"A Russian emigre who is a sexual adventurer, as well as a former criminal and drug addict, obtains a job as a butler and shares his harsh observations on wealthy New Yorkers" --

From Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellow Wil Haygood comes a mesmerizing inquiry into the life of Eugene Allen, the butler who ignited a nation's imagination and inspired a major motion picture: The Butler: A Witness to History, the highly anticipated film that stars six Oscar winners, including Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey (honorary and nominee), Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Redgrave, and Robin Williams; as well as Oscar nominee Terrence Howard, Mariah Carey, John Cusack, Lenny Kravitz, James Marsden, David Oyelowo, Alex Pettyfer, Alan Rickman, and Liev Schreiber. With a foreword by the Academy Award nominated director Lee Daniels, The Butler not only explores Allen's life and service to eight American Presidents, from Truman to Reagan, but also includes an essay, in the vein of James Baldwin’s jewel The Devil Finds Work, that explores the history of black images on celluloid and in Hollywood, and fifty-seven pictures of Eugene Allen, his family, the presidents he served, and the remarkable cast of the movie.

Master of vast rice and cotton plantations in South Carolina and Georgia, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Major Pierce Butler bequeathed his family and nation a legacy of slavery--an inheritance of immense wealth sown with the seeds of Civil War. In Major Butler's Legacy, Malcolm Bell charts the unfolding of the Butler patrimony, an epic story that reaches from the eve of the Revolution to the first decades of this century and includes in its course such figures as George Washington, Aaron Burr, Fanny Kemble, William Tecumseh Sherman, Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt, and Owen Wister.

Despite his challenges as a deaf-mute, Burnell Butler was one of those who dreamed of a better life in Texas. Lured by all the twenty-eighth state offered, Butler, his wife, twelve children, and seven slaves gambled big in 1852, migrating from Mississippi in covered wagons to the unknown prairies of Texas. It was there that the Butlers would begin a new chapter, fueled by their rugged, hard-working spirit. Charles Olmsted, a former award-winning sports writer, relies on extensive research and anecdotes to chronologically capture the fascinating history of the Butler family. Beginning with a cattle drive during the Civil War, Olmsted details how Burnells son, William G. Butler joined in helping build the foundation for the multi-billion dollar beef industry, rode the Chisholm Trail with his family from the 1860s to the 1880s as part of the transformation to cattle cars on railroads, and often settled disputes with gunfights. Included are excerpts from letters, newspapers, and books as well as details from land purchases, proclamations, and real-life accounts. The Good, the Bad, the Butlers shares the true story of a pioneer family as they built a new life in Karnes County, Texas, and attempted to survive all the challenges of living in a dangerous and dusty land.

Longlisted for the Reading the West Book Award For the right price, you’d risk your life. Wouldn’t you? Cole, Bart, and Teddy, the three principals of True Triangle Construction, are hired to finish a project for a mysteriously wealthy homeowner. The grand house is unlike anything they’ve worked on before, and they’re sure it’ll put their name on the map. But the owner is intent on having it built in a few months, an impossible task made irresistible by an exorbitant bonus. Up against the critical deadline and the threat of a harsh Wyoming winter, the trio will do anything to get the money, even if it means risking their lives…or each other’s. With heart-pounding danger and high-stakes action, Godspeed is a gripping thriller about greed and violence that asks: How much is never enough?

'Terrific. So funny' Zadie Smith 'Monstrously depressing but so comic and well observed that I didn't really mind .... It is great' Dolly Alderton 'A dark comedy of female rage' Catherine Lacey 'Brilliant. For fans of Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation' Pandora Sykes 'Funny, shocking, clever, and hugely entertaining' Roddy Doyle 'A definitive work of milennial literature' Jia Tolentino 'The best thing I've read in years' Emma Jane Unsworth 'Vicious ... hilariously spot on' Guardian In a windowless office, a woman explains something from her real, nonwork life - about the frustration and indignity of returning her online shopping - to her colleagues. One wears a topknot. Another checks her pedometer. Watching them all is Millie. Thirty-years-old and an eternal temp, she says almost nothing, almost all of the time. But then the possibility of a permanent job arises. Will it bring the new life Millie is envisioning - one involving a gym membership, a book club, and a lot less beer and TV - finally within reach? Or will it reveal just how hollow that vision has become? 'Made me laugh and cry enough times to feel completely reborn' The Paris Review 'A definite work of millennial literature. Wretchedly riveting, with the sick, obsessive pleasure of looking under a bandage at a wound' The New Yorker 'So darkly funny and acutely observed that it feels like a documentary' Andrew McMillan 'Anyone who has ever felt like their life is going nowhere - and to make it worse, going nowhere in an achingly slow manner - will recognize themselves' Nylon