A p oigna nt and inspi r ati onal l o ve st o ry s et in Burma,The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has a ny idea whe re he mig ht be...u ntil th ey find a l o ve l etter he w r o te ma ny yea rs a g o, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father's past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader's belief in the power of love to move mountains.

 

 

 

"I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus." So begins the new novel from the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings, an extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny in a time of great despair and great hope.

G r ounded in m eticul ous hi st ori cal resea rch and written with a r e ve re ntial app r oa ch to Jesus's l ife that focuses on his humanity,The Book of Longings is an inspiring account of one w oman 's b old st ru ggle to reali ze the passi on and p o te ntial inside he r, while living in a time, pla ce, and cultu re d evised to silence he r.

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they're together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they've lost with humor and rage. But when at last they're forced to

co nf r o nt the pe ople who l eft them behind, the rel ati onship b et ween an indul ged b r other and his e ve r-p r o tecti ve si ster is finally te sted.

 

 

 

Jericho Brown's daring new book The Tr adition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Brown makes mythical pastorals to question the terrors to which we've become accustomed, and to celebrate how we survive. Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown's mastery, and his invention of the duplex-a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues-is testament to his formal skill. The Tr adition is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while reveling in a celebration of contradiction.

 

 

When El w ood Curtis, a bla ck b oy g r owing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is u n fairly se ntenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a g r o tesque cha mber of h or r o rs. El w ood 's only sal v ati on is his friendship with fell ow "delinque n t" Turne r, which deepens despi te Turne r 's c o nvicti on th at El w ood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension b et ween El w ood 's ideals and Turne r 's s ke pticism leads to a decisi on wh ose repercussions will echo down the decades.

 

Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.

 

Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but

unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves-lines from her favorite authors play in her head like a soundtrack- but now she finds that the world demands more of her than words.

Afterlife is a compact, nimble, and sharply droll novel. Set in this political moment of tribalism and distrust, it asks: What do we owe those in crisis in our families, including-maybe especially-members of our human family? How do we live in a

broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves? And how do we stay true to those glorious souls we have lost?

 

Set in the London of the 1660s and of the early 21st century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi just before the plague hits the city, and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history.

As the novel opens, Helen has been summoned by a former student to view a cache of 17th-century Jewish documents newly discovered in his home during a renovation.

Enlisting the help of Aaron Levy, an American graduate student as impatient as he is charming, and in a race with another fast-moving team of historians, Helen embarks on one last project: to determine the identity of the documents' scribe, the elusive "Aleph".  

Electrifying and ambitious, sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, The Weight of Ink is a sophisticated work of historical fiction about women separated by centuries, and the choices and sacrifices they must make in order reconcile the life of the heart and mind.

 

 

Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self- discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

 

Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different-and far more satisfying-than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.

It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible-food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation.

 

An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation's Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it-the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress.

The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation- today's.

  

 

How did Fidel Ca st ro f ool the CIA  f or a gene r ati on? W hy did N eville Cha mberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true?

While ta ckling these que sti ons, Mal c olm Glad well was n ot s olely writing a b ook f or the  page.He was also producing for the ear.In the audio book version of Talking to Strangers, y ou'll hear the v oices of pe ople he i nte rvi e wed--scie ntists, crimin ol ogi sts, mili ta ry psychologists. Court transcripts are brought to life with re-enactments. You actually hear the c o nte nti ous a r re st of Sand ra Bland by the side of the r oad in T e xas. As Glad well r evisits the dece pti ons of Bernie Mad o ff, the t rial of Amanda Kn ox, and the suicide of Sylvia Plath,you hear directly from many of the players in these real-life tragedies.

There's even a theme song - Janelle Monae's "Hell You Talmbout."

Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.

 

 

When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?

 

In All Adults Here, Emma Straub's unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not.

In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start on its cobblestone streets. Into this bustling town, came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters--Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa--a chance at a better life.

As Bright as Heaven is the compelling story of a mother and her daughters who find themselves in a harsh world during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, not of their making, which will either crush their resolve to survive or purify it.

 

 

Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crime for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way - not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer.

A novel of love, crime, magic, fate and coming of age, this story will be the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novel you will read all year.

 

 

One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the north-eastern edge of Russia, two sisters are abducted. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.

In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer's virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel provides a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.

 

 

M. D. Scott

In this i ntim ate and openly hea rtfelt debut mem oi r, S c ott expl o res the p o wer of faith and c ommunity as st ren gth-building res ou rces f or n avi g ating difficult times ..... She's equally

rel atable and f orthrig ht in exp osing her own vulne rabilities and l oneliness as a single w oman living in the city al ong with her resp onsibilities and insecurities mini stering to the needs of her congregants ....... Scott delivers a moving personal memoir and an accessibly reverent meditation on finding faith through

un c o n ve nti onal a cts of w o rship. F or All Who Hunger is a story about a God whose love has no limits and a faith that opens our eyes to the truth. There's a place for you at the table.