Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker

“Get the Picture is one of the funniest books I’ve read . . . Brilliant.” —The Washington Post

“A gripping and often hilarious investigation into the art world. . . . Bosker goes full Tom Wolfe.” —TIME

“Funny, whip-smart, and gorgeously written, Get the Picture will forever transform the way you see. . . . I loved every word.” —Suleika Jaouad, New York Times bestselling author of Between Two Kingdoms

The New York Times bestselling author of Cork Dork takes readers on another fascinating, hilarious, and revelatory journey—this time burrowing deep inside the secretive world of art and artists

An award-winning journalist obsessed with obsession, Bianca Bosker’s existence was upended when she wandered into the art world—and couldn’t look away. Intrigued by artists who hyperventilate around their favorite colors and art fiends who max out credit cards to show hunks of metal they think can change the world, Bosker grew fixated on understanding why art matters and how she—or any of us—could engage with it more deeply.

In Get the Picture, Bosker throws herself into the nerve center of art and the people who live for it: gallerists, collectors, curators, and, of course, artists themselves—the kind who work multiple jobs to afford their studios while scrabbling to get eyes on their art. As she stretches canvases until her fingers blister, talks her way into A-list parties full of billionaire collectors, has her face sat on by a nearly-naked performance artist, and forces herself to stare at a single sculpture for hours on end while working as a museum security guard, she discovers not only the inner workings of the art-canonization machine but also a more expansive way of living.

Probing everything from cave paintings to Instagram, and from the science of sight to the importance of beauty as it examines art’s role in our culture, our economy, and our hearts, Get the Picture is a rollicking adventure that will change the way you see forever.

House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas

The stunning third book in the sexy, action-packed Crescent City series, following the global bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath.

Bryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Stranded in a strange new world, she’s going to need all her wits about her to get home again. And that’s no easy feat when she has no idea who to trust.

Hunt Athalar has found himself in some deep holes in his life, but this one might be the deepest of all. After a few brief months with everything he ever wanted, he’s in the Asteri’s dungeons again, stripped of his freedom and without a clue as to Bryce’s fate. He’s desperate to help her, but until he can escape the Asteri’s leash, his hands are quite literally tied.

In this sexy, breathtaking sequel to the #1 bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath, Sarah J. Maas’s Crescent City series reaches new heights as Bryce and Hunt’s world is brought to the brink of collapse-with its future resting on their shoulders.

Errand Into the Maze: The Life and Works of Martha Graham by Deborah Jowitt

From the legendary dance critic Deborah Jowitt, Errand into the Maze is the definitive biography of the visionary dancer and choreographer Martha Graham.

“Deborah Jowitt chronicles a life passionately, artfully lived. An essential read about a true legend.” —Mikhail Baryshnikov

In the pantheon of American modernists, few figures loom larger than Martha Graham. One of the greatest choreographers ever to live, Graham pioneered a revolutionary dance technique—primal, dynamic, and rooted in the emotional life of the body—that upended traditional vocabulary and shaped generations of dancers and choreographers across the globe. Over her sweeping career, she founded what is now the oldest dance company in the country and produced nearly two hundred ballets, many of them masterpieces. And along the way, she engaged with the major debates, events, and ideas of the twentieth century, creating works that cut to the core of the human experience. Time magazine’s “Dancer of the Century,” and the first dancer and choreographer to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Graham was a visionary artistic force and an international cultural figure: hers was the iconic face of what came to be known as modern dance.

From the renowned dance writer and former longtime critic for The Village Voice Deborah Jowitt, Errand into the Maze draws on more than a decade of firsthand research to deliver the definitive portrait of this titan. Beginning with Graham’s childhood in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and her early studies at the Denishawn School; weaving in her offstage adventures, including her relationship with her dancer and muse Erick Hawkins; and chronicling her retirement from dancing at age seventy-five and her remarkably productive final years, this elegant, empathetic biography portrays the artist in all her passionate complexity. Most important, Jowitt places Graham’s creations at the heart of her story. Her works, brimming with raw intensity, are intimately linked with their creator, who played the heroine in almost all that she choreographed: Joan of Arc, Jocasta, Clytemnestra, and Judith, among others. In this volume, Graham is centerstage once more, and Jowitt casts a brilliant spotlight on her life and work.

Come and Get It by Kiley Reid

An Indie Next Pick
A LibraryReads Pick

From the celebrated New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age comes a fresh and provocative story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students.

It’s 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie’s starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks, and illicit intrigue.

A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption, and reckless abandon, Come and Get It is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior—and the highly anticipated new novel by acclaimed and award-winning author Kiley Reid.

Subculture Vultue by Moshe Kasher

A “hilarious” (Dax Shepard), “surprisingly emotional trip” (The Chainsmokers) through deep American subcultures ranging from Burning Man to Alcoholics Anonymous, by the writer and comedian Moshe Kasher

“Moshe Kasher has the rare gift to simultaneously celebrate a community while also making fun of it. His writing succinctly captures the insanity, the joy, the ridiculousness, and the radical act of fully embracing these worlds.”—Nick Kroll

After bottoming out, being institutionalized, and getting sober all by the tender age of fifteen, Moshe Kasher found himself asking: “What’s next?”Over the ensuing decades, he discovered the answer: a lot.

There was his time as a boy-king of Alcoholics Anonymous, a kind of pubescent proselytizer for other teens getting and staying sober. He was a rave promoter turned DJ turned sober ecstasy dealer in San Francisco’s techno warehouse party scene of the 1990s. For fifteen years he worked as a psychedelic security guard at Burning Man, fishing hippies out of hidden chambers they’d constructed to try to sneak into the event. As a child of deaf parents, Kasher became deeply immersed in deaf culture and sign language interpretation, translating everything from end-of-life care to horny deaf clients’ attempts to hire sex workers. He reconnects and tries to make peace with his ultra-Hasidic Jewish upbringing after the death of his father before finally settling into the comedy scene where he now makes his living.

Each of these scenes gets a gonzo historiographical rundown before Kasher enters the narrative and tells the story of the lives he has spent careening from one to the next.A razor-sharp, gut-wrenchingly funny, and surprisingly moving tour of some of the most wildly distinct subcultures a person can experience, Subculture Vulture deftly weaves together memoir and propulsive cultural history. It’s a story of finding your people, over and over again, in different settings, and of knowing without a doubt that wherever you are is where you’re supposed to be.

Everyone On This Train Is Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

From the bestselling author of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, a fiendishly fun locked room (train) murder mystery that “offers a tip of the hat to the great Agatha Christie novel while at the same time being a modern reinvention of it” (Nita Prose) — perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz

When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out.

The program is a who’s who of crime writing royalty:

the debut writer (me!)

the forensic science writer

the blockbuster writer

the legal thriller writer

the literary writer

the psychological suspense writer

But when one of us is murdered, the remaining authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime.

Of course, we should also know how to commit one.

How can you find a killer when all the suspects know how to get away with murder?

Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can, Too by Ijeoma Oluo

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre, an eye-opening and galvanizing look at the current state of anti-racist activism across America.

In the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo offered a vital guide for how to talk about important issues of race and racism in society. In Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, she discussed the ways in which white male supremacy has had an impact on our systems, our culture, and our lives throughout American history. But now that we better understand these systems of oppression, the question is this: What can we do about them?

With Be A Revolution: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can, Too, Oluo aims to show how people across America are working to create real positive change in our structures. Looking at many of our most powerful systems—like education, media, labor, health, housing, policing, and more—she highlights what people are doing to create change for intersectional racial equity. She also illustrates various ways in which the reader can find entryways into change in these same areas, or can bring some of this important work being done elsewhere to where they live.

February Staff Pick: The Reformatory

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due (S&S/Saga Press), picked by Bookseller Lori

The Reformatory is a novelized account of the Dozier School and all of the horrors perpetrated against its residents. Set in the time of the Jim Crow south, a 12-year-old boy sentenced to the school finds that his ability to see and speak to ghosts takes him on a dark journey to the true violent history of the school.

A horror masterpiece that will stay with you long after you finish the book.

~ Lori

Ed note: Like horror? Check out this round up of Black Horror.

Black Horror: What Are You Scared Of?

Our Black History Month display features a wide range of books showcasing the diversity of experiences of Black Americans, but riffing off of Lori’s featured staff pick this month, here are some titles to terrify you:

All The Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby – This was Lori’s October featured staff pick. Read her review.

Lone Women by Victor LaValle – Out in paper, Feb. 6.

Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, edited by Jordan Peele – If you’re new to the genre, anthologies are a great way to try out a new bunch of authors.

You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron – A creepy, fun YA take on a camp slasher.

The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown – Horror in space.

The Black Guy Dies First by Robin R. Means Coleman & Mark H. Harris – Nonfiction on Black Horror at the movies.

Sweet & Spicy Reads for Valentine’s Day

Here are a handful of new and favorite Romance books for Valentine’s Day. We have many more in store, ask a bookseller for their favorites!

Enchanted to Meet You by Meg Cabot

Bride by Ali Hazelwood (Feb. 6)

Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail by Ashley Herring Blake

A River of Golden Bones by A.K. Mulford

Second Chances in New Port Stephen by TJ Alexander

Funny Story by Emily Henry (April 23)