Rachel Ake - Designer

Courage Is Contagious: And Other Reasons to Be Grateful for Michelle Obama

A collection of essays celebrating the influential former first lady, by an array of acclaimed contributors and with a foreword by Lena Dunham Michelle Obama’s legacy transcends categorization. Mrs. Obama was not only our first black first lady; she was President Obama’s equal partner in marriage and parenthood and a tireless advocate for women’s rights, education, healthy eating, and exercise... read more

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar •... read more

32 Yolks: From My Mother's Table to Working the Line

Eric Ripert, Veronica Chambers

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Hailed by Anthony Bourdain as “heartbreaking, horrifying, poignant, and inspiring,” 32 Yolks is the brave and affecting coming-of-age story about the making of a French chef, from the culinary icon behind the renowned New York City restaurant Le Bernardin.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR In an industry where celebrity chefs are known as much for their ... read more

Green: A Novel

Sam Graham-Felsen

A coming-of-age novel about race, privilege, and the struggle to rise in America, written by a former Obama campaign staffer and propelled by an exuberant, unforgettable narrator. “A riot of language that’s part hip-hop, part nerd boy, and part pure imagination.”—The Boston GlobeBoston, 1992. David Greenfeld is one of the few white kids at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School. Everybody ... read more

Sour Heart: Stories

Jenny Zhang

A sly debut story collection that conjures the experience of adolescence through the eyes of Chinese American girls growing up in New York City—for readers of Zadie Smith, Helen Oyeyemi, and Junot DíazA fresh new voice emerges with the arrival of Sour Heart, establishing Jenny Zhang as a frank and subversive interpreter of the immigrant experience in America. Her stories cut across generations... read more

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

Kurt Andersen

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The single most important explanation, and the fullest explanation, of how Donald Trump became president of the United States . . . nothing less than the most important book that I have read this year.”—Lawrence O’Donnell How did we get here? In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this post-fact... read more

Shame and Wonder: Essays

David Searcy

For fans of John Jeremiah Sullivan, Leslie Jamison, Geoff Dyer, and W. G. Sebald, the twenty-one essays in David Searcy’s debut collection are captivating, daring—and completely unlike anything else you’ve read before. Forging connections between the sublime and the mundane, this is a work of true grace, wisdom, and joy.Expansive in scope but deeply personal in perspective, the pieces in Shame... read more

Everything Belongs to Us: A Novel

Yoojin Grace Wuertz

Two young women of vastly different means each struggle to find her own way during the darkest hours of South Korea’s “economic miracle” in a striking debut novel for readers of Anthony Marra and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie. Seoul, 1978. At South Korea’s top university, the nation’s best and brightest compete to join the professional elite of an authoritarian regime. Success could lead to a life... read more

The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict

Austin Reed

The earliest known prison memoir by an African American writer—recently discovered and authenticated by a team of Yale scholars—sheds light on the longstanding connection between race and incarceration in America.“[A] harrowing [portrait] of life behind bars . . . part confession, part jeremiad, part lamentation, part picaresque novel (reminiscent, at times, of Dickens and Defoe).”—Michiko Kak... read more

The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict

Austin Reed

The earliest known prison memoir by an African American writer—recently discovered and authenticated by a team of Yale scholars—sheds light on the longstanding connection between race and incarceration in America.“[A] harrowing [portrait] of life behind bars . . . part confession, part jeremiad, part lamentation, part picaresque novel (reminiscent, at times, of Dickens and Defoe).”—Michiko Kak... read more

Good Food, Good Life: 130 Simple Recipes You'll Love to Make and Eat

Curtis Stone

The host of FOX’s My Kitchen Rules shares 130 recipes that bring back the pleasure of cooking and the wonder of connection into your home. For internationally known chef Curtis Stone, cooking is a pleasurable journey, not just a destination. In this wonderful book featuring his favorite dishes, Curtis inspires us to turn meal preparation into a joy rather a chore through delicious recipes, mou... read more

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Yiyun Li

In her first memoir, award-winning novelist Yiyun Li offers a journey of recovery through literature: a letter from a writer to like-minded readers. “A meditation on the fact that literature itself lives and gives life.”—Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead“What a long way it is from one life to another, yet why write if not for that distance?”Startlingly original and shining with quiet wisdom... read more

The 40s: The Story of a Decade (Modern Library Paperbacks)

The New Yorker Magazine

Including contributions by W. H. Auden • Elizabeth Bishop • John Cheever • Janet Flanner • John Hersey • Langston Hughes • Shirley Jackson • A. J. Liebling • William Maxwell • Carson McCullers • Joseph Mitchell • Vladimir Nabokov • Ogden Nash • John O’Hara • George Orwell • V. S. Pritchett • Lillian Ross • Stephen Spender • Lionel Trilling • Rebecca West • E. B. White • Williams Carlos William... read more

The 50s: The Story of a Decade (Modern Library Paperbacks)

The New Yorker Magazine

Including contributions by Elizabeth Bishop • Truman Capote • John Cheever • Roald Dahl • Janet Flanner • Nadine Gordimer • A. J. Liebling • Dwight Macdonald • Joseph Mitchell • Marianne Moore • Vladimir Nabokov • Sylvia Plath • V. S. Pritchett • Adrienne Rich • Lillian Ross • Philip Roth • Anne Sexton • James Thurber • John Updike • Eudora Welty • E. B. White • Edmund Wilson And featuring new... read more

The 60s: The Story of a Decade

The New Yorker Magazine

The third installment of a fascinating decade-by-decade series, this anthology collects historic New Yorker pieces from the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century—including work by James Baldwin, Pauline Kael, Sylvia Plath, Roger Angell, Muriel Spark, and John Updike—alongside new assessments of the 1960s by some of today’s finest writers. Here are real-time accounts of these years of ... read more

Little Big Man

Thomas Berger

“The truth is always made up of little particulars which sound ridiculous when repeated.” So says Jack Crabb, the 111-year-old narrator of Thomas Berger’s 1964 masterpiece of American fiction, Little Big Man. Berger claimed the Western as serious literature with this savage and epic account of one man’s extraordinary double life.After surviving the massacre of his pioneer family, ten-year-old ... read more

Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

Kate Bowler

A divinity professor and young mother with a Stage IV cancer diagnosis explores the pain and joy of living without certainty. Thirty-five-year-old Kate Bowler was a professor at the school of divinity at Duke, and had finally had a baby with her childhood sweetheart after years of trying, when she began to feel jabbing pains in her stomach. She lost thirty pounds, chugged antacid, and visited ... read more

Killer, Come Hither: A Novel

Louis Begley

From the master observer of upper-crust New York life comes a taut thriller that takes readers from the office suites of Manhattan to the tidy elegance of Sag Harbor and the rough-and-tumble western plains of Brazil.Find your next book club pick, read special features, and more. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle. Jack Dana, a star student at Yale, joins the military after 9/11—only to have... read more

Kill and Be Killed: A Novel

Louis Begley

Master stylist Begley continues the story of Jack Dana, the former Marine Corps officer turned novelist whose quest to avenge his murdered uncle takes a new, more dangerous turn. The man who brutally murdered Uncle Harry is dead. In an effort to recover from the confrontation and collect himself, Jack takes refuge on Torcello, a small island in the Venetian lagoon, to return to his writing car... read more

Alpha Docs: The Making of a Cardiologist

Daniel Muñoz, James M. Dale

In the tradition of Scott Turow’s One L and Atul Gawande’s Better comes a real-time, real-life chronicle from an impassioned young doctor on the front lines of high-stakes cardiology.It takes drive, persistence, and plenty of stamina to practice cardiology at the highest level. The competition for training fellowship spots is intense. Hundreds of applicants from all over the world compete to b... read more

The Complete Poetry

Maya Angelou

Throughout her illustrious career in letters, Maya Angelou gifted, healed, and inspired the world with her words. Now the beauty and spirit of those words live on in this new and complete collection of poetry that reflects and honors the writer’s remarkable life. Every poetic phrase, every poignant verse can be found within the pages of this sure-to-be-treasured volume—from her reflections on ... read more

America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History

Andrew J. Bacevich

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A searing reassessment of U.S. military policy in the Middle East over the past four decades from retired army colonel and New York Times bestselling author Andrew J. Bacevich From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers ... read more

The Vonnegut Encyclopedia: Revised and updated edition

Marc Leeds

Now expanded and updated, this authorized compendium to Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, stories, essays, and plays is the most comprehensive and definitive edition to date.Over the course of five decades, Kurt Vonnegut created a complex and interconnected web of characters, settings, and concepts. The Vonnegut Encyclopedia is an exhaustive guide to this beloved author’s world, organized in a handy A-t... read more

We Are Not Such Things: The Murder of a Young American, a South African Township, and the Search for Truth and Reconciliation

Justine van der Leun

A gripping investigation in the vein of the podcast Serial—a summer nonfiction pick by Entertainment Weekly and The Wall Street Journal Justine van der Leun reopens the murder of a young American woman in South Africa, an iconic case that calls into question our understanding of truth and reconciliation, loyalty, justice, race, and class.“Timely . . . gripping, explosive . . . the kind of obse... read more

You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again

Julia Phillips

“The Hollywood memoir that tells all . . . Sex. Drugs. Greed. Why, it sounds just like a movie.”—The New York Times Every memoir claims to bare it all, but Julia Phillips’s actually does. This is an addictive, gloves-off exposé from the producer of the classic films The Sting, Taxi Driver, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind—and the first woman ever to win an Academy Award for Best Picture—... read more

The Wonder of Birds: What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future

Jim Robbins

A fascinating investigation into the miraculous world of birds and the powerful—and surprising—ways they enrich our lives and sustain the planetOur relationship to birds is different from our relationship to any other wild creatures. They are found virtually everywhere and we love to watch them, listen to them, keep them as pets, wear their feathers, even converse with them. Birds, Jim Robbins... read more

Adventures with Postpartum Depression: A Memoir

Courtney Novak

After the birth of her first child, Courtney Novak was blindsided by postpartum depression. Her maternal mental illness started with a pervasive sense of guilt and quickly morphed into anxiety, insomnia and neurotic behaviors like checking to make sure her baby was still breathing dozens of times each night. When she started having dark intrusive thoughts of throwing her daughter, she finally ... read more

Where Reasons End: A Novel

Yiyun Li

A brilliant writer imagines a conversation between a mother and the teenage son she lost to suicide. Yiyun Li confronts grief and transforms it into art, in a book of surprising beauty and love. The narrator of Where Reasons End writes, “I had but one delusion, which I held on to with all my willpower: We once gave Nikolai a life of flesh and blood; and I’m doing it over again, this time by wo... read more

The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After

Julie Yip-Williams

As a young mother facing a terminal diagnosis, Julie Yip-Williams began to write her story, a story like no other. What began as the chronicle of an imminent and early death became something much more—a powerful exhortation to the living. That Julie Yip-Williams survived infancy was a miracle. Born blind in Vietnam, she narrowly escaped euthanasia at the hands of her grandmother, only to flee ... read more

All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir

Erin Lee Carr

An acclaimed documentary filmmaker comes to terms with her larger-than-life father, the late New York Times journalist David Carr, in this fierce memoir of addiction and sobriety, work and family.“A breathtaking read . . . a testimony equal parts love and candor. David would have had it no other way.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates, bestselling author of Between the World and Me Dad: What will set you apart... read more

The Learning Curve: A Novel

Mandy Berman

A love triangle among two college friends and a charismatic professor alters the lives of everyone involved in this razor-sharp novel from an author whose work has been hailed as “captivating” by J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Saints for All Occasions. Fiona and Liv are seniors at Buchanan College, a small liberal arts school in rural Pennsylvania. Fiona, who is still struggling emotionally a... read more

The Writer's Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing

John Warner

For anyone aiming to improve their skill as a writer, a revolutionary new approach to establishing robust writing practices inside and outside the classroomAfter a decade of teaching writing using the same methods he’d experienced as a student many years before, writer, editor, and educator John Warner realized he could do better. Drawing on his classroom experience and the most persuasive res... read more

A People's History of Heaven

Mathangi Subramanian

A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2019A politically driven graffiti artist. A transgender Christian convert. A blind girl who loves to dance. A queer daughter of a hijabi union leader. These are some of the young women who live in a Bangalore slum known as Heaven, young women whom readers will come to love in the moving, atmospheric, and deeply inspiring debut, A People's History of Heaven. W... read more

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

Mira Jacob

A bold, wry, and intimate graphic memoir about American identity, interracial families, and the realities that divide us, from the acclaimed author of The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing.“By turns hilarious and heart-rending, it’s exactly the book America needs at this moment.”—Celeste Ng “Who taught Michael Jackson to dance?” “Is that how people really walk on the moon?”“Is it bad to be brown?... read more