From an award-winning writer, a debut novel that’s a fresh and dazzling portrait of a family and its history in the American South, from Reconstruction through the present dayAt thirty-two, Aubrey Lamb is stumbling into adulthood. A semi-employed gig worker in Washington, DC, she's grieving the recent loss of her father and the end of a relationship that she’d thought would lead to marriage. When Aubrey learns that she has inherited a shared stake in a sizable Tennessee farm from her father, she simply sees an opportunity to get out of the city—and the potential to erase a mounting pile of debts.Upon her arrival in Lanyer County, though, Aubrey meets the relatives with whom she shares ownership of the farm, and discovers the backstory of the land, beginning with her great-grandfather Thomas—one of the first Black landowners in his community, who gave his four children a homestead on which they could flourish.But the land proves to be a burdensome inheritance. Over the years, it divides the family, turning Thomas’ descendants against each other and drawing the attention of external forces only too eager to wrest the land from Black hands. These struggles come to a head when a catastrophic tragedy befalls the Lambs, splintering the family and echoing down through the decades, with repercussions for Audrey herself.As Aubrey learns this history from her living relatives, the ghosts of her ancestors interject with their own exasperated, gossipy commentary on the flaws and foibles of relatives living and dead, and stake their own claims on the farm.Injecting the expansive family sagas of Honorée Fanonne Jeffers and Margaret Wilkerson Sexton with a very modern voice, The Great Wherever is at once grand and intimate; it explores the ways we learn to define ourselves through and against our family, how we carry on after loss, and how the past lives on in all of us.

Travis Smith is Death in the modern world. He lives with his cat in a grey English town. He offers people comfort in their final days and hours of life. He's stoic, gentle, a little naive, despite what he knows. He's handsome, he seems young, despite what he is. Each death has a meaning to him, and he never tries to change anyone's fate. He listens and never judges, and ultimately escorts each of them to rest.Travis is desperately lonely, and when he crosses paths with young single midwife called Dalia who lives across the way and her boisterous eight-year-old daughter Layla, he can't help but be drawn to them. Dalia is beautiful and overwhelmed, and Layla seems to have a never-ending trove of small treasures to show Travis, and he's never felt the importance of making every moment count so clearly. Because he knows what's to come, and he can't make himself look away. As he learns what it means to really experience death, he's torn between his nature and his newfound understanding of the important things about being alive.

Travis Smith is Death in the modern world. He lives with his cat in a grey English town. He offers people comfort in their final days and hours of life. He's stoic, gentle, a little naive, despite what he knows. He's handsome, he seems young, despite what he is. Each death has a meaning to him, and he never tries to change anyone's fate. He listens and never judges, and ultimately escorts each of them to rest.Travis is desperately lonely, and when he crosses paths with young single midwife called Dalia who lives across the way and her boisterous eight-year-old daughter Layla, he can't help but be drawn to them. Dalia is beautiful and overwhelmed, and Layla seems to have a never-ending trove of small treasures to show Travis, and he's never felt the importance of making every moment count so clearly. Because he knows what's to come, and he can't make himself look away. As he learns what it means to really experience death, he's torn between his nature and his newfound understanding of the important things about being alive.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and Bright Young Women comes a smoldering psychological thriller with a singular, mind-bending last page. It’s been twelve years since Faye Heron broke Henry Spalding’s heart. Henry was her college boyfriend, her first intense love, but Faye was in danger of being subsumed by him. Now, Faye is one half of a power-producing duo with her Hollywood husband. Henry is a married father running the family business. Both of their lives have essentially gone to plan. When a former and beloved college professor suddenly passes away, Faye and Henry find themselves back on campus for the funeral, circling something old and dangerous. Something, if Faye is honest with herself, she has been trying to duplicate for years. But Henry is one of a kind. The kind who delivers a hypnotic apology for the way things ended. The kind who suggests they go back to the hotel for a drink. The kind who drugs and kidnaps her. When Faye comes to Henry’s remote mountain cabin, she’s beside herself. Has Henry brought her here to punish her? She did, after all, write and star in a lauded episode of television based on their indelicate appetites and vicious breakup. As her week of captivity unfolds, Henry’s wanton demands intensify, and a sprawling, years-old mystery begins to take shape—one that will rewrite history as Faye remembers it and reveal an astounding, cataclysmic truth.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and Bright Young Women comes a smoldering psychological thriller with a singular, mind-bending last page. It’s been twelve years since Faye Heron broke Henry Spalding’s heart. Henry was her college boyfriend, her first intense love, but Faye was in danger of being subsumed by him. Now, Faye is one half of a power-producing duo with her Hollywood husband. Henry is a married father running the family business. Both of their lives have essentially gone to plan. When a former and beloved college professor suddenly passes away, Faye and Henry find themselves back on campus for the funeral, circling something old and dangerous. Something, if Faye is honest with herself, she has been trying to duplicate for years. But Henry is one of a kind. The kind who delivers a hypnotic apology for the way things ended. The kind who suggests they go back to the hotel for a drink. The kind who drugs and kidnaps her. When Faye comes to Henry’s remote mountain cabin, she’s beside herself. Has Henry brought her here to punish her? She did, after all, write and star in a lauded episode of television based on their indelicate appetites and vicious breakup. As her week of captivity unfolds, Henry’s wanton demands intensify, and a sprawling, years-old mystery begins to take shape—one that will rewrite history as Faye remembers it and reveal an astounding, cataclysmic truth.

A day-in-the-life debut novel about a fading socialite on the hunt for someone to kill her before her next Soul Cycle class.New York City, 2014. Agnes Maurer is seeking the appropriate killer. Candidates an icy magazine editor with a special cutlery set; a Craigslist gun dealer; and Agnes' toxic novelist boyfriend. In her hunt, she stumbles into unexpected cleansing crystals, must-have handbags, a Tesla ride where someone else dies, naked housekeeping, and an encounter with deep, dark water. Through a murderously attuned kaleidoscope stained with image, money, and sex, Agnes' dwindling hours of icon-filled privilege become a breathless search for self. Agnes Lives! is a killer exhibition, an obsessive rendering of millennial sexuality as internalized abuse and consummate style, with the knob righty-tightened all the way. Newton's prose is disturbingly fun, relentless, shattering. A crafted study of mid-aughts values that have brought us to where we are now. The ping-pong pacing crashes into a worthy, intense denouement.

The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life’s story. Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living. As Bud awaits his fate at work, his life hangs in the balance. Given another shot by his boss and encouraged by his best friend, Tim, a worldly and wise former art dealer, Bud starts to attend the wakes and funerals of strangers to learn how to live. Thurber Prize-winner and NYTimes bestselling author John Kenney tells a funny, touching story about life and death, about the search for meaning, about finding and never letting go of the preciousness of life.

A day-in-the-life debut novel about a fading socialite on the hunt for someone to kill her before her next Soul Cycle class.New York City, 2014. Agnes Maurer is seeking the appropriate killer. Candidates an icy magazine editor with a special cutlery set; a Craigslist gun dealer; and Agnes' toxic novelist boyfriend. In her hunt, she stumbles into unexpected cleansing crystals, must-have handbags, a Tesla ride where someone else dies, naked housekeeping, and an encounter with deep, dark water. Through a murderously attuned kaleidoscope stained with image, money, and sex, Agnes' dwindling hours of icon-filled privilege become a breathless search for self. Agnes Lives! is a killer exhibition, an obsessive rendering of millennial sexuality as internalized abuse and consummate style, with the knob righty-tightened all the way. Newton's prose is disturbingly fun, relentless, shattering. A crafted study of mid-aughts values that have brought us to where we are now. The ping-pong pacing crashes into a worthy, intense denouement.

Brian is on his way to Canada to visit his estranged father when the pilot of his small prop plane suffers a heart attack. Brian is forced to crash-land the plane in a lake--and finds himself stranded in the remote Canadian wilderness with only his clothing and the hatchet his mother gave him as a present before his departure. Brian had been distraught over his parents' impending divorce and the secret he carries about his mother, but now he is truly desolate and alone. Exhausted, terrified, and hungry, Brian struggles to find food and make a shelter for himself. He has no special knowledge of the woods, and he must find a new kind of awareness and patience as he meets each day's challenges. Is the water safe to drink? Are the berries he finds poisonous? Slowly, Brian learns to turn adversity to his advantage--an invading porcupine unexpectedly shows him how to make fire, a devastating tornado shows him how to retrieve supplies from the submerged airplane. Most of all, Brian leaves behind the self-pity he has felt about his predicament as he summons the courage to stay alive. A story of survival and of transformation, this riveting book has sparked many a reader's interest in venturing into the wild.