Spiegel & Grau

“Gripping . . . Out of the Sky is at once an eloquent inquiry into heroism, a wrenching chronicle of bravery and betrayal, and a poignant evocation of a generation hurled from innocence into the maw of history.”—Ben Balint, author of Kafka’s Last Trial

The harrowing true story of Hannah Szenes and a group of idealistic young Jews who parachuted from Palestine into Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944.

Matti Friedman had heard the story before but had never quite understood it: A group of young Jews who had barely escaped the rise of Nazism found refuge in Palestine and then agreed to parachute back into occupied Europe as British agents. Their names were legendary in the early years of the State of Israel, especially that of 23-year-old Hannah Szenes, best known as the author of “Eli, Eli,” one of the most famous songs ever written in Hebrew. And yet what exactly was the mission, and what had the parachutists actually accomplished? What made them heroes?

Using thousands of original documents from once-secret files, manuscripts, memoirs, and unpublished letters, Out of the Sky follows four of the parachutists from the spring of 1944 to the operation’s dramatic end that winter. The mission was run by British special-operations officers and Zionist leaders who, faced with the Nazi threat, suspended their mutual distaste but not their suspicion. The British needed multilingual agents behind enemy lines, while their Jewish counterparts were desperate to fight back somehow against their Nazi murderers. Of the thirty-two parachutists who jumped, seven were killed, while others performed acts of extraordinary bravery and ingenuity merely to escape. Not a single Nazi was harmed, not a single Jew was saved—and yet the story of these brave young men and women became one of Israel’s founding myths. 

In Out of the Sky, Matti Friedman unravels this perplexing dissonance, telling the gripping tale of a forgotten moment, showing us how storytelling itself can have a power even greater than warfare. And in exploring the line between myth and reality, heroism and futility, and how history remembers what it chooses to remember, he creates an argument that has deep resonance in our own time.   

Melody Beattie, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Codependent No More, turns her attention to what comes after codependency: mastering the art of self-care.

You’re learning to let go, to live your life free of the grip of someone else’s problems. And yet you realize that the long journey of recovery has only just begun. With her signature insight and humanity, Melody Beattie brings to light the aftermath of codependency in all its complexity. A guided tour past the pitfalls of recovery, Beyond Codependency is dedicated to those struggling to master the art of self-care. It is a book about what to do once the pain has stopped and you recognize that you have a life to live. It is about what comes next.

In simple, straightforward terms, Beattie takes you beyond codependency, into the realm of recovery and relapse, family-of-origin work and relationships, surrender and spirituality. With personal stories, hard-won wisdom, and meditative exercises, this timeless book imparts lessons in overcoming shame, building self-esteem, healing from deprivation, and breaking free of damaging patterns in order to flourish in healthy, lasting relationships.

* Revised and Updated, with a New Preface and New Meditations *

This gentle and profound collection of 365 meditations reminds us that letting go is a daily practice that sets everything free.

 This cherished work by Melody Beattie was written for those on a journey of recovery and healing, a companion to her classic, Codependent No More. “It was the daily journey that I wanted to write about,” Beattie notes in the preface to this new edition. “Of the many healing behaviors I’ve learned to practice, letting go—in all its shapes and forms—is the most influential, profound, and life altering.”

Drawing on her own life experiences and struggles with codependency, Beattie offers a thought to guide us through each day of the year and to encourage us to take small, meaningful steps toward renewal, courage, and resilience. Every day affords an opportunity for growth, she reminds us, and with this wise and compassionate book, she lights the way. 

Reality Winner was a twenty-five-year-old translator for the NSA when she saw a document that she assumed would make headlines: after public silence by the NSA and blatant lies by the Trump administration, the 2016 US election was far from secure. She impulsively printed the document—a breach of NSA protocol—stuffed it into her stockings, left the building, and mailed it to The Intercept, which promptly informed the NSA and led to Winner’s arrest. Now, for the first time—after two films and a Broadway play about her—Winner tells her own story: her unusual childhood, which led her to want to serve her country; her reasons for leaking the document; her torturous years in prison. This is a bold, brave book about the risk one woman took to protect her country and the price she paid for it.

Gripping, funny, heartbreaking, and hopeful, The Calamity Club is the story of a group of unbreakable women in 1933 Mississippi, as they fight to claim what’s rightfully theirs—Stockett’s first novel since the #1 bestselling phenomenon, The Help.

It’s been over a year since Meg’s beloved mother failed to come home one Christmas Eve. Since then, the eleven-year-old has been one of the unadoptable “big” girls at The Orphan in Oxford, Mississippi. There, in the face of the disdain and cruelty of the chairlady who runs the orphanage, she fights each day to keep her wits sharp and her spirit unbowed.

In the final, sweltering weeks of the summer, Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and opinionated, arrives in Oxford with the unpleasant task of asking her socialite sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. Her sister has married into a wealthy, old family and has taken pains to conceal her humble Delta roots. But as the Depression tightens its grip, it becomes clear that her dreams may have been built on an unsteady foundation. With her banker husband worryingly absent, she drifts around his once-grand family home as her imperious mother-in-law clings to a fantasy of bygone days.

When Birdie meets Charlie, a woman with nothing left to lose, their fates—and Meg’s—converge with those of a band of undaunted, disreputable women as they form an audacious plan to take back control of their lives. But in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife, where women’s freedom is fragile, and where making an enemy can have calamitous consequences, will the price they pay for their outrageous risk-taking be too high?

Bold, heartwarming, and bracingly funny, The Calamity Club is an unputdownable story about the many ways female agency can be thwarted, and of those determined to take it back, no matter the cost.

• OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • 

“I was riveted until the very last shocking sentence!”—Oprah Winfrey

“The most of-the-moment novel I’ve read all year, and it’s the book of the summer.”—Real Simple

“If you want an engaging novel sure to spark great discussion about that thorny [AI] future, this is it.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

A suspenseful family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence.

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident.

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.

Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.

Transformational life lessons from a psychic medium affectionately known as the “Internet’s gay uncle,” culled from his own life and from thousands of client readings—to help you become the fullest possible version of yourself.

For Travis Holp, growing up in Ohio in a conservative family challenged his very understanding of himself. As a child playing with a Ouija board with his grandmother, he received messages that felt as natural to him as breathing, and yet he quickly learned to keep his understanding to himself. He was shunned by his family for being gay and spent difficult years searching for his purpose and belief in himself. When, on a lark, he began doing tarot readings on TikTok, he soon became aware that the lessons from Spirit were just as relevant for him as they were for the friends and clients he was reading for. And when his social media following exploded, and he embraced his role as a medium, his life became meaningful in ways he never expected.

In Are You There, Spirit? It’s Me, Travis, Holp shares the lessons he has learned through both his own life experiences and the conversations he has conducted for clients with loved ones on the other side. Through stories and exercises, he opens us up to a new and expansive way of understanding our place in the world, helping us embrace our authenticity, overcome fear, welcome change, and live with real purpose. And on every page, as he leads us toward self-discovery and profound healing, his sparkling personality, optimism, and warmth remind us that we are all loved, and that a meaningful life is one filled with joy.

* 2023 Nautilus Book Award Winner: Rising to the Moment: Gold *

World-renowned future forecaster, game designer, and New York Times bestselling author Jane McGonigal gives us the tools to imagine the future without fear.

“An accessible, optimistic field guide to the future.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Reading this book is like sitting down with a creative, optimistic friend—and getting up as a new version of yourself.”—Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of When

The COVID-19 pandemic, increasingly frequent climate disasters, a new war—events we might have called “unimaginable” or “unthinkable” in the past are now reality. Today it feels more challenging than ever to feel unafraid, hopeful, and equipped to face the future with optimism. How do we map out our lives when it seems impossible to predict what the world will be like next week, let alone next year or next decade? What we need now are strategies to help us recover our confidence and creativity in facing uncertain futures.

In Imaginable, Jane McGonigal draws on the latest scientific research in psychology and neuroscience to show us how to train our minds to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable. She invites us to play with the provocative thought experiments and future simulations she’s designed exclusively for this book, with the goal to:

1. Build our collective imagination so that we can dive into the future and envision, in surprising detail, what our lives will look like ten years from now
2. Develop the courage and vision to solve problems creatively
3. Take actions and make decisions that will help shape the future we desire
4. Access “urgent optimism,” an unstoppable force within each of us that activates our sense of agency

Imaginable teaches us to be fearless, resilient, and bold in realizing a world with possibilities we cannot yet imagine—until reading this transformative, inspiring, and necessary book.

A moving exploration of the crisis of homeless youth—told through the inspiring stories of a woman on the frontlines and the kids themselves.

They hide in plain sight. They survive on free school breakfasts and lunches, join school sports teams in order to shower, sleep on friends’ couches, in parks, or on the streets. Their official designation is “unaccompanied homeless youth”—they are not "runaways" breaking free from strict parenting; these are kids seeking safety. They have escaped abusive parents, have been abandoned, or have never had a home to begin with.

When Vicki Sokolik’s son brought home a classmate who was living on her own and was dropping out of school to support herself, Vicki stepped in to help. As she learned more about the invisible population of young people navigating life alone, she discovered the countless ways they are overlooked and impeded by the system. She founded a nonprofit and worked to change legislation in her home state of Florida to give these kids agency over their lives.

If You See Them wakes us up to the issue of youth homelessness in America, through Sokolik’s own story of advocacy and through the voices of the kids themselves. Her grassroots action demonstrates the world-shifting power of compassion, acceptance, belonging, and self-determination, and the capacity each of us has to change our communities for the better.

A postapocalyptic road trip and a quest for redemption.

It’s 2048, and the world has been ravaged by a lethal virus. With few exceptions, only the young have survived. Cities and infrastructures have been destroyed, and the natural world has reclaimed the landscape in surprising ways, with herds of wild camels roaming the American West and crocodiles that glow neon green lurking in the rivers.

Will Collins, the last surviving resident of a Buddhist retreat center in Colorado, receives an urgent and mysterious request: to deliver a potential cure to a scientist on the West Coast. So Will sets out into an unknown and perilous world, haunted by dreams of the woman he once loved, in a rusted-out pickup pulled by two mules. He doesn’t have much time—temperatures are rising to lethal heights, a hit man is on his tail, and armed militias patrol the roads. The only way he’ll make it is with the help of a clever raven, an opinionated cat, and a tough teenage girl who has learned to survive on her own.

A highly original contribution to the canon of dystopian literature, The Way is a thrilling and imaginative novel, full of warmth, wisdom, and surprises. It raises age-old questions about life, death, and how to live, while reflecting our own world in unsettling, uncanny, and even hopeful ways.

Instant New York Times Bestseller * Financial Times Best Books of 2024

Climate investor and activist Tom Steyer shows us how we can win the war on climate—and why fighting for a sustainable future can help bring meaning and prosperity to our lives.

The consequences of climate change—rising waters, extreme weather, record temperatures—are transforming our lives, as global warming accelerates more rapidly than scientists predicted even a few years ago. At the same time, the clean energy revolution is forging ahead faster than nearly anyone anticipated. As Tom Steyer sees it, these two trends together create a moment like the one America faced during World War II: on the one hand, an existential threat that demands our collective action; on the other, an opportunity to lead the world, protect the planet, and set the stage for a new generation of shared economic prosperity.

In 2012, Steyer walked away from the highly successful investment fund he founded to devote himself full time to climate issues, and he’s been on the front lines ever since. In this accessible book, aimed at everyone from college students to Wall Street investors, Steyer presents his blueprint for winning the climate fight—sharing his own story of becoming a “climate person,” debunking the arguments made by fossil fuel companies, and showcasing the inspiring, innovative work of other climate leaders in the clean-energy transition. Capitalism, Steyer argues, can be the key to scaling climate progress, and all of us can play a part in stabilizing our planet. As green technology is fast becoming cleaner and cheaper, reshaping our planet’s future—and our own—has never been more crucial or within our reach.

New York Times Editor’s Choice * Indie Next Pick * Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction 2023 * Kirkus Best Nonfiction 2023 * Amazon Best of the Month * B&N Most Anticipated * Jennette McCurdy Book Club Pick

A “remarkable” (New York Times Book Review) memoir that tells of a young woman’s coming-of-age amid glamour, excess, and neglect, and the love affair that, against the odds, allows her to save herself.

Alice Carrière grew up in a converted factory in Greenwich Village in the 1990s, an extravagant home based on the hyper-aestheticized vision of her artist mother, Jennifer Bartlett—with two studios, an indoor swimming pool, a rooftop garden with a koi pond, and multiple, cavernous rooms through which a steady stream of visitors flowed. Alice’s iconoclastic European father was a fleeting, atmospheric disturbance.

Alice grows up as a child living in an adult’s world, with little-to-no boundaries or supervision. As she enters adolescence, a dissociative disorder erases her identity, and overzealous doctors medicate her further into madness. In the absence of self, she inhabits various roles: as a patient in expensive psychiatric hospitals, the ingenue in destructive encounters with older men, a provocateur who weaponizes intellectual dazzle and outrageous candor—until a medication-induced psychosis brings these personas crashing down. Finally, a soulful connection with a generous and sensitive musician allows her to free herself from the pathologies that defined her and recognize her true self. With gallows humor and brutal honesty, Carrière has written a unique and mesmerizing narrative of emergence and, at last, cure.

*WINNER OF THE WOMEN WRITING THE WEST 2023 WILLA LITERARY AWARD*

Brave Hearted is not just history, it is an incredibly intense page-turning experience. To read what these women endured is to be transported into another universe of courage, loss, pain, and occasionally victory. This book is a triumph.”—Amanda Foreman

“Absolutely compelling.”—Christina Lamb, Sunday Times (UK)

The dramatic, untold stories of the diverse array of women who helped transform the American West.

Hard-drinking, hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns; wives and mothers traveling two and a half thousand miles across the prairies in covered-wagon convoys, some of them so poor they walked the entire route; African-American women in search of freedom from slavery; Chinese sex-workers sold openly on the docks of San Francisco; Native American women brutally displaced by the unstoppable tide of white settlers – these were the women who settled the American West, whose stories until now have remained mostly untold. As the internationally bestselling historian Katie Hickman writes, “Myth and misunderstanding spring from the American frontier as readily as rye grass from sod, and—like the wiry grass—seem as difficult to weed out and discard.” But the true-life story of women's experiences in the Wild West is more gripping, heart-rending, and stirring than all the movies, novels, folk-legends, and ballads of popular imagination.

Drawing on letters, diaries, and other extraordinary contemporary accounts, sifting through the legends and the myths, the laws and the treaties, Katie Hickman presents us with a cast of unforgettable women, all forced to draw on huge reserves of resilienceand courage in the face of tumultuous change: the half Cree, Marguerite McLoughlin, the much-admired “First Lady” of Fort Vancouver; the Presbyterian missionary Narcissa Whitman, who in 1837 became the first white woman to make the overland journey west across the Rocky Mountains; Biddy Mason, the Mississippi slave who fought for her freedom through the courts of California; Olive Oatman, adopted by the Mohave, famous for her facial tattoos.

This is the story of the women who participated in the greatest mass migration in American history, transforming their country in the process. This is American history not as it was romanticized but as it was lived.

What if the great love of your life is friendship?

In their twenties, Lissa Soep and her boyfriend forged deep friendships with two other couples—Mercy and Christine; and Emily and Jonnie—until, decades later, Jonnie died suddenly, in an accident, and Christine passed away after a mysterious illness. Christine had been a writer, Jonnie a storyteller. Lissa couldn’t imagine a world without their letters, postcards, texts—a world without their voices. Then she found comfort in a surprising place. As a graduate student, she had studied the philosophy of the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, who wrote about the many voices that can echo through a single person’s speech. Suddenly, Bakhtin’s theory that our language is “filled to overflowing with other people’s words” came to life. Lissa began hearing Jonnie and Christine when least expected. In a conversation with Emily, a familiar phrase was spoken, and suddenly, there was Jonnie, with his riotous laugh, vibrant in her mind. Mercy recited an Adrienne Rich poem in just the way Christine used to and, for a moment, Christine was with them in the room.

Other People’s Words shows us how we carry within us the language of loved ones who are gone, and how their words can be portals to other times and places. Language—as with love—is boundless, and Other People’s Words is an intimate, original, and profoundly generous look at its power to nurture life amid the wreckage of grief. Dialogues do not end when a friendship or person is gone; instead, they accrue new layers of meaning, showing how the conversations we share with those we love continue after them, and will continue after us.

“Hafner’s taut and utterly delightful debut is a novel of multitudes. . . . What a wonder of storytelling.”—Weike Wang, New York Times

New York Times Editor’s Choice * Good Morning America Reading Pick * LitHub Most Anticipated Book * Christian Science Monitor Summer Reading Pick

A delicious summer read filled with humor and surprise for readers of Anne Tyler and Kevin Wilson.

When introverted Ethan Fawcett marries fun-loving Barb, so comfortable in the world, he has every reason to believe he will be delivered from a lifetime of solitude. She fills his world with a sense of adventure, expanding his horizons beyond his comfortable routine. To ease Ethan’s fears of becoming a father, Barb suggests they foster two young brothers, Tommy and Sam, and Ethan immediately falls in love with the boys.

When the pandemic hits, he becomes obsessed with providing a perfect life for them. But instead of bringing Barb and Ethan closer together, the boys become a wedge in their relationship, as Ethan is unable to share with Barb a secret that has been haunting him since childhood. Then Ethan takes Tommy and Sam on a biking trip in Italy, and it becomes clear just how unusual Ethan and his boys are.

2024 Nautilus Book Award Winner * The Marginalian Favorite Books of 2023

An electrifying introduction to complexity theory, the science of how complex systems behave, that explains the interconnectedness of all things and that Deepak Chopra says, “will change the way you understand yourself and the universe.”

Nothing in the universe is more complex than life. Throughout the skies, in oceans, and across lands, life is endlessly on the move. In its myriad forms—from cells to human beings, social structures, and ecosystems—life is open-ended, evolving, unpredictable, yet adaptive and self-sustaining. Complexity theory addresses the mysteries that animate science, philosophy, and metaphysics: how this teeming array of existence, from the infinitesimal to the infinite, is in fact a seamless living whole and what our place, as conscious beings, is within it.

The implications of complexity theory are profound, providing insight into everything from the permeable boundaries of our bodies to the nature of consciousness. Notes on Complexity is an invitation to trade our limited, individualistic view for the expansive perspective of a universe that is dynamic, cohesive, and alive—a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Physician, scientist, and philosopher Neil Theise takes us to the exhilarating frontiers of human knowledge and in the process restores wonder and meaning to our experience of the everyday.

“An antidote to the loneliness of our species.”—ROBIN WALL KIMMERER

“A master class in how to love the world.”—MARGARET RENKL

A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.

Growing up, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. A child who frequently felt out of place, too much of one thing or not enough of another, she found acceptance in these settings, among other amphibious beings. In snakes, snails, and, above all, fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected back at her—and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science.

In Forest Euphoria, Kaishian shows us this making of a scientist and introduces readers to the queerness of all the life around us. Fungi, we learn, commonly have more than two biological sexes—and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate “love darts” at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, a mystery that stumped scientists once dubbed “the eel question.” Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized—and they have lessons for us all.

Wide-ranging, richly observant, and full of surprise, Forest Euphoria will open your eyes and change how you look at the world around you.

“An expedition into the troubled soul of one of the world’s greatest songwriters.”—Haaretz 

“A fascinating and intense account of Leonard Cohen’s time in Israel during the 19-day Yom Kippur War of 1973. A must for any Leonard Cohen completist.”—Suzanne Vega

A Vanity Fair Best Book of 2022 * Mosaic Magazine Best Book of 2022

The untold story of Leonard Cohen’s concert tour to the front lines of the Yom Kippur War, including never-before-seen selections from an unfinished manuscript by Cohen and rare photographs

In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen—thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end—traveled to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur. Moving around the front with a group of local musicians, Cohen sang for hundreds of young soldiers, men and women at the worst moment of their lives. Those who survived never forgot the experience. And the war transformed Cohen, reigniting his creativity and inspiring him to compose some of his most memorable songs. Who by Fire provides a riveting account of those weeks in the Sinai, drawing on Cohen’s previously unpublished writing and original reporting to create a kaleidoscopic depiction of a harrowing, existential moment for both a young country at war and a singer at a crossroads.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER and BOOK CLUB FAVORITE * Over 1 million copies sold worldwide!

* 2024 High Plains Book Award Winner * 2023 Reading the West Book Award Winner * Finalist for Goodreads Choice Award * Colorado Public Radio 2023 Books We Love * 2025 Prix de l'Union Interalliée *

Set amid Colorado’s wild beauty, the heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a resilient young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter. A tragic and uplifting novel of love and loss, family and survival—and hope—for readers of Great Circle, The Four Winds, and Where the Crawdads Sing.

“Beautiful . . . A striking first novel of love and strength and growth, set against the forests and rivers of Colorado’s high country. Read is a gifted writer, and the book is a literary triumph.”—Denver Post

“With gorgeous descriptions of the great outdoors, an illicit love story, and an unforgettable protagonist, Go as a River offers something for everyone.”—Real Simple

Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family’s peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado—the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses.

Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known, fleeing into the surrounding mountains, where she struggles to survive in the wilderness with no clear notion of what her future will bring. As the seasons change, she also charts the changes in herself, finding in the beautiful but harsh landscape the meaning and strength to move forward and rebuild all that she has lost, even as the Gunnison River threatens to submerge her homeland—its ranches, farms, and the beloved peach orchard that has been in her family for generations.

Inspired by true events surrounding the destruction of the town of Iola in the 1960s, Go as a River is a story of deeply held love in the face of hardship and loss, but also of finding courage, resilience, friendship, and, finally, home—where least expected. This stunning debut explores what it means to lead your life as if it were a river—gathering and flowing, finding a way forward even when a river is dammed.

“Skip Yellowstone for this rawer version of the West.”—The New York Times Book Review

“This taut, compelling novel explores the great outdoors—and a realm of moral uncertainty. . . . A ferociously gripping book.”—The Economist 

Two brothers in dire straits, living on the edge of Yellowstone, agree to a desperate act of survival in this taut, propulsive novel reminiscent of the works of C.J. Box, Donald Ray Pollock and Larry McMurtry.

An epic, deeply moving coming-of-age novel about young love and lasting friendships forged in the years leading up to the Tiananmen Square student protests, for readers of The Beekeeper of Aleppo and The Night Tiger.

As a child in Beijing in the 1970s, Lai lives with her family in a lively, working-class neighborhood near the heart of the city. Thoughtful yet unassuming, she spends her days with her friends beyond the attention of her parents: Her father is a reclusive figure who lingers in the background, while her mother, an aging beauty and fervent patriot, is quick-tempered and preoccupied with neighborhood gossip. Only Lai’s grandmother, a formidable and colorful maverick, seems to really see Lai and believe that she can blossom beyond their circumstances.

But Lai is quickly awakened to the harsh realities of the Chinese state. A childish prank results in a terrifying altercation with police that haunts her for years; she also learns that her father, like many others, was broken during the Cultural Revolution. As she enters adolescence, Lai meets a mysterious and wise bookseller who introduces her to great works—Hemingway, Camus, and Orwell, among others—that open her heart to the emotional power of literature and her mind to thrillingly different perspectives. Along the way, she experiences the ebbs and flows of friendship, the agony of grief, and the first steps and missteps in love.

A gifted student, Lai wins a scholarship to study at the prestigious Peking University where she soon falls in with a theatrical band of individualists and misfits dedicated to becoming their authentic selves, despite the Communist Party’s insistence on conformity—and a new world opens before her. When student resistance hardens under the increasingly restrictive policies of the state, the group gets swept up in the fervor, determined to be heard, joining the masses of demonstrators and dreamers who display remarkable courage and loyalty in the face of danger. As 1989 unfolds, the spirit of change is in the air. . .

Drawn from her own life, Lai Wen’s novel is mesmerizing and haunting—a universal yet intimate story of youth and self-discovery that plays out against the backdrop of a watershed historic event. Tiananmen Square captures the hope and idealism of a new generation and the lasting price they were willing to pay in the name of freedom.

Winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award * 2022 Nautilus Book Awards Gold Winner * Shortlisted for the John Burroughs Medal * Finalist for the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize * Shortlisted for a Reading the West Book Award

Instant New York Times Bestseller * A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year * 2021 Summer Reading Pick by Buzzfeed * New York Times Book Review * Kirkus * Time * Good Morning America * People * Washington Post

“The book everyone will be talking about. . . . Full of tenderness and understanding.”—New York Times

An “extraordinary” (Oprah Daily) memoir about the friendship between a solitary woman and a wild fox.

When Catherine Raven finished her PhD in biology, she built herself a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana. She was as emotionally isolated as she was physically, but she viewed the house as a way station, a temporary rest stop where she could gather her nerves and fill out applications for what she hoped would be a real job that would help her fit into society. In the meantime, she taught remotely and led field classes in nearby Yellowstone National Park.

Then one day she realized that a mangy-looking fox was showing up on her property every afternoon at 4:15 p.m. She had never had a regular visitor before. How do you even talk to a fox? She brought out her camping chair, sat as close to him as she dared, and began reading to him from The Little Prince. Her scientific training had taught her not to anthropomorphize animals, yet as she grew to know him, his personality revealed itself and they became friends.

From the fox, Catherine learned the single most important thing about loneliness: we are never alone when we are connected to the natural world. Friends, however, cannot save each other from the uncontained forces of nature.

Fox and I is a poignant and remarkable tale of friendship, growth, and coping with inevitable loss—and of how that loss can be transformed into meaning. It is both a timely tale of solitude and belonging as well as a timeless story of one woman whose immersion in the natural world will change the way we view our surroundings—each tree, weed, flower, stone, or fox.

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“A beautiful love letter to nature and the world around us.”—Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club September ’24 Pick)

THE PERFECT GIFT FOR NATURE LOVERS, BIRDERS, AND GARDENERS, WITH ORIGINAL COLOR ART THROUGHOUT * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * INDIE NEXT PICK

From the beloved New York Times opinion writer: a luminous book that traces the passing of seasons, both personal and natural.

In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer.

Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life. Grown children, unexpectedly home during the pandemic, prepare to depart once more. Birdsong and night-blooming flowers evoke generations past. The city and the country where Renkl raised her family transform a little more with each passing day. And the natural world, now in visible flux, requires every ounce of hope and commitment from the author—and from us. For, as Renkl writes, “radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world.”

With fifty-two original color artworks by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, The Comfort of Crows is a lovely and deeply moving book from a cherished observer of the natural world.

“An affirmation and celebration of our deep and radical connections with the world and each other . . . Reading this book is like finding a friend.”—Ruth Ozeki

A spirited and timely exploration of group living that encourages readers to reconsider the meaning of family and home.

Lola Milholland grew up in the nineties, the child of iconoclastic hippies. Both her parents threw open their rambling house in Portland, Oregon, to long-term visitors and unusual guests in need of a place to stay. Years later, after college and after her parents’ separation, Milholland returned home. There, she joined her brother and his housemates—an eccentric group of stop-motion animators and accomplished cooks—in furthering the experiment of communal living into a new generation.

Group Living and Other Recipes tells the story of the residents of the Holman House—of transcendent meals and ecstatic parties, of colorful characters coming together in moments of deep tenderness and inevitable irritation, of a shared life that is appealing, humorous, confounding, and, just maybe, utopian—with a wider exploration of group living as a way of life. From spending time at her aunt and uncle’s intentional community in Washington State to finding her footing in the kitchen as a student in Japan to mushroom hunting in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, Milholland offers an expansive and vibrant reevaluation of the structures at the very center of our lives.

Thoughtful, quirky, candid, and wise, Group Living and Other Recipes introduces a gifted memoirist and thinker, making a convincing case that “now is always the right time to reimagine home and family.”

REVISED AND UPDATED * With a New Chapter on Trauma and Anxiety, a List of Resources, and More * 2023 Nautilus Book Award Winner * As Heard on Glennon Doyle’s We Can Do Hard Things Podcast

The cultural phenomenon that has helped heal millions of readers, this modern classic holds the key to understanding codependency and unlocking its hold on your life.

Melody Beattie’s compassionate and insightful look into codependency—the concept of losing oneself in the name of helping another—has guided millions of readers toward the understanding that they are powerless to change anyone but themselves and that caring for the self is where healing begins.

Is someone else’s problem your problem? If, like so many others, you’ve lost sight of your own life in the drama of tending to a loved one’s self-destructive behavior, you may be codependent—and you may find yourself in this book. With personal reflections, exercises, and instructive stories drawn from Beattie’s own life and the lives of those she’s counseled, Codependent No More helps you break old patterns and maintain healthy boundaries, and offers a clear and achievable path to healing, hope, freedom, and happiness.

This revised edition includes an all-new chapter on trauma and anxiety—subjects Beattie has long felt necessary to address within the context of codependency—making it even more relevant today than it was when it first entered the national conversation over thirty-five years ago.

In her English-language debut, award-winning Italian novelist Giulia Caminito follows a teenage girl as her family transitions from Rome’s impoverished outskirts to a fraught new beginning in a tranquil lakeside town, capturing the disillusionment, loneliness, and rage that defined a generation.

In the 1990s, Gaia’s family moves from the neglected peripheries of Rome to an idyllic lakeside town twenty miles away, in search of a new life that will lift them out of poverty. Each of them bears their own scars: Gaia’s strong-willed mother is fiercely determined to secure a better future for her children at any cost; her father, a once proud man, now suffers in bitter silence after a devastating accident; her anarchist older brother rebels against the political apathy he sees at home; and her young twin brothers wordlessly bear witness to a family in decay.

When Gaia meets two local girls, Agata and Carlotta, the trio builds a fragile friendship throughout their adolescence based as much on their insecurities and jealousies as it is on their mutual affection. Gaia’s encounters with callous boys and contemptuous teachers convince her that she might always be an outsider—excluded from a privileged life and perhaps even beyond the possibility of happiness. Faced with bullying and betrayals among her peers and immense pressure from her mother to excel, Gaia turns inward and her world becomes increasingly insular. Then tragedy strikes her friend group. As more friends slip away and her family fractures, Gaia vows to make the world pay for all the things it has denied her.

Winner of the Campiello Prize, The Lake’s Water Is Never Sweet is an unflinching portrait of a generation, striving to make a place for themselves in a world markedly different from the one their parents promised them. With psychological acuity and stylish prose, Caminito takes us into the volatile, searching mind of a young woman torn between her desire to connect with others and her drive for self-preservation. In a novel that has been acclaimed by readers around the world, Caminito shows how tenderness and fragility often lie just beneath the surface of simmering fury.

“A fascinating story of a young mixed-race man caught between two cultures, not knowing what to keep and what to leave behind.”—James McBride, author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

A “magnificent” (Ha Jin), “mesmerizing” (James McBride), and “magical” (Marie Myung-Ok Lee) fever dream of a novel that interweaves the coming-of-age of a 1970s Korean-American boy grappling with his identity and the impact of intergenerational trauma.

Growing up outside a US military base in South Korea in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Insu—the son of a Korean mother and a German father enlisted in the US Army—spends his days with his “half and half” friends skipping school, selling scavenged Western goods on the black market, watching Hollywood movies, and testing the boundaries between childhood and adulthood. When he hears a legend that water collected in a human skull will cure any sickness, he vows to dig up a skull in order to heal his ailing Big Uncle, a geomancer who has been exiled by the family to a mountain cave to die.

Insu’s quest takes him and his friends on a sprawling, wild journey into some of South Korea’s darkest corners, opening them up to a fantastical world beyond their grasp. Meanwhile, Big Uncle has embraced his solitude and fate, trusting in otherworldly forces Insu cannot access. As he recalls his wartime experiences of betrayal and lost love, Big Uncle attempts to teach his nephew that life is not limited to what we can see—or think we know.

Largely autobiographical and sparkling with magical realism, Skull Water is the story of a boy coming into his own—and the ways the past haunts the present, in a country on the cusp of modernity, struggling to confront its troubled history. As Insu seeks the wisdom of his ancestors, what he learns, he hopes, will save not just his uncle but himself.

*ONE OF TIME’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2025*

An inspiring collection of essays, personal and political, from the leading environmental justice activist of our time, that frames the challenges we face as a society and—with grace, generosity, and hope—charts the way toward equity, respect, and a brighter future.

Described by Bryan Stevenson as “the center of the quest for environmental justice in America,” Catherine Coleman Flowers has dedicated her life to fighting for the most vulnerable communities—rural, poor, of color—who have been deprived of the basic civil right to a clean, safe, and sustainable environment. Both deeply personal and urgently political, the essays in Holy Ground draw on history to illuminate and contextualize the most pressing issues of this moment: from climate change to human rights, from rural poverty to reproductive justice, from the notorious history of Lowndes County, Alabama, to the broader crisis of racialized disinvestment in the South. Flowers maps the distance and direction toward justice, examining her own diverse ancestry as evidence of our interconnectedness. She reflects on trailblazers who have fought for social and environmental justice. She writes about her mother, a civil rights activist who lost her life to gun violence, and her own deeply personal experience with reproductive justice. And in a remarkably candid and moving piece, she writes about a traumatic attack that occurred at a moment of collective triumph, in which she weighs her fight for the common good against her own well-being. Flowers’s faith shines throughout the collection, guiding her work and inspiring her vision of our responsibility to one another and to our shared home.

Drawn from a lifetime of organizing, activism, and change-making, Holy Ground equips us with clarity, lights a way forward, and rouses us to action—for ourselves and for each other, for our communities, and, ultimately, for our planet.