Recommended Reads

Category
Audience
"Tender Is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tender Is the Night

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Description

A modern classic, this edition has been restored by Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III and features a personal foreword by Fitzgerald’s great-granddaughter Blake Hazard and a new introduction by bestselling Amor Towles.

Set in the south of France in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic tale of a young actress, Rosemary Hoyt, and her complicated relationship with the alluring American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth pushed him into a glamorous lifestyle, and whose growing strength highlights Dick’s decline.

Lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative, Tender Is the Night was one of the most talked-about books of the year when it was originally published in 1934, and is even more beloved by readers today.

View Details
Image for "The IT Crowd"

The IT Crowd

Ayoade, Richard, 1977-

Description

In the gleaming high-rise offices of Reynholm Industries, powerful executives oversee billion-dollar business deals. But in the dark and shabby basement, the company's IT support team rules their own domain of professional irresponsibility, mega-nerd ecstasy, and personal insanity. 

View Details
Image for "A Fine Scottish Time"

A Fine Scottish Time

Maeve Greyson

Description

Time Travel, Tarot, and Fated Love in the Highlands

Jessa Tamson desperately needs a win. Her three-year relationship ended in heartbreak, her dream job evaporated, her car was stolen, and her rent just skyrocketed. She's about ready to tell the universe exactly where to go-until a strange tarot card dating app starts popping up on her phone. It's persistent, mysterious, and downright annoying, but when it promises an escape from her current mess of a life, she decides to take a leap of faith-and a flight to Scotland.

Grant MacAlester has no time for love-or meddling witches. It's been forty years since his clan barely survived the Jacobite uprising in 1746, and between smuggling runs and keeping the peace, he's got his hands full. The last thing he needs is old Mairwen and her apprentice scheming to marry him off again. His first marriage taught him one thing: women bring trouble.

But when Jessa suddenly lands in Grant's 18th-century Highlands-quite literally-everything changes. Their meeting isn't just a coincidence; it's the work of the immortals of Seven Cairns, who have declared them fated mates. Together, they hold the key to strengthening the Highland Veil, a mystical barrier protecting all creation from chaos.

-Magic, time travel, and destiny can lead to wonderful things-if a person's brave enough to embrace them.

 

The Magical Matchmakers of Seven Cairns:

1. A Fine Scottish Time

2. A Fine Scottish Spell

3. A Fine Scottish Dream

4. A Fine Scottish Love

5. A Fine Scottish Harmony

6. A Fine Scottish Curse

7. A Fine Scottish Keeper

View Details
Love's a Witch by Tricia O'Malley

Love's a Witch

Tricia O'Malley

Description

Instant USA TODAY bestseller! 

This collectible paperback comes with gorgeous sprayed edges while supplies last!

From New York Times bestselling author Tricia O’Malley, Charmed meets The Pumpkin Spice Café in this cozy romantasy about a witch returning to Scotland to break a family curse—only to clash with one grumpy Scotsman determined to protect his town from her haywire magic. 

She’s hexed. He’s vexed. And for Scotland’s most magical small-town, their feud might just spell disaster.

Sloane MacGregor swore she’d never return to Briarhaven, but with her twenty-fifth birthday looming—the day witches come into their magic—her grandmother summons her and her sisters back for one tiny task: break the centuries-old curse haunting their bloodline.

Knox Douglas, Briarhaven’s grumpy mayor, has worked tirelessly to make his town a haven for magical folk. The last thing he needs is a cursed MacGregor wreaking havoc. It doesn’t matter he once crushed on her. For the sake of Briarhaven, Sloane has to go.

But magic has other plans—and in Briarhaven, love really is a witch.

View Details
Image for "Clanlands Almanac"

Clanlands Almanac

Sam Heughan

Description

A seasonal meander through the wilds of Scotland.



'If Clanlands was a gentle road trip through Scotland, this almanac is a top down, pedal to the metal up and down odyssey through the many byways of a Scottish year. An invitation to anyone who picks up the book to join us on a crazy camper van exploration over 12 glorious, whisky fuelled months. Mountains, battles, famous (and infamous) Scots, the alarming competitiveness of Men in Kilts, clans, feuds, flora, fauna, with a healthy sprinkling of embarrassing personal reminiscences thrown in. Much is explored, all is shared. It is a camper van cornucopia of all things Alba'.



From First Footing to Samhain, Fringe Festival follies to whisky lore, Sam & Graham guide readers through a year of Scottish legends, traditions, historical and contemporary events, sharing personal stories and tips as only these two chalk-and-cheese friends can. As entertaining as it is practical, The Clanlands Almanac is a light-hearted education in Scottish history and culture, told through the eyes of two passionate Scotsmen. The perfect escapist guide, The Clanlands Almanac is intended as a starting point for your own Scottish discoveries.

View Details
Image for "Highland Hearts Holiday Bookshop"

Highland Hearts Holiday Bookshop

Tricia O'Malley

Description

The universe is playing a joke on me.

 

An unexpected inheritance has gifted me with the dream of a lifetime - owning a charming bookshop in small-town Scotland. Little did I know this gift comes with a surprise - Highland Hearts bookshop has been running an underground magical matchmaking service - and as new owner of the shop, I am expected to deliver on these matches.

 

As Christmas looms, and lonely hearts beg for love, I'm tossed into the world of magic and romance, aided by a meddling book club who seems more interested in romance than reading.

 

The problem is - I just don't believe in love. Or so I thought.

 

It turns out there's one local bird nerd and Scottish hottie, Alexander MacTavish, who has my heart all aflutter. While he's more into puffins than paperbacks, I can't help but notice he's showing up at the bookshop to help every time something goes wrong. Maybe it's my determination to have an adventure, or maybe it's the magic, but every time tall, dark, and grumpy enters my bookshop, I find myself wanting to read up on birds just to catch his attention.

 

As my newfound magic falters, and the town enters my shop into a cutthroat Christmas window decorating competition, I find myself working side-by-side with Alexander, who seems just as determined to avoid love as I am.

 

With Christmas fast approaching, I must figure out if I can suspend my disbelief and make the match of a lifetime - my own.

View Details
Image for "Highland Conquest"

Highland Conquest

Heather McCollum

Description

Cain Sinclair has a plan. In order to finally bring peace to his clan, he will wed the young female chief of their greatest enemy. Only problem: capturing her and forcing her back to Sinclair castle doesn’t exactly make her want to say yes. Ella Sutherland may be clever, passionate, and shockingly beautiful, but what she isn’t is willing.

Every attempt Cain makes to woo her seems to backfire on him. A gift? The kitten practically claws his eyes out. A competitive game of chess? Even when he wins, he loses. It seems the only time the two ever see eye to eye is when they’re heating up Cain’s bed. Still, the only thing Ella truly wants is the one thing he cannot offer her: freedom.

But when Cain discovers she’s been harboring a secret—one that could threaten both clans’ very existence—he’ll have to decide between peace for the Sinclairs or the woman who’s captured his heart.

Each book in the Sons of Sinclair series is STANDALONE:
* Highland Conquest
* Highland Warrior
* Highland Justice
* Highland Beast
* Highland Surrender

View Details
Image for "The Highland Duke"

The Highland Duke

Amy Jarecki

Description

RT Reviewers' Choice Award winner

She'll put her life on the line for him . . . 
When Akira Ayres finds the brawny Scot with a musket ball in his thigh, the healer has no qualms about doing whatever it takes to save his life. Even if it means fleeing with him across the Highlands to tend to his wounds while English redcoats are closing in. Though Akira is as fierce and brave as any of her clansmen, even she's intimidated by the fearsome, brutally handsome Highlander who refuses to reveal his name.

Yet she can never learn his true identity.
Geordie knows if Akira ever discovers he's the Duke of Gordon, both her life and his will be forfeit in a heartbeat. The only way to keep the lass safe is to ensure she's by his side day and night. But the longer he's with her, the harder it becomes to think of letting her go. Despite all their differences, despite the danger-he will face death itself to make her his . . . 


"Readers get all the benefits of a modern road trip (forced proximity, lots and lots of dialogue, and uninterrupted time for the hero and heroine's love to grow) without technology or secondary characters interrupting the main story arc. About halfway through there is a pretty darn huge plot twist, too. This book kept me on my toes and anxious for more." --Book Riot
 

View Details
Image for "To Scotland with Love"

To Scotland with Love

Patience Griffin

Description

Welcome to the charming Scottish seaside town of Gandiegow—where two people have returned home for different reasons, but to find the same thing.… 

Caitriona Macleod gave up her career as an investigative reporter for the role of perfect wife. But after her husband is found dead in his mistress’s bed, a devastated Cait leaves Chicago for the birthplace she hasn’t seen since she was a child. She’s hoping to heal and to reconnect with her gran. The last thing she expects to find in Gandiegow is the Sexiest Man Alive! She just may have stumbled on the ticket to reigniting her career—if her heart doesn’t get in the way.

Graham Buchanan is a movie star with many secrets. A Gandiegow native, he frequently hides out in his hometown between films. He also has a son he’ll do anything to protect. But Cait Macleod is too damn appealing—even if she is a journalist.

Quilting with her gran and the other women of the village brings Cait a peace she hasn’t known in years. But if she turns in the story about Graham, Gandiegow will never forgive her for betraying one of its own. Should she suffer the consequences to resurrect her career? Or listen to her battered and bruised heart and give love another chance?

View Details
Image for "The Strings of Murder"

The Strings of Murder

Oscar de Muriel

Description

1888: A violinist is brutally murdered in his Edinburgh home. Fearing a national panic over a copycat Jack the Ripper, Scotland Yard send Inspector Ian Frey. Frey reports to Detective "Nine-Nails" McGray, local legend and exact opposite of the foppish English Inspector. McGray’s tragic past has driven him to superstition, but even Frey must admit that this case seems beyond belief.There was no way in or out of the locked music studio. And there are black magic symbols on the floor. The dead man’s maid swears there were three musicians playing before the murder. And the suspects all talk of a cursed violin once played by the Devil himself.Inspector Frey has always been a man of reason—but the longer this investigation goes on, the more his grasp on reason seems to be slipping...

View Details
Image for "An American in Scotland"

An American in Scotland

Lucy Connelly

Description

The small idyllic town of Sea Isle, Scotland, harbors some dark secrets, and Dr. Emilia McRoy is determined to uncover all of them—no matter what the diagnosis—in this charming cozy, sure to enchant fans of Sheila Connolly and Charlene O’Connor.

Sea Isle was supposed to be the fresh start Dr. Emilia McRoy dreamed of. Far from the busy emergency room across the Atlantic in Seattle, she hoped to settle down and begin this new chapter as a small-town doctor to the quirky residents who immediately welcomed her. When she stumbles across a dead body, she starts to think that she may not be as Scot free of the drama and intrigue as she initially thought.

Emilia soon learns she has bigger issues at hand. It starts with realizing she'll work closely with the less than helpful local constable, Laird Ewan Campbell. Her luck continues when she discovers that part of her new responsibilities includes being the coroner for the very body she found. Finally, when the body goes missing before she can even begin the autopsy, Emilia must convince the townspeople that a crime did, in fact, occur. The deeper she digs into the picturesque town, the more suspicious she becomes. And then there are her sleep issues. It may be due to the ever-growing list of suspects, a number of threatening letters, or the surprise visitor who breaks into her house at night. But she’s never backed down before, and she doesn’t intend to start now.

Someone doesn’t want this doctor to treat the ailments of Sea Isle, but Emilia McRoy is determined to find the murderer before they kilt again.

View Details
Image for "Queen Hereafter"

Queen Hereafter

Isabelle Schuler

Description

"A bruising tale of passion, ambition, power, vengeance, and desire . . . a stunning retelling." --Entertainment Weekly, Most Anticipated Books of Fall

"Suspenseful, atmospheric and full of twists and turns, I loved the brutal, backstabbing world that Isabelle Schuler conjures up where only the most ruthless can survive. A thoroughly enjoyable read!"--Jennifer Saint, bestselling author of Ariadne and Elektra

An instant international bestseller: a suspenseful, sweeping historical epic for readers of Natalie Haynes and Madeline Miller, which boldly reimagines the origin story of the woman who inspired one of Shakespeare's most iconic characters, Lady Macbeth.

She will be Queen. Whatever it takes . . .

Daughter of an ousted king, descendant of ancient druids, Gruoch (GREW-ock), has grown up believing that she will be crowned queen of Alba and reclaim the lands of her Pictish kin, a prophecy seemingly fulfilled by her betrothal to Duncan, the heir-elect.

Determined never to be powerless again, she leaves behind her home, her family, and her close friend MacBethad, and travels to the royal seat at Scone to embrace her new position. But Duncan's court is rife with sly words and unfriendly faces, women desperate to usurp her position, and others whose motives are shrouded in mystery.

As her coronation approaches, a deadly turn of events forces Gruoch to flee Duncan and the capital. Alone and at the mercy of an old enemy, her hope of becoming Queen all but lost, Gruoch must make a fateful choice: live a long, quiet life in the shadows, or seize vengeance and a path back to the throne.

A stunning literary reclamation of an iconic character, Queen Hereafter is a gripping story of female ambition, power, history, desire, hate, and vengeance set against the backdrop of early medieval Scotland.

View Details
Image for "Finding Fraser"

Finding Fraser

kc dyer

Description

“Jamie Fraser would be Deeply Gratified at having inspired such a charmingly funny, poignant story—and so am I.”—Diana Gabaldon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Outlander series

Escape to Scotland with the delightful novel that readers have fallen in love with—inspired by Diana Gabaldon’s #1 New York Times bestselling Outlander series.

I met Jamie Fraser when I was nineteen years old. He was tall, redheaded, and, at our first meeting at least, a virgin. He was, in fact, the perfect man.That he was fictional hardly entered into it...

On the cusp of thirty, Emma Sheridan is desperately in need of a change. After a string of failed relationships, she can admit that no man has ever lived up to her idea of perfection: the Scottish fictional star of romantic fantasies the world over—James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.

Her ideal man might be ripped from the pages of a book, but Emma hopes that by making one life-altering decision she might be able to turn fiction into fact. After selling all her worldly possessions, Emma takes off for Scotland with nothing but her burgeoning travel blog to confide in. 

But as she scours the country’s rolling green hills and crumbling castles, Emma discovers that in searching for her own Jamie Fraser, she just might find herself.

View Details
Clear by Carys Davies

Clear

Carys Davies

Description

“Tender, riveting, and inventive is Clear, the newest offering and masterpiece from the brilliant Carys Davies. It will take your breath away…What a thrill.” —Sarah Jessica Parker

Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, 2024 Bookmark Festival Book of the Year, and Wales Book of the Year

A Vogue, The Washington Post, NPR, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, and The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Best Book of the Year

A “daring and necessary…sophisticated and playful” (The New York Times) novel from an award-winning writer, Clear is the story of a minister dispatched to a remote island to “clear” its last remaining inhabitant—an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.

John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland—Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted.

Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. “Clear chronicles the surprising bond that develops between these two men…pack[ing] a great deal of power into a compact tale” (The Wall Street Journal) about connection, home, and hope—in which John begins to learn Ivar’s language, and Ivar sees himself reflected through the eyes of another person for the first time in decades.

Unfolding during the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances—a period of the 19th century which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions—this singular novel explores what binds us together in the face of insurmountable difference, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can endure despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable, “a love letter to the scorching power of language” (The Guardian), Clear is “a jewel of a novel” (The Washington Post)—a profound and unforgettable read.

View Details
Image for "Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster"

Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster

William W. Starr

Description

A celebration of Scottish life and spirited endorsement of the unexpected discoveries to be made through good travel and good literature.

Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster is a memoir of a twenty-first-century literary pilgrimage to retrace the famous eighteenth-century Scottish journey of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, two of the most celebrated writers of their day. An accomplished journalist and aficionado of fine literature, William W. Starr enlivens this crisply written travelogue with a playful wit, an enthusiasm for all things Scottish, the boon and burden of American sensibility, and an ardent appreciation for Boswell and Johnson--who make frequent cameos throughout these ramblings.

In 1773 the sixty-three-year-old Johnson was England's preeminent man of letters, and Boswell, some thirty years Johnson's junior, was on the cusp of achieving his own literary celebrity. For more than one hundred days, the distinguished duo toured what was then largely unknown Scottish terrain, later publishing their impressions of the trip in a pair of classic journals. In 2007 Starr embarked on a three-thousand-mile trek through the Scottish Lowlands and Highlands, following the path--though in reverse--of Boswell and Johnson. Starr tracked their route as closely as the threat of storms, distractions of pubs, and limitations of time would allow. Like his literary forebears, he recorded a wealth of keen observations on his encounters with places and people, lochs and lore, castles and clans, fables and foibles. Starr couples his contemporary commentary with passages from Boswell's and Johnson's published accounts, letters, and diaries to weave together a cohesive travel guide to the Scotland of yore and today, comparing reflections from two centuries ago to his own modern-day perspectives. The tour begins and ends in Edinburgh and includes along the way visits to Glasgow, Inverness, Loch Ness, Culloden, Auchinleck, the Isles of Iona and Skye, and many more destinations. In addition Starr expands his course to include two of the farthest reaches of Scotland where eighteenth-century travelers dared not tread: the Outer Hebrides and the Orkney Islands, remarkable regions shaped by distinctive weather, history, and isolation.

Blending biography, intellectual and cultural history, and comic asides into his travelogue, Starr crafts an inviting vantage point from which to view aspects of Scotland's storied past and complex present through an illuminating literary lens. The well-read globetrotter and the armchair adventurer will each benefit from this compendium of fascinating revelations about Scotland's colorful, volatile heritage; its embrace of myth and legends; its flirtations with both tradition and commercialization; and its legacy as more than a source of single malts, bagpipes, and kilted genealogies.

View Details
Image for "The Canterbury Tales"

The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer

Description

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight’s account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath’s Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook. Rich and diverse, The Canterbury Tales offer us an unrivalled glimpse into the life and mind of medieval England.

 

View Details
Image for "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Arthur Conan Doyle

Description

The most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles features the phantom dog of Dartmoor, which, according to an ancient legend, has haunted the Baskervilles for generations. When Sir Charles Baskerville dies suddenly of a heart attack on the grounds of the family’s estate, the locals are convinced that the spectral hound is responsible, and Holmes is called in. “Conan Doyle triumphed and triumphed deservedly,” G. K. Chesterton wrote, “because he took his art seriously, because he lavished a hundred little touches of real knowledge and genuine picturesqueness on the police novelette.”

View Details
Image for "Endless Night"

Endless Night

Agatha Christie

Description

Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night . . .

When penniless Michael Rogers discovers the beautiful house at Gypsy’s Acre and then meets the heiress Ellie, it seems that all his dreams have come true at once. But he ignores an old woman’s warning of an ancient curse, and evil begins to stir in paradise. As Michael soon learns: Gypsy’s Acre is the place where fatal “accidents” happen.

View Details
Image for "Pride and Prejudice"

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

Description

Austen's most popular novel, the unforgettable story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy

Few have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet in Austen’s beloved classic Pride and Prejudice. When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows us the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life. This Penguin Classics edition, based on Austen's first edition, contains the original Penguin Classics introduction by Tony Tanner and an updated introduction and notes by Viven Jones.

View Details
Image for "The Sun Also Rises"

The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway

Description

A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises is "an absorbing, beautifully and tenderly absurd, heartbreaking narrative...a truly gripping story, told in lean, hard, athletic prose" (The New York Times).

View Details
Image for "A Tale of Two Cities"

A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens

Description

Charles Dickens's classic historical novel of the French Revolution

A Tale of Two Cities portrays a world on fire, split between Paris and London during the brutal and bloody events of the French Revolution. After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There, two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are all drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror and soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine. 

This edition uses the text as it appeared in its first serial publication in 1859 to convey the full scope of Dickens's vision, and includes the original illustrations by H.K. Browne ('Phiz'). Richard Maxwell's introduction discusses the intricate interweaving of epic drama with personal tragedy.

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

View Details
Image for "Rebecca"

Rebecca

Daphne Du Maurier

Description

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. . . With these words the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone manse on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room in the immense, foreboding estate were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten -- a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. And with an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wife -- the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca.

View Details
Image for "The Divine Comedy"

The Divine Comedy

Dante Alighieri

Description

The Divine Comedy marked nothing less than the arrival of vernacular Italian as a literary language--and Dante's book is still considered Italy's greatest literary achievement. Its highly idiomatic verse, however, has long bedeviled English-language translators. Burton Raffel, whose translation of Don Quixote is acclaimed for making Cervantes more accessible to the modern generation, in this new translation for Northwestern World Classics, shows exciting new directions, preserving both the lyricism of the original and its incisive meaning. First-time readers and longtime fans of "the supreme poet" alike will cherish this clear and lyrical rendering of one of world literature's masterpieces.

The Divine Comedy depicts the journey of Dante the pilgrim, guided by the poet Virgil and the love of his life, Beatrice, as he moves through the stages of his life and world. Raffel's single-volume translation of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso follows the complete journey of a spiritual pilgrim who struggles from the depths of the inferno to the heights of paradise. In the former Dante meets many of his political enemies, suffering the punishments that match their crimes in life. And in the ninth circle of Hell, Lucifer--the ultimate traitor--is shown chewing on Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Iscariot, three others who committed horrendous acts of treason in the classical and early Jewish worlds. Dante's evocative description of Heaven is a sort of homecoming for the exiled poet. Dante's epic poem challenged the political and religious hierarchy of his time and remains a powerful and universal expression of human desires, strivings, and shortcomings.


 

View Details
Image for "The Maltese Falcon"

The Maltese Falcon

Dashiell Hammett

Description

ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME

Detective Sam Spade is a private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. When his partner is killed during a stakeout, he is drawn into the hunt for a fantastic treasure with a dubious provenance—a golden bird encrusted with jewels. Also on the trail are a perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, an oversized adventurer named Gutman, and Spade’s new client Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. 

These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted generations of readers.
 

View Details
Image for "Death on the Nile"

Death on the Nile

Branagh, Kenneth

Description

When a wealthy and beautiful woman is murdered during her honeymoon on a boat cruising down the Nile, detective Hercule Poirot steps in to investigate the case.  Based on the novel by Agatha Christie.

View Details
Image for "The last anniversary"

The last anniversary

Palmer, Teresa, 1986-

Description

A mystery that touches on family matters, motherhood and those women whose legacy defines the generations that blossom after them.

View Details
Image for "River wild"

River wild

Meester, Leighton, 1986-

Description

Joey fears there could be trouble ahead after her brother Gray invites Trevor, a childhood friend with a troubled past, on their whitewater rafting adventure with two tourists. Once they become stranded in raging rapids, the thrill-seeking trip quickly turns from exciting to utterly terrifying as the rafters are trapped in a desperate fight for their lives, all while someone seems intent on sabotaging to ensure shocking secrets stay buried. To survive the wild river, Joey will have to face her fears, and everyone will have to develop killer instincts before they're torn apart by deception aboard the raft, or by deadly waters wreaking havoc all around them.

View Details
Image for "Speak to Me of Home"

Speak to Me of Home

Jeanine Cummins

Description

What does it mean to call a place home?

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jeanine Cummins comes a deeply felt multigenerational family story

On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments. 

In the 1980s, against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth, wants only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits, and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. It’s not until decades later when Ruth’s own daughter, Daisy, returns to San Juan that her mother and grandmother begin to truly reflect on the choices that have come to define their lives.

When a hurricane ravages the island in 2023, leaving Daisy critically injured, Rafaela and Ruth return to the city where their story began. As they gather at Daisy’s bedside, we follow them back into the moments that brought them to this point: We watch as they come of age, fall in love, take risks, and contend with all the heartbreaks, triumphs, and reversals of fortune—both good and bad—that make up a meaningful life. As old memories come to light, so do buried secrets, leaving everyone in the family wondering exactly where it is that they belong.

A striking, resonant examination of marriage, family, and identity, Speak to Me of Home is ultimately a story of mothers and daughters that asks: How can three women who share geography and genetics have such wildly different ideas of where they come from? And, more important, can they discover a common language to find their way back home?

View Details
Image for "Knives out"

Knives out

Craig, Daniel, 1968-

Description

A tribute to mystery mastermind Agatha Christie and a fun, modern-day murder mystery where everyone is a suspect. When renowned crime novelist Harlan Thrombey is found dead at his estate just after his 85th birthday, the inquisitive and debonair Detective Benoit Blanc is mysteriously enlisted to investigate. From Harlan's dysfunctional family to his devoted staff, Blanc sifts through a web of red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind Harlan's untimely death.

View Details
Image for "Operation fortune : ruse de guerre"

Operation fortune : ruse de guerre

Statham, Jason, 1967-

Description

Super spy Orson Fortune must track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology wielded by billionaire arms broker Greg Simmonds. Reluctantly teamed with some of the world's best operatives, Fortune and his crew recruit Hollywood's biggest movie star Danny Francesco to help them on their globe-trotting undercover mission to save the world.

View Details
Image for "Atonement"

Atonement

Ian McEwan

Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from the acclaimed Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author.

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century

“A beautiful and majestic fictional panorama.” —John Updike, The New Yorker

On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives. 

As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.

View Details
Image for "No Bad Deed"

No Bad Deed

Heather Chavez

Description

"A twisty, jet-fueled thriller... Don't miss it!" - Lisa Gardner

Packed with the electrifying pacing and pulse-pounding suspense of Harlan Coben and Lisa Gardner, a thrilling debut about a mother desperate to find the connections between her missing husband and a deadly stalker who knows too much about her own dark family history.

View Details
Image for "The Handmaid's Tale"

The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood

Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (The New York Times) • The sixth and final season of the award-winning Hulu series starring Elisabeth Moss is now streaming

Look for The Testaments, the bestselling, award-winning sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid’s Tale is a modern classic.

Includes an introduction by Margaret Atwood

View Details
Image for "Fun Home"

Fun Home

Alison Bechdel

Description

CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED, NATIONAL BESTSELLER

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year * National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

Winner of the Stonewall Book Award * Double finalist for the Lambda Book Award

Alison Bechdel's groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father.

Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.

In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.

View Details
Image for "Nineteen Minutes"

Nineteen Minutes

Jodi Picoult

Description

"In Sterling, New Hampshire, 17-year-old high school student Peter Houghton has endured years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of classmates. His best friend, Josie Cormier, succumbed to peer pressure and now hangs out with the popular crowd that often instigates the harassment. One final incident of bullying sends Peter over the edge and leads him to commit an act of violence that forever changes the lives of Sterling's residents. Even those who were not inside the school that morning find their lives in an upheaval, including Alex Cormier. The superior court judge assigned to the Houghton case, Alex - whose daughter, Josie, witnessed the events that unfolded - must decide whether or not to step down. She's torn between presiding over the biggest case of her career and knowing that doing so will cause an even wider chasm in her relationship with her emotionally fragile daughter. Josie, meanwhile, claims she can't remember what happened in the last fatal minutes of Peter's rampage. Or can she? And Peter's parents, Lacy and Lewis Houghton, ceaselessly examine the past to see what they might have said or done to compel their son to such extremes. Rich with psychological and social insight, Nineteen Minutes is a riveting, poignant, and thought-provoking novel that has at its center a haunting question. Do we ever really know someone?"--Source other than the Library of Congress.

View Details
Image for "Lawn Boy"

Lawn Boy

Jonathan Evison

Description

Recipient of the 2019 Alex Award​​

“Mike Muñoz Is a Holden Caulfield for a New Millennium--a '10th-generation peasant with a Mexican last name, raised by a single mom on an Indian reservation' . . . Evison, as in his previous four novels, has a light touch and humorously guides the reader, this time through the minefield that is working-class America.” --The New York Times Book Review

For Mike Muñoz, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work--and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew--he’s smart enough to know that he’s got to be the one to shake things up if he’s ever going to change his life. But how? He’s not qualified for much of anything. He has no particular talents, although he is stellar at handling a lawn mower and wielding clipping shears. But now that career seems to be behind him. So what’s next for Mike Muñoz?

In this funny, biting, touching, and ultimately inspiring novel, bestselling author Jonathan Evison takes the reader into the heart and mind of a young man determined to achieve the American dream of happiness and prosperity--who just so happens to find himself along the way.

View Details
Image for "Bob Marley One Love"

Bob Marley: One Love

Ben-Adir, Kingsley,

Description

Celebrates the life and music of an icon who inspired generations through his message of love and unity. On the big screen for the first time, discover Bob's powerful story of overcoming adversity and the journey behind his revolutionary music.

View Details
Image for "I saw the light"

I Saw the Light

Hiddleston, Tom

Description

The story of the legendary country western singer Hank Williams, who in his brief life created one of the greatest bodies of work in American music. The film chronicles his meteoric rise to fame and its ultimately tragic effect on his health and personal life.  

Based on the book "Hank Williams: the Biography" by Colin Escott with George Merritt and William MacEwen.

View Details
Image for "The accountant"

The Accountant

Affleck, Ben, 1972-

Description

Christian Wolff is a math savant who works as a freelance accountant for some of the world's most dangerous criminal organizations. With the Treasury Department's Crime Enforcement Division starting to close in, he takes on a legitimate client, a robotics company where an accounting clerk has discovered a discrepency involving millions of dollars. But as Christian uncooks the books and gets closer to the truth, the body count starts to rise.

View Details
Image for "The Master Butchers Singing Club"

The Master Butchers Singing Club

Louise Erdrich

Description

From National Book Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author Louise Erdrich, a profound and enchanting new novel: a richly imagined world “where butchers sing like angels.”

Having survived World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns to his quiet German village and marries the pregnant widow of his best friend, killed in action. With a suitcase full of sausages and a master butcher's precious knife set, Fidelis sets out for America. In Argus, North Dakota, he builds a business, a home for his family—which includes Eva and four sons—and a singing club consisting of the best voices in town. When the Old World meets the New—in the person of Delphine Watzka—the great adventure of Fidelis's life begins. Delphine meets Eva and is enchanted. She meets Fidelis, and the ground trembles. These momentous encounters will determine the course of Delphine's life, and the trajectory of this brilliant novel.

View Details
Image for "Prodigal Summer"

Prodigal Summer

Barbara Kingsolver

Description

Barbara Kingsolver, a writer praised for her"extravagantly gifted narrative voice" (New York Times Book Review), has created with this novel a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself.

Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches the forest from her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who comes to invade her most private spaces and confound her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, another web of lives unfolds as Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the complexities of a world neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes a green and profligate countryside, these characters find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place. Their discoveries are embedded inside countless intimate lessons of biology, the realities of small farming, and the final, urgent truth that humans are only one part of life on earth.

With the richness that characterizes Barbara Kingsolver's finest work, Prodigal Summer embraces pure thematic originality and demonstrates a balance of narrative and ideas that only an accomplished novelist could render so beautifully.

View Details
Image for "The Book of M"

The Book of M

Peng Shepherd

Description

"Eerie, dark, and compelling, [The Book of M] will not disappoint lovers of The Passage and Station Eleven." --Booklist

WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE UP TO REMEMBER?

Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.

Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too.

Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.

As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.

Like The Passage and Station Eleven, this haunting, thought-provoking, and beautiful novel explores fundamental questions of memory, connection, and what it means to be human in a world turned upside down.

View Details
Image for "Just Like Home"

Just Like Home

Sarah Gailey

Description

A Best Horror Novel of All Time (Cosmopolitan) • WINNER of the 2023 British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel • One of the Best Horror Novels of 2022 (Vulture, Paste, NPR, and Teen Vogue) • A Belletrist Book Club pick!

Just Like Home is a darkly gothic thriller from bestselling author Sarah Gailey, perfect for fans of The Haunting of Hill House as well as true crime masterpiece I'll Be Gone in the Dark.

“Come home.” Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories — she's come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father and the bodies he buried there, beneath the house he'd built for his family.

Coming home is hard enough for Vera, and to make things worse, she and her mother aren’t alone. A parasitic artist has moved into the guest house out back and is slowly stripping Vera’s childhood for spare parts. He insists that he isn’t the one leaving notes around the house in her father’s handwriting... but who else could it possibly be?

There are secrets yet undiscovered in the foundations of the notorious Crowder House. Vera must face them and find out for herself just how deep the rot goes.

View Details
Image for "Rez Life"

Rez Life

David Treuer

Description

Celebrated novelist David Treuer has gained a reputation for writing fiction that expands the horizons of Native American literature. In Rez Life, his first full-length work of nonfiction, Treuer brings a novelist’s storytelling skill and an eye for detail to a complex and subtle examination of Native American reservation life, past and present.

With authoritative research and reportage, Treuer illuminates misunderstood contemporary issues of sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation. He traces the waves of public policy that have disenfranchised and exploited Native Americans, exposing the tension that has marked the historical relationship between the United States government and the Native American population. Through the eyes of students, teachers, government administrators, lawyers, and tribal court judges, he shows how casinos, tribal government, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have transformed the landscape of Native American life.

A member of the Ojibwe of northern Minnesota, Treuer grew up on Leech Lake Reservation, but was educated in mainstream America. Exploring crime and poverty, casinos and wealth, and the preservation of native language and culture, Rez Life is a strikingly original work of history and reportage, a must read for anyone interested in the Native American story.
 

View Details
Image for "Plant Powered Mexican"

Plant Powered Mexican

Kate Ramos

Description

In Plant Powered Mexican, Kate Ramos (Hola Jalepeno) takes you on a tour of her delicious, vegetable-driven kitchen with 70+ recipes celebrating the flavors of Mexico.

Mexican recipes have long been known for their fresh, vibrant ingredients and delicious flavor combinations. However, it's only recently that chefs and eaters alike have discovered something wonderful: many Mexican recipes taste just as good (or better!) when vegetables are the star. This collection of meat-free Mexican recipes includes favorites passed down from family as well as many of Kate's own creations.

Chapters and recipes include:
 

  • Low Cook: Spicy Mexican Gazpacho with Chopped Cucumber Salad; Cauliflower, Pepita, and Rice Salad Lettuce Wraps; Chilled Avocado Soup with Farmer's Market Fairy Dust; Tomatillo Poke Bowl with Avocado and Pink Grapefruit; Marinated Vegetable Torta with Serrano-Lemon Aioli
  • From the Stove: Spinach and Caramelized Onion Sopes, Winter Vegetable Enmoladas with Queso Fresco, Jackfruit Tinga Grain Bowls, Squash Blossom Quesadillas with Tomatillo-Avocado Salsa, Poached Eggs Divorciados
  • From the Oven: Roasted Carrot Barbacoa Tostadas, Sweet Pea and Potato Empanadas, One Pan Chile Rellenos, Sheet Pan Chilaquiles Rojos with Cilantro-Lime Crema
  • From the Grill: Sangria Marinated Veggie Skewers, Chipotle-spiced Cauliflower Tacos, Grilled Stuffed Peppers with Mint, Queso Asado and Calabacitas
  • Electric Pressure Cooker: Almond Mole, Poblano Pepper-Potato Soup with Toasted Pepitas, Vegan Red Pozole with Mushrooms, Black Bean and Swiss Chard Enchilada Casserole


While some recipes are easier than others, they were all developed with the family table in mind. This means most are weeknight meals meant to fit into a busy family's life.

In addition to the centerpiece mains, you'll find salads, soups, bowls, and plenty of classics to return to week after week as well—think time-tested salsa recipes, a foolproof version of Mexican rice, and a hands-off pot of flavorful beans that can be served up four different ways.

Many of the recipes in the book are vegan and others can be made vegan by omitting or substituting cheese or milk.

Whether you are vegan, vegetarian, or simply a vegetable-loving cook, these are the Mexican recipes you've been waiting for!

View Details
Image for "Flamin Hot"

Flamin' Hot

Richard Montanez

Description

Now a Hulu feature film directed by Eva Longoria 

Read the story everyone is talking about: how a janitor struggling to put food on the table invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in a secret test kitchen, breaking barriers and becoming the first Latino frontline worker promoted to executive at Frito-Lay. 

Richard Montañez is a man who made a science out of walking through closed doors, and his success story is an empowerment manual for anyone stuck in a dead-end job or facing a system stacked against them. 
 
Having taken a job mopping floors at Frito-Lay's California factory to support his family, Montañez took his future into his own hands and created the world’s hottest snack food: Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. This bold move not only disrupted the food industry with some much-needed spice, but also shook up a corporate culture in which everyone stayed in their lane. When a top food scientist at Frito-Lay sent out a memo telling sales and marketing to kill the new product before it made it to the store shelves—jealous that someone with no formal education beyond the sixth grade could do his job—Montañez was forced to go rogue once again to save his idea. Through creative thinking, community building, and a few powerful mindset shifts, he outsmarted the naysayers who tried to get in his way.
 
Flamin' Hot proves that you can break out of your career rut and that your present circumstances don't have to dictate your future.

View Details
Image for "My Side of the River"

My Side of the River

Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

Description

A New York Times Editor's Pick
A People Magazine Best Book to Read in February
A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of 2024

My Side of the River is both fierce and poetic. It brilliantly reframes border writing while embracing nature and familial history. There are moments one sees greatness appear. This is one of those moments.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, New York Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene 

Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez reveals her experience as the U.S. born daughter of immigrants and what happened when, at fifteen, her parents were forced back to Mexico in this captivating and tender memoir.

Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips. She was preparing to enter her freshman year of high school as the number one student when suddenly, her own country took away the most important right a child has: the right to have a family.

When her parents’ visas expired and they were forced to return to Mexico, Elizabeth was left responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being a “statistic,” she knew that even though her parents couldn’t stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide. Armed with only her passport and sheer teenage determination, Elizabeth became what her school would eventually describe as an unaccompanied homeless youth, one of thousands of underage victims affected by family separation due to broken immigration laws. 

For fans of Educated by Tara Westover and The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, My Side of the River explores separation, generational trauma, and the toll of the American dream. It’s also, at its core, a love story between a brother and a sister who, no matter the cost, is determined to make the pursuit of her brother’s dreams easier than it was for her.

View Details
Image for "Olga Dies Dreaming"

Olga Dies Dreaming

Xochitl Gonzalez

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK · WINNER OF THE BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY PRIZE • INTERNATIONAL LATINO BOOK AWARD FINALIST 

A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots—all in the wake of Hurricane Maria

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Kirkus, Washington Post, TIME, NPR, Vogue, Esquire, Book Riot, Goodreads, EW, Reader's Digest, and more!

"Don’t underestimate this new novelist. She’s jump-starting the year with a smart romantic comedy that lures us in with laughter and keeps us hooked with a fantastically engaging story."The Washington Post 

It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, are boldfaced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s power brokers.

Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1 percent but she can’t seem to find her own. . . until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.

Olga and Prieto’s mother, Blanca, a Young Lord turned radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.

Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico’s history, Xochitl Gonzalez’s Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife, and the very notion of the American dream—all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.

View Details
Image for "Our Migrant Souls"

Our Migrant Souls

Héctor Tobar

Description

WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR NONFICTION
Named One of The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2023
One of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 | A Top Ten Book of 2023 at Chicago Public Library

A new book by the Pulitzer Prizewinning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity.

In Our Migrant Souls, the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Héctor Tobar delivers a definitive and personal exploration of what it means to be Latino in the United States right now.

“Latino” is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States, and also one of the most rapidly growing. Composed as a direct address to the young people who identify or have been classified as “Latino,” Our Migrant Souls is the first account of the historical and social forces that define Latino identity.

Taking on the impacts of colonialism, public policy, immigration, media, and pop culture, Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of “Latino” as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States, and gives voice to the anger and the hopes of young Latino people who have seen Latinidad transformed into hateful tropes and who have faced insult and division—a story as old as this country itself.

Tobar translates his experience as not only a journalist and novelist but also a mentor, a leader, and an educator. He interweaves his own story, and that of his parents’ migration to the United States from Guatemala, into his account of his journey across the country to uncover something expansive, inspiring, true, and alive about the meaning of “Latino” in the twenty-first century.

A new book by the Pulitzer Prizewinning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity.

In Our Migrant Souls, the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Héctor Tobar delivers a definitive and personal exploration of what it means to be Latino in the United States right now. 

“Latino” is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States, and also one of the most rapidly growing. Composed as a direct address to the young people who identify or have been classified as “Latino,” Our Migrant Souls is the first account of the historical and social forces that define Latino identity.

Taking on the impacts of colonialism, public policy, immigration, media, and pop culture, Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of “Latino” as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States, and gives voice to the anger and the hopes of young Latino people who have seen Latinidad transformed into hateful tropes and who have faced insult and division—a story as old as this country itself. 

Tobar translates his experience as not only a journalist and novelist but also a mentor, a leader, and an educator. He interweaves his own story, and that of his parents’ migration to the United States from Guatemala, into his account of his journey across the country to uncover something expansive, inspiring, true, and alive about the meaning of “Latino” in the twenty-first century.

View Details
Image for "Speculative Fiction for Dreamers"

Speculative Fiction for Dreamers

Alex Hernandez (Science fiction author)

Description

"An outstanding showcase of contemporary Latinx authors exploring identity through the conventions of sci-fi, fantasy, and magical realism. Themes of family, migration, and community resonate throughout these 38 masterful stories. ... This is a knockout." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Finalist, 2022 World Fantasy Awards Finalist, 2022 Ignyte Awards Finalist, 2022 Utopia Awards In a tantalizing array of new works from some of the most exciting Latinx creators working in the speculative vein today, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers extends the project begun with a previous anthology, Latinx Rising (The Ohio State University Press, 2020), to showcase a new generation of writers. Spanning diverse forms, settings, perspectives, and styles, but unified by their drive to imagine new Latinx futures, these stories address the breadth of contemporary Latinx experiences and identities while exuberantly embracing the genre's ability to entertain and surprise. With new work for new audiences in their teens and up, and especially for Latinx people navigating their identities in the ever-shifting, sometimes perilous, but always promising cultural landscape of the US, this book is for dreamers--and DREAMers--everywhere. Contributors: Grisel Y. Acosta, Stephanie Adams-Santos, Frederick Luis Aldama, William Alexander, Nicholas Belardes, Louangie Bou-Montes, Lisa M. Bradley, Eliana Buenrostro, Diana Burbano, Pedro Cabiya, Steve Castro, Fernando de Peña, Scott Russell Duncan, Samy Figaredo, Tammy Melody Gomez, J. M. Guzman, Ernest Hogan, Pedro Iniguez, Ezzy G. Languzzi, Patrick Lugo, Roxanne Ocasio, Daniel Parada, Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos, Reyes Ramirez, Julia Rios, Sara Daniele Rivera, Roman Sanchez, Tabitha Sin, Alex Temblador, Rodrigo Vargas, Laura Villareal, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Karlo Yeager Rodriguez

View Details
Image for "The Man Who Could Move Clouds"

The Man Who Could Move Clouds

Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Description

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER • From the bestselling author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, comes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir reclaiming her family's otherworldly legacy.

“Rojas Contreras reacquaints herself with her family’s past, weaving their stories with personal narrative, unraveling legacies of violence, machismo and colonialism… In the process, she has written a spellbinding and genre-defying ancestral history.”—New York Times Book Review  

For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her mother’s fortune-telling clients, she was a hard child to surprise. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called “the secrets”: the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit “the secrets,” Rojas Contreras’ mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water.

This legacy had always felt like it belonged to her mother and grandfather, until, while living in the U.S. in her twenties, Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before: Decades ago Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia, too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to “the secrets.”

In 2012, spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, and her own powerful urge to relearn her family history in the aftermath of her memory loss, Rojas Contreras joins her mother on a journey to Colombia to disinter Nono’s remains. With Mami as her unpredictable, stubborn, and often amusing guide, Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her mestizo family into two camps: those who believe “the secrets” are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse.

Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.

View Details
Image for "Claudia's Cocina"

Claudia's Cocina

Claudia Sandoval

Description

Claudia's Cocina: A Taste of Mexico celebrates the food of MasterChef Season 6 winner, Claudia Sandoval. Claudia brought with her a cooking background strongly influenced by her family's Mexican roots, as well as the seafood restaurant her grandparents owned when she was a child. Throughout the show she demonstrated a bright, versatile range of flavors and always made family the center of her dishes.

Simple by design, the book offers 65 mouthwatering recipes straight from Claudia's kitchen to yours. It showcases a mix of Claudia's favorite dishes, as well as some of the on-the-spot creations that propelled her to victory: 
 

  • Hibiscus Poached Pears
  • Grilled Swordfish
  • Head-On Garlic Shrimp
  • Achiote Rubbed Pork Chops
  • Cilantro Lime Grilled Chicken
  • Tres Leches Cake


The book also shares her favorites from her family's town of Mazatlan, as well as creams, sauces, and salsas, plus step-by-step directions for complex dishes that will help readers master some of the staples of Mexican cuisine. The recipes are introduced by headnotes that offer anecdotes about Claudia's life and childhood and include insights into how she became the extraordinary winner of MasterChef Season 6.

View Details
Image for "Somos Latinas"

Somos Latinas: Voices of Wisconsin Latina activists

Arenas, Andrea-Teresa

Description

Somos Latinas shares the powerful narratives of 25 activists--from outspoken demonstrators to collaborative community-builders to determined individuals working for change behind the scenes--providing proof of the long-standing legacy of Latina activism throughout Wisconsin. 

View Details
Image for "El Norte"

El Norte

Carrie Gibson

Description

Because of our shared English language, as well as the celebrated origin tales of the Mayflower and the rebellion of the British colonies, the United States has prized its Anglo heritage above all others. However, as Carrie Gibson explains with great depth and clarity in El Norte, the nation has much older Spanish roots--ones that have long been unacknowledged or marginalized. The Hispanic past of the United States predates the arrival of the Pilgrims by a century, and has been every bit as important in shaping the nation as it exists today.

El Norte chronicles the sweeping and dramatic history of Hispanic North America from the arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century to the present--from Ponce de Leon's initial landing in Florida in 1513 to Spanish control of the vast Louisiana territory in 1762 to the Mexican-American War in 1846 and up to the more recent tragedy of post-hurricane Puerto Rico and the ongoing border acrimony with Mexico. Interwoven in this stirring narrative of events and people are cultural issues that have been there from the start but which are unresolved to this day: language, belonging, community, race, and nationality. Seeing them play out over centuries provides vital perspective at a time when it is urgently needed.

In 1883, Walt Whitman meditated on his country's Spanish past: "We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them," predicting that "to that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts." That future is here, and El Norte, a stirring and eventful history in its own right, will make a powerful impact on our national understanding.

View Details
Image for "Read Dangerously"

Read Dangerously

Azar Nafisi

Description

The New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with a guide to the power of literature in turbulent times, arming readers with a resistance reading list, ranging from James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston to Margaret Atwood.

"[A] stunning look at the power of reading. ... Provokes and inspires at every turn." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Remarkable. ... Audacious." --The Progressive

"Stunningly beautiful and perceptive." --Los Angeles Review of Books

What is the role of literature in an era when one political party wages continual war on writers and the press? What is the connection between political strife in our daily lives, and the way we meet our enemies on the page in fiction? How can literature, through its free exchange, affect politics?

In this galvanizing guide to literature as resistance, Nafisi seeks to answer these questions. Drawing on her experiences as a woman and voracious reader living in the Islamic Republic of Iran, her life as an immigrant in the United States, and her role as literature professor in both countries, she crafts an argument for why, in a genuine democracy, we must engage with the enemy, and how literature can be a vehicle for doing so.

Structured as a series of letters to her father, who taught her as a child about how literature can rescue us in times of trauma, Nafisi explores the most probing questions of our time through the works of Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood, and more.

View Details
Image for "Dangerous Ideas"

Dangerous Ideas

Eric Berkowitz

Description

A fascinating examination of how restricting speech has continuously shaped our culture, and how censorship is used as a tool to prop up authorities and maintain class and gender disparities

Through compelling narrative, historian Eric Berkowitz reveals how drastically censorship has shaped our modern society. More than just a history of censorship, Dangerous Ideas illuminates the power of restricting speech; how it has defined states, ideas, and culture; and (despite how each of us would like to believe otherwise) how it is something we all participate in.

This engaging cultural history of censorship and thought suppression throughout the ages takes readers from the first Chinese emperor’s wholesale elimination of books, to Henry VIII’s decree of death for anyone who “imagined” his demise, and on to the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the volatile politics surrounding censorship of social media.

Highlighting the base impulses driving many famous acts of suppression, Berkowitz demonstrates the fragility of power and how every individual can act as both the suppressor and the suppressed.

View Details
The Indispensable Right

The Indispensable Right

Jonathan Turley

Description

A “timely and brilliant original” (Michael B. Mukasey, former US attorney general) look at freedom of speech—our most basic right and the one that protects all the others.

Free speech is a human right, and the free expression of thought is at the very essence of being human. The United States was founded on this premise, and the First Amendment remains the single greatest constitutional commitment to the right of free expression in history. Yet there is a systemic effort to bar opposing viewpoints on subjects ranging from racial discrimination to police abuse, from climate change to gender equity. These measures are reinforced by the public’s anger and rage; flash mobs appear today with the slightest provocation. We all lash out against anyone or anything that stands against our preferred certainty.

The Indispensable Right places the current attacks on free speech in their proper historical, legal, and political context. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not only written for times like these, but in a time like this. This country was born in an age of rage and for 250 years we have periodically lost sight of the value of free expression. The history of the struggle for free speech is the story of extraordinary people—nonconformists who refuse to yield to abusive authority—and here is a mosaic of vivid characters and controversies.

Johnathan Turley “has written a learned and bracing book, rigorously detailed and unfailingly evenhanded” (The Wall Street Journal) showing us the unique dangers of our current moment. The alliance of academic, media, and corporate interests with the government’s traditional wish to control speech has put us on an almost irresistible path toward censorship. The Indispensable Right is a “magnum opus should be required reading for everyone who cares about free speech” (Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union) that reminds us that we remain a nation grappling with the implications of free expression and with the limits of our tolerance for the speech of others. For rather than a political crisis, this is a crisis of faith.

View Details
Image for "The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America"

The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America

Ellis Cose

Description

Named one of Newsweek's "25 Must-Read Fall Fiction and Nonfiction Books to Escape the Chaos of 2020"

The critically acclaimed journalist and bestselling author of The Rage of a Privileged Class explores one of the most essential rights in America--free speech--and reveals how it is crumbling under the combined weight of polarization, technology, money and systematized lying in this concise yet powerful and timely book.

 

Free speech has long been one of American's most revered freedoms. Yet now, more than ever, free speech is reshaping America's social and political landscape even as it is coming under attack. Bestselling author and critically acclaimed journalist Ellis Cose wades into the debate to reveal how this Constitutional right has been coopted by the wealthy and politically corrupt.

It is no coincidence that historically huge disparities in income have occurred at times when moneyed interests increasingly control political dialogue. Over the past four years, Donald Trump's accusations of "fake news," the free use of negative language against minority groups, "cancel culture," and blatant xenophobia have caused Americans to question how far First Amendment protections can--and should--go.

Cose offers an eye-opening wholly original examination of the state of free speech in America today, litigating ideas that touch on every American's life. Social media meant to bring us closer, has become a widespread disseminator of false information keeping people of differing opinions and political parties at odds. The nation--and world--watches in shock as white nationalism rises, race and gender-based violence spreads, and voter suppression widens. The problem, Cose makes clear, is that ordinary individuals have virtually no voice at all. He looks at the danger of hyper-partisanship and how the discriminatory structures that determine representation in the Senate and the electoral college threaten the very concept of democracy. He argues that the safeguards built into the Constitution to protect free speech and democracy have instead become instruments of suppression by an unfairly empowered political minority.

But we can take our rights back, he reminds us. Analyzing the experiences of other countries, weaving landmark court cases together with a critical look at contemporary applications, and invoking the lessons of history, including the Great Migration, Cose sheds much-needed light on this cornerstone of American culture and offers a clarion call for activism and change.

View Details
Image for "Free Speech and Koch Money"

Free Speech and Koch Money

Ralph Wilson

Description

"An insightful dive into the ways higher education has been impacted--indeed, manipulated--by conservatives. Read it and fight back."--The Progressive

Cancel culture is running wild on college campuses. Student, faculty, and the media are outraged. Or is something else at work. Take a deep dive to fund out how the infamously conservative Koch Brothers and their donor network is funding and activating outrage in an attempt to frame their arguments about the dangers of liberalism.

In recent years hundreds of high-profile "free speech" incidents have rocked US college campuses. Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter and other right-wing speakers have faced considerable protest, with many being disinvited from speaking. These incidents are widely circulated as examples of the academy's intolerance towards conservative views. But this response is not the spontaneous outrage of the liberal colleges.

There is a darker element manufacturing the crisis, funded by political operatives, and designed to achieve specific political outcomes. If you follow the money, at the heart of the issue lies the infamous and ultra-libertarian Koch donor network.

Grooming extremist celebrities, funding media platforms that promote these controversies, developing legal organizations to sue universities and corrupting legislators, the influence of the Koch network runs deep. Chapters include:

*The Donor Strategy 
*The Student Groups 
*The Provocateurs 
*The Media amplifiers 
*The Lawyers 
*Changing the Laws 
*The Free Speech International

The authors believe we need to abandon the "campus free speech" narrative and instead follow the money if we ever want to root out this dangerous network from our universities.

They write, "We hope this book serves as a useful tool for refocusing the debate about campus free speech. We recognize that navigating the complex intersection of free speech, academic freedom, campus safety, and institutional inclusion is not easy. What speech crosses the line? Who determines this? How does an institution protect a wide range of speech while also making sure that all students and faculty free included and welcome within the campus community? These are difficult questions, especially in a deeply divided country, Asking these questions by themselves, however, also misses the fact that the growing outrage over free speech on campus is not a concern necessarily organic to the school in question. It was--and is--international and manufactured. 
 

View Details
Image for "The Case Against Free Speech"

The Case Against Free Speech

P. E. Moskowitz

Description

A hard-hitting expose that shines a light on the powerful conservative forces that have waged a multi-decade battle to hijack the meaning of free speech--and how we can reclaim it.
There's a critical debate taking place over one of our most treasured rights: free speech. We argue about whether it's at risk, whether college students fear it, whether neo-Nazis deserve it, and whether the government is adequately upholding it.

But as P. E. Moskowitz provocatively shows in The Case Against Free Speech, the term has been defined and redefined to suit those in power, and in recent years, it has been captured by the Right to push their agenda. What's more, our investment in the First Amendment obscures an uncomfortable truth: free speech is impossible in an unequal society where a few corporations and the ultra-wealthy bankroll political movements, millions of voters are disenfranchised, and our government routinely silences critics of racism and capitalism.

Weaving together history and reporting from Charlottesville, Skokie, Standing Rock, and the college campuses where student protests made national headlines, Moskowitz argues that these flash points reveal more about the state of our democracy than they do about who is allowed to say what.

Our current definition of free speech replicates power while dissuading dissent, but a new ideal is emerging. In this forcefully argued, necessary corrective, Moskowitz makes the case for speech as a tool--for exposing the truth, demanding equality, and fighting for all our civil liberties.

View Details
Image for "Crushed"

Crushed

Ken Buck

Description

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY IS AT RISK

"No one--conservative or liberal--should be comfortable with a few Silicon Valley oligarchs having a monopoly over the marketplace of ideas, and with it, democracy itself." -- Senator Ted Cruz

When the Founding Fathers drafted our Constitution, they had no idea there would be a "Big Tech" - nor any concept of the immense power these companies would wield over our people. But the Fathers did provide mechanisms -- a system of check and balances -- for the people to stop dangerous monopolies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon from suffocating our business and political life. Few know more about these mechanisms than Rep. Ken Buck, who has been a leader in Congress fighting against the unchecked power of Big Tech.

In CRUSHED: Big Tech's War on Free Speech, Buck exposes the bullying and predatory behavior from the Big Tech giants who have used their technologies and their unbelievable market shares to stifle commerce and censor free speech. He spells out the inside details of how these companies restrict free markets, stop competition, increase prices, and ultimately hurt consumers. Even worse, Big Tech companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook are actively censoring conservative news and views, as they openly manipulate information provided to voters. Ken Buck shows how these tech giants are true monopolies and their concentrated power pose a serious danger for our democracy.

In contrast to the robber barons of the Gilded Age who simply posed a threat to commerce, Big Tech threatens the very core of our political system. They control the flow of information shared with the public for their own financial and political gain. In CRUSHED, Ken Buck argues that while Americans are under siege by Big Tech, we are not destroyed. We can still take on Big tech, fight back and even win. The future of our nation depends on it, he says.

IT IS TIME TO FIGHT BACK!

View Details
Image for "To Rescue the Constitution"

To Rescue the Constitution

Bret Baier

Description



 

Instant New York Times Bestseller

#1 New York Times bestselling author Bret Baier reveals how George Washington saved the Constitution-and the American experiment

"To Rescue The Constitution is a masterful exploration of the electrifying struggle to unite a young United States." --Jay Winik

A sweeping narrative ranging from the unsettled early American frontier and the battlefields of the Revolution to the history-making clashes within Philadelphia's Independence Hall, Bret Baier's To Rescue the Constitution dramatically illuminates the life of George Washington, the Founder who did more than perhaps any other individual to secure the future of the United States.

George Washington rescued the nation three times: first by leading the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War, second by presiding over the Constitutional Convention that set the blueprint for the United States and ushering the Constitution through a fractious ratification process, and third by leading the nation as its first president. There is no doubt that the struggling new nation needed to be rescued--and that Washington was the only American who could bring them together.

After the victorious War of Independence, when a spirit of unity and patriotism might have been expected, instead the nation fractured. The states were no more than a loosely knit and contentious confederation, with no strong central union. It was an urgent matter that led to the calling of a Constitutional Convention to meet in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787.

Setting aside his plan to retire to Mount Vernon, Washington agreed to be a delegate at Philadelphia. There he was unanimously elected president of the convention. After successfully bringing the Constitution into being, Washington then sacrificed any hope of returning to private life by accepting the unanimous election to be the nation's first president. Washington was not known for brilliant oratory or prose, but his quiet, steady leadership gave life to the Constitution by showing how it should be enacted.

In this vivid and moving portrait of America's early struggles, Baier captures the critical moments when Washington's leadership brought the nation from the brink of collapse. Baier exposes an early America that is grittier and far more divided than is often portrayed--one we can see reflected in today's conflicts.

View Details
Image for "Young Patriots"

Young Patriots

Charles A. Cerami

Description

A history of the making of the Constitution focuses on Madison and Hamilton's dynamic leadership contributions to the effort to construct a national government. America's great underdog story from New York Times bestselling author Charles Cerami. Seven years after the revolution, America was in crisis. The government didn't work, but the citizens didn't care-or were in a state of rebellion. Then two unknown men, Hamilton and Madison (unknown especially compared to the revered Founding Fathers), envisioned a plan that no one else thought could happen: a truly United States. Against all odds, these men maneuvered and strategized to get the right men to agree on the right ideas. The result: the most brilliant political document ever and a powerful United States.

View Details
Founding Brothers

Founding Brothers

Joseph J. Ellis

Description

An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic--John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.

During the 1790s, which Ellis calls the most decisive decade in our nation's history, the greatest statesmen of their generation--and perhaps any--came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries. Ellis focuses on six discrete moments that exemplify the most crucial issues facing the fragile new nation: Burr and Hamilton's deadly duel, and what may have really happened; Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison's secret dinner, during which the seat of the permanent capital was determined in exchange for passage of Hamilton's financial plan; Franklin's petition to end the "peculiar institution" of slavery--his last public act--and Madison's efforts to quash it; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address, announcing his retirement from public office and offering his country some final advice; Adams's difficult term as Washington's successor and his alleged scheme to pass the presidency on to his son; and finally, Adams and Jefferson's renewed correspondence at the end of their lives, in which they compared their different views of the Revolution and its legacy.

In a lively and engaging narrative, Ellis recounts the sometimes collaborative, sometimes archly antagonistic interactions between these men, and shows us the private characters behind the public personas: Adams, the ever-combative iconoclast, whose closest political collaborator was his wife, Abigail; Burr, crafty, smooth, and one of the most despised public figures of his time; Hamilton, whose audacious manner and deep economic savvy masked his humble origins; Jefferson, renowned for his eloquence, but so reclusive and taciturn that he rarely spoke more than a few sentences in public; Madison, small, sickly, and paralyzingly shy, yet one of the most effective debaters of his generation; and the stiffly formal Washington, the ultimate realist, larger-than-life, and America's only truly indispensable figure.

Ellis argues that the checks and balances that permitted the infant American republic to endure were not primarily legal, constitutional, or institutional, but intensely personal, rooted in the dynamic interaction of leaders with quite different visions and values. Revisiting the old-fashioned idea that character matters, Founding Brothers informs our understanding of American politics--then and now--and gives us a new perspective on the unpredictable forces that shape history.

View Details
Image for "Ratification"

Ratification

Pauline Maier

Description

From the distinguished historian of Revolutionary-era America and author of the acclaimed American Scripture comes this fresh and surprising account of a pivotal moment in American history—the ratification of the Constitution.

When the delegates left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in September 1787, the new Constitution they had written was no more than a proposal. Elected conventions in at least nine of the thirteen states would have to ratify it before it could take effect. There was reason to doubt whether that would happen. The document we revere today as the foundation of our country’s laws, the cornerstone of our legal system, was hotly disputed at the time. Some Americans denounced the Constitution for threatening the liberty that Americans had won at great cost in the Revolutionary War. One group of fiercely patriotic opponents even burned the document in a raucous public demonstration on the Fourth of July.

In this splendid new history, Pauline Maier tells the dramatic story of the yearlong battle over ratification that brought such famous founders as Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and Henry together with less well-known Americans who sometimes eloquently and always passionately expressed their hopes and fears for their new country. Men argued in taverns and coffeehouses; women joined the debate in their parlors; broadsides and newspaper stories advocated various points of view and excoriated others. In small towns and counties across the country people read the document carefully and knew it well. Americans seized the opportunity to play a role in shaping the new nation. Then the ratifying conventions chosen by “We the People” scrutinized and debated the Constitution clause by clause.

Although many books have been written about the Constitutional Convention, this is the first major history of ratification. It draws on a vast new collection of documents and tells the story with masterful attention to detail in a dynamic narrative. Each state’s experience was different, and Maier gives each its due even as she focuses on the four critical states of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, whose approval of the Constitution was crucial to its success.

The New Yorker Gilbert Livingston called his participation in the ratification convention the greatest transaction of his life. The hundreds of delegates to the ratifying conventions took their responsibility seriously, and their careful inspection of the Constitution can tell us much today about a document whose meaning continues to be subject to interpretation. Ratification is the story of the founding drama of our nation, superbly told in a history that transports readers back more than two centuries to reveal the convictions and aspirations on which our country was built.

View Details
Image for "Plain, Honest Men"

Plain, Honest Men

Richard Beeman

Description

“While some have boasted it as a work from Heaven, others have given it a less righteous origin. I have many reasons to believe that it is the work of plain, honest men.”
–Robert Morris, delegate from Pennsylvania to the Constitutional Convention

From distinguished historian Richard Beeman comes a dramatic and engrossing account of the men who met in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 to design a radically new form of government. Plain, Honest Men takes readers behind the scenes and beyond the debate to show how the world’s most enduring constitution was forged through conflict, compromise, and, eventually, fragile consensus.

The delegates met in an atmosphere of crisis, many Americans at that time fearing that a combination of financial distress and civil unrest would doom the young nation’s experiment in liberty. When the delegates began their deliberations in May 1787, they discovered that a small cohort of men, led by James Madison, had prepared an audacious plan–revolutionary in its view of the nature of American government. The success of this bold and brilliant strategy was far from assured, and the ultimate outcome of the delegates’ labors–the creation of a frame of government that would enable America to flourish–was very different from what Madison had envisioned when he launched his grand scheme.

Beeman captures as never before the dynamic of the debate and the characters of the men who labored that summer in Philadelphia, among them James Madison, as brilliant as he was unprepossessing; the mercurial Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, arrogant, combative, but ultimately effective in shaping the language of the completed Constitution; Maryland’s Luther Martin, a pugnacious (and often inebriated) opponent of a strong national government; Roger Sherman, the straightforward Connecticut delegate who helped broker some of the key compromises of the Convention; and General George Washington, whose quiet dignity and forceful presence helped keep under control the clash of egos and words among the delegates.

Virtually all of the issues the delegates debated that summer–the extent of presidential power, the nature of federalism, and, most explosive of all, the role of slavery–have continued to provoke conflict throughout the nation’s history. Plain, Honest Men is a fascinating portrait of another time and place, a bold and unprecedented book about men, both grand and humble, who wrote a document that would live longer than they ever imagined. This is an indispensable work for our own time, in which debate about the Constitution’s meaning still rages.

View Details
Image for "The Words that Made Us"

The Words that Made Us

Akhil Reed Amar

Description

From a preeminent legal scholar, a "fascinating" and "masterful" (Wall Street Journal) history of the American Constitution's formative decades

When the US Constitution won popular approval in 1788, it was the culmination of thirty years of passionate argument over the nature of government. But ratification hardly ended the conversation. For the next half century, ordinary Americans and statesmen alike continued to wrestle with weighty questions in the halls of government and in the pages of newspapers. Should the nation's borders be expanded? Should America allow slavery to spread westward? What rights should Indian nations hold? What was the proper role of the judicial branch?

In The Words That Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered. His account of the document's origins and consolidation is a guide for anyone seeking to properly understand America's Constitution today.

View Details
Image for "The Federalist Papers, the Ideas That Forged the American Constitution"

The Federalist Papers, the Ideas That Forged the American Constitution

Alexander Hamilton

Description

This luxury, silkbound treasury brings together a selection of the most influential essays from The Federalists Papers, presented in a handsome slip-case with silver foil stamping. 

The Federalist was the most important American contribution to the literature of constitutional law-making, written by Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. These articles are hailed as one of the greatest products of the American Enlightenment, covering judiciary authority, legislative representation, the separation of powers and more.

This beautiful slipcased edition features stunning full-color illustrations and is edited and introduced by constitutional historian R. B. Bernstein.

Essays include: 
- No. 10 - The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection by Madison
- No. 39 - The Conformity of the Plan to Republican Principles by Madison
- No. 51 - The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments by Madison
- No. 78 - The Judiciary Department by Hamilton
- No. 84 - Certain General and Miscellaneous Objections to the Constitution Considered and Answered by Hamilton

This edition also includes John Jay's An Address to the People of the State of New York, a copy of the American Constitution as well as the Amendments, making it a brilliant reference guide to American constitutional history. Its deluxe presentation makes this book a wonderful gift or collectible for any history enthusiast.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Arcturus Silkbound Classics series brings together deluxe gift editions of literary classics, presented with luxurious silk binding, striking embossed cover designs and full-color illustrations.

View Details
Image for "The Constitution Today"

The Constitution Today

Akhil Reed Amar

Description

A leading legal scholar addresses the most important constitutional controversies of the past two decades and illuminates the Constitution's spirit and ongoing relevance

America's Constitution, Chief Justice John Marshall famously observed in McCulloch v. Maryland, aspires “to endure for ages to come.” The daily news has a shorter shelf life, and when the issues of the day involve momentous constitutional questions, present-minded journalists and busy citizens cannot always see the stakes clearly.

In The Constitution Today, Akhil Reed Amar, America's preeminent constitutional scholar, considers the biggest and most bitterly contested debates of the last two decades and provides a passionate handbook for thinking constitutionally about today's headlines. Amar shows how the Constitution's text, history, and structure are a crucial repository of collective wisdom, providing specific rules and grand themes relevant to every organ of the American body politic. Prioritizing sound constitutional reasoning over partisan preferences, he makes the case for diversity-based affirmative action and a right to have a gun in one's home for self-protection, and against spending caps on independent political advertising and bans on same-sex marriage. He explains what's wrong with presidential dynasties, advocates a “nuclear option” to restore majority rule in the Senate, and suggests ways to reform the Supreme Court. And he revisits three dramatic constitutional conflicts—the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the contested election of George W. Bush, and the fight over Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act—to show what politicians, judges, and journalists got right as events unfolded and what they missed.

Leading readers through the particular constitutional questions at stake in each episode while outlining his abiding views regarding the Constitution's letter, its spirit, and the direction constitutional law must go, Amar offers an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand America's Constitution and its relevance today.

View Details
Image for "TIME The Constitution"

TIME The Constitution

The Editors of TIME

Description

Americans have debated the Constitution since the day its was signed, but rarely in its 223-year history have so many disagreed so fiercely about so much. Everywhere there seems to be debate about the Constitution's meaning and message. The Tea Party, with its almost fanatical focus on the founding document, contends that its primary purpose is to restrain the federal government-but does it really say that? Among scholars, some believe the Constitution should be interpreted exactly as the framers wrote it, while others analyze the text just as closely to find the elasticity they believe the framers had in mind. But how could the founding fathers know about the world today, with DNA, sexting, airplanes, TV, Medicare, computers and Lady Gaga? In this probing and accessible book, TIME's editors bring the founding document to life, showing how it was written in a spirit of change and revolution and turbulence. With an introduction by one of America's top jurists, an essay by
TIME managing editor Richard Stengel (former president of the National Constitution Center), and the full text of the 8,000-word Constitution annotated to show its most controversial passages and little-known quirks, TIME's compact volume will be an indispensable guide for the well-informed citizen.

View Details
The First Congress

The First Congress

Fergus M. Bordewich

Description

The little known story of perhaps the most productive Congress in US history, the First Federal Congress of 1789–1791.

The First Congress was the most important in US history, says prizewinning author and historian Fergus Bordewich, because it established how our government would actually function. Had it failed—as many at the time feared it would—it’s possible that the United States as we know it would not exist today.

The Constitution was a broad set of principles. It was left to the members of the First Congress and President George Washington to create the machinery that would make the government work. Fortunately, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and others less well known today, rose to the occasion. During two years of often fierce political struggle, they passed the first ten amendments to the Constitution; they resolved bitter regional rivalries to choose the site of the new national capital; they set in place the procedure for admitting new states to the union; and much more. But the First Congress also confronted some issues that remain to this day: the conflict between states’ rights and the powers of national government; the proper balance between legislative and executive power; the respective roles of the federal and state judiciaries; and funding the central government. Other issues, such as slavery, would fester for decades before being resolved.

The First Congress tells the dramatic story of the two remarkable years when Washington, Madison, and their dedicated colleagues struggled to successfully create our government, an achievement that has lasted to the present day.

View Details
Image for "Braiding Sweetgrass"

Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Description

An inspired weaving of indigenous knowledge, plant science, and personal narrative from a distinguished professor of science and a Native American whose previous book, Gathering Moss, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing. 

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as ?the younger brothers of creation.” As she explores these themes she circles toward a central argument: the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the world. Once we begin to listen for the languages of other beings, we can begin to understand the innumerable life-giving gifts the world provides us and learn to offer our thanks, our care, and our own gifts in return.
 

View Details
Image for "Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky"

Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky

Lois Ellen Frank

Description

This enriching cookbook celebrates eight important plants Native Americans introduced to the rest of the world: corn, beans, squash, chile, tomato, potato, vanilla, and cacao--with more than 100 recipes.

When these eight Native American plants crossed the ocean after 1492, the world's cuisines were changed forever. In Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky, James Beard Award-winning author and chef Lois Ellen Frank introduces the splendor and importance of this Native culinary history and pairs it with delicious, modern, plant-based recipes using Native American ingredients. Along with Native American culinary advisor Walter Whitewater, Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky shares more than 100 nutritious, plant‑based recipes organized by each of the foundational ingredients in Native American cuisine as well as a necessary discussion of food sovereignty and sustainability.

A delicious, enlightening celebration of Indigenous foods and Southwestern flavors, Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky shares recipes for dishes such as Blue Corn Hotcakes with Prickly Pear Syrup, Three Sisters Stew, and Green Chile Enchilada Lasagna, as well as essential basics like Corn Masa, Red and Green Chile Sauces, and Cacao Spice Rub. The "Magic 8" ingredients share the page--and plate--to create recipes that will transform your world.

View Details
Image for "Love Medicine"

Love Medicine

Louise Erdrich

Description

The stunning first novel in Louise Erdrich's Native American series, Love Medicine tells the story of two families, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. Written in Erdrich's uniquely poetic, powerful style, it is a multi-generational portrait of strong men and women caught in an unforgettable drama of anger, desire, and the healing power that is love medicine.

View Details
Image for "The Only Good Indians"

The Only Good Indians

Stephen Graham Jones

Description

From bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a novel about revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition. 

This is a remarkable horror story is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience. It follows the lives of four American Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

In this “thrilling, literate, scary, [and] immersive” (Stephen King) tale, Jones blends his signature storytelling style with a haunting narrative that masterfully intertwines revenge, cultural identity, and tradition.

View Details
Image for ""All the Real Indians Died Off""

"All the Real Indians Died Off"

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Description

Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans

In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors disrupt long-held and enduring myths such as:

“Columbus Discovered America”
“Thanksgiving Proves the Indians Welcomed Pilgrims”
“Indians Were Savage and Warlike”
“Europeans Brought Civilization to Backward Indians”
“The United States Did Not Have a Policy of Genocide”
“Sports Mascots Honor Native Americans”
“Most Indians Are on Government Welfare”
“Indian Casinos Make Them All Rich”
“Indians Are Naturally Predisposed to Alcohol”

Each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance. Accessibly written and revelatory, “All the Real Indians Died Off” challenges readers to rethink what they have been taught about Native Americans and history.

View Details
Image for "Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask"

Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask

Anton Treuer

Description

A modern classic offering answers to nearly 200 essential and thought-provoking questions about the Native people of North America.

What have you always wanted to know about Indians? Do you feel like you should already know the answers--or are concerned that your questions may be offensive? For more than a decade, Anton Treuer's clear, candid, and informative book has answered questions for tens of thousands of readers. This revised edition both revisits old questions from a new perspective and expands on topics that have become increasingly relevant over the past decade, including activism and tribal enrollment; truth and reconciliation efforts; gender roles and identities in Indigenous communities; the status of Alaskan Natives and Canadian First Nations; and much more.

Treuer, an Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist, addresses nearly 200 questions on a range of topics--questions that are thoughtful and outrageous, modern and historical, and always interesting.

--What are we supposed to call North America's first people?
--Can white people dance at powwows?
--What's the point of land acknowledgments?
--Does tribal sovereignty mean that tribes can offer abortion services in states where it is now otherwise illegal?

With frank, funny, and sometimes personal prose, this book cuts through myths, guilt, and anger and builds a foundation for true understanding and positive action.

View Details
Image for "An American Sunrise"

An American Sunrise

Joy Harjo

Description

A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land. 
In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family’s lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise, Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. From her memory of her mother’s death, to her beginnings in the native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo’s personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings. Her poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living in the ruins of injustice. A descendent of storytellers and “one of our finest—and most complicated—poets” (Los Angeles Review of Books), Joy Harjo continues her legacy with this latest powerful collection.

View Details
Image for "New Native Kitchen"

New Native Kitchen

Freddie Bitsoie

Description

Modern Indigenous cuisine from the renowned Native foods educator and former chef of Mitsitam Native Foods Café at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian

From Freddie Bitsoie, the former executive chef at Mitsitam Native Foods Café at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, and James Beard Award-winning author James O. Fraioli, New Native Kitchen is a celebration of Indigenous cuisine. Accompanied by original artwork by Gabriella Trujillo and offering delicious dishes like Cherrystone Clam Soup from the Northeastern Wampanoag and Spice-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin from the Pueblo peoples, Bitsoie showcases the variety of flavor and culinary history on offer from coast to coast, providing modern interpretations of 100 recipes that have long fed this country.

Recipes like Chocolate Bison Chili, Prickly Pear Sweet Pork Chops, and Sumac Seared Trout with Onion and Bacon Sauce combine the old with the new, holding fast to traditions while also experimenting with modern methods. In this essential cookbook, Bitsoie shares his expertise and culinary insights into Native American cooking and suggests new approaches for every home cook. With recipes as varied as the peoples that inspired them, New Native Kitchen celebrates the Indigenous heritage of American cuisine.

View Details
Image for "One Native Life"

One Native Life

Richard Wagamese

Description

In 2005, award-winning writer Richard Wagamese moved with his partner to a cabin outside Kamloops, B.C. In the crisp mountain air Wagamese felt a peace he'd seldom known before. Abused and abandoned as a kid, he'd grown up feeling there was nowhere he belonged. For years, only alcohol and moves from town to town seemed to ease the pain.

In One Native Life, Wagamese looks back down the road he has travelled in reclaiming his identity and talks about the things he has learned as a human being, a man and an Ojibway in his fifty-two years. Whether he's writing about playing baseball, running away with the circus, attending a sacred bundle ceremony or meeting Pierre Trudeau, he tells these stories in a healing spirit. Through them, Wagamese celebrates the learning journey his life has been.

Free of rhetoric and anger despite the horrors he has faced, Wagamese's prose resonates with a peace that has come from acceptance. Acceptance is an Aboriginal principle, and he has come to see that we are all neighbours here. One Native Life is his tribute to the people, the places and the events that have allowed him to stand in the sunshine and celebrate being alive.

View Details
Image for "Fatty Legs"

Fatty Legs

Christy Jordan-Fenton

Description

Eight-year-old Margaret Pokiak has set her sights on learning to read, even though it means leaving her village in the high Arctic. Faced with unceasing pressure, her father finally agrees to let her make the five-day journey to attend school, but he warns Margaret of the terrors of residential schools. At school Margaret soon encounters the Raven, a black-cloaked nun with a hooked nose and bony fingers that resemble claws. She immediately dislikes the strong-willed young Margaret. Intending to humiliate her, the heartless Raven gives gray stockings to all the girls -- all except Margaret, who gets red ones. In an instant Margaret is the laughingstock of the entire school. In the face of such cruelty, Margaret refuses to be intimidated and bravely gets rid of the stockings. Although a sympathetic nun stands up for Margaret, in the end it is this brave young girl who gives the Raven a lesson in the power of human dignity. Complemented by archival photos from Margaret Pokiak-Fenton's collection and striking artworks from Liz Amini-Holmes, this inspiring first-person account of a plucky girl's determination to confront her tormentor will linger with young readers.

View Details
Image for "Last Standing Woman"

Last Standing Woman

Winona LaDuke

Description

An Indian-rights activist and former vice-presidential candidate (Green Party, 1996), LaDuke makes an impressive fiction debut in this provocative if tendentious first novel. Rooted in LaDuke's own Anishinaabe heritage, the novel skillfully intertwines social history, oral myth and character study in ways reminiscent of Leslie Marmon Silko and Louise Erdrich. Stretching from 1800 into the near future but set mostly in this century, the narrative focuses on events at LaDuke's own White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. Episodes of the so-called Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 are poignantly recalled as a prelude to the later struggles for dignity and self-determination that dominate the plot. At the center of these are Ishkweniibawiikwe (the Last Standing Woman of the title) and Lucy St. Clair, both strong women who resist continued U.S. persecution and corrupt tribal governments. In a climactic incident reminiscent of the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee, revolutionary Indians forcibly take over their reservation and assert their independence. A list of dramatis personae and glossary of Anishinaabe words aid the reader. 

View Details
Image for "The Inconvenient Indian"

The Inconvenient Indian

Thomas King

Description

In The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King offers a deeply knowing, darkly funny, unabashedly opinionated, and utterly unconventional account of Indian-White relations in North America since initial contact. Ranging freely across the centuries and the Canada-U.S. border, King debunks fabricated stories of Indian savagery and White heroism, takes an oblique look at Indians (and cowboys) in film and popular culture, wrestles with the history of Native American resistance and his own experiences as a Native rights activist, and articulates a profound, revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands.

Suffused with wit, anger, perception, and wisdom, The Inconvenient Indian is at once an engaging chronicle and a devastating subversion of history, insightfully distilling what it means to be "Indian" in North America. It is a critical and personal meditation that sees Native American history not as a straight line but rather as a circle in which the same absurd, tragic dynamics are played out over and over again. At the heart of the dysfunctional relationship between Indians and Whites, King writes, is land: "The issue has always been land." With that insight, the history inflicted on the indigenous peoples of North America--broken treaties, forced removals, genocidal violence, and racist stereotypes--sharpens into focus. Both timeless and timely, The Inconvenient Indian ultimately rejects the pessimism and cynicism with which Natives and Whites regard one another to chart a new and just way forward for Indians and non-Indians alike.
 

View Details
Image for "House Made of Dawn"

House Made of Dawn

N. Scott Momaday

Description

The magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning classic from N. Scott Momaday

A young Native American, Abel has come home from war to find himself caught between two worlds. The first is the world of his grandfather’s, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people. But the other world—modern, industrial America—pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, claiming his soul, and goading him into a destructive, compulsive cycle of depravity and disgust.

Beautifully rendered and deeply affecting, House Made of Dawn has moved and inspired readers and writers for the last fifty years. It remains, in the words of The Paris Review, “both a masterpiece about the universal human condition and a masterpiece of Native American literature.”

View Details
Image for "Highway of tears"

Highway of Tears

Jessica McDiarmid

Description

“These murder cases expose systemic problems... By examining each murder within the context of Indigenous identity and regional hardships, McDiarmid addresses these very issues, finding reasons to look for the deeper roots of each act of violence.” —The New York Times Book Review 
 

For decades, Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been found murdered along an isolated stretch of highway in northwestern British Columbia. The corridor is known as the Highway of Tears, and it has come to symbolize a national crisis.

Journalist Jessica McDiarmid meticulously investigates the devastating effect these tragedies have had on the families of the victims and their communities, and how systemic racism and indifference have created a climate in which Indigenous women and girls are overpoliced yet underprotected. McDiarmid interviews those closest to the victims—mothers and fathers, siblings and friends—and provides an intimate firsthand account of their loss and unflagging fight for justice. Examining the historically fraught social and cultural tensions between settlers and Indigenous peoples in the region, McDiarmid links these cases to others across Canada—now estimated to number up to four thousand—contextualizing them within a broader examination of the undervaluing of Indigenous lives in the country. 

Highway of Tears is a piercing exploration of our ongoing failure to provide justice for the victims and a testament to their families’ and communities’ unwavering determination to find it.

View Details
Image for "Jojo Rabbit"

Jojo Rabbit

Description

A World War II satire that follows a lonely German boy named Jojo whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his single mother is hiding a young Jewish girl in their attic. Aided only by his idiotic imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler, Jojo must confront his blind nationalism.

View Details
Image for "The lost city of Z"

The lost city of Z

Description

The incredible true story of British explorer Percy Fawcett, who journeys into the Amazon at the dawn of the twentieth century and discovers evidence of a previously unknown, advanced civilization that may have once inhabited the region.

Based on the book by David Grann.

 

 

View Details
Image for "Heretic"

Heretic

Description

Two young missionaries are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and are greeted by a diabolical Mr. Reed, becoming ensnared in his deadly game of cat-and-mouse.

View Details
Image for "Better Call Saul"

Better Call Saul

Odenkirk, Bob, 1962-

Description

The television series is a spinoff from the popular Breaking Bad television show. The series takes place six years before the events of Breaking Bad and features small-time lawyer Jimmy McGill. The series follows the exploits of Jimmy and the circumstances that lead to his metamorphosis into criminal-minded lawyer Saul Goodman.

View Details
Image for "Severance season one"

Severance

Scott, Adam, 1973-

Description

Severance centers on Mark Scout, leading a team of office workers whose memories are surgically split between work and personal lives. The 'work-life balance' experiment is questioned as Mark faces a mystery forcing him to confront the true nature of his work and himself.

View Details
Image for "Dust Child"

Dust Child

Que Mai Phan Nguyen

Description

Finalist for the 2024 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. From the bestselling author of The Mountains Sing, a richly poetic and suspenseful saga about two Vietnamese sisters, an American veteran, and an Amerasian man whose lives intersect in surprising ways, set during and after the war in Việt Nam.

In 1969, sisters Trang and Quỳnh, desperate to help their parents pay off debts, leave their rural village to work at a bar in Sài Gòn. Once in the big city, the young girls are thrown headfirst into a world they were not expecting. They learn how to speak English, how to dress seductively, and how to drink and flirt (and more) with American GIs in return for money. As the war moves closer to the city, the once-innocent Trang gets swept up in an irresistible romance with a handsome and kind American helicopter pilot she meets at the bar.

Decades later, an American veteran, Dan, returns to Việt Nam with his wife, Linda, in search of a way to heal from his PTSD; instead, secrets he thought he had buried surface and threaten his marriage. At the same time, Phong--the adult son of a Black American soldier and a Vietnamese woman--embarks on a mission to find both his parents and a way out of Việt Nam. Abandoned in front of an orphanage, Phong grew up being called "the dust of life," "Black American imperialist," and "child of the enemy," and he dreams of a better life in the United States for himself, his wife Bình, and his children.

Past and present converge as these characters come together to confront decisions made during a time of war--decisions that reverberate throughout one another's lives and ultimately allow them to find common ground across race, generation, culture, and language. Immersive, moving, and lyrical, Dust Child tells an unforgettable story of how those who inherited tragedy can redefine their destinies with hard-won wisdom, compassion, courage, and joy.

View Details
Image for "Scattered Showers"

Scattered Showers

Rainbow Rowell

Description

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Rainbow Rowell comes her first short-story collection, Scattered Showers

Rainbow Rowell has won fans all over the world by writing about love and life in a way that feels true.

In her first collection, she gives us nine beautifully crafted love stories. Girl meets boy camping outside a movie theater. Best friends debate the merits of high school dances. A prince romances a troll. A girl romances an imaginary boy. And Simon Snow himself returns for a holiday adventure.

It’s a feast of irresistible characters, hilarious dialogue, and masterful storytelling—in short, everything you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell book.

View Details
image of Ask again yes

Ask Again, Yes

Mary Beth Keane

Description

How much can a family forgive?

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie NYPD cops, are neighbors in the suburbs. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come.

In Mary Beth Keane's extraordinary novel, a lifelong friendship and love blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next thirty years. Heartbreaking and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes is a gorgeous and generous portrait of the daily intimacies of marriage and the power of forgiveness.

View Details
Image for "First Lie Wins"

First Lie Wins

Ashley Elston

Description

Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence, a tight group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.

Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn't like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there's still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn't be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .

View Details
Image for "Anna Karenina"

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

Description

Regarded by many as the greatest novel ever written in any language, Anna Karenina relates the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer Count Vronsky. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, Anna's tragedy unfolds with relentless force as she rejects her passionless marriage to the aging official Karenin and must endure the hypocrisies of society. 

View Details
Image for "The Phoenix Pencil Company"

The Phoenix Pencil Company

Allison King

Description

In this dazzling debut novel, a hidden and nearly forgotten magic--of Reforging pencils, bringing the memories they contain back to life--holds the power to transform a young woman's relationship with her grandmother, and to mend long-lost connections across time and space.

Monica Tsai spends most days on her computer, journaling the details of her ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online. A self-proclaimed recluse, she's always struggled to make friends and, as a college freshman, finds herself escaping into a digital world, counting the days until she can return home to her beloved grandparents. They are now in their nineties, and Monica worries about them constantly--especially her grandmother, Yun, who survived two wars in China before coming to the States, and whose memory has begun to fade.

Though Yun rarely speaks of her past, Monica is determined to find the long-lost cousin she was separated from years ago. One day, the very program Monica is helping to build connects her to a young woman, whose gift of a single pencil holds a surprising clue. Monica's discovery of a hidden family history is exquisitely braided with Yun's own memories as she writes of her years in Shanghai, working at the Phoenix Pencil Company. As WWII rages outside their door, Yun and her cousin, Meng, learn of a special power the women in their family possess: the ability to Reforge a pencil's words. But when the government uncovers their secret, they are forced into a life of espionage, betraying other people's stories to survive.

Combining the cross-generational family saga and epistolary form of A Tale for the Time Being with the uplifting, emotional magic of The Midnight Library, Allison King's stunning debut novel asks: who owns and inherits our stories? The answers and secrets that surface on the page may have the unerasable power to reconnect a family and restore a legacy.

View Details
Image for "Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant"

Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant

Curtis Chin

Description

This "vivid, moving, funny, and heartfelt" memoir tells the story of Curtis Chin's time growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in 1980's Detroit (Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers).

Nineteen eighties Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung's Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone--from the city's first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples--could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned to embrace his identity as a gay ABC, or American-born Chinese; where he navigated the divided city's spiraling misfortunes; and where--between helpings of almond boneless chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and some of his own, less-savory culinary concoctions--he realized just how much he had to offer to the world, to his beloved family, and to himself.

Served up by the cofounder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and structured around the very menu that graced the tables of Chung's, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant is both a memoir and an invitation: to step inside one boy's childhood oasis, scoot into a vinyl booth, and grow up with him--and perhaps even share something off the secret menu.

View Details
Image for "It's Me They Follow"

It's Me They Follow

Jeannine A. Cook

Description

An allegorical love story -- a modern day Alchemist meets The Never Ending Story --set in a world where a book shopkeeper becomes a reluctant matchmaker, bringing soulmates together through books.

It's Me They Follow is an allegorical love story set in a not so distant past. It follows The Shopkeeper, a bookseller and reluctant matchmaker. Helping others find love through books comes easily for The Shopkeeper, until it is time for her to find love for herself.

She secretly yearns for her first customer, ME, who took both her most prized book and a piece of her heart when he left. But just when she begins to lose hope, she discovers that she may hold the key to her own happily ever after as well.

Real life Shopkeeper and author Jeannine A. Cook has conjured a magical story that is a book within a book within a book. Soon, readers will find themselves falling under the same love spell as her customers and characters. In this magical bookshop where the line between fiction and reality blurs, stories and real life intertwine in an enchanting and moving narrative about human connection, the power of storytelling, and the spirit of love.

View Details
Image for "Happy Place"

Happy Place

Emily Henry

Description

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.

They broke up five months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blissful week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week…in front of those who know you best?

View Details
Image for "The Alchemist"

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho

Description

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book - a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life's path and, above all, follow your dreams.

Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is more to life than his humble home and his flock. One day he finds the courage to follow his dreams into distant lands, each step galvanised by the knowledge that he is following the right path: his own. The people he meets along the way, the things he sees and the wisdom he learns are life-changing.

With Paulo Coelho's visionary blend of spirituality, magical realism and folklore, The Alchemist is a story with the power to inspire nations and change people's lives.

View Details