Colum McCann's Everything in This Country Must, a writer of fierce originality and haunting lyricism, turns to the troubles in Northern Ireland and reveals the reverberations of political tragedy in the most intimate lives of men and women, parents and children. In the title story, a teenage girl must choose between allegiance to her Catholic father and gratitude to the British soldiers who have saved the family's horse. The young hero of Hunger Strike, a novella, tries to replicate the experience of his uncle, an IRA prisoner on hunger strike. And in Wood, a small boy does his part for the Protestant marches, concealing his involvement from his blind father. Writing in a new form, but with the skill and force and sparkling poetry that have brought him international acclaim, Colum McCann has delivered masterful, memorable short fiction.

Scholars and preachers have been approaching Islam and Christianity for centuries as two religions. But what if we set that approach aside and try something new? What if we look at the stories that Islam and Christianity tell? In this book we do exactly that: we go back to the beginning of the stories - Creation - and work our way forward to humanity, Israel, the founders (Jesus and Muhammad), why they founded their communities (the Church and the Umma), what those communities are doing in the world today, and then look down the road to the end of the two stories of everything with their different accounts of the final judgment. Approaching Islam and Christianity as two stories of everything, or metanarratives, produces fresh new insights relevant to any person - whether Christian, Muslim, or of no religion - concerned with the question of how Islam, Christianity, and modernity interact and sometimes clash with each other.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light comes a “powerful” (The Washington Post) novel about the choices that alter the course of our lives. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She’s on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: Prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong. Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, their beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, in which she helps ease the transition between life and death for her clients. But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a career Dawn once studied for but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made. After the crash landing, the airline ensures that the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation to wherever they want to go. The obvious destination is to fly home, but she could take another path: return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways—the first known map of the afterlife. As the story unfolds, Dawn’s two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried with them. Dawn must confront the questions she’s never truly asked: What does a life well lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices . . . or do our choices make us? And who would you be if you hadn’t turned out to be the person you are right now?

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • "Unforgettable tales of families and lovers—from Haiti to Miami, Brooklyn, and beyond—often struggling with grief, loss, and missed connections.” —Vanity Fair • A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick! A romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends. A marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences. A young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival. Two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives. A baby’s christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new. A man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose. Set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, here are eight emotionally absorbing stories, rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity. At once wide in scope and intimate, Everything Inside explores with quiet power and elegance the forces that pull us together or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.

“Incredibly entertaining and so damn illuminating” (Entertainment Weekly), Dennard Dayle’s electrifying and wholly original collection of satirical stories create a bitingly funny portrait of American racism, capitalism, and politics. A New Yorker Best Book of the Year “Slyly defiant and blazingly imaginative . . . Dayle’s a genre-shattering writer, whose wit and intellect never cease to entertain.” —New York Times bestselling author Paul Beatty Framed as a reference work of humorous “entries” that offer trenchant social commentary, Everything Abridged presages a dark vision of the near future but tells jokes in the face of it: An intelligence agency operative uncovers a conspiracy to generate conspiracies and realizes his participation in the scheme. A Caribbean monarch meets four decades of American presidents and adjusts his country’s foreign policy accordingly. Experiment participants are asked to bring back a gun as quickly as possible. A copywriter on a space colony advertises a weapon with the potential to destroy his home during an intergalactic war. These and other linked stories, many of which feature a speculative bent—about being Black in America, law enforcement practices in an android society, Olympic speed walking, consumerism, nuclear war, and more—are interspersed with hilarious, one-line definitions for words ranging from abolition to zygote, creating a sharply humorous portrait of American inequality. With his singular wit, sharp prose, and shrewd observations, Dennard Dayle captures the struggles his characters face to keep hold of their sanity in a society collapsing into chaos and absurdity.

These two stories by Koos Rozemond, with English translations by Aart van den End, manage to be both droll and comedic, subtle and sophisticated. In each story, the narrator creates a central character as a foil for his rich imagination. Can you continue a conversation-game after an interruption of more than two decades? In Spring in Prague the narrator and his Moslem friend Shyam, the publisher of Progressive Islam and a conspirator in an Indonesian coup, meet in Prague after 25 years of silence. Shyam cannot guess that an unusual verbal surprise awaits him. Riks, the perpetual defendant of Riks, is, we learn, vulnerable to questionable company, which causes the narrator to observe, That alone is not so bad, but if youOCOre in the wrong social class itOCOll ruin you.OCO For an author bio and photo, reviews, and a reading sample, visit bosonbooks.com."

A thoughtful picture book illustrating the power of small acts of kindness, from the award-winning author of Sophie's Squash.