Imagine being an astronaut and hurtling through space for one day. Then imagine you're a phenomenal writer who not only shows you around the space ship but gives you moment by moment view of civilization below and wrestles with questions and awe-inspiring considerations about our floating planet and the meaning of love and family, where "there's no wall or barrier--no tribes, no war or corruption or particular cause of fear." A breathtaking meditation on life.
Winner of the 2024 Hawthornden Prize Shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction
A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in 24 hours
"Ravishingly beautiful." — Joshua Ferris, New York Times
A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of…
This is a compelling look at aging and dementia through the eyes of a swimmer exploring her personal backstory in Japanese American incarceration camps. But it's also a fine set up for relationship conflict/love with her daughter. With a speculative imagination, Julie Otsuka spins a unique tale of heroism and literally propels us through with her beautiful writing just as the swimmers propel themselves through the pool.
From the internationally bestselling author of The Buddha in the Attic
Up above there are wildfires, smog alerts, epic droughts, paper jams, teachers' strikes, insurrections, revolutions, record-breaking summers of unendurable heat, but down below, at the pool, it is always a comfortable eighty-one degrees ...
Alice is one of a group of obsessed recreational swimmers for whom their local swimming pool has become the centre of their lives - a place of unexpected kinship, freedom, and ritual. Until one day a crack appears beneath its surface ...
As cracks also begin to appear in Alice's memory, her husband and daughter…
I picked it up for the title as I love Death Valley National Park. But from the first sentence to the last I was riveted in Broder's wonderful world building out in the very alien desert where her protagonist tries to come to terms with the impending death of her father. Laugh out loud wonderful characters in the hotel clerks and protagonist. Also a fabulous essay on art, writing, and creation. A standout read this year for me.
Named a Best Book of 2023 by The New York Times ("incandescent...hilarious...a triumph"), Oprah Daily ("surreal, absurd, lucid, and wise"), Vanity Fair ("Broder [is] a genius and a sorceress"), and more!
From the visionary author of Milk Fed and The Pisces, a darkly funny novel about grief and a “magical tale of survival” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
In Melissa Broder’s astonishingly profound new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow—for both her father in the ICU…
In 1922, George A. Hormel, founder of today’s multibillion-dollar company Hormel Foods, forced the resignation of my grandfather, Alpha LaRue Eberhart, after a decade-long embezzlement scandal. But was he complicit, as rumors suggested?
Through research and first-hand exploration in Austin, Minnesota, I dig deep to understand what really happened one hundred years ago, both in intimate and grand scale, weaving the histories of these powerful men within the sweeping landscape of our country’s early entrepreneurs and industries. I offer insight about business leaders from my forty-year career advising CEOs and top executives, and provide a multilayered exploration of our collective reverence for heroes while reconciling my complicated past.
