Collection: Adult

A twisty, genre-bending metafictional mystery set in Cuba past and present about a writer returning to her long-lost hometown to seek the buried truth about two suspicious deaths at her Havana high school, perfect for fans of Chanel Cleeton and Jean Hanff Korelitz

2020: Teresa, a Cuban-born mystery writer now living in America, gets an unexpected call from her childhood best friend, Estrella, inviting her to Havana. Estrella is determined to get answers about a case that has haunted them both for decades: the purported dual suicides of a teacher and student at their high school. Though Teresa doesn't quite understand why Estrella is taking the story so personally, she's along for the ride--as she always wanted to write a novel about this case.

1980: Fourteen-year-old Teresita, bespectacled, awkward and mystery novel-obsessed, is "nosy, but not a tattletale." She knows who's been skimming off the top of the amphetamine stash in her mother's pharmacy, which teacher keeps cyanide in his cabinet at school and that their classmate Yoyi is sleeping with their English teacher. Over the course of one fateful day, Teresita gets closer than ever to learning the "Truth of Life"--her catchall term for the intricacies of adult existence--even if it means coming face to face with death.

Drawing upon the tradition of Latin American magical realism and directly inspired by the author's own childhood in Cuba and adult life in the United States, this resonant tale is at once personal and universal, full of nostalgia, candor and danger.

For readers of Permission to Come Home, Minor Feelings, and Pleasure Activism, an insightful guide for "hyphenates" seeking to better understand themselves and help others understand them, too.

What does it mean to live a hyphenated life?

So many folks are forced to toggle across the multiple layers of who they are, and across the diverse spaces they occupy. They may be children of immigrants, 1.5 gen, of color; they may be disabled, neurodivergent, or queer. Regardless of how they identify, they exist in an in-between space while also trying to fit into the dominant culture. With a foot in multiple worlds, belonging fully to none, it can be hard to figure out where they fit in.

Dr. Han Ren, licensed psychologist and a hyphenate herself, seeks to offer solutions for those with intersectional identities to fully express who they are in any and every environment. The Hyphenated Life is an intersectional, inside out excavation of how existing in marginalized bodies affects the ways folks show up in dominant culture and predominantly white spaces.

Offering tools, stories, conversations, solutions and insights, this book will resonate with anyone who is navigating the intricacies of their multicultural identity development.

From the prize-winning author of The Ottomans, a myth-busting history of Muslim-Jewish relations, tracing fourteen centuries of cooperation and conflict.

"A revelatory picture of both coexistence and conflict." --Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem: The Biography

Today, the dominant narrative of the relationship between Jewish and Muslim peoples assumes a long history of violent hostility. In Children of Abraham, historian Marc David Baer lays this myth to rest, showing how Jews and Muslims lived together in the Middle East and Europe, more often in cooperation than in conflict, for more than a millennium. When Islam emerged in the seventh century, Muslims and Jews were bound by shared religious tenets and common cultural practices, and for centuries afterward, they were often allies.

Baer introduces readers to Muslim warriors fighting for a medieval Turkish Jewish kingdom on the Caspian Sea, Jewish viziers leading the Muslim sultan's troops in Spain, and Jewish literary lights and political party leaders in modern Egypt and Iraq. But Baer resists the alluring fable that Jews and Muslims ever lived in interfaith utopia, and he shows how European colonization and nationalism fed the emergence of modern antisemitism and Islamophobia and helped to drive these two peoples further and further apart.

Traversing the full spectrum of Jewish-Muslim relations, this is an urgent, essential history for understanding today's unending conflicts in the Middle East and beyond.

Experience firsthand encounters with the paranormal in libraries from around the world!

Have you ever noticed that libraries emanate a certain energy? If you've ever been alone in a library, chances are you've noticed a not-quite-empty feeling. This isn't surprising. From the constant flow of people, the echoing voices from authors on the shelves, and archives full of artifacts and records, libraries are inherently haunting spaces. There is no other place in society quite like the library, in fact, and their liminal nature might just serve as a beacon to the strange. It's no wonder that people experience anomalous phenomena in libraries around the world.

In this work, librarian and paranormal researcher Courtney M. Block collects these encounters and presents the personal paranormal experiences of library workers from around the world. Inside, you'll find firsthand reports from libraries in Canada, Australia, England, India, the United States, and many more! Featuring tales of strange figures seen through the stacks, barcode scanners sending messages, and beloved patrons who might still be visiting their favorite libraries in the afterlife, this book celebrates libraries and the ghosts within them.

We've re-edited our past Kyoto features into a comprehensive guidebook. From saba-zushi, Kyoto-style Chinese cuisine, public baths, gardens, bamboo crafts, traditional footwear, deep-roast coffee, dumplings, matcha, record shops, bookstores, bars, flea markets, antiques, yoshoku (Western-style Japanese food), oden, to river fish--this book is packed with all the great places and delicious foods we discovered by walking every corner of the city, almost as if we moved our editorial office to Kyoto. It also includes city guides by Kyoto experts such as Ukon Onoe, Akira Kawashima of Kirin, Bose from Scha Dara Parr, and W. David Marx. A definitive guide to Kyoto, made to keep.

"Jeff Abbott is one of the finest thriller writers working today." --Harlan Coben

The latest standalone thriller from New York Times bestseller Jeff Abbott

A disgraced intel officer anxious to redeem herself after a disastrous mission, January Holte vows to uncover the identity of a traitor who is selling her agency's secrets. The few clues she's found have led her to a sleepy river town: Lethey, Texas--and to Bill Connors, the one man who might know the truth.

July Whitlock, a rookie bodyguard, searches for his one and only client, who has suddenly disappeared. He follows a trail to Lethey to find his missing protectee--Bill Connors.

But Bill's friends and enemies in Lethey have secrets of their own. And as January and July ask questions no one wants to answer, they find a tangled web of murder, greed, and ambition--one that will kill anyone who tries to unravel its mysteries.

"A heartfelt and heartwarming story about finding your own peace . . . charming and lovely."--Sarah Beth Durst, New York Times bestselling author of The Spellshop

A young aspiring scholar is sent to research the mysteries of an adventurer's inn--only to uncover a centuries-old secret, while finding true friendship and a new home, in this uplifting cozy fantasy.

Mount Vengeance is legendary. For most, it's an adventure or a quest to prove themselves worthy of fame and glory. For Ainsworth Gladsly, it's the perfect thesis material.

Ainsworth is an ambitious research fellow and up-and-coming historian, finally ready to make his mark on the world. When his supervisor learns of the rumored Misnich Inn at the foot of Mount Vengeance, she sends Ainsworth to be the first to document the exploits of the bold adventurers who seek to face the perils of the mountain and the dragon said to inhabit it.

The inn is far from the sophisticated city life he's grown to love, but even as he grudgingly warms to its rustic charm--and its lovely innkeeper, Honey--the mystery of the mountain refuses to reveal itself. Worse, Ainsworth can't find evidence that anyone has ever undertaken the climb. Even the bravest warriors who stay at the inn turn away from Mount Vengeance the next day.

With Ainsworth's reputation on the line, he can't allow this mystery to remain unsolved--even if he has to push the adventurers up the mountain himself.

An urgent, globe-spanning exploration of languages at risk, from Kichwa to Ukrainian, that asks: What do we lose--culturally, politically, and personally--when a language is silenced?

"A vivid, hopeful portrait of how people around the world are staying connected to their linguistic roots."--Gretchen McCulloch, author of Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

Languages can be killed in many ways: war, the climate crisis, nationalism, and even quiet choices made at the dinner table. Around the world, an unprecedented shift is drawing speakers toward national and global lingua francas. For some, that means losing the language of parents or grandparents; for many, it is a permanent farewell to systems that carry knowledge, culture, and belonging. With half of our 7,000 languages due to disappear this century, linguicide is one of the most pressing cultural emergencies of our age.

In How to Kill a Language, journalist Sophia Smith Galer travels across continents and generations to chart this phenomenon. In Ecuador, she sees firsthand how shame deters parents from passing Kichwa onto their children. In Oman, she learns about languages with roots older than Arabic but never officially recognized. And in Italy, she searches for her Nonna's dialët, which is vanishing from diaspora communities and Italy itself. But languages can also be reclaimed: We meet the Karuk tribe of California, pioneering a grassroots language immersion program, and the storytellers challenging the criminalization of Kurdish. And in her discussion of Hebrew, Smith Galer reckons with the unintended consequences of raising a language seemingly from the grave.

Part investigation, part travelogue from a disappearing world, How to Kill a Language exposes the true costs of this mass extinction event. Brought to life by vivid storytelling and Smith Galer's own experience with language loss, it's a fierce rallying cry for a multilingual future.

A bold new history of women's health, brought to life through ancient women's stories of pregnancy and birth.

In the well-trod history of the Roman Empire, a pivotal moment has long gone unnoticed: It was in ancient Rome that medical men first set their sights on childbirth, the traditional domain of female midwives.

Taking us to the dawn of Western obstetrics, A Womb of One's Own offers a feminist account of how, against a long tradition of midwifery, male doctors began claiming authority in reproductive matters, with an emphasis on theoretical rather than practical knowledge. Their intrusion paved the way for the later criminalization of midwives and the cloaking of childbirth in secrecy and shame.

Yet communities of Roman women continued to help each other through the journey from preconception to postpartum, guided by their own experience and the expertise of midwives. Tara Mulder recovers stories of ancient women living and resisting as they sought autonomy over their bodies and their health. Recounting their experiences in vivid, intimate detail, she reveals how old our modern conflicts about birth truly are.

Pet Shop Boys--Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe--are the most successful duo in the history of the UK pop charts, worldwide superstars, and legends in dance music on both sides of the Atlantic. From their first international smash hit 'West End Girls' in 1985 to the present day, their 40-plus years of songwriting and recording have seen them release fifteen studio albums, more than seventy singles, scores of non-album tracks, and an ambitious string of outside projects that include a stage musical, a film score, a ballet, a 'classical' work for the BBC Proms, and numerous collaborations with other artists. This book, the second of two volumes, delves into their entire output, every song they've written or recorded during the second half of their astounding career--not just the hits, but also album tracks and obscurities, revealing the remarkable depth and breadth of their artistry. Compiled by an acknowledged expert on their music who has been writing about their career in detail for more than 20 years, this book clues you in, song by song, on their inspirations and influences, as well as the fascinating stories behind and ideas expressed throughout their richly varied catalogue.

Welcome to the hidden, squirming world of parasites--some of the most misunderstood creatures with whom we share the Earth (and our bodies).

"Astonishing, eye-opening, and inspiring." --Chloe Dalton, author of Raising Hare

There is the tapeworm, which can grow 120 feet in length within the gut of a whale; the tsetse fly, a notorious vector of disease that can pierce the skin even of crocodiles with its needle-like mouth; and the most universal symbol of parasitic behavior: the leech. Long villainized as, well, parasitic, these creatures are actually a vital part of every ecosystem--and Dr. Dino Martins, an award-winning entomologist and biologist from Kenya, has made it his life's mission to demystify these beguiling beings.

Hidden Creatures is a journey around the world ten times over--from Martins' home in the wilds of East Africa, to the rainforests of the Amazon, to cities and backyards across the globe--and along the way, we encounter the brilliant and eccentric experts who join Martins on his adventures to investigate not only parasites but their hosts, from hyraxes and hippos to, of course, humans. Immersive, driven by an utterly infectious curiosity, and sure to transform every reader's understanding of these organisms, Hidden Creatures has the magnetic force of a David Attenborough documentary and introduces a monumental, charismatic new voice in science writing.

A superstar podcast producer delivers a unique, laugh-out-loud, cry quietly invitation to examine our delusional obsessions with work in this eye-opening book--part memoir, part mentoring, part confessional guide--that dissects the emotional ties that bind us . . . to our desks.

For any type-A, high achiever out there, this is the book that sees you. And provides a cathartic, funny, emotionally charged insight into what drives the perfection-oriented.

Laura Mayer was born a girlboss. As a child in suburban Illinois, she played "V.P. of Sales" in her bedroom, dictating important memos to her twin brother and swapping Judy Blume for the buzzy business books of the day. While other kids dreamed of being pop stars or pro athletes, little Laura had a single-minded focus: the corporate ladder.

Some thirty years later, from a dizzying perch on that very ladder--as Executive Producer of Podcasts at ABC News, with such blockbuster shows as Revisionist History, Bad Blood, and Happier with Gretchen Rubin to her credit--and with an identity shaped by annual reviews, performance indicators, and "executive presence" (whatever that means) a disillusioned Laura is calling "bullshit" on the whole work-is-life thing. Sort of.

Tryhard is a gonzo memoir for 9-to-5 devotees who have read every business book and C-suite-or-bust instruction manual yet still find we're burnt out and unhappy. It is also a deeply personal and poignant examination of why we race at all. Laura detangles this delusional mess of priorities we've created, rejects the "boss-at-any-cost" culture, and invites us to laugh at ourselves (and her) along the way. She offers the modern office worker a new path forward through her own revelations, and implores us, for the love of God, to chill out a little bit.

This is Laura's messy, somewhat enlightened, possibly transformative, heart-wrenching and always entertaining story--a one-of-a-kind sightseeing trip on the Great American hamster wheel.

The electrifying and intimate first novel from the author of The Collection Plate and Fruit Punch, a searing story of a young Texan woman and the family she makes with two men

"A couple years after Noon and I fall in love, we fall in love with Micah--and a couple years after that, I have both of their babies. We choose, this land and this life. We share, ourselves and our sons. We name them, Morning and Night."

In her arresting first novel, Kendra Allen investigates love, partnership, motherhood, pleasure and the pursuit of freedom in one young woman's defiantly unconventional terms. Rae has just returned to her family after leaving for a stretch and suddenly - that family being her two male partners and the sons, named Morning and Night, that she has mothered with each of them. In the span of one year, they will experience unfathomable depths of devastation--and joys they could never predict.

Good Morning Means I Love You follows Rae as she makes choices around sex, mothering, and partnership that are as stunning to everyone else as they are natural to herself. With pain and pleasure, she watches as her children learn to walk and give language to the world as her lovers contend with their own ideas of masculinity, personhood, and fatherhood. Along the way, Rae begins to understand the hardest and most beautiful truth: that we have only so much time on earth to make love, to make family, and to make good on the promise of this one, short life.

This is a novel of the self in all its simultaneities and a living portrait of intimacy written in poetic, bold, and sensual prose that shines a light on what it means to redefine expectation.

How the iconic publication's unruly first decade rewrote the rules of journalism.

Rolling Stone's first decade was truly rock and roll: chaotic, wild, and unpredictable. Brand New Beat charts the origins and evolution of the magazine during its formative early years in San Francisco. Founded in 1967 by a 21-year-old college dropout, Rolling Stone and its editors were steeped in the Bay Area's counterculture and viewed rock and roll as the animating spirit of a social revolution. Reaching beyond music, the magazine delved into the tempestuous culture and politics of the time.

Acclaimed author Peter Richardson takes readers inside the iconic magazine during an era of legendary events, major cultural figures, and unforgettable music. Showing how Rolling Stone became a journalistic juggernaut--nurturing music-focused writers like Cameron Crowe, Lester Bangs, and Greil Marcus as well as New Journalism giants Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe--this book reveals how Rolling Stone both exemplified and critiqued the counterculture. Always more than the definitive rock magazine, Rolling Stone leveraged the power of popular music to deliver groundbreaking coverage of historic events, setting a new standard for the next generation of American journalism.

A professional thief takes the chance of a lifetime when he agrees to mastermind the raid of a tech billionaire's secret bunker in this action-packed heist thriller set in the heart of contemporary Los Angeles, from master of West Coast noir Gary Phillips. Perfect for fans of Sara Paretsky and Michael Connelly.

After years of close calls, O'Conner--the former "Warlord of Willow Ridge"--spends most of his time in semi-retirement, running his legitimate businesses and playing pickleball. Except for his longtime girlfriend, no one in his middle-class neighborhood is the wiser to his double life.

But O'Conner's past refuses to stay dead. When he's approached with a job he can't resist, he agrees to mastermind his biggest heist yet: a multi-million-dollar raid of a tech billionaire's secret bunker, hidden beneath his newly constructed basketball arena. As the job goes down, testing O'Conner's mettle with new challenges, the promise of the score attracts ghosts from his past he thought were long buried.

Interwoven with flashbacks to O'Conner's coming-of-age as an orphan in Los Angeles, this pulse-pounding story is both an homage to Donald Westlake's Parker series and a rich portrait of a morally gray thief at a crossroads.