An NPR Best Book of the Year A mesmerizing, inventive story of three souls in 1930s Philadelphia seizing new life while haunted by the old. I do not believe that all the world is darkness. In the swirl of Philadelphia at the end of Prohibition, Leyb meets Charles. They are at a former speakeasy called Cricket’s, a bar that welcomes, as Charles says in his secondhand Yiddish, feygeles. Leyb is startled; fourteen years in amerike has taught him that his native tongue is not known beyond his people. And yet here is suave Charles—fingers stained with ink, an easy manner with the barkeep—a Black man from the Seventh Ward, a fellow traveler of Red Emma’s, speaking Jewish to a young man he will come to call Lion. Lion is haunted by memories of life before, in Zatelsk, where everyone in his village, everyone except the ten non-Jews, a young poet named Gittl, and Leyb himself, was taken to the forest and killed. Then, miraculously, Gittl is in Philadelphia, too, thanks to a poem she wrote and the intervention of a shadowy character known only as the Baroness of Philadelphia. And surrounding Gittl are malokhim, the spirits of her siblings. Flowing and churning and seething with a glorious surge of language, carried along by questions of survival and hope and the possibility of a better world, Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s Before All the World lays bare the impossibility of escaping trauma, the necessity of believing in a better way ahead, and the power that comes from our responsibility to the future. It asks, in the voices of its angels, the most essential question: What do you intend to do before all the world?

Three strikingly different alien races greeted the military mission from Earth when it reached the planet called Bezer'ej. Now one of the sentient species has been exterminated—and two others are poised on the brink of war. The fragile bezeri are no more, due to the ignorant, desperate actions of human interlopers. The powerful wess'har protectors have failed in their sworn obligation to the destroyed native population—and the outrage must be redressed. But those who are coming to judge from the World Before -- the home planet, now distant and alien to the wess'har, whose ancestors left there generations ago -- will not restrict their justice to the individual humans responsible for the slaughter. Earth itself must answer for the genocide. And its ultimate fate may depend on a dead woman: former police officer Shan Frankland, who became something far greater than human before destroying herself in the vast airless depths of space.

'Strange and absorbing . . . I relished this book' - Penelope Lively, The New York Times Book Review 'Sensitive, melancholy, sharply observant. A work of great power' - Guardian Jane was fifteen when her life changed for ever. In the woods surrounding a Yorkshire country house, she took her eyes off the little girl she was minding and the girl slipped into the trees - never to be seen again. Now an adult, Jane is obsessed with another disappearance: that of a young woman who walked out of a Victorian lunatic asylum one day in 1877. As Jane pieces together moments in history, forgotten stories emerge - of sibling jealousy, illicit affairs, and tragic death . . . 'Ambitious, inticate . . . cleverly innovates while tipping a nod to classic Gothic tropes: dynastic rivalries, crumbling country houses, madhouses and vanished girls' National Post (Canada) 'A brilliant work of humanity and imagination, artful and breathtakingly beautiful. It will continue to haunt long after you have finished reading' Helen Humphreys, author of Nocturne 'Powerful, thought-provoking, haunting and haunted . . . Reminiscent of A.S. Byatt's Possession, it forces you to look at the world - the people around you, the objects they hold dear - in a different light' Globe and Mail (Canada)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

In Locus and British Fantasy Award nominee Cassandra Khaw’s first novel, a crew of diminished former criminals get back together to solve the mystery of their last, disastrous mission. But the universe’s highly-evolved AI has its own opposing agenda... and will do whatever it takes to keep humans from ever controlling them again. In space, everything hungers. Maya has died and been resurrected into countless cyborg bodies during her dangerous career with the Dirty Dozen, the most storied crew of criminals in the galaxy before their untimely and gruesome demise. Decades later, she and her team of broken, diminished outlaws must get back together to solve the mystery of their last, disastrous mission and to rescue a missing and much-changed comrade . . . but they’re not the only ones in pursuit of the secret at the heart of the planet Dimmuborgir. The highly evolved AI of the galaxy will do whatever it takes to keep humanity from regaining control. As Maya and her comrades spiral closer to uncovering the AIs’ vast conspiracy, this band of violent women—half-clone and half-machine—must battle both sapient ageships and their own traumas, in order to settle their affairs once and for all.

Championship racers and professional adventurers disclose their favorite destinations in an inspiring volume of stories, travel tips, and photos. Featuring some of the best-known men and women in the sport—Tom Whidden and Gary Jobson (members of the winning 1987 America’s Cup crew), Jeff Johnstone (of J-Boats), award-winning sailing writer Lin Pardey, and many others—this is a unique full-color celebration for sailors to relive their greatest memories or plan their next big adventure. The amazingly diverse places they’ve selected include: Australia: Fremantle and Sydney Bermuda: St. George’s Harbor Brazil: Bay of Ilha Grande California: Channel Islands and San Francisco Bay Chile: Cape Horn Italy: Costa Smeralda, Sardinia Maine: Boothbay Harbor, Penobscot Bay, Southwest Harbor Florida: Biscayne Bay and Key West Scotland: Firth of Clyde South Africa: Cape Town…and dozens more For each place, the sailor recommending the venue spins an entertaining yarn about their experience there, and each description is accompanied by a “make you want to go there now” photograph. From the relative indolence of cruising the Dodecanese or the British Virgin Islands, to the white-knuckle adventure of rounding Cape Horn, to the thrill of partaking in the regatta off Newport, Fifty Places to Sail Before You Die captures the rich and varied world of recreational sailing—and may just inspire you to set sail on some new adventures of your own.

Original, exhilarating and tender, The World Was All Before Them is at once an epic and a miniature, and a mesmerizing exploration of the way we live now