A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEE"An extraordinary work that will stand as blazing witness to the age that bore it.? -- Sarah PerryA "masterpiece" (Daisy Johnson) of mortality, passion, and human connection, set against the backdrop of a deadly global virus?from the Booker?nominated writerYou were the last one here, before I closed the door of Burntcoat. Before we all closed our doors . . .In an unnamed British city, the virus is spreading, and like everyone else, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness retreats inside. She isolates herself in her immense studio, Burntcoat, with Halit, the lover she barely knows. As life outside changes irreparably, inside Burntcoat, Edith and Halit find themselves changed as well: by the histories and responsibilities each carries and bears, by the fears and dangers of the world outside, and by the progressions of their new relationship. And Burntcoat will be transformed, too, into a new and feverish world, a place in which Edith comes to an understanding of how we survive the impossible?and what is left after we have.A sharp and stunning novel of art and ambition, mortality and connection, Burntcoat is a major work from ?one of our most influential short story writers? (The Guardian). It is an intimate and vital examination of how and why we create?make art, form relationships, build a life?and an urgent exploration of an unprecedented crisis, the repercussions of which are still years in the learning.
How deeply can you love when your heart is full of secrets? A sweeping, propulsive family story about a woman learning to love, from the bustle of New York's fashion scene to a remote, windswept Swedish island, by the acclaimed author of The Red Address Book-"a love letter to the human heart" (Alyson Richman).By age fifty, Elin Boals has created a perfect life for herself: her wildly successful business as Manhattan's preeminent fashion photographer is flourishing. Her handsome, patient husband is devoted to her; her teenaged daughter, Alice, has been accepted to the ballet academy of her dreams. But then Elin receives an innocuous-looking envelope. Folded inside is a star chart, with an address written by a familiar hand.Shaken, Elin begins to have startling flashbacks to a life very different from the childhood in a Paris bookstore that she has so lovingly recounted to Alice. In these memories, a poverty-stricken little girl cares for her two ragged baby brothers, laughing with her family on the good days, sheltering them from her mother's sadness and her father's wrath on the bad days. Elin also remembers vivid walks with a young classmate, Fredrik, whose steadfast friendship and starlit confidences shaped her young life. As Elin becomes consumed by these memories, her New York life begins to crumble dramatically. Finally, her family's troubling questions drive her to face, at last, the brutal secret from her past.At once a heartwarming family story and a page-turning mystery, A Question Mark Is Half a Heart traces a surprising journey across continents to reconciliation, and toward finding a true sense of home.
National Book Award finalist Howard Norman delivers another "provocative . . . haunting"* novel, this time set in a Vermont village and featuring a missing child, a newly married private detective, and a highly relatable ghost. *Janet Maslin, New York Times Simon Inescort is no longer bodily present in his marriage. It's been several months since he keeled over the rail of a Nova Scotia-bound ferry, a massive heart attack to blame. Simon's widow, Lorca Pell, has sold their farmhouse to newlyweds Zachary and Muriel--after revealing that the deed contains a "ghost clause," an actual legal clause, not unheard of in Vermont, allowing for reimbursement if a recently purchased home turns out to be haunted. In fact, Simon finds himself still at home: "Every waking moment, I'm astonished I have any consciousness . . . What am I to call myself now, a revenant?" He spends time replaying his marriage in his own mind, as if in poignant reel-to-reel, while also engaging in occasionally intimate observation of the new homeowners. But soon the crisis of a missing child, a local eleven-year-old, threatens the tenuous domestic equilibrium, as the weight of the case falls to Zachary, a rookie private detective with the Green Mountain Agency. The Ghost Clause is a heartrending, affirming portrait of two marriages--one in its afterlife, one new and erotically charged--and of the Vermont village life that sustains and remakes them.
In a nail-biting hunt for a missing loved one, DI Edgar Stephens and the magician Max Mephisto discover once again that the line between art, life, and death is all too easily blurred. It's the holiday season and Max Mephisto and his daughter Ruby have landed a headlining gig at the Brighton Hippodrome, the biggest theater in the city, an achievement only slightly marred by the less-than-savory supporting act: a tableau show of naked "living statues." But when one of the girls goes missing and turns up dead not long after, Max and Ruby realize there's something far more sinister than obscenity afoot in the theater. DI Edgar Stephens is on the case. As he searches for the killer, he begins to suspect that her fatal vanishing act may very well be related to another case, the death of a quiet local florist. But just as he's narrowing in on the missing link, Ruby goes missing, and he and Max must team up once again to find her.
An urgent and deeply necessary work, Dear Zealots offers three powerful essays that speak directly to our present age, on the rise of zealotry in Israel and around the world. "Concise, evocative . . . Dear Zealots is not just a brilliant book of thoughts and ideas-it is a depiction of one man's struggle, who for decades has insisted on keeping a sharp, strident and lucid perspective in the face of chaos and at times of madness." - David Grossman, winner of the Man Booker International Prize From the incomparable Amos Oz comes a series of three essays: on the universal nature of fanaticism and its possible cures, on the Jewish roots of humanism and the need for a secular pride in Israel, and on the geopolitical standing of Israel in the wider Middle East and internationally.Dear Zealots is classic Amos Oz-fluid, rich, masterly, and perfectly timed for a world in which polarization and extremism are rising everywhere. The essays were written, Oz states, "first and foremost" for his grandchildren: they are a patient, learned telling of history, religion, and politics, to be thumbed through and studied, clung to even, as we march toward an uncertain future.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie. A biography "as enthralling as a detective story," of the woman who reigned over sixteenth-century Scotland (New York Times Book Review).In Mary Queen of Scots, John Guy creates an intimate and absorbing portrait of one of history's most famous women, depicting her world and her place in the sweep of history with stunning immediacy. Bringing together all surviving documents and uncovering a trove of new sources for the first time, Guy dispels the popular image of Mary Stuart as a romantic leading lady?achieving her ends through feminine wiles?and establishes her as the intellectual and political equal of Elizabeth I. Through Guy's pioneering research and superbly readable prose, we come to see Mary as a skillful diplomat, maneuvering ingeniously among a dizzying array of factions that sought to control or dethrone her. It is an enthralling, myth-shattering look at a complex woman and ruler and her time. "The definitive biography . . . gripping . . . a pure pleasure to read."?Washington Post Book World First published in 2004 as Queen of Scots
"[An] ingeniously plotted novel . . . Norman knows how to weave an enticing and satisfying mystery, one tantalizing thread at a time." -- New York Times Book Review A witty, engrossing homage to noir, from National Book Award finalist Howard Norman Jacob Rigolet, soon-to-be former assistant to a wealthy art collector, looks up from his seat at an auction--his mother, former head librarian at the Halifax Free Library, is walking almost casually up the aisle. Before a stunned audience, she flings an open jar of ink at master photographer Robert Capa's Death on a Leipzig Balcony. Jacob's police detective fiancée is assigned to the ensuing interrogation. My Darling Detective delivers a fond nod to classic noir, as Jacob's understanding of the man he has always assumed to be his father unravels against the darker truth of Robert Emil, a police officer suspected of murdering two Jewish residents during an upswing of anti-Semitism in 1945. The denouement, involving a dire shootout and an emergency delivery--it's the second Rigolet to be born in the Halifax library in a three decades--is Howard Norman at his uncannily moving best. "Norman works with an offhand ease and grace . . . Whimsy is balanced by moments of powerfully evoked realism." -- Washington Post "An unconventional, lively literary mystery." -- Kirkus Reviews
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize "Baume is a writer of outstanding grace and style. She writes beyond the time we live in."--Colum McCann "Baume leaves nothing unturned in this dark and sometimes funny excavation of the human heart." --Minneapolis Star-Tribune "Fascinating, because of the cumulative power of the precise, pleasingly rhythmic sentences, and the unpredictable intelligence of the narrator's mind." --Guardian Struggling to cope with urban life--and life in general--Frankie, a twenty-something artist, retreats to her family's rural house on "turbine hill," vacant since her grandmother's death three years earlier. It is in this space, surrounded by countryside and wild creatures, that she can finally grapple with the chain of events that led her here--her shaky mental health, her difficult time in art school--and maybe, just maybe, regain her footing in art and life. As Frankie picks up photography once more, closely examining the natural world around her, she reconsiders seminal works of art and their relevance. With "prose that makes sure we look and listen,"* Sara Baume has written an elegant novel that is as much an exploration of wildness, the art world, mental illness, and community as it is a profoundly beautiful and powerful meditation on life. *Atlantic "Baume's writing is near-faultless." --Financial Times "A novel of uniqueness, wonder, recognition, poignancy, truth-speaking, quiet power, strange beauty, and luminous bedazzlement." -- Joseph O'Connor
"Modiano is an ideal writer to gorge on . . . A moody, delectable noir." -- The New Yorker "The best kind of mystery, the kind that never stops haunting you." -- Entertainment Weekly "A work of melancholic beauty . . . Sincere, shattering, magnificent." -- L'Express In the stillness of his Paris apartment, Jean Daragane has built a life of total solitude. Then a surprising phone call shatters the silence of an unusually hot September, and the threatening voice on the other end of the line leaves Daragane wary but irresistibly curious. Almost at once, he finds himself entangled with a shady gambler and a beautiful, fragile young woman, who draw Daragane into the mystery of a decades-old murder. The investigation will force him to confront the memory of a trauma he had all but buried. This masterly novel penetrates the deepest enigmas of identity and compels us to ask whether we ever know who we truly are. "Moody . . . Lyrical . . . A pleasure." -- Kirkus Reviews "A writer unlike any other and a worthy recipient of the Nobel." -- Wall Street Journal
"If you've ever wondered if love can conquer all, read [this] stunning coming-of-age debut." -- Marie Claire A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR * BuzzFeed * Bustle * Shelf Awareness * Publishers Lunch "[This] love story has hypnotic power."--The New Yorker Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does. Born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. But when their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself--and there is a cost to living inside a lie. Inspired by Nigeria's folktales and its war, Chinelo Okparanta shows us, in "graceful and precise" prose (New York Times Book Review), how the struggles and divisions of a nation are inscribed on the souls of its citizens. "Powerful and heartbreaking, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply moving commentary on identity, prejudice, and forbidden love" (BuzzFeed). "An important and timely read, imbued with both political ferocity and mythic beauty." -- Bustle "A real talent. [Under the Udala Trees is] the kind of book that should have come with a cold compress kit. It's sad and sensual and full of heat." -- John Freeman, Electric Literature "Demands not just to be read, but felt." -- Edwidge Danticat
Phil Sundeen thinks Deputy Sheriff Kirby Frye is just a green local kid with a tin badge. And when the wealthy cattle baron's men drag two prisoners from Frye's jail and hang them from a high tree, there's nothing the young lawman can do about it. But Kirby's got more grit than Sundeen and his hired muscle bargained for. They can beat the boy and humiliate him, but they can't make him forget the oath he has sworn to uphold. The cattleman has money, power, and guns on his side, but Kirby Frye is the law in this corner of the Arizona Territories, and he'll drive a rich man to his knees to prove it.
The definitive history of the Samurai, by acclaimed author of Ninja: 1,000 Years of the Shadow Warrior"One could ask for no better storyteller or analyst than John Man." --Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem: The Biography The inspiration for the Jedi knights of Star Wars and the films of Akira Kurosawa, the legendary Japanese samurai have captured modern imaginations. Yet with these elite warriors who were bound by a code of honor called Bushido--the Way of the Warrior--the reality behind the myth proves more fascinating than any fiction. In Samurai, celebrated author John Man provides a unique and captivating look at their true history, told through the life of one man: Saigo Takamori, known to many as "the last samurai." In 1877 Takamori led a rebel army of samurai in a heroic "last stand" against the Imperial Japanese Army, who sought to end the "way of the sword" in favor of firearms and modern warfare. Man's thrilling narrative brings to life the hidden world of the samurai as never before.
Sweet Honey Deal's not sure what compelled her to marry Walter Schoen, possibly the most boring man on Earth. So she quickly rectified the situation by leaving the dour German-born butcher to start a new life. A good thing, too, now that America's at war with Adolf Hitler and Walter's loyalty to his adopted country was always questionable. Even better, now U.S. Marshal Carl Webster wants to come up to Honey's room for an official "chat" . . . and for something more intimate, if Honey has anything to say about it.The feds' legendary "Hot Kid," Carl's hunting two German POWs who escaped from an Oklahoma internment camp. Maybe Honey's estranged hubby knows something. Maybe Honey knows something. Maybe Carl can stay faithful to his wife. Or maybe they're all about to get tangled up--along with a sultry Ukrainian spy and her transvestite manservant--in a nutty assassination plot that can't possibly succeed.
"Cat Chaser is just what one would expect from Elmore Leonard--quirky, peopled with oddball characters...and more twists and turns than a roller coaster."--Cleveland Plain Dealer"A superior example of gritty writing and violent action." --New York Times There are numerous reasons why Grand Master Elmore Leonard is considered "the coolest, hottest thriller writer in America" (Chicago Tribune) and "the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever" (New York Times Book Review). Cat Chaser is one of them. A gripping, lightning-paced tale of an ex-soldier-turned Florida motel owner whose dangerous affair with the mistress of a Dominican general in exile--a former death squad leader--threatens to have lethal consequences...especially when drugs, double-cross, and murderous mob thugs are added into the mix. A classic thriller from crime fiction master who first brought us U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, currently of TV's Justified, Cat Chaser proves once more that when the true greats of mystery and suspense are mentioned--John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Robert Parker, et al--Elmore Leonard tops the list.
A pioneering music educator reveals how music can supercharge early childhood development-and explains how parents and educators can harness its power.Since opening her famed Parisian conservatory over three decades ago, Joan Koenig has led a global movement to improve children's lives and minds with the transformative power of music. With a curriculum and philosophy drawn from cutting-edge science, L'École Koenig has educated and empowered even its youngest students-from baby Max, whose coordination and communication grow as he wiggles and coos to targeted songs and dance routines, to five-year-old Constance, who nourishes her empathy, creativity, and memory while practicing music from other cultures. In The Musical Child, Koenig shares stories from her classrooms, along with tips about how to use the latest research during the critical years when children are most sensitive to musical exposure and most receptive to its benefits.A gift for parents, caregivers, musicians, and educators, The Musical Child reveals the multiple ways in which music can help children thrive-and shows how, in the twenty-first century, its practice is more vital than ever.
HAPPY HOUSE HUNTING… Nelle and Evan Pereira were thrilled to close on their "forever home," a spacious paradise nestled against a state forest in Massachusetts. Three months later, on a brisk Saturday morning, their peace is destroyed when an intruder captures Nelle home by herself. Quickly overpowered by the aggressive stranger, she's forced down to the cold, musty basement where he ties her to a chair. The intruder has a singular, if unusual, demand: he wants her to make a phone call. One that Nelle isn't confident she can make, even though her life depends on it. Desperate to see herself and her husband to safety, Nelle doesn't yet realize this was no chance encounter-it was a carefully planned attack. With no one to hear them scream, their secluded home feels horrifyingly isolated. And before this long day is through, Nelle and Evan, who share a dangerous secret, will bring a violent reckoning down upon all of them.
A mother's secret past and her daughter's present collide in this richly atmospheric novel from the acclaimed author of The Animals at Lockwood Manor. In the summer of 1973, Ruth and her four friends were obsessed with Pre-Raphaelite paintings-and a little bit obsessed with each other. Drawn to the cold depths of the river by Ruth's house, the girls pretend to be the drowning Ophelia, with increasingly elaborate tableaux. But by the end of that fateful summer, real tragedy finds them along the banks.Twenty-four years later, Ruth returns to the suffocating, once-grand house she grew up in, the mother of young twins and seventeen-year-old Maeve, whose leukemia is recently in remission. Joining the family in the country is Stuart, Ruth's childhood friend, who is quietly insinuating himself into their lives and gives Maeve the attention she longs for. She is unsure of her place in the world now that she is cancer-free. Her parents just want her to be an ordinary teenage girl. But what teenage girl is ordinary?Alternating between the two fateful summers, The Ophelia Girls is a suspense-filled exploration of mothers and daughters, illicit desire, and the perils and power of being a young woman.
Former Secret Service agent Joe LaBrava gets mixed up in a South Miami Beach scam involving a redneck former cop, a Cuban hitman who moonlights as a go-go dancer, and a crazy one-time movie queen whose world is part make-believe, part deadly danger.
"A quirky, deeply satisfying, whip-smart debut that critiques corporate culture and male entitlement while also offering a heartfelt look at how to work through grief. Meticulously constructed and truly original-I inhaled it."-Jami Attenberg, author of All This Could Be YoursFor fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Severance: an offbeat, wryly funny debut novel that follows an eccentric product engineer who works for a hip furniture company, where sweeping corporate change lands her under the purview of a startlingly charismatic boss who seems determined to get close to her at all costs . . . Ava Simon designs storage boxes for STÄDA, a slick Brooklyn-based furniture company. She's hardworking and obsessive, and heartbroken from a tragedy that killed her girlfriend and upended her life. It's been years since she's let anyone in. But when Ava's new boss-the young and magnetic Mat Putnam-offers Ava a ride home one afternoon, an unlikely relationship blossoms. Ava remembers how rewarding it can be to open up-and, despite her instincts, becomes enamored. But Mat isn't who he claims to be, and the romance takes a sharp turn.The Very Nice Box is a funny, suspenseful debut-with a shocking twist. It's at once a send-up of male entitlement and a bighearted account of grief, friendship, and trust.
?In She Memes Well, Quinta gives more than a peek behind the curtain. She invites us in, lets us poke around and offers a balm for our aching souls. She moves beyond the jokes into something much deeper, something we may not recognize we need. She is the friend, sister, lover, cool co-worker we all wished we had.??Gabrielle Union, actress and New York Times bestselling author of We're Going to Need More Wine From comedian Quinta Brunson (creator and star of Abbott Elementary) comes a deeply personal and funny collection of essays about trying to make it when you're struggling, the importance of staying true to your roots, and how she's redefined humor online. Quinta Brunson is a master at breaking the internet. Before having any traditional background in media, her humorous videos were the first to go viral on Instagram's platform. From there, Brunson's wryly observant POV helped cement her status in the comedy world at large, with roles on HBO, Netflix, ABC, Adult Swim, BuzzFeed, the CW, and Comedy Central. Now, Brunson is bringing her comedic chops to the page in She Memes Well, an earnest, laugh-out-loud collection about this unusual road to notoriety.In her debut essay collection, Quinta applies her trademark humor and heart to discuss what it was like to go from a girl who loved the World Wide Web to a girl whose face launched a thousand memes. With anecdotes that range from the ridiculous?like the time she decided to go clubbing wearing an outfit she describes as "Gary Coleman meets metrosexual pirate"?to more heartfelt material about her struggles with depression, Quinta's voice is entirely authentic and eminently readable. With its intimate tone and hilarious moments, She Memes Well will make you feel as if you're sitting down with your chillest, funniest friend.
A triumphant collection of stories centered on Nigerian women as they build lives out of love and longing, the struggle to stay and the mandate to leave, by an award-winning writer who ¿is a certainly a voice to watch, and clearly deserves a place on any bookshelf beside fellow Nigerian authors Achebe and Adichie" (Bustle). What does happiness look like for the women in this acclaimed debut collection? Here is a cast of characters, in their Nigerian homeland and abroad, who whose world is marked by lush landscapes, historical legend and lively folktales, and the search for identity at all costs. You'll meet mothers who will go to the ends of the earth for their children and daughters who will love whomever they want--even if that means risking everything, even their own lives. Spanning generations, transcending social strata, and crossing the boundaries between duty and desire, the stories in this collection are rendered with ¿such strength and intimacy, such lucidity and composure, that in each and every case the truths of their lives detonate deep inside the reader's heart, with the power and force of revelation" (Paul Harding). ¶ ¿The work of a sure and gifted new writer."--Julie Otsuka
"What Bodanis does brilliantly is to give us a feel for Einstein as a person. I don't think I've ever read a book that does this as well . . . Whenever there's a chance for storytelling, Bodanis triumphs." --Popular Science "Fascinating." --Forbes Widely considered the greatest genius of all time, Albert Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos with his general theory of relativity and helped lead us into the atomic age. Yet in the final decades of his life, he was ignored by most working scientists, and his ideas were opposed by even his closest friends. How did this happen?Best-selling biographer David Bodanis traces the arc of Einstein's life--from the skeptical, erratic student to the world's most brilliant physicist to the fallen-from-grace celebrity. An intimate biography in which "theories of the universe morph into theories of life" (Times, London), Einstein's Greatest Mistake reveals what we owe Einstein today--and how much more he might have achieved if not for his all-too-human flaws.
"Propulsive . . . Not only is the book difficult to put down, it's also an adroit exploration of the ethical quandaries of true crime storytelling, particularly in podcasts."-New York Times Book Review Elle Castillo once trained as a social worker, supporting young victims of violent crime. Now she hosts a popular true crime podcast that focuses on cold cases of missing and abducted children. After four seasons of successfully solving these cases in Minnesota's Twin Cities, Elle decides to tackle her white whale: The Countdown Killer. Twenty years ago, TCK was terrorizing the community, kidnapping and ritualistically murdering three girls over seven days, each a year younger than the last. Then, after he took his eleven-year-old victim, the pattern-and the murders-abruptly stopped. No one has ever known why. When Elle follows up on a listener tip only to discover the man's dead body, she feels at fault. Then, within days, a child is abducted-a young girl who seems to fit suspiciously into the TCK sequence halted decades before. While media and law enforcement long ago concluded that TCK had died by suicide, Elle has never believed TCK was dead. She had hoped her investigation would lay that suspicion to rest, but her podcast seems instead to be inciting new victims. "A masterful, heart-pounding suspense that ushers in an astonishing new voice in crime fiction." -Samantha M. Bailey, internationally best-selling author of Woman on the Edge "A tale of obsession, dark histories, and one woman's quest to bring a terrifying killer to justice, Girl, 11 is delivered with poise, style, and cunning-making it impossible to put down." -Alex Segura, acclaimed author of Miami Midnight and Blackout
A New York Times bestseller, Norman Ohler's Blitzed is a "fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich" (Washington Post). The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs: cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, which were consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to German soldiers. In fact, troops were encouraged, and in some cases ordered, to take rations of a form of crystal meth?the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to account for the breakneck invasion that sealed the fall of France in 1940, as well as other German military victories. Hitler himself became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs?ultimately including Eukodal, a cousin of heroin?administered by his personal doctor. Thoroughly researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows. "Delightfully nuts."?The New Yorker
An ?electrifying? biography of Walter White, a little-remembered Black civil rights leader who passed for white in order to investigate racist murders, help put the NAACP on the map, and change the racial identity of America forever (Chicago Review of Books).Walter F. White led two lives: one as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP in the early twentieth century; the other as a white newspaperman who covered lynching crimes in the Deep South at the blazing height of racial violence. Born mixed race and with very fair skin and straight hair, White was able to ?pass? for white. He leveraged this ambiguity as a reporter, bringing to light the darkest crimes in America and helping to plant the seeds of the civil rights movement.White's risky career led him to lead a double life. He was simultaneously a second-class citizen subject to Jim Crow laws at home and a widely respected professional with full access to the white world at work. His life was fraught with internal and external conflict?much like the story of race in America. Starting out as an obscure activist, White ultimately became Black America's most prominent leader, during his time. A character study of White's life and career with all these complexities has never been rendered, until now.By the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental President, Dewey Defeats Truman, and The Arsenal of Democracy, White Lies uncovers the life of a civil rights leader unlike any other.
The story of the fascinating, fraught alliance among Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Maria Weston Chapman?and how its breakup led to the success of America's most important social movement.?Fresh, provocative and engrossing.? ?New York TimesIn the crucial early years of the Abolition movement, the Boston branch of the cause seized upon the star power of the eloquent ex-slave Frederick Douglass to make its case for slaves' freedom. Journalist William Lloyd Garrison promoted emancipation while Garrison loyalist Maria Weston Chapman, known as ?the Contessa,? raised money and managed Douglass's speaking tour from her Boston townhouse.Conventional histories have seen Douglass's departure for the New York wing of the Abolition party as a result of a rift between Douglass and Garrison. But, as acclaimed historian Linda Hirshman reveals, this completely misses the woman in power. Weston Chapman wrote cutting letters to Douglass, doubting his loyalty; the Bostonian abolitionists were shot through with racist prejudice, even aiming the N-word at Douglass among themselves. Through incisive, original analysis, Hirshman convinces that the inevitable breakup was in fact a successful failure. Eventually, as the most sought-after Black activist in America, Douglass was able to dangle the prize of his endorsement over the Republican Party's candidate for president, Abraham Lincoln. Two years later the abolition of slavery?if not the abolition of racism?became immutable law.
The chilling debut mystery in the Brighton Mysteries series from Edgar Allen Poe Award-winner Elly Griffiths--author of the Ruth Galloway Mysteries--about a band of magicians who served together in World War II tracking a killer who's performing their deadly tricks."Captivating."--Wall Street Journal"An absorbing read, the debut of another great series."--San Jose Mercury News"A labyrinthine plot, a splendid reveal, and superb evocation of the wafer-thin veneer of glamour at the bottom end of showbusiness . . . Thoroughly enjoyable." --GuardianBrighton, 1950. A girl is found cut into three sections, and Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is convinced the killer is mimicking a famous magic trick--the Zig Zag Girl. The inventor of the trick, Max Mephisto, served with Edgar in a special ops group called the Magic Men that used stage illusions to confound the enemy. Max still performs, touring with ventriloquists, sword-swallowers, and dancing girls.When Edgar asks for his help with the case, Max tells him to identify the victim, for it takes a special sidekick to do the Zig Zag Girl. Those words haunt Max when he learns the victim was a favorite former assistant of his own. And when Edgar receives a letter warning of another "trick" on the way, he realizes that it is the Magic Men themselves who are in the killer's sights."Enormously engaging . . . Griffiths's plot is satisfyingly serpentine."--Daily Mail"Readers will finish looking forward to the next trick up [Griffiths's] sleeve."--Mystery Scene
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