The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don’t—shape our realities.
“[Coates] is intellectually fearless . . . unshackled by political or racial ideology, humane in his judgments, respectful of facts, acutely aware of the difference between what is knowable and what is not.”—The New Yorker
Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic “Politics and the English Language,”but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.
In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city—a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.
Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table.
Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.
From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.
After the “insanely readable” (Stephen King) and “perfectly told” (Malcolm Gladwell) New York Times bestseller The Plot comes Jean Hanff Korelitz’s equally captivating new novel: The Sequel.
Anna Williams-Bonner has taken care of business. That is to say, she’s taken care of her husband, bestselling novelist Jacob Finch Bonner, and laid to rest those anonymous accusations of plagiarism that so tormented him. Now she is living the contented life of a literary widow, enjoying her husband’s royalty checks in perpetuity, but for the second time in her life, a work of fiction intercedes, and this time it’s her own debut novel, The Afterword. After all, how hard can it really be to write a universally lauded bestseller?
But when Anna publishes her book and indulges in her own literary acclaim, she begins to receive excerpts of a novel she never expected to see again, a novel that should no longer exist. That it does means something has gone very wrong, and someone out there knows far too much: about her late brother, her late husband, and just possibly… Anna, herself. What does this person want and what are they prepared to do? She has come too far, and worked too hard, to lose what she values most: the sole and uncontested right to her own story. And she is, by any standard, a master storyteller.
With her signature wit and sardonic humor, Jean Hanff Korelitz gives readers an antihero to root for while illuminating and satirizing the world of publishing in this deliciously fun and suspenseful read.
You Like It Darker by Stephen King (Scribner), picked by bookseller Lori
Twelve new short stories from the master of horror. Standouts for me: “Rattlesnakes,” a sequel to 1981’s Cujo, and “The Answer Man,” my personal favorite, which asks us to ponder the meaning of our own lives and ask ourselves how we will approach the inevitable end of it.
Beauty, horror, humor and humanity are all present in the pages from the true King of the genre.
Do you like to be scared? Or perhaps your kids can’t wait until it’s time to break out the costumes. Pick up a spooky, witchy read for the season. Here are a few books we are enjoying or looking forward to. Browse the store or ask a bookseller for many more recommendations.
Red Solo cups? Check. Snacks? Check. Abandoned mansion full of countless horrors that won’t let you leave? Check.
The Deinhart Manor has been a looming shadow over town for as long as anyone can remember, and it’s been abandoned for even longer. When the final Deinhart descendent passes, the huge gothic manor is up for sale for the first time ever. Which means Arden can steal the keys from her mom’s real estate office . . . It’s time for a graduation party that no one will ever forget.
Arden and her friends each have different reasons for wanting to throw the party to end all parties. But when the manor doors bar everyone inside and the walls begin to bleed, all anyone wants to do is make it out alive.
Five siblings in West Virginia unearth long-buried secrets when the supernatural bargain entwining their fate with their ancestral land is suddenly ruptured
Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are governed by a strict covenant that is renewed each generation with the ritual sacrifice of their patriarch, and in return, the bog produces a “bog-wife.” Brought to life from vegetation, this woman is meant to carry on the family line. But when the bog fails—or refuses—to honor the bargain, the Haddesleys, a group of discordant siblings still grieving the mother who mysteriously disappeared years earlier, face an unknown future.
Middle child Wenna, summoned back to the dilapidated family manor just as her marriage is collapsing, believes the Haddesleys must abandon their patrimony. Her siblings are not so easily persuaded. Eldest daughter Eda, de facto head of the household, seeks to salvage the compact by desecrating it. Younger son Percy retreats into the wilderness in a dangerous bid to summon his own bog-wife. And as youngest daughter Nora takes desperate measures to keep her warring siblings together, fledgling patriarch Charlie uncovers a disturbing secret that casts doubt over everything the family has ever believed about itself.
At once a gothic eco-horror, a psychological drama, and a family saga, The Bog Wife is a propulsive read for fans of Shirley Jackson, Karen Russell, and Matt Bell that speaks to what is knowable and unknowable within a family history and how to know when it is time to move forward.
Painfully shy Callum Flannelly would rather dive into an open grave than take a stranger to dinner. But he can only inherit the family undertaking business under one condition: He must marry before his 35th birthday. Texan animator Lark Thompson moved to Galway, Ireland, to restart her life and career, not be reminded of losing her husband by moving in next to a funeral home.
But when she learns of Callum’s dilemma, Lark’s certain she can help him find The One, even if she’s sworn off love herself. Though as the dating project progresses and Lark spends more time with straight-laced, sarcastic Callum, he starts to crack the ice around her grieving heart. And the more joy that vivacious Lark brings to Callum’s grey existence, the less he can imagine letting her return to Texas.
If they think they can ignore their connection, they’re dead wrong.
It’s 5 more sleeps ‘til Halloween! That spooky time of year. Where all of the ghosts are wide awake As nighttime’s drawing near.
The excitement leading up to spooky season has been enjoyed by so many for so long. Filled with costumes, candy, and big scares! But why not make the last few days before Halloween even more exciting by counting how many sleeps until trick-or-treat night?
Paired with the eerie artwork of Rich Deas, fans will enjoy the humor of Jimmy Fallon as he prepares readers for the most spinetingling week of the year—5 More Sleeps ‘til Halloween.
1943, El Paso, Texas: teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older sisters, while longing for a life of freedom and adventure. The premonitions and fainting spells she has endured since childhood are getting worse, and Nena worries she’ll end up like the scary old curandera down the street. Nena prays for help, and when the mysterious Sister Benedicta arrives late one night, Nena follows her across the borders of space and time. In colonial Mexico, Nena grows into her power, finding love and learning that magic always comes with a price.
In the present day, Nena’s grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta’s own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed.
The Nobel Prize winner’s latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas
September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone—or something—seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world. Little does the newcomer realize, as he tries to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.
A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Olga Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, with signature boldness, inventiveness, humor, and bravura.
It’s Halloween night, 1984, in Coventry, Massachusetts, and two families are unraveling. Up and down the street, horrifying secrets are being revealed, and all the while, mixed in with the trick-or-treaters of all ages, four children who do not belong are walking door to door, merging with the kids of Parmenter Road. Children in vintage costumes with faded, eerie makeup. They seem terrified, and beg the neighborhood kids to hide them away, to keep them safe from The Cunning Man.
There’s a small clearing in the woods now that was never there before, and a blackthorn tree that doesn’t belong at all. These odd children claim that The Cunning Man is coming for them…and they want the local kids to protect them. But with families falling apart and the neighborhood splintered by bitterness, who will save the children of Parmenter Road? All Hallows. The one night when everything is a mask…
A chilling middle grade novel about a girl haunted by a hungry ghost.
Molly Teng sees things no one else can.
By touching the belongings of people who have died, she gets brief glimpses into the lives they lived. Sometimes the “zaps” are funny or random, but often they leave her feeling sad, drained, and lonely.
The last thing Jade remembers from life is dying. That was over one hundred years ago. Ever since then she’s been trapped in the same house watching people move in and out. She’s a ‘hungry ghost’ reliant on the livings’ food scraps to survive. To most people she is only a shadow, a ghost story, a superstition.
Molly is not most people. When she moves into Jade’s house, nothing will ever be the same—for either of them. After over a century alone, Jade might finally have someone who can help her uncover the secrets of her past, and maybe even find a way out of the house—before her hunger destroys them both.
A witchy rom-com from New York Times bestseller Meg Cabot about a plus size witch who must team up with a handsome stranger to help protect her village from an otherworldly force—but will she be able to protect her heart?
It’s Magic When You Meet Your Match
In her teenage years, lovelorn Jessica Gold cast a spell that went disastrously wrong, and brought her all the wrong kind of attention—as well as a lifetime ban from the World Council of Witches.
So no one is more surprised than Jess when, fifteen years later, tall, handsome WCW member Derrick Winters shows up in her quaint little village of West Harbor and claims that Jess is the Chosen One.
She’s the Chosen One
Not chosen by West Harbor’s snobby elite to style them for the town’s tricentennial ball—though Jess owns the chicest clothing boutique in town. And not chosen finally to be on the WCW, either—not that Jess would have said yes, anyway, since she’s done with any organization that tries to dictate what makes a “true” witch.
No, Jess has been chosen to help save West Harbor itself . . .
As Summer Ends, Her Power Grows
But just when Jess is beginning to think that she and Derrick might have a certain magic of their own—and not of the supernatural variety—Jess learns he may not be who she thought he was.
And suddenly Jess finds herself having to make another kind of choice: trust Derrick and work with him to combat the sinister force battling to bring down West Harbor, or use her gift as she always has: to keep herself, and her heart, safe.
What a dynamic book, it pulled me into Frankie’s life and her service in Viet Nam as an army nurse during this turbulent time in history of a nation divided by war and politics. I could not put it down Kristin Hannah is a master in writing. -Betty, Store Volunteer
A #1 bestseller on The New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times!
From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah’s The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.
But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.
The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.
David James Poissant, author of Lake Life and The Heaven of Animals, is coming to the Key West Library, (time and date TBD). Monroe County Public Library’s Acting Director of Libraries Michael Nelson asked Poissant a few questions, offering up a little preview of the planned event.
Q: Your debut novel, Lake Life, brings a complicated family (The Starlings) together at a lake house in North Carolina for one last vacation before the place is sold. What compelled you to write about this particular family?
A: When I was young, my parents rented a house for one week every summer. The house was a lake house on the shores of Lake Toxaway in Transylvania County, North Carolina. When I was in my late teens or early twenties, my parents bought a converted double wide trailer on Lake Oconee, not far from Milledgeville, Georgia and Andalusia Farm where Flannery O’Connor lived. Because I’m a person who falls in love with places, I fell in love with both houses, both lakes. And because I’m a writer who loves writing place, I wanted to capture the essence of both places in a single story. For the novel, I moved the Lake Oconee house to Lake Toxaway, then renamed the place Lake Christopher. I had a place, then, but no novel. Then, at a fourth of July event on Lake Oconee in 2009 or 2010, I saw a small boy very nearly fall from the back of a speeding boat. The boat was moving fast, and it was a miracle that no one was killed. The boy looked too young to swim, he wore no lifejacket, and the person piloting the boat was likely drunk. Fortunately, authorities intervened. For weeks, though, I had nightmares. What would have happened had the boy fallen into the water? Could I have saved him? I’m a fairly strong swimmer, but this was at night, and who knows? These dreams and questions haunted me until I knew that I had the opening chapter of my novel Lake Life.
Q: You’ve lived and worked as a writer in Florida for many years and received a Florida Book Award for your 2014 collection of stories, The Heaven of Animals. What appeals to you about Florida’s literary scene? What makes it different from other places in the country?
A: Florida is wild. Growing up in Georgia, I thought of Florida the way most tourists see Florida: beaches and Disney. When the job offer at the University of Central Florida brought me to Orlando thirteen years ago, I wasn’t sure what I’d find. What I found was a vibrant, sophisticated literary community with numerous reading series and open mics, small presses and literary magazines, indie bookstores, and more writers than I would ever have expected. So many literary luminaries call the Sunshine State home. And I love the atmosphere. The vibe of Florida’s literary scene, as my students would say, is “chill.” If you’ve ever hung out with Kristen Arnett or Lauren Groff or Laura van den Berg, you know that these are not pretentious people. They’re brilliant writers, but they’re also good hangs. And I need that. I’m not particularly comfortable in a recliner with a tie on. I’d rather perch on a barstool in a t-shirt and argue about which Lydia Millet book is best. (Answer: There isn’t a bad Lydia Millet book!)
Q: You teach in the MFA Creative Writing program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. What’s the best advice you give to new writers, or something you wished you knew when you started first writing?
A: Read. We can talk all day about craft, and I do. And we can talk about process, and I will. But the thing I find that students need most is more time to read. We’re all busy. We have families and jobs and classes, so time is a luxury, I know. But I strongly encourage them to carve as much time from devices, streaming platforms, and social media as they can manage. I encourage students to read at least a book a week beyond the books they read for class. I’m happiest at a rate of two books a week, in addition to the books I assign, student’s stories, and the dozens of submissions I read each week for The Florida Review, where I serve as Editor. To me, the math of fiction is pretty simple. If you want to be a writer, you need to read a lot of books. Every book is a toolbox. When you start reading like a writer, you see how many craft tools are at your disposal, which is why I encourage students and beginning writers to read widely from writers of diverse backgrounds and writing styles. Read things you wouldn’t think you’d like. Read as widely as you can. So much of learning arrives via this bookworm osmosis, and well read beginning writers make for the fastest learners.
Q: What are you reading and recommending these days?
A: I got a good bit of reading done this summer. I’ve been on a pandemic novel kick, and two reads that have stuck with me are The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez and Touch, by Olaf Olafsson, both set during the Covid-19 pandemic. I heard that a great film version of Touch was just released, but I haven’t seen it yet. I’m a longtime fan of Tove Jansson’s Moominbooks, all of which I read to my daughters when they were younger. This summer I finally read one of her adult novels, The Summer Book, reissued in 2008 by NYRB Classics. It’s the sad, gorgeous, episodic story of a grandmother and granddaughter set over the course of a summer on an island in the Gulf of Finland. We forget that children know and feel and grieve more than we think, and this novel captures that fact, and childhood, beautifully. Other books that brightened my summer include Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus, Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters, Hiroko Oyamada’s The Factory, and Max Porter’s Shy.
Q: Can you tell us anything about future projects?
A: Sure! I’ve finished a second collection of short stories, tentatively titled Sons & Daughters. As with The Heaven of Animals, I don’t think that I consciously set out to pen a collection. It was more that I looked back over ten years of story publications and saw that I had produced dozens of new stories, most of which address questions of childhood and parenthood. For years, my fiction has grappled with the question of what it means to be a child or a parent. I like to think about what we owe each other, as family members, if anything. Familial bonds can save us, but they’re also frequently abused. And the tension between those extremes, that gray area between salvation and degradation, that’s what I’m interested in. Where some people find their identities in family, some can’t thrive until they’ve freed themselves from their family of origin. I’m interested in both of those characters. Each of their stories will resonate with different readers. To that end, I’m also hard at work on a novel, my first to be set in the great state of Florida, about a very large, very isolated family, and about the dangers of such isolation.
Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the rich diversity of Hispanic and Hispanic American people. Here are a few books we are reading and recommending for Hispanic Heritage Month:
Finalist for the 2024 Kirkus Prize Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize Named a Best Book of 2024 So Far by The New Yorker and Vogue • Selected as “Fiction to Read this Fall” by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, People, and Parade • A Time, Vulture, Kirkus, and Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2024 • Named a Top Read of the Season by the AARP A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory and Bewilderment.
Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.
They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.
Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.
An award-winning journalist’s deeply reported exploration of how race, identity and political trauma have influenced the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos, and how this group can shape American politics
Democrats have historically assumed they can rely on the Latino vote, but recent elections have called that loyalty into question. In fact, despite his vociferous anti-immigrant rhetoric and disastrous border policies, Trump won a higher percentage of the Latino vote in 2020 than he did in 2016. Now, journalist Paola Ramos pulls back the curtain on these voters, traveling around the country to uncover what motivates them to vote for and support issues that seem so at odds with their self-interest.
From coast to coast, cities to rural towns, Defectors introduces readers to underdog GOP candidates, January 6th insurrectionists, Evangelical pastors and culture war crusaders, aiming to identify the influences at the heart of this rightward shift. Through their stories, Ramos shows how tribalism, traditionalism, and political trauma within the Latino community has been weaponized to radicalize and convert voters who, like many of their white counterparts, are fearful of losing their place in American society.
We meet Monica de la Cruz, a Republican congresswoman from the Rio Grande Valley who won on a platform centered on finishing “what Donald Trump started” and pushing the Great Replacement Theory; David Ortiz, a Mexican man who refers to himself as a Spaniard and opposed the removal of a statue of a Spanish conquistador in New Mexico; Luis Cabrera, an evangelical pastor pushing to “Make America Godly Again;” Anthony Aguero, an independent journalist turned border vigilante; and countless other individuals and communities that make up the rising conservative Latino population. Cross-cultural and assiduously reported, Defectors highlights how one of America’s most powerful and misunderstood electorates may come to define the future of American politics.
