Original, witty, and subtle, these stories feature characters who must navigate life in a small town, and will appeal to fans of Miriam Toews and Kathleen Winter. This collection of beautifully crafted short stories features complex characters whose internal struggles manifest in their most intimate relationships, told by a writer with a compassionate eye. A narrator watches her social sphere deteriorate after her boyfriend’s rough-housing leads to his best friend’s tragic paralysis. Childhood sweethearts, finally united later in life, find that they are not the soulmates they believed themselves to be. After her mother becomes depressed after a miscarriage, a daughter takes on the role of caregiver. Set in fictional small rural towns, these stories explore young people who grow up against a religious backdrop, mothers who baulk against society’s imposed identities, and characters who explore their individual roles within their families as they navigate sexuality, suffering, and shame. These narrators are blunt and sometimes obsessive, but bravely optimistic as they strive to be the best versions of themselves. As her characters struggle to discern deception from reality, using their limited resources to parse charm and charisma from credibility, Kuipers understated style is full of dark wit and detailed observation.

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Beautiful World, Where Are You is a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

“A seductive page-turner that ripples with an undercurrent of suspense.” —The Boston Globe “A seamless triumph of storytelling.” —Gail Godwin, author of Flora It’s 1969, and sixteen-year-old Lucy is about to run away with a much older man to live off the grid in rural Pennsylvania, a rash act that will have frightening repercussions for both her and her older sister, Charlotte. As Lucy’s default caretaker for most of their lives, Charlotte has always been burdened by having to be the responsible one, but never more so than when Lucy’s dream of a rural paradise turns into a nightmare. With precise, haunting prose and indelible characters, Cruel Beautiful World examines the infinitesimal distance between seduction and love, loyalty and duty, and most of all, tells a universal story of sisterhood and the complicated legacy of family. “Absorbing.” —The New York Times Book Review “Captivating.”—Los Angeles Times “Engrossing.” —People “Page-turning suspense.” —New York Journal of Books “Riveting.” —Marie Claire “Marvelous.”—The National Book Review “Hauntingly brilliant.” —Coastal Living “Gripping and suspenseful.” —BookPage “Moving.” —The Washington Post

As seen on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday A beacon of hope in the face of our current world crises, this uplifting book demonstrates how embracing our interconnectedness is key to world transformation In a time of social and ecological crisis, what can we as individuals do to make the world a better place? This inspirational and thought-provoking book serves as an empowering antidote to the cynicism, frustration, paralysis, and overwhelm so many of us are feeling, replacing it with a grounding reminder of what’s true: we are all connected, and our small, personal choices bear unsuspected transformational power. By fully embracing and practicing this principle of interconnectedness—called interbeing—we become more effective agents of change and have a stronger positive influence on the world. Throughout the book, Eisenstein relates real-life stories showing how small, individual acts of courage, kindness, and self-trust can change our culture’s guiding narrative of separation, which, he shows, has generated the present planetary crisis. He brings to conscious awareness a deep wisdom we all innately know: until we get ourselves in order, any action we take—no matter how good our intentions—will ultimately be wrong-headed and wrong-hearted. Above all, Eisenstein invites us to embrace a radically different understanding of cause and effect, sounding a clarion call to surrender our old worldview of separation, so that we can finally create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. With chapters covering separation, interbeing, despair, hope, pain, pleasure, consciousness, and many more, the book invites us to let the old Story of Separation fall away so that we can stand firmly in a Story of Interbeing.

Offers a book about facing one's fears as a young girl ventures out of her home to take part in an array of new experiences and adventures. 4 yrs+

Lately I feel like an astronaut out on a space walk – constantly praying the tube attaching me to the ship doesn't snap and send me flying into outer darkness. The only good thing about having a mother with cancer is that people are willing to let you get away with pretty much anything. Like failing a Latin test. Or being late to class. Or skipping tennis practice. But there's one thing Edna's fairly certain even she can't get away with – her burgeoning romance with Mr. Howland, her fourth-period Ceramics teacher. That day when Mr. Howland kissed her in his office, she felt like she was floating, like she could levitate right out of her skin. It's Mr. Howland, with his tousled blond hair and his beautiful guitar and his spot-on impression of Dracula, who makes Edna feel happy for the first time in a long time. But what does Mr. Howland want? And how does Edna really feel – about her mother, about Mr. Howland, about moving forward? Set in New Jersey in the 1980s, this is a piercing story about decisions both heart-wrenching and wonderful, and how life and love so often lead us down unexpected paths.

"A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard"--