Collection: Adult

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK - NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE - From the bestselling historian and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, the moving untold story of the eighteenth-century men and women behind the making of Handel's Messiah.

"A delicious history of music, power, love, genius, royalty and adventure."--Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World

"A book of power and glory, brimming with emotion and dazzling in its reach."--Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra and The Revolutionary

George Frideric Handel's Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by renowned choirs and orchestras, as well as by audiences singing along with the words on their cell phones.

But this work of triumphant joy was born in a worried age. Britain in the early Enlightenment was a place of astonishing creativity but also the seat of an empire mired in war, enslavement, and conflicts over everything from the legitimacy of government to the meaning of truth. Against this turbulent background, prize-winning author Charles King has crafted a cinematic drama of the troubled lives that shaped a masterpiece of hope.

Every Valley presents a depressive dissenter stirred to action by an ancient prophecy; an actress plagued by an abusive husband and public scorn; an Atlantic sea captain and penniless philanthropist; and an African Muslim man held captive in the American colonies and hatching a dangerous plan for getting back home. At center stage is Handel himself, composer to kings but, at midlife, in ill health and straining to keep an audience's attention. Set amid royal intrigue, theater scandals, and political conspiracy, Every Valley is entertaining, inspiring, unforgettable.

NAMED A BEST BOOK BY BOOK RIOT, AND MORE! - The incredible story of an all-deaf high school football team's triumphant climb from underdog to undefeated, their inspirational brotherhood, a fascinating portrait of deafness in America, and the indefatigable head coach who spearheaded the team, by New York Times reporter and Page One Correspondent, Thomas Fuller.

"The Boys of Riverside is another example of how anyone can achieve their dreams, making what appears impossible, possible." --Marlee Matlin, Academy Award winner

"Remarkable"--Wall Street Journal - "Narrative nonfiction at its finest, filled with drama, detail and action."--Los Angeles Times - "Inspiring." --Parade.com

In November 2021, an obscure email from the California Department of Education landed in New York Times reporter, Thomas Fuller's, inbox. The football team at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, a state-run school with only 168 high school students, was having an undefeated season. After years of covering war, wildfires, pandemic, and mass shootings, Fuller was captivated by the story of this group of high school boys. It was uplifting. During the gloom of the pandemic, it was a happy story. It was a sports story but not an ordinary one, built on the chemistry between a group of underestimated boys and their superhero advocate coach, Keith Adams, a deaf former athlete himself. The team, and Adams, tackled the many stereotypes and seemed to be succeeding. Fuller packed his bags and drove seven hours to the Riverside campus.

The Boys of Riverside looks back at the historic 2021 and 2022 seasons in which the California School for the Deaf chased history. It follows the personal journeys of their dynamic deaf head coach, and a student who spent the majority of the season sleeping in his father's car in the Target parking lot. It tells the story of a fiercely committed player who literally played through a broken leg in order not to miss a crucial game, as well as myriad other heart-wrenching and uplifting narratives of players who found common purpose. Through their eyes, Fuller reveals a portrait of high school athletics, inspiring camaraderie, and deafness in America.

Longlisted for the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Named one of the Best Books of 2024 by Glamour and one of them's Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2024. RuPaul and Eric Cervini's Allstora Book Club Pick for June.

"A novel that should become the touchstone of a whole generation." --Edmund White

It's 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon--handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction--takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it's the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city's punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites' dogs. But it isn't until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Philip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him--and what he's capable of doing in order to get it for himself.

A lush, heart-quickening novel about family and art, sex and class, and the terror of self-discovery, Thomas Grattan's In Tongues chronicles Gordon's perilous pursuit of belonging from the Midwest to New York and, later, to Europe and Mexico City. As he floats further into Philip and Nicola's exclusive universe, and as lines blur between employee, muse, lover, and mentor, Gordon's charm, manipulations, and growing ambition begin to escape his own control, in turn threatening to unravel the lives, and lies, of those around him.

Anchored by winsome lyricism, glinting intellect, and a main character whose yearnings and mistakes come to feel like our own, In Tongues crackles with fierce longing and pointed emotion, further confirming Thomas Grattan as a rare chronicler of young adulthood's joys and devastations.

A National Bestseller

A map for a liberating journey toward a more meaningful life--a journey that begins where we actually find ourselves, not with a fantasy of where we'd like to be--from the New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks

Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, Meditations for Mortals offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls "imperfectionism." It helps us tackle challenges as they crop up in our daily lives: our finite time, the lure of distraction, the impossibility of doing anything perfectly.

How can we embrace our nonnegotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there's always too much to do? How do we shed the illusion that life will really begin as soon as we can "get on top of everything"? Reflecting on quotations drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman explores a combination of practical tools and daily shifts in perspective. The result is a life-enhancing and surprising challenge to much familiar advice--and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully.

To be read either as a four-week "retreat of the mind" or devoured in one or two sittings, Meditations for Mortals will be a source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life. In anxiety-inducing times, it is rich in truths we have never needed more.

A pulse-pounding novel of class, privilege, sex, and murder, from the New York Times bestselling author of Two Nights in Lisbon and The Expats.

Chicky Diaz is everyone's favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York's cultural elite.

Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth has the perfect-looking everything, all except her husband, whom she'd quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where all the money comes from. But his wealth is immense, their prenup is iron-clad, and Emily can't bring herself to leave him. Yet.

And downstairs in 2a, Julian Sonnenberg--who has carved himself a successful niche in the art world, and led a a good half-century of a full and satisfying, cosmopolitan life--has just received a devastating phone call that does nothing at all to alleviate his sense that, probably for better and worse, he has aged out and he's just not that useful to anyone any more.

Meanwhile, gathered in the Bohemia's bowels, the building's almost entirely Black and Hispanic, working-class staff is taking in the news that that just a few miles uptown, a Black man has been killed by the police, leading to a demonstration, a counterdemonstration, and a long night of violence across the tinderbox city.

As Chicky changes into his uniform for tonight's shift, he finds himself breaking a cardinal rule of the job: tonight, he'll be carrying a gun, bought only hours earlier, but before he knew of the pandemonium taking over the city. Chicky knows that there's more going on in his patch of sidewalk in front of the Bohemia than anyone's aware of. Tonight in the city, enemies will clash, loyalties will be tested, secrets will be revealed--and lives will be lost.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A National Indie Bestseller
Short-listed for the An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year
Finalist for the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year

Named a Best Book of the Year and a Critics' Pick by The New York Times
Named an Essential Read by The New Yorker
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, Financial Times, Vogue, The Guardian, Harper's Bazaar, Vox, The Times (UK), Apple Books, and more
A USA Today, People, and Associated Press Top 10 Book of the Year

One of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2024
One of Chicago Public Library's Favorite Books of the Year

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family--but especially love--from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties--successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women--his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude--a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

"Full of humor and tenderness...a cozy, sexy romance." -Ashley Herring Blake, author of Delilah Green Doesn't Care

A charming home run of a queer holiday romance where two former classmates' plan to fake-date their way to freedom goes immediately awry--but, perhaps, exactly the way they need it to

Murphy was supposed to be settling into her junior year at the University of Illinois with her best friend, Kat. Instead, she's stuck in a hellish suburban holding pattern: living with her parents, failing the same class that kept her from graduating the first time around, and making minimum wage at the same coffee shop she's worked at since she was sixteen. It doesn't help that the dating pool for a twenty-one-year-old lesbian in the tiny town of Geneva, Illinois, is anemic at best.

When her and Kat's long-awaited reunion is plagued by stuttering conversation and uninvited guests, Murphy's resentment threatens to boil over. That is, until a miracle appears in the form of Ellie Meyers, a former classmate who is way cuter and not nearly as straight as Murphy remembers. Their heavy flirting holds the promise of something more... until Murphy learns that Ellie's mom is the very professor preparing to flunk Murphy for a second semester in a row. Talk about killing the vibe.

Romance might be off the table, but Ellie could be Murphy's key to getting into Professor Meyers' good graces and finally getting out of Geneva. And Murphy--well-versed in defying parental expectations--might be Ellie's chance to get her mother onboard with her own dreams. Together, they hatch a plot: fake a relationship for a holiday weekend at the Meyers' house. If everything goes according to plan, Ellie will be living her dream halfway across the country, and Murphy will finally be able to graduate community college and start her life in earnest. So, the fact that Murphy can't stop thinking about Ellie's lips on hers isn't relevant. It's just a part played well.

Right?

A story about opening your heart to possibility, I'll Get Back To You is a giddy love letter to anyone in need of a bit of bravery to step up to the plate--and to the unending process of finding yourself.

The Zodiac Academy series from the Twisted Sisters and Amazon and Wall Street Journal #1 bestselling authors Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti is a Booktok phenomenon. This print re-issue includes an exlusive bonus chapter, brand new world map, and a new cover. As well as the stunning interior chapter pages which were included in the previous edition.

They tried to break us.
They almost did.
But we're not going anywhere.

The Celestial Heirs think the stars are on their side. But they don't know what's coming. We have to be smart. Fighting them one on one isn't an option so we have to be stealthy. Remaining under the radar won't be easy, but if we pull it off, they'll never suspect our involvement when their lives start falling apart.

Besides, they've already taken us to the brink of hell, what more can they really do?

The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find--discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe--cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past--and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can't she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.

CALM BEFORE THE STORM

After two lifetimes of misunderstandings, Mo Ran and Chu Wanning have at last opened their hearts to one another. Mo Ran is determined to treat Chu Wanning with all the devotion his teacher deserves, but Chu Wanning has his doubts: has Mo Ran truly turned his attention from his first love, the beautiful Shi Mei, so easily?

Yet the pair must put aside the bloom of new love all too soon. When a crucial clue about Xu Shuanglin's whereabouts comes to light, the foremost powers of the cultivation realm set out to confront him. But the more devious moves their opponent makes, the greater Mo Ran's suspicion grows that behind Xu Shuanglin lurks another player--a true mastermind who holds all the pieces.

In this nuanced queer fantasy set amid the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia, the last witch of the Ridge must choose sides in a clash between industry and nature.

After her best friend dies in a coal mine, Benethea "Bennie" Mattox sacrifices her job, her relationship, and her reputation to uncover what's killing miners on Kire Mountain. When she finds a half-drowned white woman in a dirty mine slough, Bennie takes her in because it's right--but also because she hopes this odd, magnetic stranger can lead her to the proof she needs.

Instead, she brings more questions. The woman called Motheater can't remember her true name, or how she ended up inside the mountain. She knows only that she's a witch of Appalachia, bound to tor and holler, possum and snake, with power in her hands and Scripture on her tongue. But the mystery of her fate, her doomed quest to keep industry off Kire Mountain, and the promises she bent and broke have followed her a century and half into the future. And now, the choices Motheater and Bennie make together could change the face of the town itself.

A Lover's Universe Novel

Lovable loner Casey Isaac thinks romance isn't for him. Not since extraordinary events left him with supernormal powers and a great deal of trauma. But when Oscar Kenzari looks at him, he can't help but change his mind.

As Divinators, Casey and Oscar have used their psychic powers to defend humanity from sentient, extradimensional storms for one hundred years.

But a storm more powerful than any before is brewing. MaalenKun, prince of the maelstrom, conqueror of countless realities, plans to turn the tables by infecting Casey's mind.

MaalenKun is not the only threat.

Casey and Oscar must determine who they can trust: the eccentric trillionaire keeping them in the dark, the independent contractors with secrets of their own, or a seemingly helpful extradimensional being shrouded in mystery.

As Casey works to defeat threats around and within himself, he must open to love for his chosen family, for Oscar, and for himself to unlock a transformative power capable of banishing MaalenKun. And Oscar must make a difficult choice that could cost him the future he dreams of.

Can Casey and Oscar's love break the storm?

"It's fantastic to have such an emotional, thoughtful, and at times really sexy story to enjoy and identify with. I love books that take characters who are usually shoved to the margins and make their stories, their struggles, fears, hopes, tragedies, and triumphs the focus--which is exactly what this book does." -Doug Spearman, Actor/Activist/Writer/Producer/Director, From Zero to I Love You

"From the title page onwards, I was unable to put this book down. With excellent worldbuilding and rich, dimensional characters, T.Q. Sims' Godspeed, Lovers skillfully weaves a world that is equal parts fantastical sci-fi, spirituality, and queer joy. I can't wait to see where Casey and Oscar go next." -Colette Bennett, Author, Enter the Meta

The Lovers Trilogy Book 2

As deadly living storms threaten to destroy the world, a crew of Queer warriors must harness their supernatural powers and their deepest emotions to stave off cosmic annihilation.

For over a century, Casey Isaac and the valiant crew aboard The Queen have defended their planet from extradimensional storms that threaten humanity's very existence. But their most perilous battle lies ahead: the Crimson Chain, a lethal cult, is hellbent on unleashing MaalenKun the Shadow, a dark force from the deepest dimension with a singular goal-devouring the entire cosmos.

To stop this world-ending catastrophe, Casey and his crewmates must outpace the Crimson Chain and recover the Shadow's aureate relics-powerful tools that in the wrong hands could obliterate reality, but under Casey's control, could shatter the Shadow itself. As they embark on this desperate quest to save the universe, Casey is also driven by a personal mission to rescue his long-lost lover, Oscar.

"Lovers in Arms" is a soulbending sci-fi saga that combines heart-pounding space opera with a sizzling LGBTQ+ romance. As Casey and Oscar tap into their justified rage and unbreakable bonds, they uncover the true force propelling them-love worth fighting for, love worth living for.

Join them in a journey through multiple dimensions where courage, love, and resilience light the way against the encroaching darkness.

Praise for Lovers in Arms: "The next chapter of the Lovers Universe leads us into richer, deeper relationships with Sims' profoundly likable characters as the venture further into a world-bending battle against a vast cosmic evil. It's the kind of book that makes you look up at 3am and wonder where the time went." --Colette Bennett, author Enter the Meta

Praise for Godspeed, Lovers: "One of the most trauma-informed works of fiction I've ever read!" --Elle Hamilton, LCSW

"The space scene action grabs your attention, but once you get to know the characters, it's the heart of this novel that won't let you go." --Jeremy Campbell, author Between the Causeways

After a rough tumble and maybe-serious head injury, a disillusioned trans poet falls for a charming corporate lawyer in a love story that grapples with the explosive ghosts of relationships past, romantic and familial, from the Lambda Award-nominated author of Bellies, Nicola Dinan

"Fell down the stairs and woke up a trad wife."

Max is thirty, a published poet and grossly overpaid legal counsel for a tech company. With a lifetime of dysphoria and fuccbois rattling around in her head, Max is plagued with a deep dissatisfaction during what should be the best years of her life. After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year's Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First things first: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.

Max thinks she's found the answer in Vincent, a corporate lawyer and hobby baker, whose trad friendship group may as well speak a foreign language, and whose Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman. This uncharted territory may have rough terrain, but Vincent cares for Max in a way she'd long given up on as a foolish fantasy.

Yet Vincent is carrying his own baggage from his gap year in Thailand a decade prior: an explosive entanglement with a mysterious, gorgeous traveler. Voice-driven, warm, and poignant, Disappoint Me is an exploration of millennial angst, race, trans panic, and the allure of bourgeois domesticity that asks if we are defined by our worst mistakes.