An NPR Best Book of the Year Written during the height of the 1970s Italian domestic terror, a cult novel, with distinct echoes of Lovecraft and Borges, makes its English-language debut. In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one another’s personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether." But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Library’s users learn too late that a malicious force has consumed their privacy and their sanity. As the city of Turin suffers a twenty-day "phenomenon of collective psychosis" culminating in nightly massacres that hundreds of witnesses cannot explain, the Library is shut down and erased from history. That is, until a lonely salaryman decides to investigate these mysterious events, which the citizenry of Turin fear to mention. Inevitably drawn into the city’s occult netherworld, he unearths the stuff of modern nightmares: what’s shared can never be unshared. An allegory inspired by the grisly neo-fascist campaigns of its day, The Twenty Days of Turin has enjoyed a fervent cult following in Italy for forty years. Now, in a fretful new age of "lone-wolf" terrorism fueled by social media, we can find uncanny resonances in Giorgio De Maria’s vision of mass fear: a mute, palpitating dread that seeps into every moment of daily existence. With its stunning anticipation of the Internet—and the apocalyptic repercussions of oversharing—this bleak, prescient story is more disturbingly pertinent than ever. Brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Ramon Glazov, The Twenty Days of Turin establishes De Maria’s place among the literary ranks of Italo Calvino and beside classic horror masters such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Hauntingly imaginative, with visceral prose that chills to the marrow, the novel is an eerily clairvoyant magnum opus, long overdue but ever timely.

On July 28, 1851, Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife Sophia and daughters Una and Rose left their house in Western Massachusetts to visit relatives near Boston. Hawthorne and his five-year-old son Julian stayed behind. How father and son got along over the next three weeks is the subject of this tender and funny extract from Hawthorne's notebooks. "At about six o'clock I looked over the edge of my bed and saw that Julian was awake, peeping sideways at me." Each day starts early and is mostly given over to swimming and skipping stones, berry-picking and subduing armies of thistles. There are lots of questions ("It really does seem as if he has baited me with more questions, references, and observations, than mortal father ought to be expected to endure"), a visit to a Shaker community, domestic crises concerning a pet rabbit, and some poignant moments of loneliness ("I went to bed at about nine and longed for Phoebe"). And one evening Mr. Herman Melville comes by to enjoy a late-night discussion of eternity over cigars. With an introduction by Paul Auster that paints a beautifully observed, intimate picture of the Hawthornes at home, this little-known, true-life story by a great American writer emerges from obscurity to shine a delightful light upon family life—then and now.

The story of the last world war, as told by Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz himself. His memoir covers his early career with submarines in the First World War and follows both his successes and failures through the Second World War, with great detail on the way the U-boat campaign was waged, as told by the man who invented U-boat tactics. Doenitz includes details of the U-boat campaigns during the Second World War as well as the opinions, ideas and commentary on the period. Of particular interest are the comments regarding British and American conduct during the war. An important social document, and an invaluable source for any student of the last war. He became the last Führer of Germany after Hitler's suicide in May 1945 and the book’s subtitle, Ten Years and Twenty Days, is a direct reference to the time Karl Doenitz spent in Spandau Prison having been convicted of war crimes following trial at Nuremberg.

Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award in Outdoor Literature It was 1993, Suzanne Roberts had just finished college, and when her friend suggested they hike California’s John Muir Trail, the adventure sounded like the perfect distraction from a difficult home life and thoughts about the future. But she never imagined that the twenty-eight-day hike would change her life. Part memoir, part nature writing, part travelogue, Almost Somewhere is Roberts’s account of that hike. John Muir wrote of the Sierra Nevada as a “vast range of light,” and that was exactly what Roberts was looking for. But traveling with two girlfriends, one experienced and unflappable and the other inexperienced and bulimic, she quickly discovered that she needed a new frame of reference. Her story of a month in the backcountry—confronting bears, snowy passes, broken equipment, injuries, and strange men—is as much about finding a woman’s way into outdoor experience as it is about the natural world Roberts so eloquently describes. Candid and funny, and finally, wise, Almost Somewhere not only tells the whimsical coming-of-age story of a young woman ill-prepared for a month in the mountains but also reflects a distinctly feminine view of nature. This new edition includes an afterword by the author looking back on the ways both she and the John Muir Trail have changed over the past thirty years, as well as book club and classroom discussion questions and photographs from the trip.

​“Truly thrilling. Daniel Levin brilliantly conveys both the menace and the evil of Middle Eastern intrigue, and some victories of human kindness over cruelty and despair.” —Daniel Kahneman, New York Times bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow “In laying bare the raw human toll of the ferocious and cruel Syrian conflict, Proof of Life asks the reader to make a choice between cynicism and compassion.” —Ayaan Hirsi Ali, New York Times bestselling author of Infidel Daniel Levin was at his office when he got a call from an acquaintance with an urgent, cryptic request to meet in Paris. A young man had gone missing in Syria. No government, embassy, or intelligence agency would help. Could he? Would he? So begins a suspenseful, shocking, and at times brutal true story of one man’s search to find a missing person in Syria over twenty tense days. Levin, a lawyer turned armed-conflict negotiator, uses his extensive contacts to chase leads throughout the Middle East, meeting with powerful sheikhs, drug lords, and sex traffickers in his pursuit of the truth. He also discovers remarkable people who retain their essential goodness and spirit in the face of adversity. In Proof of Life, Levin dives deep into a shadowy world where few have access—an underground industry of war where everything is for sale, including arms, drugs, and even people. He offers a fascinating study of how people use leverage to get what they want from one another and where no one does a favor without wanting something in return, whether it’s immediately or years down the road. Proof of Life is a fast-paced thriller wrapped in a memoir, a must-read for anyone interested in power dynamics, international affairs, the Middle East, or our growing number of forever wars.

The harrowing true story of a high-school senior, her parents, her secret online relationship with a handsome, manipulative stranger, and her well-laid plan to leave home and country to marry a man in Kosovo she thought she loved. The Baldwins were a strong, tight-knit family living in Texas. When their seventeen-year-old daughter, Mackenzie, met Aadam in an online chat room, she fell for his good looks, his charm, and his respectful conversation. He lived in Kosovo, and they began talking regularly. The more attached Mackenzie became to Aadam, the more detached she became from her family. Mackenzie’s parents, John and Stephanie Baldwin, had no clue there was a man behind their daughter’s sudden change in personality, her surprising interest in Islam, and her withdrawal from friends and family. When Mackenzie’s attachment to Aadam increased and they became “engaged,” Mackenzie started making plans to fly secretly to Kosovo and marry Aadam. But twenty-five days before Mackenzie was scheduled to leave the country, three friends in whom Mackenzie had confided told Mackenzie’s father. Through the help of their pastor, John Baldwin contacted the FBI and asked for help. The FBI did not believe Aadam was involved with ISIS or that he was trying to radicalize her, but they were concerned about Aadam’s intentions, as that part of Kosovo was known for sex-trafficking and money scams. With just 72 hours left before Mackenzie’s planned departure, three FBI agents confronted her and urged her to stay. Told from the viewpoint of both father and daughter, Almost Gone allows us to walk with this family through Mackenzie’s network of lies and deceit and John and Stephanie’s escalating bewilderment and alarm. More than a cautionary tale, this is the story of unconditional parental love and unwavering faith, and how God helped a family save their daughter from a relationship that jeopardized not only her happiness, but also her safety.