One of Buzzfeed's 25 New And Upcoming Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down and one of LitHub's Best New Nonfiction to Read This November "The Uninnocent is so elegantly crafted that the pleasure of reading it nearly overrides its devastating subject matter . . . a story of radical empathy, a triumph of care and forgiveness." --Stephanie Danler, author of Stray and Sweetbitter A harrowing intellectual reckoning with crime, mercy, justice and heartbreak through the lens of a murder On a Thursday morning in June 2010, Katharine Blake's sixteen-year-old cousin walked to a nearby bike path with a boxcutter, and killed a young boy he didn’t know. It was a psychological break that tore through his brain, and into the hearts of those who loved both boys—one brutally killed, the other sentenced to die at Angola, one of the country’s most notorious prisons. In The Uninnocent, Blake, a law student at Stanford at the time of the crime, wrestles with the implications of her cousin’s break, as well as the broken machinations of America’s justice system. As her cousin languished in a cell on death row, where he was assigned for his own protection, Blake struggled to keep her faith in the system she was training to join. Consumed with understanding her family’s new reality, Blake became obsessed with heartbreak, seeing it everywhere: in her cousin’s isolation, in the loss at the center of the crime, in the students she taught at various prisons, in the way our justice system breaks rather than mends, in the history of her parents and their violent childhoods. As she delves into a history of heartbreak—through science, medicine, and literature—and chronicles the uneasy yet ultimately tender bond she forms with her cousin, Blake asks probing questions about justice, faith, inheritance, family, and, most of all, mercy. Sensitive, singular, and powerful, effortlessly bridging memoir, essay, and legalese, The Uninnocent is a reckoning with the unimaginable, unforgettable, and seemly irredeemable. With curiosity and vulnerability, Blake unravels a distressed tapestry, finding solace in both its tearing and its mending.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Bradford Morrow’s stories have garnered him awards such as the O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes and have given him a devoted following. Now gathered here for the first time is a collection of his most darkly comic, masterfully written tales. A young man whose childhood hobby of collecting sea shells and birds’ nests takes a sinister turn when he becomes obsessed with acquiring his brother’s girlfriend, in “The Hoarder” (selected as one of the Best American Noir Stories of the Century). An archeologist summoned to attend his beloved sister’s funeral is astonished to discover it is not she who has died, but someone much closer to him, in “Gardener of Heart.” A blind motivational speaker has a crisis of faith when he suddenly regains his sight, only to discover life was better lived in the dark, in “Amazing Grace.” In all of these stories, readers will find themselves enthralled and captivated by one of the major voices in contemporary American fiction.

Words from the Heart of the UN innocent is a poetry book thatwas written to represent change. It contains several different stylesof poems which the author hopes the reader will find unique andsoul searching. It is a delightful and positive book of poetry thatgives everyone who reads it something to think about. Since it isdedicated to change and hope, the author is donating some of theproceeds from book sales to the American Cancer Society in hopesto aid in the fight against such a deadly disease.

A Black immortal in 1930's Los Angeles must recover the memory of her past in order to discover who she truly is in this extraordinarily affecting novel for readers of N. K. Jemisin and Octavia E. Butler. Lou, a young Black woman, wakes up in an alley in 1930s Los Angeles with no memory of how she got there or where she’s from. Taken in by a caring foster family, Lou dedicates herself to her education while trying to put her mysterious origins behind her. She’ll go on to become the first Black female journalist at the Los Angeles Times, but Lou’s extraordinary life is about to take an even more remarkable turn. When she befriends a firefighter at a downtown boxing gym, Lou is shocked to realize that though she has no memory of meeting him, she’s been drawing his face for years. Increasingly certain that their paths previously crossed—and beset by unexplainable flashes from different eras haunting her dreams—Lou begins to believe she may be an immortal sent here for a very important reason, one that only others like her can explain. Setting out to investigate the mystery of her existence, Lou must make sense of the jumble of lifetimes calling to her, just as new forces threaten the existence of those around her. Immersed in the rich historical tapestry of Los Angeles—Prohibition, the creation of Route 66, and the collapse of the St. Francis Dam—The Perishing is a stunning examination of love and justice through the eyes of one miraculous woman whose fate seems linked to the city she comes to call home.

“A delightful read [and] an important addition to human-animal relations studies.” —Anthropology Matters What does it mean to live and die in relation to other animals? Animal Intimacies posits this central question alongside the intimate—and intense—moments of care, kinship, violence, politics, indifference, and desire that occur between human and non-human animals. Built on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the mountain villages of India’s Central Himalayas, Radhika Govindrajan’s book explores the number of ways that human and animal interact to cultivate relationships as interconnected, related beings. Whether it is through the study of the affect and ethics of ritual animal sacrifice, analysis of the right-wing political project of cow-protection, or examination of villagers’ talk about bears who abduct women and have sex with them, Govindrajan illustrates that multispecies relatedness relies on both difference and ineffable affinity between animals. Animal Intimacies breaks substantial new ground in animal studies, and Govindrajan’s detailed portrait of the social, political and religious life of the region will be of interest to cultural anthropologists and scholars of South Asia as well. “Immerses us in passionate case studies on the multiple relationships between Kumaoni villagers and animals in Uttarakhand.” —European Bulletin of Himalayan Research “A memorable and innovative ethnography.” —Piers Locke, University of Canterbury

Death has come to court.As the plague rages outside the palace walls, tormented screams and pleas for help go unanswered by the members of the French court sheltered within the castle. Mary Queen of Scots feels safe-but she doesn't know that someone using the secret tunnels may bring the threat inside. Mary worries that those she loves--her husband Francis, and friends Lola, Bash, and Kenna--remain stranded beyond the gates, among the sick and dying. The infection doesn't distinguish between royals and commoners. Can they survive? And when Nostradamus receives a disturbing vision that portends Mary's own death, she wonders--how long will she reign?

DIVTwo Los Alamos boys forge a friendship in the shadow of their parents’ history-changing work developing nuclear weapons/div DIVIn many ways, Los Alamos is an ideal place for best friends Brice McCarthy and Kip Calder to grow up. There’s wilderness to explore; brilliant and fascinating people, including their own parents and neighbors; and a booming wartime economy. Still, the town was built for one purpose: to manufacture a weapon capable of total annihilation. As the two boys grow and the United States enters the Vietnam War, the psychic fallout of their parents’ deeds pushes Brice and Kip toward opposite sides in the conflict—one, a soldier; the other, an antiwar activist—even as they come to love the same woman./divDIV /divDIVTrinity Fields is a sweeping saga of American life in the atomic age that brilliantly illuminates the soul of a nation./div