My Brilliant Friend meets Blue is the Warmest Color in this lyrical debut novel set in a working-class neighborhood of the Canary Islands—a story about two girls coming of age in the early aughts and a friendship that simmers into erotic desire over the course of one hot summer. High near the volcano of northern Tenerife, an endless ceiling of cloud cover traps the working class in an abject, oppressive heat. Far away from the island’s posh resorts, two girls dream of hitching a ride down to the beach and escaping their horizonless town. It’s summer, 2005, and our ten-year-old narrator is consumed by thoughts of her best friend Isora. Isora is rude and bossy, but she’s also vivacious and brave; grownups prefer her, and boys do, too. That's why sometimes she gets jealous of Isora, who already has hair on her vagina and soft, round breasts. But she's definitely not jealous that Isora’s mother is dead, nor that Isora's fat, foul-mouthed grandmother has her on a diet, so that she is constantly sticking her fingers down her throat. Besides, she would do anything for Isora: gorge herself on cakes when her friend wants to watch, follow her to the bathroom when she takes a shit, log into chat rooms to swap dirty instant messages with strangers. But increasingly, our narrator finds it hard to keep up with Isora, who seems to be growing up at full tilt without her—and as her submissiveness veers into a painful sexual awakening, desire grows indistinguishable from intimate violence. Braiding prose poetry with bachata lyrics and the gritty humor of Canary dialect, Dogs of Summer is a story of exquisite yearning, a brutal picture of girlhood and a love song written for the vital community it portrays.

From Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa comes a revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labor, and class, an intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the privileged clients who don't even know her true name.“IliveinaworldofSusans.Igotnametagsforeveryonewhoworksatthisnailsalon,andoneveryoneisprintedthename "Susan." Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer's day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod. But beneath this superficial veneer, Ning is a woman of rigorous intellect and profound complexity. A woman enthralled by the intricacy and rhythms of her work, but also haunted by memories of paths not taken and opportunities lost. A woman navigating the complex power dynamics among her fellow Susans, whose greatest fears and desires lie just behind the gossip they exchange. As the day's work grinds on, the friction between Ning's two identities—as anonymous manicurist and brilliant observer of her own circumstances—will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning. Told over a single day with razor-sharp precision and wit, Pick a Color confirms Souvankham Thammavongsa's place as literature's premier chronicler of the immigrant experience, in its myriad, complex, and slyly subversive forms.

A young gay man upends the lives of a powerful art-world couple in this steamy novel of self-discovery. It’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon―handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction―takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites’ dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Phillip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him―and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself. A lush, heart-quickening novel about family and art, sex and class, and the terror of self-discovery, Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues chronicles Gordon’s perilous pursuit of belonging from the Midwest to New York and, later, to Europe and Mexico City. As he floats further into Phillip and Nicola’s exclusive universe, and as lines blur between employee, muse, lover, and mentor, Gordon’s charm, manipulation, and growing ambition begin to escape his own control, in turn threatening to unravel the lives, and lies, of those around him. Anchored by winsome lyricism, glinting intellect, and a main character whose yearnings and mistakes come to feel like our own, In Tongues crackles with fierce longing and pointed emotion, further confirming Grattan as a rare chronicler of young adulthood’s joys and devastations.

A young gay man upends the lives of a powerful art-world couple in this steamy novel of self-discovery. It’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon―handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction―takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites’ dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Phillip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him―and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself. A lush, heart-quickening novel about family and art, sex and class, and the terror of self-discovery, Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues chronicles Gordon’s perilous pursuit of belonging from the Midwest to New York and, later, to Europe and Mexico City. As he floats further into Phillip and Nicola’s exclusive universe, and as lines blur between employee, muse, lover, and mentor, Gordon’s charm, manipulation, and growing ambition begin to escape his own control, in turn threatening to unravel the lives, and lies, of those around him. Anchored by winsome lyricism, glinting intellect, and a main character whose yearnings and mistakes come to feel like our own, In Tongues crackles with fierce longing and pointed emotion, further confirming Grattan as a rare chronicler of young adulthood’s joys and devastations.

Who invented reality TV, the world’s most dangerous pop-culture genre, and why can’t we look away from it? In this revelatory, deeply reported account of the rise of “dirty documentary,” Emily Nussbaum unearths the surprising origin story of the genre that ate the world, as told through the lively voices of the people who created it. At once gimlet-eyed and empathetic, Cue The Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake. Nussbaum traces four paths of reality innovation—game shows, prank shows, soap operas, and clip shows—that united in the Survivor format, sparking a tumultuous Hollywood gold-rush. Along the way, we meet tricksters and innovators—from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; Bachelor mastermind Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray, the visionary behind The Real World—along with dozens of crew members and ordinary people whose lives became fodder for the reality revolution. We learn about the tools of the trade—like Candid Camera’s brilliant “reveal” and the notorious Frankenbite, a deceptive editor’s best friend—and the moral outrage that reality shows provoked. But Cue The Sun! also celebrates what made the genre so powerful: a jolt of authentic emotion. Through broad-ranging reporting, Nussbaum examines seven tumultuous decades, exploring the celebreality boom, reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo, and the dark truth behind The Apprentice. A shrewd observer who cares about television, she is the ideal voice for the first substantive cultural history of the genre that has, for better or worse, made America what it is today.

Geralt is a witcher, a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent. This is a collection of short stories, following the adventures of the hit collection THE LAST WISH. Join Geralt as he battles monsters, demons and prejudices alike...

Geralt the Witcher—revered and hated—is a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent. But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good... and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth. Librarian's Note: Alternate cover edition of ASIN B0010SIPT4

Geralt the Witcher—revered and hated—is a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent. But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good... and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth. Librarian's Note: Alternate cover edition of ASIN B0010SIPT4

There are two kinds of people no one ever expects to be murderers: little girls and old ladies. Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old. She's lived on her idyllic street for sixty years—longer than anyone else. Aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else's business, few would suspect that Elsie has a past she's worked exceedingly hard at concealing—because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, once a little girl and now an old lady, has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.