Category: Book

A fascinating, vivid global history of witch trials across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, told through thirteen distinct trials that illuminate the pattern of demonization and conspiratorial thinking that has profoundly shaped human history.

Witchcraft is a dramatic journey through thirteen witch trials across history, some famous—like the Salem witch trials—and some lesser-known: on Vardø island, Norway, in the 1620s, where an indigenous Sami woman was accused of murder; in France in 1731, during the country’s last witch trial, where a young woman was pitted against her confessor and cult leader; in Pennsylvania in 1929 where a magical healer was labelled a “witch”; in Lesotho in 1948, where British colonial authorities executed local leaders. Exploring how witchcraft became feared, decriminalized, reimagined, and eventually reframed as gendered persecution, Witchcraft takes on the intersections between gender and power, indigenous spirituality and colonial rule, and political conspiracy and individual resistance.

Offering a striking, dramatic story, unspooling through centuries, about the men and women who were accused—some of whom survived their trials, and some who did not—Witchcraft empowers the people who were and are victimized and marginalized, giving a voice to those who were silenced by history.

In this hilariously savage, poignant novel by acclaimed author Katherine Min, a grieving daughter’s revenge on the man who caused her mother’s death sets off a series of unexpected reckonings.

On a cold, gloomy night, twenty-three-year-old Kyoko stands in the rain with a knife in her hoodie’s pocket. Her target is Daniel, who seduced Kyoko’s mother then callously dropped her, leading to her death. But tonight, there will be repercussions. Following the unsuspecting Daniel home, Kyoko manages to get a rash kidnapping plot off the ground . . . and then nothing goes as planned.

The Fetishist is the story of three people—Kyoko, a Japanese American punk-rock singer full of rage and grief; Daniel, a philandering violinist forced to confront the wreckage of his past; and Alma, the love of Daniel’s life, a Korean American cello prodigy long adored for her beauty, passion, and talent, but who spends her final days examining if she was ever, truly, loved.

An exuberant, provocative story that confronts race, complicity, visibility, and ideals of femininity, The Fetishist was written before the celebrated author’s untimely death in 2019. Startlingly prescient, as wise and powerful as it is utterly delightful, this novel cements Katherine Min’s legacy as a writer with a singular voice for our times.

Inspired by Jami Attenberg’s wildly popular literary movement #1000WordsofSummer, this writer’s guidefeatures encouraging essayson creativity, productivity, and writing from acclaimed authors including Roxane Gay, Lauren Groff, Celeste Ng, Meg Wolitzer, and Carmen Maria Machado.

In 2018, novelist Jami Attenberg, faced with a looming deadline, needed writing inspiration. Using a bootcamp model, she and a friend set out to write one thousand words daily for two weeks straight. They opened this practice to Attenberg’s online community and soon hundreds then thousands of people started using the #1000WordsofSummer hashtag to track their work and support one another. What began as a simple challenge between two friends has become a literary movement—write 1,000 words per day without judgment, or bias, or concerns about writer’s block, and see what comes of it.

1000 Words is the book-length extension of this movement. It is about becoming—and staying—motivated, discovering yourself and your creative desires, and approaching your craft from a new direction. It features advice from more than fifty well-known writers, including New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer Prize winners, and stars of the literary world. Framing these letters are words of wisdom and encouragement, plus specific strategies, from Attenberg on how to carve out a creative path for yourself all year round.

Paired with vibrant word art illustrations, 1000 Words is an accessible and motivational craft book that allows you to open any page and get a quick and fulfilling hit of inspiration.

Featuring Roxane Gay, Bryan Washington, Susan Orlean, Maris Kreizman, Sara Novic, Rumaan Alam, Lauren Oyler, Emma Straub, Christopher Gonzales, Benjamin Percy, Mira Jacob, Laura van den Berg, Carmen Maria Machado, Courtney Sullivan, Rebecca Carroll, Ada Limon, R.O. Kwon, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Elissa Washuta, Alexander Chee, Maggie Shipstead, Deesha Philyaw, Jasmine Guillory, Kristen Arnett, Attica Locke, Megan Abbott, Min Jin Lee, Lauren Groff, Andrew Sean Greer, Camille Dungy, Megan Giddings, Isaac Fitsgerald, Hannah Tinti, Michael H. Weber, Celeste Ng, Elizabeth McCracken, Will Leitch, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Morgan Parker, Kiese Laymon, Melissa Febos, Alissa Nutting, Liz Moore, Laila Lalami, Megan Mayhew Berman, Rebecca Makkai, Meg Wolitzer, Mychal Denzel Smith, Josh Gondelman, and Dantiel W. Moniz.

A wondrous, tender novel about a young girl grappling with her role in a tragic loss—and attempting to reshape the narrative of her life—from PEN/Faulkner Award nominee Claire Oshetsky

Margaret Murphy is a weaver of fantastic tales, growing up in a world where the truth is too much for one little girl to endure. Her first memory is of the day her friend Agnes died.

No one blames Margaret. Not in so many words. Her mother insists to everyone who will listen that her daughter never even left the house that day. Left alone to make sense of tragedy, Margaret wills herself to forget these unbearable memories, replacing them with imagined stories full of faith and magic—that always end happily.

Enter Poor Deer: a strange and formidable creature who winds her way uninvited into Margaret’s made-up tales. Poor Deer will not rest until Margaret faces the truth about her past and atones for her role in Agnes’s death.

Heartrending, hopeful, and boldly imagined, Poor Deer explores the journey toward understanding the children we once were and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of life’s most difficult moments.

“Delivering juicy details with unrelenting speed and force” (Jonathan Allen), Swamp Monsters is the wild inside story of how Donald Trump made a star of Ron DeSantis and then set out to destroy him—a struggle for supremacy that has turned Florida into the crucible of the new GOP and of America’s future—by “one of the keenest and best-sourced observers of Florida’s political maelstrom” (Rick Wilson).

Ron DeSantis was struggling through Florida’s political wilderness when, in late 2017, Donald Trump extended his hand. Ambitious but charmless, DeSantis was a relatively obscure figure even within his own state’s Republican party, and an unlikely pick for the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination. But when Trump took to Twitter and praised him as “a brilliant young leader” and “a true FIGHTER,” everything changed—for DeSantis, for Florida, and for the country. Today, as Florida governor and a GOP presidential frontrunner, DeSantis sits within striking distance of the Oval Office, and his onetime benefactor has turned into his most formidable opponent. Florida, meanwhile, has mutated from the country’s biggest swing state into the stronghold of the extremist wing of the Republican party—a place where COVID denialism and culture-war antics have been battle-tested, and where the nation’s political future might just be forged.

In Swamp Monsters, veteran Florida journalist and NBC News senior national politics reporter Matt Dixon pulls back the curtain on the titanic clash between a one-time kingmaker and a would-be king, showing how the battle between Trump and DeSantis has escalated, how it might end—and what it will mean for the country.

“Ingeniously plotted, irresistibly readable, brimming with inside information about the high-stakes art world of theft, forgery, and murder…Also included are brilliantly rendered drawings by the author, who is as accomplished an artist as he is a writer of suspense thrillers.” —Joyce Carol Oates

From the author of the much-praised The Last Mona Lisa comes another thrilling story of masterpieces, masterminds, and mystery.

For years, there have been whispers that, before his death, Van Gogh completed a final self-portrait. Curators and art historians have savored this rumor, hoping it could illuminate some of the troubled artist’s many secrets, but even they have to concede that the missing painting is likely lost forever.

But when Luke Perrone, artist and great-grandson of the man who stole the Mona Lisa, and Alexis Verde, daughter of a notorious art thief, discover what may be the missing portrait, they are drawn into a most epic art puzzles. When only days later the painting disappears again, they are reunited with INTERPOL agent John Washington Smith in a dangerous and deadly search that will not only expose secrets of the artist’s last days but draws them into one of history’s darkest eras.

Beneath the paint and canvas, beneath the beauty and the legend, the artwork has become linked with something evil, something that continues to flourish on the dark web and on the shadiest corridors of the underground art world.

“An extended spa treatment that stretches tired brains and unkinks the usual habitual responses where Hitchens is concerned.” —James Wolcott in his introduction

An outstanding new collection, A HITCH IN TIME is a must have for Hitchens completists and the perfect starting point for understanding one of the most brilliant essayists of all time.

Anthologized here for the first time, A HITCH IN TIME is a choice selection of Christopher Hitchens’s finest reviews, diary entries and essays – along with a smattering of ferocious letters. Familiar bêtes noires—Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger, Clinton—rub shoulders with lesser-known preoccupations: P.G. Wodehouse, Princess Margaret and, magisterially, Isaiah Berlin. A HITCH IN TIME is a banquet of entertaining stories ranging from his thoughts on Salman Rushdie to being spanked by Margaret Thatcher in The House of Lords and the night he took his son to the Oscars. The broad scope and high caliber of Hitchens’ essays allows his work to transcend the occasion for which it was written and continues to be essential reading. 

Along with an introduction by James Wolcott, A HITCH IN TIME recaptures the brilliance of Hitchens – barnstorming, cauterizing, and ultimately uncontainable.

“A riveting, unsettling crime novel that will keep you turning pages well past your bedtime. Is Anna O a sleeping beauty or a sleeping killer? Matthew Blake’s tension-filled thriller is as elusive and mysterious as sleep itself.”—Nita Prose, #1 New York Times author of The Maid and The Mystery Guest

Joining the ranks of Gillian Flynn, A. J. Finn, and Alex Michaelides, Matthew Blake delivers the thriller of the year: a dark, twisty, and shocking mystery about a young woman who commits a double murder while sleepwalking, and then never opens her eyes again.

THE WORLD WILL KNOW HER NAME

What if your nightmares weren’t really nightmares at all?

We spend an average of 33 years of our lives asleep. But what really happens, and what are we capable of, when we sleep?

Anna Ogilvy was a budding twenty-five-year-old writer with a bright future. Then, one night, she stabbed two people to death with no apparent motive—and hasn’t woken up since. Dubbed “Sleeping Beauty” by the tabloids, Anna’s condition is a rare psychosomatic disorder known to neurologists as “resignation syndrome.”

Dr. Benedict Prince is a forensic psychologist and an expert in the field of sleep-related homicides. His methods are the last hope of solving the infamous “Anna O’”case and waking Anna up so she can stand trial. But he must be careful treating such a high-profile suspect—he’s got career secrets and a complicated personal life of his own.

As Anna shows the first signs of stirring, Benedict must determine what really happened and whether Anna should be held responsible for her crimes.

Only Anna knows the truth about that night, but only Benedict knows how to discover it. And they’re both in danger from what they find out.

A masterful hybrid of nature writing and cultural studies that investigates our connection with deer—from mythology to biology, from forests to cities, from coexistence to control and extermination—and invites readers to contemplate the paradoxes of how humans interact with and shape the natural world

Deer have been an important part of the world that humans occupy for millennia. They’re one of the only large animals that can thrive in our presence. In the 21st century, our relationship is full of contradictions: We hunt and protect them, we cull them from suburbs while making them an icon of wilderness, we see them both as victims and as pests. But there is no doubt that we have a connection to deer: in mythology and story, in ecosystems biological and digital, in cities and in forests. 

Delving into the historical roots of these tangled attitudes and how they play out in the present, Erika Howsare observes scientists capture and collar fawns, hunters show off their trophies, a museum interpreter teaching American history while tanning a deer hide, an animal-control officer collecting the carcasses of deer killed by sharpshooters, and a woman bottle-raising orphaned fawns in her backyard. As she reports these stories, Howsare’s eye is always on the bigger picture: Why do we look at deer in the ways we do, and what do these animals reveal about human involvement in the natural world? For readers of H is for Hawk and Fox & I, The Age of Deer offers a unique and intimate perspective on a very human relationship.