Category: Book

Prophet by Helen MacDonald, Sin Blaché

From the extraordinary minds of award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author of H Is for Hawk Helen Macdonald and first time author Sin Blach , Prophet is their electric debut, a tantalizing adventure fusing noir, sci-fi and a slow burn queer romance–set in a universe just one perilous step from our own.

Adam Rubenstein and Sunil Rao have been reluctant partners since their Uzbekistan days. Adam is a seemingly unflappable American Intelligence officer and Rao is an ex-MI6 agent, an addict and rudderless pleasure hound, with the uncanny ability to discern the truth of things–about everyone and everything other than Adam. When an American diner turns up in a foggy field in the UK after a mysterious death, Adam and Rao are called in to investigate, setting into motion the most dangerous and otherworldly mission of their lives.

In a surreal, action-packed quest that takes Adam and Rao from secret laboratories in Colorado, to a luxury lodge in Aspen, to the remote Nevada desert, the pair begins to uncover how and why people’s fondest memories are being weaponized against them by a spooky, ever-shifting substance called Prophet. As the unlikely twosome battles this strange new reality, Prophet’s victims’ memories are materializing in increasingly bizarre forms: favorite games, beloved pets, fairground rides, each more malevolent than the next. Prophet is like no enemy Adam and Rao – or the world – have ever come up against.

A tension-shot odd-couple romance, an unflinching send-up of corporate corruption, and a genre-bending tour de force, Prophet is a triumph of storytelling by a new writing duo with a thrilling future.

Mushroom Hunting by Emily and Gregory Han

Discover the quiet joy of mushroom hunting with this delightful field guide to identifying mushrooms and reconnecting with the natural world.

For the mycologically curious, this take-anywhere handbook is the perfect thing to toss in a backpack and bring on a mushroom hunt. Learn how to identify fifteen common types of mushrooms and forage safely—not necessarily for consumption but rather as a practice in curiosity, mindfulness, and peaceful observation.

Mindful reflections and shroom-inspired rituals, such as brewing reishi hot cocoa, invite you to reconnect with the earth and consider what we can learn from these incredible specimens. Filled with charming illustrations, Mushroom Hunting is your doorway to the mysterious and magical world of these earthy life-forms.

​MUSHROOMS ARE INCREDIBLE: More closely related to humans than they are to plants, fungi are fascinating organisms. Over a hundred thousand different species have been identified, though as many as five million may exist globally. Learn more in this insightful book! With tips for hunting and detailed profiles of fifteen different types of common shrooms, this mushroom book is a lovely, accessible entry point to the world of mycology.

GREAT GIFT BOOK: Petite, gorgeously illustrated, and written in an inviting tone, this approachable guide makes a great gift or self-purchase for mushroom lovers. Package it together with hiking boots,Lion’s Mane capsules,mushroom-themed clothing, or other books in the Pocket Nature series, such as Leaf Peeping(a perfect duo for nature walks!).

EASY WAY TO SPEND MORE TIME OUTSIDE: More and more people are turning to the outdoors as a place to escape and unwind. Foraging for mushrooms is an enjoyable pastime that not only gets you outside and gets your body moving but also calms your mind. With mindful activities sprinkled throughout, Mushroom Hunting is a mushroom identification book and much more—it is an invitation to spend time in nature, quiet your racing thoughts, and honor our incredible earth.

PERENNIAL + COLLECTIBLE: The topics covered in the Pocket Nature series are perennial—beaches, clouds, sunsets, stars, mushrooms, and leaves will always be there to enjoy and admire. With new titles coming out every season and each affordably priced, there will be ever-new opportunities to grow a charming collection that looks great on the shelf.

Perfect for:

  • Mushroom enthusiasts and amateur mycologists
  • Nature lovers and the nature-curious
  • Adventurers, campers, and outdoorsy types
  • Meditators and mindfulness practitioners 
  • People who watched Fantastic Fungi and are curious to learn more about shrooms
  • Anyone looking to slow down and enjoy the simple things in life

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

n this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

“Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.” —The Guardian

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

The Underworld by Susan Casey

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK TO READ THIS SUMMER • From bestselling author Susan Casey, an awe-inspiring portrait of the mysterious world beneath the waves, and the men and women who seek to uncover its secrets

“An irresistible mix of splendid scholarship, heart-stopping adventure writing, and vivid, visceral prose.” —Sy Montgomery, New York Times best-selling author of The Soul of an Octopus

For all of human history, the deep ocean has been a source of wonder and terror, an unknown realm that evoked a singular, compelling question: What’s down there? Unable to answer this for centuries, people believed the deep was a sinister realm of fiendish creatures and deadly peril. But now, cutting-edge technologies allow scientists and explorers to dive miles beneath the surface, and we are beginning to understand this strange and exotic underworld:  A place of soaring mountains, smoldering volcanoes, and valleys 7,000 feet deeper than Everest is high, where tectonic plates collide and separate, and extraordinary life forms operate under different rules. Far from a dark void, the deep is a vibrant realm that’s home to pink gelatinous predators and shimmering creatures a hundred feet long and ancient animals with glass skeletons and sharks that live for half a millennium—among countless other marvels.

Susan Casey is our premiere chronicler of the aquatic world. For The Underworld she traversed the globe, joining scientists and explorers on dives to the deepest places on the planet, interviewing the marine geologists, marine biologists, and oceanographers who are searching for knowledge in this vast unseen realm. She takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of deep-sea exploration, from the myths and legends of the ancient world to storied shipwrecks we can now reach on the bottom, to the first intrepid bathysphere pilots, to the scientists who are just beginning to understand the mind-blowing complexity and ecological importance of the quadrillions of creatures who live in realms long thought to be devoid of life.

Throughout this journey, she learned how vital the deep is to the future of the planet, and how urgent it is that we understand it in a time of increasing threats from climate change, industrial fishing, pollution, and the mining companies that are also exploring its depths. The Underworld is Susan Casey’s most beautiful and thrilling book yet, a gorgeous evocation of the natural world and a powerful call to arms.

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK!

Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: Today.com * Time * Electric Literature * Seattle Times * Telemundo * Washington Post * HipLatina * Harper’s Bazaar * Elle * AARP * Shondaland * New York Times * The Millions * LitHub

From the bestselling, National Book Award–winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.

But Flor isn’t the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.

Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo’s inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces—one family’s journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.

The Visionaries by Wolfram Eilenberger

A soaring intellectual narrative starring the radical, brilliant, and provocative philosophers Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Ayn Rand by the critically acclaimed author of Time of the Magicians, Wolfram Eilenberger

The period from 1933 to 1943 was one of the darkest and most chaotic in human history, as the Second World War unfolded with unthinkable cruelty. It was also a crucial decade in the dramatic, intersecting lives of some of history’s greatest philosophers. There were four women, in particular, whose parallel ideas would come to dominate the twentieth century—at once in necessary dialogue and in striking contrast with one another.

Simone de Beauvoir, already in a deep emotional and intellectual partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre, was laying the foundations for nothing less than the future of feminism. Born Alisa Rosenbaum in Saint Petersburg, Ayn Rand immigrated to the United States in 1926 and was honing one of the most politically influential voices of the twentieth century. Her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged would reach the hearts and minds of millions of Americans in the decades to come, becoming canonical libertarian texts that continue to echo today among Silicon Valley’s tech elite. Hannah Arendt was developing some of today’s most important liberal ideas, culminating with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism and her arrival as a peerless intellectual celebrity. Perhaps the greatest thinker of all was a classmate of Beauvoir’s: Simone Weil, who turned away from fame to devote herself entirely to refugee aid and the resistance movement during the war. Ultimately, in 1943, she would starve to death in England, a martyr and true saint in the eyes of many.

Few authors can synthesize gripping storytelling with sophisticated philosophy as Wolfram Eilenberger does. The Visionaries tells the story of four singular philosophers—indomitable women who were refugees and resistance fighters—each putting forward a vision of a truly free and open society at a time of authoritarianism and war.

August Staff Pick: Perilous Times

Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee (Ballantine Books), picked by bookseller, Riona Jean

Do you want to fight climate change, battle a dragon, reminisce about lost friends, fight the patriarchy, and more!? Try this new Arthurian Legend on for size.

Bookseller Riona Jean with Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee on an e-reader.

Bookseller Riona Jean picked Perilous Times as the August featured staff pick because it mixed her favorite genres, fantasy and dystopias.

“It remixes the Arthurian Legend in a new and dynamic way,” she writes.

“Mariam is an ecowarrior with FETA, fighting to save the planet from extreme climate change and rising sea levels. Kay is one of King Arthur’s knights, bound to a resurrection tree by Merlin, called to action whenever Britain is in trouble. With great swaths of the UK under water and major cities falling into ruin, Mariam and Kay stumble their way through trying to do the right thing. Watch out for Lancelot, corporate greed, and a nefarious plot to resurrect Arthur getting in the way!”

“Witty, insightful, and poignant, Perilous Times perfectly marries fantastical legend and dystopian new world order.”

Ed note: Riona read Perilous Times on her Kobo Clara 2E, it’s waterproof, made with recycled plastic, and we have them at the bookstore!

Somebody’s Fool by Richard Russo

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls returns to North Bath, in upstate New York, and to the characters that captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of readers in his beloved best sellers Nobody’s Fool and Everybody’s Fool.

“A wise and witty drama of small-town life…delivering the generous humor, keen ear for dialogue, and deep appreciation for humanity’s foibles that have endeared the author to his readers for decades.” —Publishers Weekly

Ten years after the death of the magnetic Donald “Sully” Sullivan, the town of North Bath is going through a major transition as it is annexed by its much wealthier neighbor, Schuyler Springs. Peter, Sully’s son, is still grappling with his father’s tremendous legacy as well as his relationship to his own son, Thomas, wondering if he has been all that different a father than Sully was to him.

Meanwhile, the towns’ newly consolidated police department falls into the hands of Charice Bond, after the resignation of Doug Raymer, the former North Bath police chief and Charice’s ex-lover. When a decomposing body turns up in the abandoned hotel situated between the two towns, Charice and Raymer are drawn together again and forced to address their complicated attraction to one another. Across town, Ruth, Sully’s married ex-lover, and her daughter Janey struggle to understand Janey’s daughter, Tina, and her growing obsession with Peter’s other son, Will. Amidst the turmoil, the town’s residents speculate on the identity of the unidentified body, and wonder who among their number could have disappeared unnoticed.

Infused with all the wry humor and shrewd observations that Russo is known for, Somebody’s Fool is another classic from a modern master.

The World Behind the World by Erik Hoel

A fascinating exploration into how the brain creates our conscious experiences—potentially revolutionizing neuroscience and the future of technology—from a Forbes 30 Under 30 scientist.

Throughout history, two perspectives on the world have dueled in our minds: the extrinsic—that of mechanism and physics—and the intrinsic—that of feelings, thoughts, and ideas. The intrinsic perspective allows us to tell stories about our lives, to chart our anger and our lust, to understand our psychologies. The extrinsic allows us to chart the physical world, to build upon it, and to travel across it. These perspectives have never been reconciled; they almost seem to exist on different planes of thought. Only recently, due to the pioneering work of DNA-discoverer Francis Crick, have these two perspectives been conjoined.

This attempt to reconcile these perspectives is the science of consciousness, and posits that the intrinsic aspect of the world, how and what we perceive, can coexist in the extrinsic part of the world, in the realm of physics. The World Behind the World is a grand tour of the state of this science, an exploration of the point where tectonic metaphysical forces meet, often in paradoxical conclusions.

Forbes 30 Under 30 scientist Dr. Erik Hoel lays out the evidence that nothing in the brain makes sense except in the light of a theory of consciousness. Some topics he examines include what the similarities are between our brains and black holes; where consciousness fits into physics and morality; and why it may be impossible for AI to ever become conscious, despite popular belief. The World Behind the World argues that establishing a proven theory of consciousness would trigger a paradigm shift in the field of neuroscience and the future of technology—transforming the very fabric of our society.

What does the science of consciousness tell us about what happens beyond brain death? Does our understanding of consciousness strengthen or weaken the case for free will? Is science itself incomplete in the way Gödel showed mathematics is? By taking us through the heated debates of the field and drawing on Hoel’s own original research to shed light on the latest theories about how the brain creates consciousness, The World Behind the World shows us that at long last, science is coming to understand the fundamental mystery of human existence.

The Last Ranger by Peter Heller

The best-selling author of The River returns with a vibrant, lyrical novel about an enforcement ranger in Yellowstone National Park who likes wolves better than most people. When a clandestine range war threatens his closest friend, he must shake off his own losses and act swiftly to discover the truth and stay alive.

Officer Ren Hopper is an enforcement ranger with the National Park Service, tasked with duties both mundane and thrilling: Breaking up fights at campgrounds, saving clueless tourists from moose attacks, and attempting to broker an uneasy peace between the wealthy vacationers who tromp through the park with cameras, and the residents of hardscrabble Cooke City who want to carve out a meaningful living.

When Ren, hiking through the backcountry on his day off, encounters a tall man with a dog and a gun chasing a small black bear up a hill, his hackles are raised. But what begins as an investigation into the background of a local poacher soon opens into something far murkier: A shattered windshield, a series of red ribbons tied to traps, the discovery of a frightening conspiracy, and a story of heroism gone awry.

Populated by a cast of extraordinary characters—famous scientists, tattooed bartenders, wildlife guides in slick Airstreams—and bursting with unexpected humor and grace, Peter Heller masterfully unveils a portrait of the American west where our very human impulses—for greed, love, family, and community—play out amidst the stunning beauty of the natural world.