Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi

An alternate cover edition can be found here. A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction. Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation. Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.

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The Cat Who Saved Books

Sōsuke Natsukawa

The Cat Who Saved Books is a heart-warming story about finding courage, caring for others – and the tremendous power of books. Grandpa used to say it all the time: 'books have tremendous power'. But what is that power really? Natsuki Books was a tiny second-hand bookshop on the edge of town. Inside, towering shelves reached the ceiling, every one crammed full of wonderful books. Rintaro Natsuki loved this space that his grandfather had created. He spent many happy hours there, reading whatever he liked. It was the perfect refuge for a boy who tended to be something of a recluse. After the death of his grandfather, Rintaro is devastated and alone. It seems he will have to close the shop. Then, a talking tabby cat called Tiger appears and asks Rintaro for help. The cat needs a book lover to join him on a mission. This odd couple will go on three magical adventures to save books from people who have imprisoned, mistreated and betrayed them. Finally, there is one last rescue that Rintaro must attempt alone . . . Sosuke Natsukawa's international bestseller, translated from Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai, is a story for those for whom books are so much more than words on paper.

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Cemetery Boys

Aiden Thomas

Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him. When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free. However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie up some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.

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A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Becky Chambers

A story for seekers of small comforts. It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They’re going to need to ask it a lot. Becky Chambers’ new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

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That Which Feeds Us

Keala Kendall

A native Hawaiian teen travels to a luxury island resort in search of her missing twin and uncovers the dark side of paradise, in this YA supernatural thriller that's Mexican Gothic meets She is a Haunting. For the world’s wealthiest, Kōpaʻa Island Resort is more than a destination. It’s the ultimate escape. With no cell service or Wi-Fi, the Hawaiian island is a coveted wellness retreat renowned for its persimmon orchard and promises of rejuvenation. But their dream vacation is Lehua’s nightmare. When her twin sister, Ohia, goes missing, Lehua follows her trail to Kōpaʻa to find her. Instead, Lehua is cut off from civilization—and help—after the island’s boat leaves without her, stranding her with the resort’s lavish guests and enigmatic staff. As Lehua investigates Ohia’s disappearance, she discovers her missing sister isn’t the island’s only mystery. Kōpaʻa’s rich exterior and sweet persimmons hide its dark plantation past. And Lehua can’t ignore the dreams haunting her each night—nor the warning telling her to leave the island at once. To uncover what happened to Ohia, Lehua will have to unearth the island’s bloody history and face the horrors that lurk within its sugarcane fields—or risk being consumed by them. Sharply observed and gorgeously written, That Which Feeds Us explores the true cost of paradise as Lehua must fight to reclaim the land, the stories, and the very souls of her people.

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Spread Me

Sarah Gailey

Spread Me is a darkly seductive tale of survival from Sarah Gailey, after a routine probe at a research station turns deadly when the team discovers a strange specimen in search of a warm place to stay. Kinsey has the perfect job as the team lead in a remote research outpost. She loves the solitude, and the way the desert keeps her far away from the temptations teeming out in the civilian world. When her crew discovers a mysterious specimen buried deep in the sand, Kinsey breaks quarantine and brings it into the hab. But the longer it's inside, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel. Temptation has found her after all, and it can't be ignored any longer. One by one, Kinsey's team realizes the thing they're studying is in search of a new host—and one of them is the perfect candidate....

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As Meat Loves Salt

Maria McCann

In the seventeenth century, the English Revolution is under way. The nation, seething with religious and political discontent, has erupted into violence and terror. Jacob Cullen and his fellow soldiers dream of rebuilding their lives when the fighting is over. But the shattering events of war will overtake them. A darkly erotic tale of passion and obsession, As Meat Loves Salt is a gripping portrait of England beset by war. It is also a moving portrait of a man on the brink of madness. Hailed as a masterpiece, this is a novel by a most original new voice in fiction.

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Stars of Chaos: Sha Po Lang, Vol. 3

Priest

CAPITAL UNDER SIEGE With the Westerners and their allies pressing in on all sides, the empire of Great Liang enters its darkest hour. Under these desperate conditions, Gu Yun leads the beleaguered Black Iron Battalion to hold the borders. Meanwhile, Chang Geng makes his move in the imperial court, sweeping corrupt officials aside in an effort to stabilize the nation before it’s too late. As the two struggle to hold the tattered pieces of the empire together, Gu Yun uncovers a shocking truth about the curse slowly tightening its grip on Chang Geng’s mind. But are the deepest secrets of Cheng Geng’s past enough to move even the iron heart of the nation’s most fearsome general?

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Stars of Chaos: Sha Po Lang, Vol. 2

Priest

ENEMIES FROM WITHOUT AND WITHIN Four years ago, Chang Geng and Gu Yun parted in anger. When fate draws them together again, Chang Geng, a once-awkward teen, is now an elegant and adroit young man. But storms lie ahead. As Great Liang faces foreign pressure from without, Gu Yun finds himself embroiled in turmoil within the imperial court. Meanwhile, as the curse in Chang Geng’s blood grows, his feelings for his godfather become more painful to subdue by the day. How much longer can he keep Gu Yun from learning his secret…and what will happen when he can hide it no more?

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The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist's Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo

Clea Koff

In the spring of 1994, Rwanda was the scene of the first acts since World War II to be legally defined as genocide. Two years later, Clea Koff, a twenty-three-year-old forensic anthropologist analyzing prehistoric skeletons in the safe confines of Berkeley, California, was one of sixteen scientists chosen by the UN International Criminal Tribunal to go to Rwanda to unearth the physical evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity. The Bone Woman is Koff’s riveting, deeply personal account of that mission and the six subsequent missions she undertook—to Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo—on behalf of the UN.In order to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity, the UN needs to know the answer to one Are the bodies those of noncombatants? To answer this, one must learn who the victims were, and how they were killed. Only one group of specialists in the world can make both those forensic anthropologists, trained to identify otherwise unidentifiable human remains by analyzing their skeletons. Forensic anthropologists unlock the stories of people’s lives, as well as of their last moments.Koff’s unflinching account of her years with the UN—what she saw, how it affected her, who was prosecuted based on evidence she found, what she learned about the world—is alternately gripping, frightening, and miraculously hopeful. Readers join Koff as she comes face-to-face with the realities of nearly five hundred bodies exhumed from a single grave in Kibuye, Rwanda; the wire-bound wrists of Srebrenica massacre victims uncovered in Bosnia; the disinterment of the body of a young man in southwestern Kosovo as his grandfather looks on in silence.Yet even as she recounts the hellish working conditions, the tangled bureaucracy of the UN, and the heartbreak of survivors, Koff imbues her story with purpose, humanity, and an unfailing sense of justice. This is a book only Clea Koff could have written, charting her journey from wide-eyed innocent to soul-weary veteran across geography synonymous with some of the worst crimes of the twentieth century. A tale of science in the service of human rights, The Bone Woman is, even more profoundly, a story of hope and enduring moral principles.

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