicago Public Library
A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, this memoir of one woman's later in life career change is “a smart, funny and compelling case for going after your heart's desires, no matter...
Winner of the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism Winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Winner of the 2020 Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography "Exhilarating…A rich resurrection of a forgotten history." —Parul Sehgal, New York Times Beautifully written and deeply researched, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. In wrestling with the question of what a free life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds of law. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. Longing and desire fueled their experiments in how to live. They refused to labor like slaves or to accept degrading conditions of work. Here, for the first time, these women are credited with shaping a cultural movement that transformed the urban landscape. Through a melding of history and literary imagination, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments recovers these women’s radical aspirations and insurgent desires. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9780393357622 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Norton W. W. & Company Inc. Publication Date: 01-14-2020 Pages: 464 Product Dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.30(d)About the Author Saidiya Hartman is the author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Lose Your Mother, Scenes of Subjection. She has been a MacArthur Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Cullman Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and lives in New York.Table of Contents Table of Contents A Note on Method xiii Cast of Characters xvii Book 1 She Makes an Errant Path through the City The Terrible Beauty of the Slum 3 A Minor Figure 13 An Unloved Woman 37 An Intimate History of Slavery and Freedom 45 Manual for General Housework 77 An Atlas of the Wayward 81 A Chronicle of Need and Want 123 In a Moment of Tenderness the Future Seems Possible 155 Book 2 The Sexual Geography of the Black Belt 1900. The Tenderloin. 241 West 41st Street 161 1909. 601 West 61st Street. A New Colony of Colored People, or Malindy in Little Africa 177 Mistah Beauty, the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Woman, Select Scenes from a Film Never Cast by Oscar Micheaux, Harlem, 1920s 193 Family Albums, Aborted Futures: A Disillusioned Wife Becomes an Artist, 1890 Seventh Avenue 205 Book 3 Beautiful Experiments Revolution in a Minor Key 217 Wayward: A Short Entry on the Possible 227 The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner 229 The Arrested Life of Eva Perkins 257 Riot and Refrain 263 The Socialist Delivers a Lecture on Free Love 287 The Beauty of the Chorus 297 The Chorus Opens the Way 345 Acknowledgments 351 Notes 355 List of Illustrations 419 Index 425 Show More
Finalist, Lambda Literary Award, Governor General's Literary Award, and Amazon Canada First Novel Award; Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize Spanning three continents, Butter Honey Pig Bread tells the interconnected stories of three Nigerian women: Kambirinachi and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye. Kambirinachi believes that she is an Ogbanje, or an Abiku, a non-human spirit that plagues a family with misfortune by being born and then dying in childhood to cause a human mother misery. She has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family but lives in fear of the consequences of her decision. Kambirinachi and her two daughters become estranged from one another because of a trauma that Kehinde experiences in childhood, which leads her to move away and cut off all contact. She ultimately finds her path as an artist and seeks to raise a family of her own, despite her fear that she won’t be a good mother. Meanwhile, Taiye is plagued by guilt for what her sister suffered and also runs away, attempting to fill the void of that lost relationship with casual flings with women. She eventually discovers a way out of her stifling loneliness through a passion for food and cooking. But now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward. For readers of African diasporic authors such as Teju Cole and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781551528236 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press Limited Publication Date: 11-03-2020 Pages: 368 Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)About the Author Francesca Ekwuyasi is a writer and filmmaker originally from Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness and belonging. Her work has been published in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol.1 Brooklyn and GUTS magazine. Her story “Ọrun is Heaven” was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize.Read an Excerpt Read an Excerpt Kambirinachi If you ask Kambirinachi, this is how she’ll tell it: There was a spirit, a child, whose reluctance to be born, and subsequent boredom with life, caused her to come and go between realms as she pleased. Succumbing to the messy ordeal of being birthed, she would traverse to flesh realm, only to carelessly, suddenly let go of living like an inconvenient load. Her dying was always a simple event; she would merely suddenly stop breathing. It was her nature. Her intention was never to cause her mother misery, she was just restless. The dark tales of malevolent spirit children, Ọgbanjes, are twisted and untrue. The way that you breathe, it’s necessity to your being alive is that same way that being born and dying was essential to her existence. Perhaps you find it ugly. The time before her final birth, in an attempt to make her stay, the Woman through which she chose to come — her Mother — marked her with a red-hot razor blade, just as the Babalawo instructed. Three deep lines at the nape of her neck, below the hairline, smeared with a pungent brown paste that burned and burned. All this so the Ọgbanje would stay bound to her body, and if not, at the very least, the Woman would recognize her should the child choose to be born again. The child died, of course. She returned again, and maybe she took pity on the Woman, or perhaps she was bored with the foreseeable rhythm of her existence, but she chose to stay. And the three horizontal welts on the back of her neck signified to the Woman that this was the same child that she’d had scarred. It might have been a coincidence, perhaps the Woman’s mother-in-law (she’d never liked the Woman, found her haughty) marked the child in secret to torment her. Nevertheless, living for Kambirinachi, was a tumultuous cascade between the unbearable misery of being in this alive way indefinitely, and what seemed to be an utter intoxication with the substance, the very matter of life. When there was peace, it was near blissful, but otherwise, her childhood was a nightmarish event for her Mother. The exhausted Woman couldn’t help it. She hated the child a good portion of the time. And the child, too, must have hated her after making her wait and suffer, only to wail the way that she did — unprovoked, inconsolable, and seemingly interminable. To preserve her sanity and, frankly, the child’s well being, the Woman retreated inside of herself, saving all tenderness for her husband, and leaving only a barely concealed indifference for Kambirinachi. — Kambirinachi was elusive, even if she was to sit right before you, her absence would be palpable. As an eleven-year-old, her attention was always elsewhere. “Where is Kambirinachi today?” her Father often teased, a broad smile stretched across his bearded face to reveal crooked and tobacco-stained teeth. She chose that smile to be her anchor when the songs calling her back home — home across the flimsy rotted wooden boards covering the unfinished borehole in the backyard, with an opening just wide enough to swallow her small body and water just deep enough to drown her — were most persistent. Loud, loud, shouting, it shocked her that nobody else could hear them. They made her accident-prone. The unfortunate thing tripped on stones that weren’t there and ended up with broken bones that couldn’t entirely be explained; she would go to sleep healthfully robust but wake up with blistering fevers that couldn’t be accounted for. She learned to think of her Father’s smile and sit still until the voices grew muffled, and she could carry on with her adventure of the day. Any thoughts of the future worked like a loosened tap that let the voices rush out in a high pressured stream, so she learned not to think too far. She thought of things she liked about being in her alive body: the smell of the dust rising from the ground outside when heavy rain struck the earth, the burnt sugar coconut taste of Baba Dudu, sweet, sweet cake, jollof rice, smoked fish. She thought of things she disliked: the sound of her Mother’s voice when hardened by anger — she was angry often — the fervour in the pastor’s voice when he shouted on Sundays — he shouted often, about hellfire, holy ghost fire, and smiting one’s enemies. She thought backwards about the in-between place before birth and after hollow body, her home — the place where she could become the things she loved most, where she would join the rays of sunlight and sing sing in sharp tones, high and joyful. It struck in her a sadness, the pitying kind of sorrow, to know the things that alive bodies could never be. There were lovely things about being alive, she had to remember, like the taste of guavas. Their existence filled her with so much joy that it burst out of her in gleeful laughter. This is how she ate them: She found the sharpest knife in the kitchen, hid it If her Mother was near, the Woman could shout, eh! Holding the blade as far away from her body as her thin arms would allow — because she had images of her throat, tattered and bloody, flash through her mind whenever she saw a knife — she sliced the bumpy emerald skin off, always trying and often failing to make a single long ribbon of the tart rind. After taking delicate bites of the soft pink flesh, shallow bites to leave the grainy seeds undisturbed until the fruit became a knobby slimy ball, she would pop the entire thing into her mouth, and spit out its tiny seeds, one by one, all sucked clean. — Kambirinachi didn’t know about any future, how could she? Even if she struggled past the voices, she couldn’t have imagined a future that involved her leaving Abeokuta, studying fine arts at a university in Ife, meeting a person that would want to keep her, or becoming a mother for that matter. But before all that, how could she know that day when she found herself in her Father’s decrepit Peugeot 504 pickup, that she was being taken to boarding school in Lagos? Queens College in Yaba. She would become a ‘QC girl.’ There had been discussions about it. She was present at these discussions. It was exciting, but she was elsewhere. Her Mother talked of Aunty Anuli — her sister, a biology teacher at Queen’s College. She’d told Kambirinachi that it was the best choice because of the discount on school fees offered to the family of the school staff. She’d said “thank God you did so well on you Common Entrance Exams! Who knows how you did it, this one that your mind is always in the sky, but thank God O! It is far, in Lagos, but it will be good for you to be with your mates.” Kambirinachi had heard all that, but she couldn’t dare imagine that far. So you’ll understand why she was addled on the day she found herself in Father’s pickup, dazed by the sweltering heat — for as long as they’d owned it, the A/C had never worked. Her Mother sat at the driver’s seat in a faded Adire Iro and Buba, talking talking, “Kambirinachi you have to behave o! But don’t worry, it’s a good school, it’s far, but not that far, we will visit every two two weeks, don’t cry biko, it’s okay.” But even as she said these things, her voice strained against jagged emotions which she cleared her throat to mask. Kambirinachi let the tears fall freely down her face. She looked at her Father as he leaned his large frame against the dusty car window, his weathered face inches from hers, the smell of chewing tobacco on his breath. “Kambi my girl, be a big girl now okay? Nwa m nwaanyị, adịghị eti mkpu.” He smiled despite his sadness. “See you later, Papa,” her small voice shook with a
A 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist “A unique alien invasion story that focuses on the human and the myriad ways we see and don’t see our own world. Mesmerizing.” —Jeff VanderMeer A blend of searing social commentary and speculative fiction, Chana Porter’s fresh, pointed debut explores a strange new world in the wake of a benign alien invasion. Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka is a fifty-year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle—but nonetheless world-changing—invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible. Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep’s utopian influence—until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seeptech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated. Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina follows a lost boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind. A strange new elegy of love and loss, The Seep explores grief, alienation, and the ache of moving on. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781641292153 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Soho Press Incorporated Publication Date: 12-08-2020 Pages: 216 Product Dimensions: 5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)About the Author Chana Porter is a playwright, teacher, MacDowell Colony fellow, and co-founder of the Octavia Project, a STEM and fiction-writing program for girls and gender non-conforming youth from underserved communities. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is currently at work on her next novel.Read an Excerpt Read an Excerpt Tips for Throwing a Dinner Party at the End of the World Relax. People may think they want to indulge, get too drunk, incapacitate themselves with weed, but really they just want to appreciate this fragile moment while the outside world falls down. Your party should facilitate this easeful enjoyment, not lead loved ones to panic through overconsumption. Be present. And remember, you don’t know what’s happening in the morning, so while an orgy might very well be the perfect thing, you don’t want to spend your last night on Earth trying to cajole your friends into a particular kind of revelry. Be present. Clean your apartment until it sparkles. Shower, of course, and anoint your body with fragrant oils, but then wear your most beloved sweatpants. Make a wide selection of delicious food, high in protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats. Serve wine but also a lovely selection of herbal teas. Juice spritzers, in fancy goblets, will allow your guests to hydrate while feeling opulent. Remember, if someone starts crying, don’t try to shut them down or change the subject. Be present. Eventually, the conversation will flow to other things—typically, to The Past and How Great It Was, Even Though We Didn’t Know It at the Time, and The Future, that shimmering, mercurial beast, constantly breaking our hearts. PART ONE THE SOFTEST INVASION 1. When the aliens first made contact, Trina and her not-yet-wife, Deeba, threw one of their famous dinner parties for a select group of friends. It wasn’t difficult to keep the guest list small. Everyone was too nervous to travel far, the subways and buses deserted but for the most intrepid or desperate travelers. They invited two beloved couples who happened to live close by, and who wondrously had never met. Emma and Mariam came first, with two types of hard cheeses, three types of olives, gluten-free rice crackers, tubs of spicy hummus. Emma was French and Mariam was from Cairo, so they both really knew how to put together a cheese plate. Their little party was completed by Katharine and Laura, the friendly, easygoing lesbians from Tennessee. They came with copious amounts of alcohol (one can always depend on the lapsed Christians to bring the bar): pale ale for the butches, and drinkable red wine. Introductions were made, drinks were poured, cheese and olives exclaimed over. After a half hour of breezy conversation, Deeba brought out a tureen of her famous fish stew, finished with black pepper and a squeeze of lime. Trina passed around homemade loaves of bread, her one party trick. It was so easy to make, and yet everyone thought she was a magician for adding yeast to water to flour and waiting. The women sopped fragrant soup with crusty bread. A generous feeling swirled around them like a melody, like a scent. The essence of a perfect dinner party. How have we never met before? they asked again and again, but what they were really saying was, How have I only just begun to love you? Throwing a dinner party was all Trina and Deeba could think to do. They had already filled the bathtub with clean water and made sure all of their flashlights had new batteries. They kept checking their most reliable sources on Twitter, as well as Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The Guardian. Every source said to keep calm, try not to panic, and to stop it with these suicide pacts. Unbelievable, the newscasters kept saying, it’s unbelievable. That word had been ringing in Trina’s head all day. But what was believable about this world, about her government, about what they were doing to the planet and each other? Furthermore, what did Trina believe in with total certainty? That the sun rose in the morning? That the sky was blue? These aliens could say that the cosmos was being carried on the back of a great platypus and she’d have to believe them. What was more mutable than her own perceptions? Katharine raised her wineglass. Her toast became the answer to Trina’s unspoken questions. At the time, Trina thought this was a coincidence. Katharine spoke warmly, as if she were telling a long joke. “Lately,” she said, “I’ve felt as if I’ve been living in the wrong timeline. I’ve become numb, like I’m watching my own life as a movie, that is, when I’m not filled with rage or tremendous grief or crippling depression.” Deeba hooted and cheered. Emma’s brown eyes twinkled in the candlelight. “Every day, I wake up embarrassed by my country and what we’ve become—” “Ugh,” groaned Mariam. She took on the tone of a newscaster. “Now, more than ever . . . In these trying times . . .” Trina laughed and slapped the table. “Let her finish!” chided Deeba. Katharine cleared her throat. “As I was saying! I’m embarrassed by what we’ve become, and by what we always have been and have never addressed.” “Hear, hear,” said Emma, raising her glass. “But tonight,” Katharine continued. “Looking at your beautiful faces, I can finally, safely say that I have no idea what’s coming! I don’t know if this is the end of life as we know it, or the beginning of a grand adventure, or perhaps both. All I have is my uncertainty. And really, that’s all I’ve ever had. Everything else was a lie.” She took a long swallow from her glass. “So cheers, babes. To tonight.” The women clapped and toasted, whistling. Katharine took a half bow and sat down. Laura slung an arm around her wife and grinned. Trina looked across the table at Deeba’s round, brown face. Her cheeks were warm with wine, as pink as the inside of a rose. I know that I love you, thought Trina. And that’s enough for me. From across the table, Deeba winked. After dinner, the women lounged on the floor and got a bit stoned. And then someone decided it would be fun to take a bath. They would soon realize that The Seep had already infiltrated their city’s water supply. They were already compromised, already bodily hosts to their new alien friends. It was through that connection they could hear one another’s thoughts, feel the same emotions, overlaid with the all-consuming adage that Everything Will Be All Right, No Matter What. The softest invasion had begun. Show More
About If They Come for Us “A debut poetry collection showcasing both a fierce and tender new voice.”— Booklist “Elegant and playful . . . The poet invents new forms and updates classic ones.”— Elle “[Fatimah] Asghar interrogates divisions along lines of nationality, age, and gender, illuminating the forces by which identity is fixed or flexible.”— The New Yorker NAMED ONE OF THE TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY • FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD an aunt teaches me how to tell an edible flower from a poisonous one. just in case, I hear her say, just in case. From a co-creator of the Emmy-nominated web series Brown Girls comes an imaginative, soulful debut poetry that collection captures the experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in contemporary America. Orphaned as a child, Fatimah Asghar grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. These poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while also exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests itself in our relationships. In experimental forms and language both lyrical and raw, Asghar seamlessly braids together marginalized people’s histories with her own understanding of identity, place, and belonging. Praise for If They Come for Us “In forms both traditional . . . and unorthodox . . . Asghar interrogates divisions along lines of nationality, age, and gender, illuminating the forces by which identity is fixed or flexible. Most vivid and revelatory are pieces such as ‘Boy,’ whose perspicacious turns and irreverent idiom conjure the rich, jagged textures of a childhood shadowed by loss.” — The New Yorker “[Asghar’s] debut poetry collection cemented her status as one of the city’s greatest present-day poets. . . . A stunning work of art that tackles place, race, sexuality and violence. These poems—both personal and historical, both celebratory and aggrieved—are unquestionably powerful in a way that would doubtless make both Gwendolyn Brooks and Harriet Monroe proud.” — Chicago Review of Books “Taut lines, vivid language, and searing images range cover to cover. . . . Inventive, sad, gripping, and beautiful.” — Library Journal (starred review)
About The Alchemy of Us A “timely, informative, and fascinating” study of 8 inventions—and how they shaped our world—with “totally compelling” insights on little-known inventors throughout history (Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction ) In The Alchemy of Us , scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez examines 8 inventions and reveals how they shaped the human experience: • Clocks • Steel rails • Copper communication cables • Photographic film • Light bulbs • Hard disks • Scientific labware • Silicon chips Ramirez tells the stories of the woman who sold time, the inventor who inspired Edison, and the hotheaded undertaker whose invention pointed the way to the computer. She describes how our pursuit of precision in timepieces changed how we sleep; how the railroad helped commercialize Christmas; how the necessary brevity of the telegram influenced Hemingway’s writing style; and how a young chemist exposed the use of Polaroid’s cameras to create passbooks to track black citizens in apartheid South Africa. These fascinating and inspiring stories offer new perspectives on our relationships with technologies. Ramirez shows not only how materials were shaped by inventors but also how those materials shaped culture, chronicling each invention and its consequences—intended and unintended. Filling in the gaps left by other books about technology, Ramirez showcases little-known inventors—particularly people of color and women—who had a significant impact but whose accomplishments have been hidden by mythmaking, bias, and convention. Doing so, she shows us the power of telling inclusive stories about technology. She also shows that innovation is universal—whether it’s splicing beats with two turntables and a microphone or splicing genes with two test tubes and CRISPR.
A National Book Award finalist and instant fantasy classic about the power of community, generosity, books, and baked goods, from the author of the beloved Newbery Medal winner The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Stone-in-the-Glen, once a lovely town, has fallen on hard times. Fires, floods, and other calamities have caused the people to lose their library, their school, their park, and even their neighborliness. The people put their faith in the Mayor, a dazzling fellow who promises he alone can help. After all, he is a famous dragon slayer. (At least, no one has seen a dragon in his presence.) Only the clever children of the Orphan House and the kindly Ogress at the edge of town can see how dire the town's problems are. Then one day a child goes missing from the Orphan House. At the Mayor's suggestion, all eyes turn to the Ogress. The Orphans know this can't be: the Ogress, along with a flock of excellent crows, secretly delivers gifts to the people of Stone-in-the-Glen. But how can the Orphans tell the story of the Ogress's goodness to people who refuse to listen? And how can they make their deluded neighbors see the real villain in their midst? Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781643754017 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers Publication Date: 10-31-2023 Pages: 416 Product Dimensions: 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.90dAbout the Author Kelly Barnhill lives in Minnesota with her husband and three children. She is the author of six novels, including The Girl Who Drank the Moon, winner of the 2017 John Newbery Medal. She is also the winner of the World Fantasy Award and has been a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, a Nebula Award, and the PEN/USA literary prize. Visit her online at kellybarnhill.com or on Twitter: @kellybarnhill.
From the author of the novel Swamplandia!—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author’s gifts at their inimitable...
