National Best Seller From the National Book Awardwinning author of Just Kids : an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as a roadmap to my life. M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, and across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations, we travel to Frida Kahlos Casa Azul in Mexico; to a meeting of an Arctic explorers society in Berlin; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New Yorks Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; and to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writers craft and on artistic creation. Here, too, are singular memories of Smiths life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith. Braiding despair with hope and consolation, illustrated with her signature Polaroids, M Train is a meditation on travel, detective shows, literature, and coffee. It is a powerful, deeply moving book by one of the most remarkable multiplatform artists at work today.
The epitome of a group of women's ideals about love, fatherhood, and friendship, wealthy hotel owner Bill Cosey finds his life compromised by his troubled past and his feelings about a spellbinding woman named Celestial.
B>From the author of the breakout New York Times best seller Hamnet--winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award--an electrifying new novel set in Renaissance Italy, and centering on the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de Medici./b>br> br>Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Moderna and Regio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.br> br>Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now make her way in a troubled court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?br> br>As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the courts eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchesss future hangs entirely in the balance.br> br>Full of the drama and verve with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie OFarrell brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life, and offers an unforgettable portrait of a resilient young womans battle for her very survival.
In exchange for a bad debt, an Anglo-Dutch trader takes on Florens, a young slave girl, who feels abandoned by her slave mother and who searches for love--first from an older servant woman at her master's new home, and then from a handsome free blacksmith, in a novel set in late seventeenth-century America.
From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in a mental asylum in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War.
In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, Freedmen and runaways. Eleven-year-old ConaLee and her mother, Eliza, who hasn't spoken in more than a year, arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital's entrance by a man they know only as Papa, an abusive war veteran who has forced himself into their lives. There, far from family, their beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.
The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their back story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the powerful woman who nurtures them; the story of ConaLee's real father who leaves for the war and never returns, having suffered a life-threatening head wound which takes all memory of who he is or where he belongs.
In the asylum, a true refuge, a place built on the most modern of ideas-treat the mentally troubled as human beings-they slowly find new paths. ConaLee pretends to be her mother's maid so she can stay with her. Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the asylum-the mystery behind the man they call the Night Watch; the child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.
Winner of the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction A New York Times 2016 Notable Book Entertainment Weekly's #1 Book of the Year A Washington Post 2016 Notable Book A Slate Top Ten Book NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The Nix is a mother-son psychodrama with ghosts and politics, but its also a tragicomedy about anger and sanctimony in America. . . . Nathan Hill is a maestro. --John Irving From the suburban Midwest to New York City to the 1968 riots that rocked Chicago and beyond, The Nix explores--with sharp humor and a fierce tenderness--the resilience of love and home, even in times of radical change. Its 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson--college professor, stalled writer--has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasnt seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now shes re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: shes facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuels help. To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Fayes losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.
A new collection of stories by the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The View from Castle Rock illuminates moments that shape a life, from a dream or a sexual act to simple twists of fate, and is set in the countryside and towns of Lake Huron. 100,000 first printing.
Winner of the NBCC's John Leonard First Book Prize A New York Times 2016 Notable Book One of Oprahs 10 Favorite Books of 2016 NPR's Debut Novel of the Year One of Buzzfeed's Best Fiction Books Of 2016 One of Time 's Top 10 Novels of 2016 Homegoing is an inspiration. --Ta-Nehisi Coates The unforgettable New York Times best seller begins with the story of two half-sisters, separated by forces beyond their control: one sold into slavery, the other married to a British slaver. Written with tremendous sweep and power, Homegoing traces the generations of family who follow, as their destinies lead them through two continents and three hundred years of history, each life indeliably drawn, as the legacy of slavery is fully revealed in light of the present day. Effia and Esi are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castles dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coasts booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effias descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.
From one of our most accomplished storytellers, an extraordinary and arresting novel about a womens asylum in the 19th century, and a terrifying doctor who wants to change the world In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, The Father of Gyno-Psychiatry, as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown. Humiliated by a disastrous procedure, Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics, where he reigns. There, he is allowed to continue his practice, unchecked for decades, making a name for himself by focusing on women who have been neglected by the state--women he subjects to the most grotesque modes of experimentation. As he begins to establish himself as a pioneer of 19th-century surgery, Weirs ambition is fueled by his obsessive fascination with a young Irish indentured servant named Brigit, who becomes not only Weirs primary experimental subject, but also the agent of his destruction.
Narrated by Silas Weirs eldest son, who has repudiated his fathers brutal legacy,
Now a Major Motion Picture starring Emma Watson and Tom Hanks. A bestselling dystopian novel that tackles surveillance, privacy and the frightening intrusions of technology in our lives. When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the worlds most powerful internet company, she feels shes been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the companys modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae cant believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world--even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one womans ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.
A successful, happily married neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne is drawn into a confrontation with Baxter, a small-time thug, following a minor motor vehicle accident, an encounter that has savage consequences.
Presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment.
Returning to America after World War II, former naval officer Philip Bowman finds a position as a book editor and loses himself in a world of intimate connections and surprising triumphs until he is betrayed by the woman he loves.
The highly anticipated, astonishing conclusion to the worldwide bestselling quartet that includes Brisingr finds farm boy-turned-Shadeslayer Eragon and his dragon companion, Saphira, preparing for an ultimate confrontation with evil king Galbatorix in order to topple him and restore justice to Alagaësia.
From his childhood in eastern Pennsylvania in the 1930s to his retirement years in Haskells Crossing, Massachusetts, Owen Mackenzie finds his life irrevocably altered by the communal humanity of the small towns in which he lives.
A New York Times Bestseller From the author of the New York Times bestseller All the Bright Places comes a heart-wrenching story about what it means to see someone--and love someone--for who they truly are. Everyone thinks they know Libby Strout, the girl once dubbed Americas Fattest Teen. But no ones taken the time to look past her weight to get to know who she really is. Following her moms death, shes been picking up the pieces in the privacy of her home, dealing with her heartbroken father and her own grief. Now, Libbys ready: for high school, for new friends, for love, and for EVERY POSSIBILITY LIFE HAS TO OFFER. In that moment, I know the part I want to play here at MVB High. I want to be the girl who can do anything. Everyone thinks they know Jack Masselin, too. Yes, hes got swagger, but hes also mastered the impossible art of giving people what they want, of fitting in. What no one knows is that Jack has a newly acquired secret: he cant recognize faces. Even his own brothers are strangers to him. Hes the guy who can re-engineer and rebuild anything in new and bad-ass ways, but he cant understand whats going on with the inner workings of his brain. So he tells himself to play it cool: Be charming. Be hilarious. Dont get too close to anyone. Until he meets Libby. When the two get tangled up in a cruel high school game--which lands them in group counseling and community service--Libby and Jack are both pissed, and then surprised. Because the more time they spend together, the less alone they feel. . . . Because sometimes when you meet someone, it changes the world, theirs and yours. Jennifer Niven delivers another poignant, exhilarating love story about finding that person who sees you for who you are--and seeing them right back. " Niven is adept at creating characters . . . . [Libby's] courage and body-positivity make for a joyful reading experience ." --The New York Times Holding Up the Universe . . . taps into the universal need to be understood. To be wanted. And thats what makes it such a remarkable read. --TeenVogue.com, Why New Book Holding Up the Universe Is the Next The Fault in Our Stars "Want a love story that will give you all the feels? . . . You'll seriously melt!" --Seventeen Magazine
Fleeing the violence that destroyed her family and separated her from her sister Claire and Coop, an enigmatic young man who lives with them, Anna finds refuge in an isolated house in south-central France, while she struggles to reconcile the past and present.
Wahoo Cray lives in a zoo. His father is an animal wrangler, so he's grown up with all manner of gators, snakes, parrots, rats, monkeys, snappers, and more in his backyard. The critters he can handle. His father is the unpredictable one.
When his dad takes a job with a reality TV show called "Expedition Survival!", Wahoo figures he'll have to do a bit of wrangling himself-to keep his dad from killing Derek Badger, the show's boneheaded star, before the shoot is over. But the job keeps getting more complicated. Derek Badger seems to actually believe his PR and insists on using wild animals for his stunts. And Wahoo's acquired a shadow named Tuna-a girl who's sporting a shiner courtesy of her old man and needs a place to hide out.
They've only been on location in the Everglades for a day before Derek gets bitten by a bat and goes missing in a storm. Search parties head out and promptly get lost themselves. And then Tuna's dad shows up with a gun . . .
It's anyone's guess who will actually survive "Expedition Survival". . . .
