Melissa Wiesner

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

California

An unforgettable and tender romance about a woman haunted by her past and the man who remained by her side through the years. Anna works two jobs to get herself through college and never, ever talks about her family. It's easier to keep her distance from everyone until she can finally leave her old life behind. That is, until chance throws her together with Gabe... Gabe is top of the class, in a fancy fraternity, and has a big, perfect, warm-hearted family. He is everything Anna is not, but their connection is undeniable. His silver-blue eyes pierce right through her, and he makes her laugh in ways she never thought possible. But Anna would do anything to stop Gabe from discovering her darkest secret and the real reason she goes home every night to a cold, silent apartment. When Gabe and his family get close to the truth, Anna runs, vowing to never see them again. But forever is a long time... Years later, tragedy brings Anna back to the town she grew up in--a place she escaped a decade ago. When Gabe wraps his strong arms around her, it's like finally finding home. But when the truth comes out after all these years, will both their worlds come crashing down? Gabe is the one person Anna trusts most: but what if he has secrets, too? And how much pain can two hearts endure, before they are torn apart forever?

It All Comes Back to You

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Karen Russell

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell: a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate. Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.

The Antidote

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Ethan Joella

A Read with Jenna Bonus Selection

An "immersive...illuminating" (Booklist) and life-affirming novel following the residents of an idyllic Connecticut town over the course of a year, A Little Hope explores the intertwining lives of a dozen neighbors as they confront everyday desires and fears: a lost love, a stalled career, an illness, and a betrayal.

Freddie and Greg Tyler seem to have it all: a comfortable home, a beautiful young daughter, a bond that feels unbreakable. But when Greg is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, the sense of certainty they once knew evaporates. Throughout their town, friends and neighbors face the most difficult of life's challenges and are figuring out how to survive thanks to love, grace, and hope.

"A quietly powerful portrait of small-town life...told with wisdom and tenderness" (Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes) A Little Hope is a deeply resonant debut that immerses the reader in a community and celebrates the importance of small moments of connection.

A Little Hope

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Andrey Kurkov

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

"A bittersweet relic of a sunnier age . . . . A joyous caper . . . playful and ebullient, shot through with magical twists and supernatural turns."--Observer Longlisted for the International Booker Prize, a Murakami-esque ode to the revered cultural capital of western Ukraine, filled with a charming cast of eccentrics who together make up the beating heart of the city. Strange, almost magical, things are afoot in Lviv. Seagulls circle overhead while the passing breeze carries a briny whiff, even though the coast is far away. A ragtag group of aging hippies gather around a mysterious grave in Lychakiv Cemetery. Among them are an ex-KGB officer and the old subversive he once spied upon. Soon, Captain Ryabtsev and Alik Olisevych band together to uncover the source of the city's "anomalies." Meanwhile, across Lviv, Taras, a cab driver, ferries kidney-stone patients over cobblestone streets in his ancient Opel Vectra. He's wooing Darka, a woman who works nights at a currency exchange. The young lovers don't know it, but their fate depends on the two lonely old men, relics of a bygone era, who will stop at nothing to save their city. Blending Shakespearean comedy with Andrey Kurkov's unique brand of black humor and vodka-fueled magic realism, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv, is a postcard from a more optimistic era. Populated by a delightful cast of oddballs, Kurkov's novel is an affectionate snapshot of a country finding itself and reclaiming its lost dreams twenty years after Soviet rule. Translated from the Russian by Reuben Woolley

Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv

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Andrés Stoopendaal

Alex Fleming

An over-educated, under-employed man struggles to complete his novel and get his life together over the course of one scorching hot Swedish summer in this clever, provocative, and hilarious novel that is already an acclaimed sensation abroad. Convinced of his own moral and intellectual superiority, the nameless protagonist of this debut novel is also paralyzed by self-consciousness. Yet, inspired by Stephen King’s On Writing, he decides to dedicate four hours a day to work on his own novel over the course of one summer. Only, he must also balance his creative goals with a part-time government job and looking after his girlfriend’s possibly brain-damaged Pomeranian dog. Too bad he’s uninspired by his job, almost kills the dog, and realizes his novel is slowly morphing into misguided fan fiction about French writer and enfant terrible Michel Houellebecq. Even when he’s alone, he can’t help but pontificate before an imagined audience, making over-the-top cases for and against all manner of culture war battles, referencing everyone from Spike Lee to Grumpy Cat. He obsesses over identity politics, and veers into dangerous territory as he and his androgynous girlfriend engage in sexual role-play. He’s an emblem of all the follies of our age—happily unaware that in his refusal to be ordinary, he’s become a walking cliché of misguided manhood. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a portrait of a person belatedly coming of age, a blistering takedown of a privileged man who believes he’s a revolutionary, and “a crackling firework display of comic brilliance” (Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden).

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

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Jackie Lau

The author of the “full of heart” (Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author) The Stand-Up Groomsman returns with a charming and clever rom-com about a young woman’s desperate attempts to fend off her meddling mother…only to find that maybe mother does know best. Mark Chan this. Mark Chan that. Writer and barista Emily Hung is tired of hearing about the great Mark Chan, the son of her parents’ friends. You’d think he single-handedly stopped climate change and ended child poverty from the way her mother raves about him. But in reality, he’s just a boring, sweater-vest-wearing engineer, and when they’re forced together at Emily’s sister’s wedding, it’s obvious he thinks he’s too good for her. But now that Emily is her family’s last single daughter, her mother is fixated on getting her married and she has her sights on Mark. There’s only one solution, clearly: convince Mark to be in a fake relationship with her long enough to put an end to her mom’s meddling. He reluctantly agrees. Unfortunately, lying isn’t enough. Family friends keep popping up at their supposed dates—including a bubble tea shop and cake-decorating class—so they’ll have to spend more time together to make their relationship look real. With each fake date, though, Emily realizes that Mark’s not quite what she assumed and maybe that argyle sweater isn’t so ugly after all…

Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie

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Melissa Broder

From the visionary author of Milk Fed and The Pisces, a darkly funny novel about grief and a “magical tale of survival” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In Melissa Broder’s astonishingly profound new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow—for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path discovered on a nearby hike. Out along the sun-scorched trail, the narrator encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious, and poignant. Death Valley is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest, and is “a journey unlike any you’ve read before” (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black).

Death Valley

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Sofia Robleda

For a young woman coming of age in sixteenth-century Guatemala, safeguarding her people's legacy is a dangerous pursuit in a mystical, empowering, and richly imagined historical novel. Catalina de Cerrato is being raised by her widowed father, Don Alonso, in 1551 Guatemala, scarcely thirty years since the Spanish invasion. A ruling member of the oppressive Spanish hierarchy, Don Alonso holds sway over the newly relegated lower class of Indigenous communities. Fiercely independent, Catalina struggles to honor her father and her late mother, a Maya noblewoman to whom Catalina made a vow that only she can keep: preserve the lost sacred text of the Popol Vuh, the treasured and now forbidden history of the K'iche' people. Urged on by her mother's spirit voice, and possessing the gift of committing the invaluable stories to memory, Catalina embarks on a secret and transcendent quest to rewrite them. Through ancient pyramids, Spanish villas, and caves of masked devils, she finds an ally in the captivating Juan de Rojas, a lord whose rule was compromised by the invasion. But as their love and trust unfold, and Don Alonso's tyranny escalates, Catalina must confront her conflicted blood heritage--and its secrets--once and for all if she's to follow her dangerous quest to its historic end.

Daughter of Fire

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Christina Vo

Nghia M. Vo

A Father Flees. a Daughter Returns. a Dual Memoir

My Vietnam, Your Vietnam chronicles the divergent journeys of a Vietnamese father, who fled war on a small boat to find refuge in the United States, and his American-born daughter, who ventures to Vietnam as an adult, capturing the stark contrast between their perspectives on their shared homeland. In this dual memoir, Christina Vo and her father, Nghia M. Vo, delve into themes of identity and heritage, with intertwined stories that present a multifaceted portrayal of Vietnam and its profound influence on shaping both familial bonds and individual identities across time. Captivating in its fluid movement and evocative depictions of place, My Vietnam, Your Vietnam offers readers a rich, multilayered exploration of Vietnam through two very distinct voices and perspectives. The memoir aims to deepen readers' understanding and appreciation of Vietnam and its culture by showcasing these two contrasting viewpoints.

My Vietnam, Your Vietnam

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Emily Farris

And Other Tales from My ADHD Brain

A hilariously-honest, heartwarming essay collection about life, love, and discovering you have ADHD at age 35 Despite being a published writer with a family, a gaggle of internet fans, and (most shockingly) a mortgage, Emily Farris could never get her sh*t together. As she saw it, disorganization was one of her countless character flaws--that is until she was diagnosed with ADHD at age 35. Like many girls who go undiagnosed, Emily grew up internalizing criticisms about her impulsivity and lack of follow-through. She held onto that shame as she tried (and often failed) to fit into a world designed for neurotypical brains. I'll Just Be Five More Minutes is a personal essay collection of laugh-out-loud-funny, tear-jerking, and at times cringey true stories of Emily's experiences as a neurodivergent woman. With the newfound knowledge of her ADHD, Emily candidly reexamines her complicated relationships (including one with a celebrity stalker), her money problems, the years she spent unknowingly self-medicating, and her hyperfixations (two words: decorative baskets). A memoir-in-essays both entertaining and enlightening, I'll Just Be Five More Minutes is for people with ADHD, as well as those who know and love them. This a powerful collection of deeply relatable, wide-ranging stories about a woman's right to control her own body, about overwhelm and oversharing, about drinking too much and sleeping too little, and about being misunderstood by the people closest to you. At its heart, I'll Just Be Five More Minutes is about not quite fitting in and not really understanding why--something we've all felt whether we're neurodivergent or not.

I'll Just Be Five More Minutes

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Maxie Dara

Murder is not her department. It’s not like it used to be. Modern-day grim reapers wear business casual, not black cloaks, and they don’t carry scythes, they work for S. C. Y. T. H. E. (Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences), where the Department of Natural Causes is the least exciting gig. And that’s how Kathy Valence likes it: boring and predictable. She has enough stress in her personal life; she’s mid-divorce, pregnant, and terrified she doesn’t have what it takes to be a good mom. Then, she goes to pick up a new client and finds his soul is missing. When she finally tracks down Conner Ortiz, he angrily insists he was murdered, and he refuses to move on until Kathy finds out why and by whom. Kathy has only forty-five days to solve the mystery before the boy’s soul is doomed to roam the earth as a ghost forever. To do that she’ll have to call on the help of her retired mentor, her almost ex-husband—and, inconveniently, Conner himself. This is the wildest case of her career . . . and one wrong move could cost Kathy her job, not to mention her life.

A Grim Reaper's Guide to Catching a Killer

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Jamie Marina Lau

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

"[Lau's] gift for writing accumulative insanities creates the same dizzying effect as a good cleaning." --Alexandra Tanner, The New York Times Book Review

"A dissociative meditation on a world that has come to feel increasingly meaningless . . . [Lau's] prose combines the languid torpor of Michael Bible with the unease of Yoko Ogawa's more macabre work." ―Declan Fry, The Guardian

A black comedy workplace thriller set in a sprawling indoor shopping mall about a cabal of low-wage workers who plot violent acts of "resistance" against their managers.

In the suburb of Par Mars stand a pair of identical shopping centers, each with the same harsh, fluorescent lights, climate-controlled environment, and monotonous encounters between employees and shoppers.
 
Reviving an ancient Chinese ritual passed down by her mother, twenty-four-year-old Leen has opened an ear-cleaning and massage studio in the Topic Heights Shopping Center. But the social fabric of Par Mars is coming loose, and a quiet unrest is growing among the mall's low-wage workers as store managers begin to fall victim to increasingly brutal and spontaneous attacks. When Leen befriends Jean Paul, a pharmacist enmeshed in a cryptic online community, she finds herself embroiled in a troubling plot to disrupt the routines of the town's banal consumer culture.
 
With fierce intellect, sharp wit, and original prose, Jamie Marina Lau interprets and vividly portrays the everyday violence and toil of contemporary working life. Encapsulating millennial ennui and middle-class boredom, Gunk Baby is an inventive and deliberate novel from a fresh, new, exciting voice.

Gunk Baby

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Liu Hong

Imperial China meets Edwardian England in this epic story of loves lost and gained set during the aftermath of the Opium Wars. Best friends Jiali and Wu Fang know that no man is a match for them. In their small harbor town of Fudi, they practice sword fighting, write couplets to one another, and strut around dressed as men. Jiali is a renowned poet and Wu Fang is going to be China's first female surgeon. But when Wu Fang returns from medical training in Japan, she is horrified to hear of Jiali's marriage to a man who cannot even match her couplets, and confused by her intense feelings of jealousy towards her friend's new husband, Yanbu. Ocean man Charles has arrived in Fudi to start a new life. He eschews the company of his fellow foreigners, preferring to spend time with new colleague Yanbu, his wife, Jiali, and her friend, Wu Fang. Over the course of several months, he grows close to them all, in increasingly confusing ways, but what will happen when he is forced to choose between his country and his friends? As tensions between the Manchu rulers and the people rise, and foreign battleships gather out to sea, loyalties will be tested in more ways than Jiali, Wu Fang, Yanbu, and Charles can possibly imagine.

The Good Women of Fudi

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Fredrik Backman

Read the New York Times bestseller that has taken the world by storm In this "charming debut" (People) from one of Sweden's most successful authors, a grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door. Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon--the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell." But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time? Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations. A feel-good story in the spirit of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Fredrik Backman's novel about the angry old man next door is a thoughtful exploration of the profound impact one life has on countless others. "If there was an award for 'Most Charming Book of the Year, ' this first novel by a Swedish blogger-turned-overnight-sensation would win hands down" (Booklist, starred review).

A Man Called Ove

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Eliza Chan

Revolution is brewing in the semi-submerged city of Tiankawi, between humans and the fathomfolk who live in its waters. This gloriously imaginative debut fantasy, inspired by East Asian mythology and ocean folk tales, is a novel of magic, rebellion and change. Welcome to Tiankawi - shining pearl of human civilization and a safe haven for those fleeing civil unrest. Or at least, that's how it first appears. But in the semi-flooded city, humans are, quite literally, on top: peering down from shining towers and aerial walkways on the fathomfolk - sirens, seawitches, kelpies and kappas - who live in the polluted waters below. For half-siren Mira, promotion to captain of the border guard means an opportunity to help her downtrodden people. But if earning the trust and respect of her human colleagues wasn't hard enough, everything Mira has worked towards is put in jeopardy when Nami, a know-it-all water dragon and fathomfolk princess - is exiled to the city, under Mira's watch. When extremists sabotage a city festival, violence erupts, as does the clampdown on fathomfolk rights. Both Nami and Mira must decide if the cost of change is worth paying, or if Tiankawi should be left to drown.

Fathomfolk

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Tomi Obaro

The story of three once-inseparable college friends in Nigeria who reunite in Lagos for the first time in thirty years--a sparkling novel about the extraordinary resilience of female friendship.

"A story rendered with so much heart." --Taylor Jenkins Reid, best-selling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six

Funmi, Enitan, and Zainab first meet at university in Nigeria and become friends for life despite their differences. Funmi is beautiful, brash, and determined; Enitan is homely and eager, seeking escape from her single mother's smothering and needy love; Zainab is elegant and reserved, raised by her father's first two wives after her mother's death in childbirth.

Their friendship is complicated but enduring, and over the course of the novel, the reader learns about their loves and losses. How Funmi stole Zainab's boyfriend and became pregnant, only to have an abortion and lose the boyfriend to police violence. How Enitan was seduced by an American Peace Corps volunteer, the only one who ever really saw her, but is culturally so different from him--a Connecticut WASP--that raising their daughter together put them at odds. How Zainab fell in love with her teacher, a friend of her father's, and ruptured her relationship with her father to have him.

Now, some thirty years later, the three women are reunited for the first time, in Lagos. The occasion: Funmi's daughter, Destiny, is getting married. Enitan brings her American daughter, Remi. Zainab travels by bus, nervously leaving her ailing husband in the care of their son. Funmi, hosting the weekend with her wealthy husband, wants everything to go perfectly. But as the big day approaches, it becomes clear that something is not right. As the novel builds powerfully, the complexities of the mothers' friendship--and the private wisdom each has earned--come to bear on a riveting, heartrending moment of decision. Dele Weds Destiny is a sensational debut from a dazzling new voice in contemporary fiction.

Dele Weds Destiny

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Freya Sampson

Nothing brings neighbors together like someone else’s secrets… At Shelley House, the walls have ears, and they’re attached to a ragtag duo of busybodies ready to pry, snoop, and generally annoy their neighbors into solving a crime. Seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Darling has lived in Shelley House longer than any of the other residents, and if you take their word for it, she’s as cantankerous as they come. But Dorothy has her reasons for spying. And none of them require justifying herself to Kat Bennett. Twenty-five-year-old Kat has never known a place where she felt truly at home, and crumbling Shelley House is no different. Her neighbors find her prickly and unapproachable, but beneath her tough exterior, Kat’s plagued by a guilty secret from her past. When their apartments face demolition, sworn enemies Kat and Dorothy agree on just one thing: they must save their historic building. But when someone plays dirty—and one of the residents is viciously taken down—Dorothy and Kat seek justice. The police close the investigation too soon, leaving it up to the unlikely amateur sleuths—with a playful Jack Russell terrier at their side—to restore peace in their community.

Nosy Neighbors

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Dominic Lim

"When Rex's ex-boyfriend, Aaron, confides in him about his failing karaoke bar, Rex has a brilliant plan to save it and hopefully rekindle their lost spark. Because straight-laced Rex has a secret weapon, his drag alter-ego Regina Moon Dee, whose master MC'ing abilities might finally turn the bar into a success. The only problem? Rex is too afraid to let Aaron know about his other identity. Will he continue to hide behind Regina to save the bar and his romance with Aaron? Or will he risk everything to tell the truth and find someone who loves him for all he truly is?"--

Karaoke Queen

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Opal Wei

They're walking on the wild side... The Plan was simple: find a cure for the cancer that nearly took her sister's life. But for Zoey Fong, something about The Plan isn't working anymore. When a crucial tissue sample accidentally winds up in the hands of a very distracting--and disarmingly handsome--visitor, Zoey jumps at the chance to follow him home to retrieve it. Davy Hsieh's rugged island estate is no manicured suburban park. His plan is simple: establish a legitimate animal sanctuary and embrace life as a hermit to make up for a sketchy past. Zoey invading his fortress of solitude should not, under any circumstances, be a romantic development. And yet it's the single most invigorating week of their lives...when they're able to set their many differences aside and embrace it. Stranded amid all manner of flora and fauna--including a semidomesticated cougar called Baby--Davy and Zoey first have to survive the island. Then they'll need to take a leap of faith, maybe even trusting in each other, to save it. "An absolutely charming opposites attract story that will have you swooning for Davy, feeling for Zoey, and swearing to stay away from geese." --Lily Chu, author of The Stand-In and The Comeback

Wild Life

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Christina Lauren

The New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners returns with an effervescent, “emotional…and surprising” (Shondaland) novel about what happens when two people with everything on the line are thrown together by science—or is it fate? Perfect for fans of The Rosie Project and One Plus One. In this “sexy, science-filled, and surprising romance full of warmth and wit” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), single mom Jess Davis is a data and statistics wizard, but no amount of number crunching can convince her to step back into the dating world. After all, her father was never around, her hard-partying mother disappeared when she was six, and her ex decided he wasn’t “father material” before her daughter was even born. Jess holds her loved ones close but working constantly to stay afloat is hard...and lonely. But then Jess hears about GeneticAlly, a buzzy new DNA-based matchmaking company that’s predicted to change dating forever. Finding a soulmate through DNA? The reliability of numbers: This Jess understands. At least she thought she did, until her test shows an unheard-of 98 percent compatibility with another subject in the database: GeneticAlly’s founder, Dr. River Peña. This is one number she can’t wrap her head around, because she already knows Dr. Peña. The stuck-up, stubborn man is without a doubt not her soulmate. But GeneticAlly has a proposition: Get ‘to know him and we’ll pay you. Jess—who is barely making ends meet—is in no position to turn it down, despite her skepticism about the project and her dislike for River. As the pair are dragged from one event to the next as the “Diamond” pairing that could launch GeneticAlly’s valuation sky-high, Jess begins to realize that there might be more to the scientist—and the science behind a soulmate—than she thought.

The Soulmate Equation

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Cara Tanamachi

Sometimes, when you ask the universe for your soulmate, you wind up with your hate mate instead. On Nami's 30th birthday, she’s reminded at every turn that her life isn’t what she planned. She’s always excelled at everything – until now. Her fiancé blew up their engagement. Her pride and joy, the tech company she helped to found, is about to lose funding. And her sister, Sora, is getting married to the man of her dreams, Jack, and instead of being happy for her, as she knows she ought to be, she’s fighting off jealousy. Frustrated with her life, she makes a wish on a birthday candle to find her soulmate. Instead, the universe delivers her hate mate, Nami’s old high school nemesis, Jae Lee, the most popular kid from high school, who also narrowly beat her out for valedictorian. More than a decade later, Jae is still as effortlessly cool, charming, and stylish as ever, and, to make matters worse, is planning a hostile take-over of her start-up. Cue: sharp elbows and even sharper banter as the two go head-to-head to see who’ll win this time. But when their rivalry ignites a different kind of passion, Nami starts to realize that it's not just her company that's in danger of being taken over, but her heart as well.

The Takeover

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Dava Sobel

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science

The acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Galileo's Daughter crafts a luminous chronicle of the life and work of the most famous woman in the history of science, and the untold story of the many young women trained in her laboratory who were launched into stellar scientific careers of their own "Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name," writes Dava Sobel at the opening of her shining portrait of the sole Nobel laureate decorated in two separate fields of science--Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre and Chemistry by herself in 1911. And yet, Sobel makes clear, as brilliant and creative as she was in the laboratory, Marie Curie was equally passionate outside it. Grieving Pierre's untimely death in 1906, she took his place as professor of physics at the Sorbonne; devotedly raised two brilliant daughters; drove a van she outfitted with x-ray equipment to the front lines of World War I; befriended Albert Einstein and other luminaries of twentieth-century physics; won support from two U.S. presidents; and inspired generations of young women the world over to pursue science as a way of life. As Sobel did so memorably in her portrait of Galileo through the prism of his daughter, she approaches Marie Curie from a unique angle, narrating her remarkable life of discovery and fame alongside the women who became her legacy--from France's Marguerite Perey, who discovered the element francium, and Norway's Ellen Gleditsch, to Mme. Curie's elder daughter, Irène, winner of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For decades the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings that probed new theories about the interior of the atom, Marie Curie traveled far and wide, despite constant illness, to share the secrets of radioactivity, a term she coined. Her two triumphant tours of the United States won her admirers for her modesty even as she was mobbed at every stop; her daughters, in Ève's later recollection, "discovered all at once what the retiring woman with whom they had always lived meant to the world." With the consummate skill that made bestsellers of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, and the appreciation for women in science at the heart of her most recent The Glass Universe, Dava Sobel has crafted a radiant biography and a masterpiece of storytelling, illuminating the life and enduring influence of one of the most consequential figures of our time.

The Elements of Marie Curie

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Abi Maxwell

A Mother's Story

A fiery, heartbreaking, riveting memoir that follows one New Hampshire family over the course of three years, unspooling a story of gender identity, class, trans youth, and a child caught in the riptide of America’s culture wars Abi Maxwell grew up in rural New Hampshire, one of eight kids in a poor town abutting a wealthier lakeside village. As a young couple, Maxwell and her husband planned not to have kids, but when Maxwell became pregnant, she knew she wanted to raise her child near the mountains and lake of her youth. When her six-year-old asks to wear pink sneakers, asks to be a witch for Halloween, asks to wear a girl’s dance costume, Abi worries about how their small community will react. But when that child changes her name, grows her hair long, and announces that she is a girl, a firestorm engulfs the family. Weaving together the story of her own youth, marked by long afternoons skiing the mountains, a cottage on the lake, and a proud gay brother, but also by neglect and bullying that pushed her brother to the brink, Abi Maxwell contends with the rural America where she was raised and, years later, where she is now raising her daughter, as lawmakers nationwide push to erase the very existence of trans youth. Intimate and stirring, this book is essential reading for this moment in our history.

One Day I'll Grow up and Be a Beautiful Woman

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Tara Dorabji

A sweeping family saga following one woman’s struggle to protect her culture and her family amidst the backdrop of a military occupation. In the foothills of the Himalayas, the picturesque mountain village of Poshkarbal is home to lush cherry and apple orchards and a thriving community—one divided by a patrolled border. Aisha and her mother Noorjahan live on the outskirts—two women alone in a world dominated by men. As the village midwife, Noorjahan teaches Aisha how to heal using local herbs and remedies. Isolated but content, Aisha is shocked when Noorjahan decides it is time for her to attend the village school as few girls do. Despite the taunting of her classmates and the teacher’s initial resistance to having her in the class, Aisha becomes a star student, destined for college. When Aisha’s hand is bequeathed to a local boy in the village, she is forced to abandon her dreams of college. She comforts herself by staying on her ancestral land, creating a nourishing life with her children and husband. But her mother’s secrets come back to haunt her and her marriage and the growing military presence in Poshkarbal force Aisha to make impossible choices in order to save her family and preserve the independence Noorjahan fought for. What follows is a family chronicle brimming with life, love, and humor, about sacrifice and honor, and fighting for your home and culture in the face of occupation. A deeply moving novel about one woman’s love for her family, this is an epic investigation of colonialism, militarization, and the loss and innocence on the journey to creating home. Spanning 1969 to 2022, Call Her Freedom is a love story that untangles family secrets and heals generational wounds, announcing Tara Dorabji as a thrilling new voice in fiction.

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