PLEASE NOTE: The limited edition with stained edges is sold out, but we invite you to purchase an unstained edition—same captivating story, same heart-pounding read!
“The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.” —Xaden Riorson
Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.
Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.
Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits—and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.
But a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.
Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.
The Empyrean series is best enjoyed in order. Reading Order: Book #1 Fourth Wing Book #2 Iron Flame
From New York Times bestselling author of To Shake the Sleeping Self.
“Exquisitely written and completely compelling . . . As Jedidiah Jenkins traces a 5,000-mile route with his wildly entertaining mother, Barb, he begins to untangle the live wires of a parent-child bond and to wrestle with a love that hurts.”—Suleika Jaouad, author of Between Two Kingdoms
When his mother, Barbara, turns seventy, Jedidiah Jenkins is reminded of a sobering truth: Our parents won’t live forever. For years, he and Barbara have talked about taking a trip together, just the two of them. They disagree about politics, about God, about the project of society—disagreements that hurt. But they love thrift stores, they love eating at diners, they love true crime, and they love each other. Jedidiah wants to step into Barbara’s world and get to know her in a way that occasional visits haven’t allowed.
They land on an idea: to retrace the thousands of miles Barbara trekked with Jedidiah’s father, travel writer Peter Jenkins, as part of the Walk Across America book trilogy that became a sensation in the 1970s. Beginning in New Orleans, they set off for the Oregon coast, listening to podcasts about outlaws and cult leaders—the only media they can agree on—while reliving the journey that changed Barbara’s life. Jedidiah discovers who Barbara was as a thirty-year-old writer walking across America and who she is now, as a parent who loves her son yet holds on to a version of faith that sees his sexuality as a sin.
Along the way, he peels back the layers of questions millions are asking today: How do we stay in relationship when it hurts? When do boundaries turn into separation? When do we stand up for ourselves, and when do we let it go?
Tender, smart, and profound, Mother, Nature is a story of a remarkable mother-son bond and a moving meditation on the complexities of love.
First line: “It is the hiss and crackle of the old recording that first reaches the ear.“
I’d like to start by saying I am not an expert in classical music at all and don’t play or read music. What got me hooked on this book was the way history is told and explained by Jeremy Eichler through the stories of individual lives and the music written by the four composers highlighted: Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britton. All four men created moving works of music to express emotions and attempt to understand atrocities of WWII.
The writer is meticulous in telling these stories through archival research and traveling to such places as Goethe’s Oak, the home of Strauss in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the Walchensee lake (and many others).
I wondered as I was reading: “how is it possible to have man’s most horrific actions and most creative on display at virtually the same intersection of time?” This book is disturbing, beautiful, horrific, and deeply moving all at once.
“One of the only works of fiction to event make me cry from something other than overwhelming happiness or sadness, but from an overwhelming pure depiction of the character of honor and the perseverance of the human spirit in the face of total abject hopelessness. Sanderson tells the most epic story in the most grounded way possible that takes no shortcuts and will often leave you breathless.” – Joey (staff)
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, Book One of the Stormlight Archive begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion.
Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.
It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.
One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.
Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.
Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan’s motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.
The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.
From Emmy-award winning actor, author, comedian, producer, and director Henry Winkler, a deeply thoughtful memoir of the lifelong effects of stardom and the struggle to become whole.
Henry Winkler, launched into prominence as “The Fonz” in the beloved Happy Days, has transcended the role that made him who he is. Brilliant, funny, and widely-regarded as the nicest man in Hollywood (though he would be the first to tell you that it’s simply not the case, he’s really just grateful to be here), Henry shares in this achingly vulnerable memoir the disheartening truth of his childhood, the difficulties of a life with severe dyslexia, the pressures of a role that takes on a life of its own, and the path forward once your wildest dream seems behind you.
Since the glorious era of Happy Days fame, Henry has endeared himself to a new generation with roles in such adored shows as Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation, and Barry, where he’s been revealed as an actor with immense depth and pathos, a departure from the period of his life when he was so distinctly typecast as The Fonz, he could hardly find work.
Filled with profound heart, charm, and self-deprecating humor, Being Henry is a memoir about so much more than a life in Hollywood and the curse of stardom. It is a meaningful testament to the power of sharing truth and kindness and of finding fulfillment within yourself.
A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.
Gracetown, Florida
June 1950
Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.
Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.
The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.
A mesmerizing trip to the strange world of white holes from the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time
Let us journey, with beloved physicist Carlo Rovelli, into the heart of a black hole. We slip beyond its horizon and tumble down this crack in the universe. As we plunge, we see geometry fold. Time and space pull and stretch. And finally, at the black hole’s core, space and time dissolve, and a white hole is born.
Rovelli has dedicated his career to uniting the time-warping ideas of general relativity and the perplexing uncertainties of quantum mechanics. In White Holes, he reveals the mind of a scientist at work. He traces the ongoing adventure of his own cutting-edge research, investigating whether all black holes could eventually turn into white holes, equally compact objects in which the arrow of time is reversed.
Rovelli writes just as compellingly about the work of a scientist as he does the marvels of the universe. He shares the fear, uncertainty, and frequent disappointment of exploring hypotheses and unknown worlds, and the delight of chasing new ideas to unexpected conclusions. Guiding us beyond the horizon, he invites us to experience the fever and the disquiet of science—and the strange and startling life of a white hole.
A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.
You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.
American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations, and discovering how their own lives as women on the periphery—of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands’ convictions—have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.
A virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant, most affecting writers, about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world.
Meet the authors of The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human–Canine Connection (Atria Books, out Nov. 14)
If you’re a dog person, your dog is probably one of your favorite people, but you might not know just how important that relationship is.
“Every dog lover knows how valuable their relationship is with their dogs and considers their dogs to be part of their family,” write Jen Golbeck & Stacey Colino, authors of The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human–Canine Connection. “But they may not realize the profound ways their beloved pooches affect their health and well-being, physically, emotionally, socially, and cognitively, as they will discover in The Purest Bond. Our hope is that the book will give readers a new appreciation for all the ways their dogs make their lives richer, healthier, happier, and more meaningful—and that they’ll discover the extent to which the benefits from this relationship are reciprocal. Dogs love us back just as much as we love them!”
We had the opportunity to find out a bit more about Jen & Stacey, and their pets, prior to their signing event on Nov. 18. Come meet them in the store Nov. 18 from 11am-1pm and get your copy of The Purest Bondsigned. This is not a seated event, come anytime between 11 and 1 for an informal signing and meet & greet. Can’t make it on the 18th? Preorder The Purest Bond and leave signing information in the order comments.
Q: Please, tell us a little about your rescue work and The Golden Ratio?
The current pups of the Golden Ratio squad.
A: Jen and her husband live on Sugarloaf Key and rescue special needs Golden Retrievers, usually those with complex medical needs, seniors, and hospice cases. They usually have between five and seven dogs, and share their lives on social media as @theGoldenRatio4 where they give followers a wholesome look at the happy, gentle, love-filled life they get to have here in the Florida Keys. At this point, the Golden Ratio has more than 1 million followers from around the world.
Jen and her husband currently have five dogs in The Golden Ratio squad: Guacamole, Chief Brody, Venkman, Remoulade, and Feta. Stacey and her family have Sadie, a chocolate-Lab/shepherd mix they rescued in September 2020.
Q: What’s something that will surprise most people about dogs?
A: As we did research for the book, we uncovered lots of surprising things about how dogs relate to humans—and how sensitive they are to our emotions and other changes in us. It may surprise people to discover the extent to which dogs experience the world through their noses. They can see into the past with their sense of smell, being able to tell whether someone they know was previously in their space based on their lingering scent. And they can detect subtle changes in the chemicals human bodies produce that could point to infections, the presence of diseases (like cancer), changes in blood sugar among people with diabetes, and in the scent of sweat before a seizure in those with epilepsy. We, humans, wouldn’t be able to do that.
Q: What was the collaboration process like for the two of you?
A: It was beautiful! We met during the process of conceptualizing and writing this book and really became friends. We bonded over our love of dogs, among other things, and we turned out to have perfectly compatible working styles. We liked the process so much that we’re now working on a second book together!
Q: Besides your own, what books would make good holiday gifts for animal lovers?
Native American Heritage Month celebrates the history, traditions, contributions, and living cultures of our nation’s indigenous peoples. Here are a few of the books we are reading and recommending. We have many more in store.
Inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth’s water from harm and corruption—a bold and lyrical picture book written by Carole Lindstrom and vibrantly illustrated by Michaela Goade.
Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home.
These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.
Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortizoffers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire.
This blood-chilling debut set in New Mexico’s Navajo Nation is equal parts gripping crime thriller, supernatural horror, and poignant portrayal of coming of age on the reservation.
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings–asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass–offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.
From National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson, a kaleidoscopic middle-grade adventure that mixes the anxieties, friendships, and wonders of a Cherokee boy’s life with Cherokee history and lore.
Corn. Chocolate. Fishing hooks. Boats that float. Insulated double-walled construction. Recorded history and folklore. Life-saving disinfectant. Forest fire management. Our lives would be unrecognizable without these, and countless other, scientific discoveries and technological inventions from Indigenous North Americans. Spanning topics from transportation to civil engineering, hunting technologies, astronomy, brain surgery, architecture, and agriculture, Indigenous Ingenuity is a wide-ranging STEM offering that answers the call for Indigenous nonfiction by reappropriating hidden history. The book includes fun, simple activities and experiments that kids can do to better understand and enjoy the principles used by Indigenous inventors. Readers of all ages are invited to celebrate traditional North American Indigenous innovation, and to embrace the mindset of reciprocity, environmental responsibility, and the interconnectedness of all life.
In this visionary novel, acclaimed Indigenous author Debra Magpie Earling brings this mythologized figure vividly to life, casting unsparing light on the men who brutalized her and recentering Sacajewea as the arbiter of her own history.
More than 160 tales from eighty tribal groups present a rich and lively panorama of the Native American mythic heritage. From across the continent comes tales of creation and love; heroes and war; animals, tricksters, and the end of the world.
