FICTION

Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya – Having left Odessa for Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with a sense of finality, the Nasmertov family has discovered that the divide between the old world and the new is not nearly as clear-cut as they had imagined. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, returning is just a matter of a plane ticket, and the Russian-owned shops in their adopted neighborhood stock even the most obscure comforts of home. Pursuing the American Dream once meant giving up everything, but does the dream still work if the past refuses to grow distant and mythical, remaining alarmingly within reach? Vogue called it “a virtuosic debut [and] a wry look at immigrant life in the global age.”

After Birth by Elisa Albert – A year has passed since Ari gave birth to Walker, though it went so badly awry she has trouble calling it “birth” and still she can't locate herself in her altered universe. Amid the strange, disjointed rhythms of her days and nights and another impending winter in upstate New York, Ari is a tree without roots, struggling to keep her branches aloft. When Mina, a one-time cult musician — older, self-contained, alone, and nine-months pregnant —moves to town, Ari sees the possibility of a new friend, despite her unfortunate habit of generally mistrusting women. Soon they become comrades-in-arms, and the previously hostile terrain seems almost navigable. With piercing insight, purifying anger, and outrageous humor, Elisa Albert issues a cultural wake-up call that O, The Oprah Magazine called “a smartly acerbic exploration of motherhood.”

The State We’re In: Maine Stories by Ann Beattie – A magnificent new collection of linked stories from a master of the short form, Ann Beattie’s first collection of new stories in a decade is about how we live in the places we have chosen—or have been chosen by. It is about the stories we tell our families, our friends, and ourselves; the truths we may or may not see; how our affinities unite or repel us; and where we look for love. Told through the voices of vivid and engaging women of all ages, The State We’re In explores their doubts and desires and reveals the unexpected moments and glancing epiphanies of daily life. Riveting, witty, sly, and bold, these stories describe a state of mind, a manner of being. Beattie’s sentences, her insights, and her inimitable voice are mesmerizing. A Beattie story, says Margaret Atwood, is “like a fresh bulletin from the front: we snatch it up, eager to know what’s happening out there on the edge of that shifting and dubious no-man’s-land known as interpersonal relations.”

Amnesia by Peter Carey – In this dark, suspenseful, and seriously funny novel, two-time Booker winner Peter Carey takes us to the place where the cyber underworld collides with international politics. When Gaby Baillieux, Australia’s most formidable hacker, releases the Angel Worm virus into her country’s prison system, cell doors are opened and inmates walk free. Since those prisons use American software, the doors in thousands of jails in the United States are opened as well. Is this an accident—or a declaration of cyber war? Does it have anything to do with the largely forgotten Battle of Brisbane between American and Australian forces in 1942? Or with the CIA-influenced coup in Australia in 1975? Disgraced writer Felix Moore, known to himself as “our sole remaining left-wing journalist,” is determined to write Gaby’s biography in order to find the answers that could save her, his career, and perhaps his country. But how to get Gaby – on the run, scared, confused, and angry – to cooperate? New York magazine called Amnesia “ambitious and urgent,” while The Boston Globe labeled it “a rollicking tour-de-force.”

The Mare by Mary Gaitskill – Velveteen Vargas is eleven years old, a Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York: Ginger, a failed artist and shakily recovered alcoholic, and her academic husband, Paul, who wonder what it will mean to “make a difference” in such a contrived situation. The Mare illuminates their shifting relationship with Velvet over several years, as well as Velvet’s encounter with the horses at the stable down the road – especially with an abused, unruly mare called Fugly Girl. With strong supporting characters, Gaitskill traces Velvet’s journey between the vital, violent world of the inner city and the world of the small-town stable as she joins the timeless story of a girl and a horse with a timely story of people from different races and classes trying to meet one another honestly. Kirkus Review named The Mare as one of its “21 Must Read Fall Books” and it was an Entertainment Weekly pick as a “Blockbuster Novel of Fall 2015.”

Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson – In six masterly stories, Adam Johnson delves into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. “Nirvana” portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous,” a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. Fortune Smiles has been named a Notable Book by the New York Times and one of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post. It was also awarded the 2015 National Book Award for Fiction.

The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips – The Lost Child is a sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves from it. At its center is Monica Johnson—cut off from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner—and her bitter struggle to raise her sons in the shadow of the wild moors of the north of England. Phillips intertwines her modern narrative with the childhood of one of literature's most enigmatic lost boys, as he deftly conjures young Heathcliff, the anti-hero of Wuthering Heights, and his ragged existence before Mr. Earnshaw brought him home to his family. Michael Magras of Bookpage called The Lost Child “a biting commentary on empire and the vulnerability of family life…a devastating novel from one of our best writers.”

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely – A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement? In this unforgettable novel from award-winning authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension. In a starred review, School Library Journal called All American Boys “timely and powerful.”

Your Face in Mine by Jess Row – One afternoon, not long after Kelly Thorndike has moved back to his hometown of Baltimore, an African American man he doesn't recognize calls out to him. To Kelly’s shock, the man identifies himself as Martin, who was one of Kelly’s closest friends in high school – and, before his disappearance nearly twenty years before, white and Jewish. Martin then tells an astonishing story: after years of immersing himself in black culture, he’s had a plastic surgeon perform “racial reassignment surgery”: altering his hair, skin, and physiognomy to allow him to pass as African American. Unknown to his family or childhood friends, Martin has been living a new life ever since. Now, however, Martin feels he can no longer keep his identity a secret; he wants Kelly to help him ignite a controversy that will help sell racial reassignment surgery to the world. Inventive and thought-provoking, Your Face in Mine is a brilliant novel about cultural and racial alienation and the nature of belonging. “The premise is headline-catching,” said a reviewer for NPR, “but the subtlety and grace with which Row tells the story is even more remarkable….We book reviewers are fond of calling books ‘brave,’ but Your Face in Mine is genuinely courageous.”

NONFICTION

A Bone to Pick by Mark Bittman – A Bone to Pick compiles Bittman’s most memorable and thought-provoking New York Times columns into a single volume for the first time. Bittman leaves no issue unexamined; agricultural practices, government legislation, fad diets, and corporate greed all come under scrutiny and show that the issues governing what ends up in our market basket and on our tables are both complex and often deliberately confusing. Unabashedly opinionated and invariably thought provoking, Bittman’s columns have helped readers decipher arcane policy, unpack scientific studies, and deflate affronts to common sense when it comes to determining what “eating well” truly means. As urgent as the situation is, Mark contends that we can be optimistic about the future of our food and its impact on our health, as slow-food movements, better school-lunch programs, and even “healthy fast food” become part of the norm. At once inspiring, enraging, and enlightening, A Bone to Pick is an essential resource for every reader eager to understand not only the complexities inherent in the American food system, but also the many opportunities that exist to improve it. Salon calls it “a staple for those who want to consider, more deeply, what’s on their plate.”

Independent Ed: What I Learned from My Career of Big Dreams, Little Movies, and the Twelve Best Days of My Life by Ed Burns and Todd Gold – As the second of three children from a working-class Long Island family, Ed Burns thought a career in filmmaking was a pipe dream. When his first film, The Brothers McMullen, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, he proved himself to be one of the most distinctive and tenacious filmmakers of our time. Since then he has gone on to star in major Hollywood films while remaining dedicated to his true passion: making small films that he believes in. Sharing the lengths he's gone to in order to write, direct, cast, produce, shoot, and edit films on a shoestring budget, Burns uses stories from his life and career to illustrate what it takes to make it as an indie filmmaker. A gripping, inspirational story about forging your own path, Independent Ed is a must-read for casual movie fans, serious film students, and any creative person searching for a bit of inspiration. “It’s a how-to,” said Today’s Matt Lauer. “Every young, hungry, creative person should view this as a textbook.”

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris – Mary Norris has spent more than three decades in The New Yorker's copy department, maintaining its celebrated high standards. Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer, and finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice. Between You & Me features Norris's laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing problems in spelling, punctuation, and usage―comma faults, danglers, "who" vs. "whom," "that" vs. "which," compound words, gender-neutral language―and her clear explanations of how to handle them in a book that Allan Fallow of the Washington Post called “pure porn for word nerds.” Down-to-earth and always open-minded, she draws on examples from Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and the Lord's Prayer, as well as from The Honeymooners, The Simpsons, David Foster Wallace, and Gillian Flynn. Readers―and writers―will find in Norris neither a scold nor a softie but a wise and witty new friend in love with language and alive to the glories of its use in America, even in the age of autocorrect and spell-check. As Norris writes, "The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can't let it push you around."

Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare’s Plays by Tina Packer – From one of the country’s foremost experts on Shakespeare, Women of Will offers a fierce, funny, and fearless exploration of the women of Shakespeare’s plays. Beginning with the early comedies (The Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors), Tina Packer shows thatShakespeare wrote the women of these plays as shrews to be tamed or as sweet little things with no definable independent thought, virgins on the pedestal. The women of the histories (the three parts of Henry VI; Richard III) are, Packer shows, much more interesting, beginning with Joan of Arc, possibly the first woman character Shakespeare ever created. Then, as Packer turns her attention to the extraordinary Juliet, the author perceives a large shift. Suddenly Shakespeare’s women have depth of character, motivation, understanding of life more than equal to that of the men; once Juliet has led the way, the plays are never the same again. As Shakespeare ceases to write about women as predictable caricatures and starts writing them from the inside, embodying their voices, his women become as dimensional, spirited, spiritual, active, and sexual as any of his male characters. Women of Will follows Shakespeare’s development as a human being, from youth to enlightened maturity, exploring the spiritual journey he undertook.  Packer shows that Shakespeare’s imagination develops and deepens until finally the women, his creative knowledge, and a sense of a larger spiritual good come together in the late plays, making clear that when women and men are equal in status and sexual passion, they can—and do—change the world.

Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights by Katha Pollitt – Forty years after the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, "abortion" is still a word that is said with outright hostility or vague discomfort by many – despite the fact that one in three American women will have terminated at least one pregnancy by the time they reach menopause. Even those who support a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy often qualify their support by saying abortion is a "bad thing," an "agonizing decision," thereby placing the medical procedure on a pedestal so remote and radioactive that it takes it out of the world of the everyday, turning an act that is often necessary, and often welcomed, into something shameful and secretive. Meanwhile with each passing day the rights upheld by the Supreme Court are being systematically eroded by state laws designed to end abortion outright.

In this controversial and necessary book, Katha Pollitt reframes abortion as a common part of a woman's reproductive life, one that should be accepted as a moral right with positive social implications. In clear, concise arguments, Pollitt takes on the personhood argument, reaffirms the priority of a woman's life and health, and discusses why terminating a pregnancy can be a force for good for women, families, and society. By whole-heartedly defending abortion rights, Pollitt argues, we reclaim the lives and the rights of women and mothers. Elle called Pro an “important, revelatory new book,” and it was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review.

In the Mind Fields: Exploring the New Science of Neuropsychoanalysis by Casey Schwartz – “I’d never been a science person,” Casey Schwartz declares at the beginning of her far-reaching quest to understand how we define ourselves. Nevertheless, in her early twenties, she was drawn to the possibilities and insights emerging on the frontiers of brain research. Over the next decade she set out to meet the neuroscientists and psychoanalysts engaged with such questions as, How do we perceive the world, make decisions, or remember our childhoods? Are we using the brain? Or the mind? To what extent is it both? With great passion and humor, Schwartz explores the surprising efforts to find common ground between neuroscience and psychoanalysis. Beginning among the tweedy Freudians of North London and proceeding to laboratories, consulting rooms, and hospital bedsides around the world, Schwartz introduces a cast of pioneering characters, from Mark Solms, a South African neuropsychoanalyst with an expertise in dreams, to David Silvers, a psychoanalyst practicing in New York, to Harry, a man who has lost his use of language in the wake of a stroke but who nevertheless benefits from Silvers’s analytic technique. In the Mind Fields is a riveting view of the convictions, obsessions, and struggles of those who dedicate themselves to the effort to understand the mysteries of inner life. The Chicago Tribune called it “fascinating…a refreshingly honest read.”

Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith, edited by Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks – As an organizer, writer, publisher, scholar-activist, and elected official, Barbara Smith has played key roles in multiple social justice movements, including Civil Rights, feminism, lesbian and gay liberation, anti-racism, and Black feminism. Cornel West has called her “one of the grand pioneering and prophetic voices of our time.” Her four decades of grassroots activism forged collaborations that introduced the idea that oppression must be fought on a variety of fronts simultaneously, including gender, race, class, and sexuality. By combining hard-to-find historical documents with new unpublished interviews with fellow activists, this book uncovers the deep roots of today’s “identity politics” and “intersectionality” and serves as an essential primer for practicing solidarity and resistance.

The Brothers Vonnegut: Science and Fiction in the House of Magic by Ginger Strand – In the mid-1950s, Kurt Vonnegut takes a job in the PR department at General Electric in Schenectady, where his older brother, Bernard, is a leading scientist in its research lab: the "House of Magic." Kurt has ambitions as a novelist, and Bernard is working on a series of cutting-edge weather-control experiments meant to make deserts bloom and farmers flourish. While Kurt writes zippy press releases, Bernard builds silver-iodide generators and attacks clouds with dry ice. But when the army takes charge of his cloudseeding project, Bernard begins to have misgivings about the use of his inventions for harm, not to mention the evidence that they are causing alarming changes in the atmosphere. In a fascinating cultural history, Ginger Strand chronicles the intersection of these brothers' lives at a time when the possibilities of science seemed infinite. As the Cold War looms, Bernard's struggle for integrity plays out in Kurt's evolving writing style. The Brothers Vonnegut reveals how science's ability to influence the natural world also influenced one of our most inventive novelists.

Wild Bill Wellman: Hollywood Rebel by William Wellman, Jr. – Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries, William Wellman, Jr. gives us the first full portrait of his father, the legendary Hollywood director known as “Wild Bill” Wellman. Among his eighty-two movies, ranging from adventure and gangster pictures to comedies, romances, and Westerns, were the pioneering World War I epic Wings, winner of the first Academy Award for best picture, Public Enemy, the original A Star Is Born,and The Ox-Bow Incident. Wild Bill Wellman: Hollywood Rebel paints a vivid recollection of the profoundly American spirit and visionary who David O. Selznick called “one of the motion pictures’ greatest craftsmen” – a man’s man who was able to put into cinematic storytelling the most subtle and fulsome of feeling, a man feared, respected, and loved.