From the Booker-winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo comes a vivid, moving, and beautifully crafted novel following a young man returning to his Hebridean island home, a portrait of a close-knit community and a fraying family, of a father’s expectations and a son’s desires Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the island of Harris to find that little has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal begrudgingly resumes his old life, stuck between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for several decades. Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As lambing season turns to shearing season, everything seems poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly knotted. John of John is a singular novel about duty and patience and the transformative power of the truth. It is a magnificent literary work that shows Douglas Stuart working at an even higher level of artistic creation.

Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us? And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence. Elizabeth Strout, as we have come to expect, delivers a moving exploration of the human condition—one that brims with compassion for each and every one of her indelible characters. With exquisite prose and profound insight, The Things We Never Say takes one man’s fears and loneliness and makes them universal. And in the same breath, captures the abiding love that sustains and holds us all.

A reclusive graduate student is forced into a friendship that destabilizes her life in this surreal, allegorical romance. In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by nature, where power is held in a fragile balance between academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, the reclusive narrator of The Vivisectors spends her days propping up the career of her needy and fraudulent professor boss. Then a controversy ruptures her careful Adam, a contrarian student and an obsession of the boss, comes into heated conflict with a young professor, with both men claiming discrimination. The crisis subsumes the university, though the narrator is unmoved—not even the attempted suicide of her estranged mother has been enough to dispel her lack of engagement with the world. But when her boss commands her to befriend Adam, the narrator finds herself both caught up in the events threatening to tear the city apart and increasingly drawn to the alluring student at the heart of it all. Coursing with icy suspense and told with violent precision, The Vivisectors is a new kind of love story for an age of deteriorated communication. With the unsparing style and intellectual ambition that made her award-winning debut The Doloriad a celebrated provocation, Missouri Williams holds a mirror up to humanity’s most intimate contradictions and reflects them back through a novel of profound, spiky spiritual reckoning.

Sam Vimes is a man on the run. Yesterday he was a duke, a chief of police and the ambassador to the mysterious, fat-rich country of Uberworld. Now he was nothing but his native wit and the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya (don't ask). It's snowing. It's freezing. And if he can't make it through the forest to civilisation there's going to be a terrible war. But there are monsters on his trail. They're bright. They're fast. They're werewolves - and they're catching up. Sam Vimes is out of time, out of luck and already out of breath...

“Sara’s an architect of change.”—Maria Shriver The inspirational, deeply researched wellness journey by the award-winning filmmaker, activist, and founder of Women Rising, shining a light on how too many girls are trained to self-silence and serve others—and how we can heal. When Sara Hirsh Bordo was growing up in a big Texas-Lebanese family, as the eldest daughter, she was expected to take care of everyone else around her at the expense of her own needs and worth. But the more she gave of herself, the more ill she became with everything from autoimmune disease to cancer. As an award-winning filmmaker, she spent decades empowering other women and telling their stories, all the while watching her own health decline. She soon came to realize that only when she was sovereign in her own voice did she grow stronger and healthier. When she funded the first quantitative research at the intersection of female empowerment and autoimmunity, she found overwhelming confirmation of her theory that girls in caretaker roles—especially eldest daughters—are disproportionately likely to develop autoimmune conditions later in life, whether that's Hashimoto's thyroiditis, endometriosis, Crohn's disease, type-1 diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, or others. This groundbreaking study was endorsed by former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona and received national media attention. In this audiobook, you will learn from her insights, inner child work, including how to remother and reparent yourself how to unlearn your primary role as a caregiver impacts of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on autoimmunity and poor health shocking facts from her research, such as the fact that more than 6 in 10 women with autoimmune diseases were raised as either the oldest or only daughter in their families moving personal narratives from the women surveyed—and how they have healed Incorporating proprietary, evidence-based research, practical resources, exclusive expert interviews, and inspiring stories, Autoimmunity and the Good Girls is a rousing testament to the missing modality in women’s health—our voices, our needs, and our desires.

Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us? And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence. Elizabeth Strout, as we have come to expect, delivers a moving exploration of the human condition—one that brims with compassion for each and every one of her indelible characters. With exquisite prose and profound insight, The Things We Never Say takes one man’s fears and loneliness and makes them universal. And in the same breath, captures the abiding love that sustains and holds us all.

A richly imagined, dark and dazzling cosy fantasy about learning to love ourselves by wondrous new Australian novelist, Christy Anne Jones Dorothy Louise Walcott should have died when she was fourteen. Instead, she grew into a timid young woman, frugal, ill, over-educated, and dreaming ceaselessly of running away to learn magic. When she hears of a woman who might apprentice her, she sets off on a journey to Alliaster, a city where spirits play cards with kings. Dot is determined to find the witch Theodora—empress of an underground syndicate peddling magic from the quaint façade of her tea shop. Theodora is everything Dot wants to be: beautiful, witty, confident. However, Dot’s arrival heralds the unearthing of Theodora’s eldritch secrets, threatening to topple the witch’s empire and take them both with it. Theodora’s Tea Shop is an atmospheric 1920s-inspired fantasy novel about magic, friendship and, of course, tea. It features twists and turns, found families, monstrous women, many heartfelt and cosy moments, and a creepy daemon who owns a department store. If you love Howl’s Moving Castle, you will adore this book.

Lost in the wide and barren North, Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp, runs into Cracknut Whirrun on a bridge far too narrow for the expansive egos of either. With the King of the Northmen and the High Priestess of Thond in pursuit, can Shevedieh, the greatest thief in Styria, persuade either one of these proud heroes to step aside?

Everything casts a shadow. Even the world we live in. And as with every shadow, there is a place where it must touch. A seam, where the shadow meets its source. Olivia Prior has grown up in Merilance School for girls, and all she has of her past is her mother’s journal—which seems to unravel into madness. Then, a letter invites Olivia to come home—to Gallant. Yet when Olivia arrives, no one is expecting her. But Olivia is not about to leave the first place that feels like home, it doesn’t matter if her cousin Matthew is hostile or if she sees half-formed ghouls haunting the hallways. Olivia knows that Gallant is hiding secrets, and she is determined to uncover them. When she crosses a ruined wall at just the right moment, Olivia finds herself in a place that is Gallant—but not. The manor is crumbling, the ghouls are solid, and a mysterious figure rules over all. Now Olivia sees what has unraveled generations of her family, and where her father may have come from. Olivia has always wanted to belong somewhere, but will she take her place as a Prior, protecting our world against the Master of the House? Or will she take her place beside him?

Lost in the wide and barren North, Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp, runs into Cracknut Whirrun on a bridge far too narrow for the expansive egos of either. With the King of the Northmen and the High Priestess of Thond in pursuit, can Shevedieh, the greatest thief in Styria, persuade either one of these proud heroes to step aside?

A contemporary dystopian elegy narrated by a cat imprisoned in a Schrödinger’s box, by the prizing-winning poet and memoirist whose writing "cuts to the core with electrifying force" (The Free-Lance Star). The indelible cat heroine of this unexpected tale recalls her life with “the Mustache,” her beloved owner. Trapped in a one-way mirrored box, displayed in a classroom for people who must contemplate her fate as part of their training to become "Emotional Support Humans," she weaves a self-soothing paean to the poetry, music, and creature comforts she shared with her Mustache—the best products of a society that has gone off the rails in its violence and intolerance. The trainees in the room, a motley crew our kitty describes with a novelistic flair of her own, are assigned to consider what they feel about her. They also argue about whether there’s really a cat in there, or are they just being manipulated? Their daily required quizzes, reproduced in each chapter, are as poignant and witty as our narrator herself; meanwhile, the mystery of her cat-kidnapping is revealed to us, along with her potential next move on a more spectral plane. An elegy to freedom, dignity, and connection for all living beings, this slim novel engenders powerful feelings in the reader, as it shows us to ourselves from the other side of the mirror.