At a Chesapeake Bay rental, the Cassidy-Shaw family reels after an autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car while 17-year-old Charlie is at the wheel. During a week of recovery, secrets, a police investigation, and the arrival of a tech mogul connected to the family—including Lorelei, an AI researcher—raise tensions and complicate the question of who is to blame. The novel examines how AI-driven technologies complicate responsibility, trust, and family bonds.

Toni at Random explores Toni Morrison’s lesser-known role as an editor, showing how she shaped manuscripts, supported fellow writers, and helped influence American literary culture. Drawing on research and firsthand accounts, Dana A. Williams traces Morrison’s editorial relationships and the ways her work extended her influence beyond her own novels.

The Zorg recounts the true story of an 1780 Dutch slave ship that, after coming under British command, embarked with hundreds of enslaved people aboard. When the vessel ran low on water, crew members resorted to a brutal decision that led to a high-profile legal case in England and exposed the violence of the transatlantic slave trade. The book reconstructs the voyage, the lives of those involved, and the episode’s role in galvanizing early abolitionist efforts.

A collection of eleven darkly comic, dreamlike stories about childhood misfits and struggling adults. Williams sketches idiosyncratic characters — from heiresses and men suspended in schooltime memory to a haunted visitor and a strange “pelican child” — against a ruined, urgent landscape. spare, often uncanny prose explores isolation, moral decay, and small, hard-won moments of understanding without revealing outcomes.

Bad Company explores how private equity affects everyday life by following four American workers—a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and a public housing organizer—whose employers were transformed by buyouts. Through their stories the book shows how private equity ownership can reshape jobs, public services, and communities, and examines the industry’s secrecy, financial priorities, and wider social consequences.

A concise biography of Robert Louis Stevenson that follows his life from Edinburgh to the South Pacific. It covers his best-known works (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), his lifelong ill health and energetic creativity, his partnership with his wife Fanny, and his years in Samoa where he was nicknamed “Storyteller.” Drawing on Stevenson’s letters, the book illuminates his personality and artistic development without revealing plot details.

Awake is a candid, often funny memoir in which Jen Hatmaker tells of the sudden end of her long marriage and the emotional fallout that followed — grief, anxiety, parenting five children, and financial uncertainty. Through intimate vignettes spanning childhood, marriage, and midlife, she examines the beliefs and systems that shaped her life and describes how she reckoned with change and began to rebuild. The result is a raw, compassionate account of loss, resilience, and starting over.

Sera Swan, a witch who lost much of her magic after resurrecting her great-aunt, now helps run a country inn in Lancashire while managing eccentric guests, a mischievous talking fox, and a strained relationship with the local magical Guild. When an old spellbook hints at a way to restore her power, she teams up with Luke, a historian staying at the inn, and they unravel mysteries, face consequences, and form unexpected bonds. The novel follows Sera’s journey to reclaim her magic and rebuild her life with the help of a quirky, found family—without revealing how it all turns out.

The Book of Alchemy is a short, practical exploration of journaling as a tool for creativity and resilience. Drawing on Suleika Jaouad’s years of journaling and contributions from many writers and artists, it pairs themed essays with prompts and reflections—on beginnings, love, loss, rebuilding, and more—to help readers process difficult experiences, ask deeper questions, and develop a sustained creative practice.

Luke Randall, a Black country singer who built his career on a hit he didn’t write, returns to his hometown to open for his childhood idol. There he meets August Lane—the woman who actually wrote the song and his teenage love—who forces him into a deal: co-write a new song and perform it or she’ll expose him. As they collaborate, old feelings resurface and August must decide whether to demand a public reckoning or trust the man Luke has become.

In 1899, struggling English writer Evelyn Dolman marries Laura Rensselaer expecting an inheritance, but when she is mysteriously disinherited the couple travel to Venice and take up residence at the ancestral Palazzo Dioscuri. Strange occurrences and Evelyn’s growing paranoia turn the novel into an atmospheric psychological noir that explores uncertainty, obsession and the blurring of reality and illusion.

A concise biography of Gertrude Stein that follows her life at the center of Paris’s artistic circle, her partnership with Alice B. Toklas, and the emergence of her unconventional writing. The author traces how Stein shaped her public persona and examines the creative and personal influences behind her work, drawing on archival research to illuminate her life without revealing key plot points.

Red Scare is a narrative history of McCarthyism and the post–World War II anti‑Communist campaigns in the United States. Using newly declassified documents, Clay Risen traces the rise and fall of the Red Scare through roughly 1957, showing how politicians and government networks pursued alleged Communists and damaged thousands of lives. The book examines well‑known episodes like the Hollywood blacklist and explores the political, cultural, and personal consequences of the era through figures such as Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Nixon, and others.

The Perfect Tuba follows Sam Quinones as he explores the people, history, and communities built around the tuba. He profiles musicians and instrument-makers trying to recreate a famed 1930s tuba, highlights figures like Big Bill Bell and Arnold Jacobs, and visits tuba scenes from New Orleans to Roma, Texas, where a high school marching program changes students’ lives. The book shows how a modest instrument can inspire craftsmanship, joy, and community.

Is a River Alive? explores the idea that rivers can be regarded as living beings. Robert Macfarlane combines travel writing, reporting, and natural history across three journeys — to cloud-forests and mountain streams in Ecuador, wounded creeks and lagoons in India, and wild rivers in Canada under threat from mining, pollution, and dams — woven with the intimate story of a chalk stream near his home. The book examines how different cultures, laws, and landscapes shape our relationships with rivers and asks what it would mean to recognize their life and rights.

Dead and Alive is a collection of essays by Zadie Smith that combines personal reflection and cultural criticism. Smith profiles visual artists, writes about film and music (including Tár and Stormzy), takes readers on a walk through Kilburn High Road, and reflects on the deaths of several writers while considering political change and the idea of “the commons.”

John Cassidy presents a global history of capitalism told through the perspectives of its critics. Moving from early colonial companies and industrial revolts to 20th‑century movements and contemporary debates, the book profiles both well‑known thinkers and lesser‑known voices to show how dissenting ideas have shaped economic theory and illuminate present‑day issues like automation, inequality, and climate change.

Searches blends memoir and reporting as Vauhini Vara examines how language models and tech companies have changed the way we speak and tell stories. After using an AI to write about her sister’s death, she traces her own history with online communication, explores how corporations harvest human-created language, and considers how we might reclaim a more humane relationship with our machines.

In 1899 at a declining English country house, Grace — an aspiring painter and skilled forger — must reckon with a man who claims to be her cousin Charles, long presumed lost at sea, and the family split his arrival creates. As she hides her own talent for deception, Grace is forced to decide whom to trust and, in the process, confronts questions of authenticity, family, desire, and the value of wealth.

Little Bosses Everywhere examines multilevel marketing in the United States, tracing its origins, how the recruitment-based business model works, and the social and economic effects on people who join. Bridget Read combines industry history, reporting on political and financial connections, and personal stories of individuals—workers, parents, and others—who were drawn into MLMs by promises of independence but often faced financial and emotional costs.

An investigative look at how Spotify transformed the music industry, drawing on interviews with industry insiders, former employees, and musicians. Liz Pelly examines the platform’s algorithms, playlist-driven culture, and business model to explain how personalization and streaming economics have reshaped how music is created, distributed, and consumed—and how artists and listeners are responding.

In winter 1951, child development scholar Bernadette Baston is called to a remote Puget Sound island penitentiary to evaluate a feral adolescent girl found living in the woods. As Bernadette investigates, she becomes entangled in the island community’s hidden loyalties and must navigate the limits placed on her as a mother, wife, and professional.

When Lea Ypi finds a stranger’s photograph of her grandmother honeymooning in 1941, she launches an inquiry into a family history that seems at odds with what she was told. Moving between archives, memories and fragmentary records, the book traces the vanished worlds of Ottoman Salonica, the turmoil of the Balkans, war and the rise of communism to ask who her grandmother really was. It is a reflective investigation of identity, historical truth and how we judge the choices of past generations.

A vivid, emotionally charged novel about a mother and her teenage son on parallel journeys—one moving through an otherworldly limbo, the other fleeing a treatment center and traveling south. As they encounter strange companions, storms, and the ache of memory, the book explores motherhood, childhood, and the fragile ties that bind family.

In 1982 Orvop, Utah, two teenagers—local Tom Gatestone and newcomer Kalin March—risk everything to rescue a pair of neglected horses. What begins as a daring act of compassion turns into an arduous journey into the nearby Katanogos mountains, bringing danger, unexpected events, and lasting consequences for them and their town. A sweeping, character-driven story about friendship, courage, and the costs of bold choices.