No one knows more about everything—especially everything rude, clever, and offensively compelling—than John Waters. The man in the pencil-thin mustache, auteur of the transgressive movie classics Pink Flamingos, Polyester, the original Hairspray, Cry-Baby, and A Dirty Shame, is one of the world’s great sophisticates, and in Mr. Know-It-All he serves it up...

A moving exploration of how gay men construct their identities, fight to be themselves, and live authentically

It goes without saying that even today, it’s not easy to be gay in America. While young gay men often come out more readily, even those from the most progressive of backgrounds still struggle with the legacy of early-life stigma and a deficit of...

By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change—including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late. Losing Earth is their story, and ours.
The...

“One of our true superstars of nonfiction” (David Foster Wallace), Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift and Trickster Makes This World, offers a playful and inspiring defense of forgetfulness by exploring the healing effect it can have on the human psyche.

We live in a culture that prizes memory—how much we can store, the quality of what’s preserved, how we might...

From one of the most lyrically gifted, socially conscious rappers of the past twenty years, Vibrate Higher is a firsthand account of hip-hop as a political force

Before Talib Kweli became a world-renowned hip hop artist, he was a Brooklyn kid who liked to cut class, spit rhymes, and wander the streets of Greenwich Village with a motley crew of artists...

An insightful biography of Mary Ball Washington, the mother of our nation's father

The Widow Washington is the first life of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington’s mother, based on archival sources. Her son’s biographers have, for the most part, painted her as self-centered and crude, a trial and an obstacle to her son. But the records tell a very...

The untold story of Dr. Oliver Sacks, his own most singular patient

The author Lawrence Weschler began spending time with Oliver Sacks in the early 1980s, when he set out to profile the neurologist for his own new employer, The New Yorker. Almost a decade earlier, Dr. Sacks had published his masterpiece Awakenings--the account of his long-dormant patients’...

One of Esquire, The Rumpus, The Millions, Literary Hub and Electric Literature's Most Anticipated Books of 2019

A searing debut novel that explores community, identity, and the myth of the American dream through an immigrant family in Alaska

In Chia-Chia Lin’s debut novel, The Unpassing, we meet a Taiwanese immigrant family of six struggling to make ends meet...

“[An] intellect with the timing of a borscht belt comedian” (Publishers Weekly), acclaimed author Adam Ehrlich Sachs brings his unique comic and philosophical sensibilities to his first novel, The Organs of Sense, an intricate nested fable equating our inability to truly understand the world with our inability to understand our own messy families.

In 1666...

A Sunday Times (U.K.) Best Book of 2018 and Winner of the Mary Soames Award for History

An unprecedented history of the storied ship that Darwin said helped add a hemisphere to the civilized world

The Enlightenment was an age of endeavors, with Britain consumed by the impulse for grand projects undertaken at speed. Endeavour was also the name given to a...

A young interracial couple escapes from Maryland to France in 1892, living first among artists in the vibrant Latin Quarter of Paris, and then beginning a new life as winemakers in the rugged countryside of the Languedoc

Twenty-three years after the publication of his acclaimed novel Mason’s Retreat and six years after The Right-Hand Shore, Christopher...

From the New York Times bestselling author Dominic Smith, a radiant novel tracing the intertwined fates of a silent-film director and his muse

Dominic Smith’s The Electric Hotel winds through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey—America’s first movie town—and on the battlefields of Belgium during World War I. A sweeping work of...

This hilarious, truth-telling debut upends notions of family, protest, and Appalachia, and forces us to reimagine an America we think we know

Helen arrives in Appalachian Ohio full of love and eager to carry out her boyfriend’s ideas for living off the land. Too soon, with winter coming, her boyfriend calls it quits. Helped by Rudy, her...

A bestselling literary sensation in Brazil, a powerful debut short-story collection about favela life in Rio de Janeiro

In The Sun on My Head, Geovani Martins recounts the experiences of boys growing up in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the early years of the twenty-first century. Drawing on his childhood and adolescence, Martins uses the rhythms and slang...

A timely and uncanny portrait of a world in the wake of fake news, diminished privacy, and a total shutdown of the Internet

BEFORE: In Bristol’s center lies the Croft, a digital no-man’s-land cut off from the surveillance, Big Data dependence, and corporate-sponsored, globally hegemonic aspirations that have overrun the rest of the world. Ten years in, it’s...

***PREVIOUSLY Miracle Submarine***

A thrilling debut novel for fans of Liane Moriarty and Celeste Ng about how far we’ll go to protect our families—and our deepest secrets

My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He probably didn’t even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first . . .

In rural Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical...

The Light Years is a joyous and defiant coming-of-age memoir set during one of the most turbulent times in American history

Chris Rush was born into a prosperous, fiercely Roman Catholic, New Jersey family. But underneath the gleaming mid-century house, the flawless hostess mom, and the thriving businessman dad ran an unspoken tension that, amid the upheaval...

A chemistry student falls for his teacher and uncovers a centuries-old quest for the Elixir of Life

Conrad Aybinder is a boy with a secret; sixteen and ready for anything. A chemistry genius, he has spent the summer on an independent-study project with his favorite teacher, Sammy Tampari. Sammy is also Conrad’s first love. But the first day of senior year...

A pathbreaking history of the United States’ overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire

We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories—the islands, atolls, and archipelagos—this country...

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. One of BBC Culture, Lit Hub, O, the Oprah Magazine, and The New York Times's Books to Read this February

“One of the premier narrative non-fiction writers of her time.” —The New Republic

Janet Malcolm’s previous collection, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, was “unmistakably the work of a...

Existential noir meets absurd comedy when a young man reluctantly enlists as source material for an art project

Stanley had known it was a mistake to accept his uncle Lech’s offer to apartment-sit in Prague—he’d known it was one of Lech’s proposals, a thinly veiled setup for some invasive, potentially dangerous performance art project. But whatever Lech had...

From one of the most significant contemporary Japanese writers, a haunting, dazzling novel of loss and rebirth

“Yuko Tsushima is one of the most important Japanese writers of her generation.” —Foumiko Kometani, The New York Times

I was puzzled by how I had changed. But I could no longer go back . . .

It is spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts...

He stole her childhood . . . she’ll take his future

Something happened, she didn’t know what, something spun, the world turning, back, back, too fast. She would be sick. Bridget put out a hand to steady herself against the wall.

Bridget has a secret—one she keeps from everyone, even her husband. One that threatens to explode when her childhood music teacher...

An “extraordinary” (The Sunday Times) debut of unnerving beauty, Chris Power’s short story collection Mothers evokes the magic and despair of the essential human longing for purpose.

Chris Power’s stories are peopled by men and women who find themselves at crossroads or dead ends—characters who search without knowing what they seek. Their paths lead them to...

A Southern Living Best New Book of Winter 2019; A Refinery29 Best Book of January 2019; A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 at The Week, Huffington Post, Nylon, and Lit Hub; An Indie Next Pick for January 2019

“Ghost Wall has subtlety, wit, and the force of a rock to the head: an instant classic.”
—Emma Donoghue, author of Room

"A worthy match for 3 a.m...

"[A] future cult classic." —The New York Times Book Review

"There’s Borges and Bolaño, Kafka and Cortázar, Modiano and Murakami, and now Laura van den Berg." —The Washington Post

Named a Best Book of 2018 by The Boston Globe, Huffington Post, Electric Literature and Lit Hub. An August 2018 IndieNext Selection. Named a Summer 2018 Read by The Washington Post, ...

Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize, A New York Times Notable Book of 2018, An Indie Next Selection

A Best Book of 2018 at Elle, Marie Claire, Refinery29, Bustle, Buzzfeed, BookPage, Bookish, Mental Floss, Chicago Review of Books, HuffPost, Electric Literature, Amazon Editors', A.V. Club, Jezebel, Vulture

"A fierce debut from a writer with seemingly boundless...

Long-listed for the 2018 Man Booker Prize
Short-listed for the 2018 Gordon Burn Prize
Short-listed for the 2018 Goldsmiths Prize

Inspired by the real-life murder of a British army soldier by religious fanatics, Guy Gunaratne’s In Our Mad and Furious City is a snapshot of the diverse, frenzied edges of modern-day London. A crackling debut from a vital new...

Named a Fall Pick by Boston Globe, ELLE, Library Journal and MyDomain

An eerie debut collection featuring missing parents, unrequited love, and other uncomfortable moments

A man hangs from the ceiling of an art gallery. A woman spells out messages to her sister using her own hair. Children deemed “bad” are stolen from their homes. In Hardly Children, Laura...

Finalist for the 2019 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing

“The Circuit is the best sports book I've read in years, maybe ever.” —Rich Cohen, author of The Chicago Cubs and Monsters

“As sports writing goes, The Circuit is unusual in the very best way. Rowan Ricardo Phillips writes with such fluidity, and packs the book with bursts of brilliance. This...

“Those who lament that the novel has lost its prophecy should pay heed and cover-price: Muck is the future, both of Jerusalem and of literature. God is showing some rare good taste, by choosing to speak to us through Dror Burstein.” —Joshua Cohen, author of Moving Kings and Book of Numbers

In a Jerusalem both ancient and modern, where the First Temple...

“I’ll take my share of the blame. I only ask that he take his.”

In Bringing Down the Colonel, the journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely nineteenth-century women’s rights crusader. After an affair with a prominent politician left her “ruined,” Pollard brought the man—and the hypocrisy of America’s control of women’s...

A tense, powerful thriller from the bestselling author of Six Four

1985. Kazumasa Yuuki, a seasoned reporter at the North Kanto Times, runs a daily gauntlet of the power struggles and office politics that plague its newsroom. But when an air disaster of unprecedented scale occurs on the paper’s doorstep, its staff is united by an unimaginable horror and a...