A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR "[A] poignant addition to the literature of moneyed glamour and its inevitable tarnish and decay...like something out of Fitzgerald or Waugh."--The New Yorker A parable for the new age of inequality: part family history, part detective story, part history of a vanishing class, and a vividly compelling exploration of the degree to which an inheritance--financial, cultural, genetic--conspired in one person's self-destruction. Land, houses, and money tumbled from one generation to the next on the eight-hundred-acre estate built by Scott's investment banker great-grandfather on Philadelphia's Main Line. There was an obligation to protect it, a license to enjoy it, a duty to pass it on--but it was impossible to know in advance how all that extraordinary good fortune might influence the choices made over a lifetime. In this warmly felt tale of an American family's fortunes, journalist Janny Scott excavates the rarefied world that shaped her charming, unknowable father, Robert Montgomery Scott, and provides an incisive look at the weight of inheritance, the tenacity of addiction, and the power of buried secrets. Some beneficiaries flourished, like Scott's grandmother, Helen Hope Scott, a socialite and celebrated horsewoman said to have inspired Katherine Hepburn's character in the play and Academy Award-winning film The Philadelphia Story. For others, including the author's father, she concludes, the impact was more complex. Bringing her journalistic talents, light touch, and crystalline prose to this powerful story of a child's search to understand a parent's puzzling end, Scott also raises questions about our new Gilded Age. New fortunes are being amassed, new estates are being born. Does anyone wonder how it will all play out, one hundred years hence?

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again..." Ancient, beautiful Manderley, between the rose garden and the sea, is the county's showpiece. Rebecca made it so - even a year after her death, Rebecca's influence still rules there. How can Maxim de Winter's shy new bride ever fill her place or escape her vital shadow? A shadow that grows longer and darker as the brief summer fades, until, in a moment of climatic revelations, it threatens to eclipse Manderley and its inhabitants completely...

A woman writer goes to Athens in the height of summer to teach a writing course. Though her own circumstances remain indistinct, she becomes the audience to a chain of narratives, as the people she meets tell her one after another the stories of their lives. Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voice begins to weave a complex human tapestry. The more they talk the more elliptical their listener becomes, as she shapes and directs their accounts until certain themes begin to emerge: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself. Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.

Called a masterpiece by The New York Times, the acclaimed trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing Tove Ditlevsen is today celebrated as one of the most important and unique voices in twentieth-century Danish literature, and The Copenhagen Trilogy (1969-71) is her acknowledged masterpiece. Childhood tells the story of a misfit child's single-minded determination to become a poet; Youth describes her early experiences of sex, work, and independence. Dependency picks up the story as the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and goes on to describe her horrible descent into drug addiction, enabled by her sinister, gaslighting doctor-husband. Throughout, the narrator grapples with the tension between her vocation as a writer and her competing roles as daughter, wife, mother, and drug addict, and she writes about female experience and identity in a way that feels very fresh and pertinent to today's discussions around feminism. Ditlevsen's trilogy is remarkable for its intensity and its immersive depiction of a world of complex female friendships, family and growing up--in this sense, it's Copenhagen's answer to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels. She can also be seen as a spiritual forerunner of confessional writers like Karl Ove Knausgaard, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy. Her trilogy is drawn from her own experiences but reads like the most compelling kind of fiction. Born in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen in 1917, Ditlevsen became famous for her poetry while still a teenager, and went on to write novels, stories and memoirs before committing suicide in 1976. Having been dismissed by the critical establishment in her lifetime as a working-class, female writer, she is now being rediscovered and championed as one of Denmark's most important modern authors, with Tove fever gripping readers.

Three lifelong friends confront restless ghosts and malevolent family secrets in this fierce, propulsive debut young adult horror novel. Iris, Gum, and Aidan are vacationing in Bad Creek, just like every summer. Except Iris’s older sister, Glory, drowned in the lake last year, and Iris can’t seem to move on; Gum is hiding his sexuality from his family while being viciously haunted by Glory’s rotting ghost; and Aidan is distraught over a drunken argument with Glory that he fears may have led to her death. When Iris sleepwalks to the dilapidated house that Glory obsessively sketched in her final days, she and the boys begin to uncover a sinister history in the very bones of the town. The trio must reckon with the events of last summer and uncover what lurks within Bad Creek before it takes Iris’s life next. Gripping and vengeful, Bad Creek confronts the intersection of religion, sexuality, and feminism, and forces readers to reckon with monsters in all their forms—human included.

The first inclusive LGBTQ+ travel anthology, Edge of the World explores what it means to be a queer person moving through the world. These lively essays by luminary writers offer a queer perspective on how people experience other cultures and how other cultures receive queer people. This anthology of essays includes the perspectives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and trans American authors from multiple ethnic identities, showcasing the travel writing of both established and emerging authors ac ross a wide age spectrum to address these central questions. Contributors include Alexander Chee, Edmund White, Daisy Hernández, Putsata Reang, Bani Amor, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Garrard Conley, Nicole Shawan Junior, Raluca Albu, Genevieve Hudson, Zoë Sprankle, and Calvin Gimpelevich. Their essays take the reader to different areas of the world including Spain, Ukraine, Florida, Cuba, New York City, Ecuador, Cambodia, Russia, Senegal, Berlin, Paris, and more.

Myung and Laleh are keepers of the whale of babel. They roam within its cosmic chambers, speak folktales of themselves, and pray to an enigmatic figure they know only as 'Great Wisa'. To Laleh, this is everything. For Myung, it is not enough. When Myung flees the whale, she stumbles into a new universe where shapeshifting islands and ancient maps hold sway. There, she sets off on an adventure that is both tragic and transformative, for her and Laleh. For at the heart of her quest lies a mystery that has confounded scholars for centuries: the truth about the mad sisters of Esi. Fables, dreams and myths come together in this masterful work of fantasy by acclaimed author Tashan Mehta, sweeping across three landscapes, and featuring a museum of collective memory and a festival of madness. At its core, it asks: In the devastating chaos of this world, where all is in flux and the truth ever-changing, what will you choose to hold on to?

From the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones comes a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher." When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruravia. What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves. Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

A series opener inspired by Arthurian legend and fueled by love, revenge, and pure adrenaline! Tamsin Lark didn’t ask to be a Hollower. As a mortal with no magical talent, she was never meant to break into ancient crypts, or compete with sorceresses and Cunningfolk for the treasures inside. But after her thieving foster father disappeared without so much as a goodbye, it was the only way to keep herself—and her brother, Cabell—alive. Ten years later, rumors are swirling that her guardian vanished with a powerful ring from Arthurian legend. A run-in with her rival Emrys ignites Tamsin’s hope that the ring could free Cabell from a curse that threatens both of them. But they aren’t the only ones who covet the ring. As word spreads, greedy Hollowers start circling, and many would kill to have it for themselves. While Emrys is the last person Tamsin would choose to partner with, she needs all the help she can get to edge out her competitors in the race for the ring. Together, they dive headfirst into a vipers’ nest of dark magic, exposing a deadly secret with the power to awaken ghosts of the past and shatter her last hope of saving her brother. . . .

Explore the wonderful world of some of the most incredible natural forms on our planet — fungi. At the centre of countless superstitions, folkloric tales and magical beliefs, as well as appearing in recipes and medicines both traditional and modern, mushrooms have incredible powers. Featuring images of over 100 fascinating species, sourced from the archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Magic of Mushrooms shows that from saving lives to expanding the mind, the potential of these fascinating organisms should not be underestimated.

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon. Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place. Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

Peter is quick, daring, and full of mischief—and like all boys, he loves to play, though his games often end in blood. His eyes are sparkling gold, and when he graces you with his smile you are his friend for life, but his promised land is not Neverland. Fourteen-year-old Nick would have been murdered by the drug dealers preying on his family had Peter not saved him. Now the irresistibly charismatic wild boy wants Nick to follow him to a secret place of great adventure, where magic is alive and you never grow old. Even though he is wary of Peter's crazy talk of faeries and monsters, Nick agrees. After all, New York City is no longer safe for him, and what more could he possibly lose? There is always more to lose. Accompanying Peter to a gray and ravished island that was once a lush, enchanted paradise, Nick finds himself unwittingly recruited for a war that has raged for centuries—one where he must learn to fight or die among the "Devils," Peter's savage tribe of lost and stolen children. There, Peter's dark past is revealed: left to wolves as an infant, despised and hunted, Peter moves restlessly between the worlds of faerie and man. The Child Thief is a leader of bloodthirsty children, a brave friend, and a creature driven to do whatever he must to stop the "Flesh-eaters" and save the last, wild magic in this dying land.

A searing new novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Such a Bad Influence, about a young woman whose life is upended when a journalist uncovers her hidden past as the daughter of an insidious cult leader. From the outside, Catharine West’s childhood sounds idyllic—balmy days spent running barefoot through the gardens, plucking ripe tomatoes straight from the vine as sunlight warmed her skin. Her parents built a life that was simple and community-focused, an ethos that soon attracted others in need of a change. For a time, Catharine’s magnetic father was enough to keep the farm thriving, and temptation outside its gates. But as she grew older, the farm and family she was raised to love faded into something darker, forcing Catharine to evolve with it. ​It’s now been a decade since Catharine abandoned the farm and has done her best to reinvent her life, until an email from a charismatic journalist interrupts her peace. Her first instinct is to ignore the stranger’s prying questions—whether she knew about a mysterious “cult” in central Florida, whether she is the same “Catharine-with-an-A” who lived there for a time. But when she realizes the journalist knows far more than he’s letting on, she reconsiders. If Catharine can stay one step ahead of him, she may be able to find the one thing she never wanted to leave behind—her sister, Linna—and make sure her own secrets remain buried too. Sharp-eyed and sweltering, Little One masterfully captures the dread of facing your deepest desires, when the hunger to become your best self threatens to drown out everything else. An achingly astute look at modern womanhood and wellness culture, it tackles the enduring How far would you go to be good?

From acclaimed author Terah Shelton Harris comes a poignant story of survival and redemption, asking readers to question what it means to stop surviving and start living. Leigh is the last of the Wildes. She knows this because she watched them all die. Grief never truly fades and even as the tragedy haunts her, Leigh carries on, because survival is in her blood. So, when the transport bus taking her to prison careens off the road, killing everyone onboard except her, she does what's in her nature. She survives. While searching for a place to hide, Leigh stumbles upon an unexpected sanctuary: a flower farm in rural Alabama tucked away from the world. What Leigh doesn't expect is the found family there who have built something from the wreckage of their own lives. Especially Jackson, the farm's owner, who sees through Leigh's defenses, offers her small moments of tenderness, encourages her to face her own tragedies. Slowly, Leigh finds peace with the hard pace and soft nature of the farm, taking comfort in the life blooming around her. Maybe she's not beyond redemption, not too broken for something good. And maybe, just maybe, Leigh starts to heal. But the past isn't so easily buried. No matter how far she runs, the truth of who she is and the ghosts of the Wildes follow. And when those secrets catch up to her, threatening everything she's come to love, Leigh will have to truly face what she can survive.

They called for a break, and Gambon magicked up a cigarette from out of his beard. He and I were often to be found outside the stage that housed the Astronomy Tower, having 'a breath of fresh air' as we referred to it. There would be painters and plasterers and chippies and sparks, and among them all would be me and Dumbledore having a crafty cigarette. From Borrower to wizard, Tom Felton's childhood was anything but ordinary. His early rise to fame saw him catapulted into the limelight aged just twelve when he landed the iconic role of Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films. Speaking with candour and his own trademark humour, Tom shares his experience of growing up on screen and as part of the wizarding world for the very first time. He tells all about his big break, what filming was really like and the lasting friendships he made during ten years with the franchise, as well as the highs and lows of fame and the reality of navigating adult life after filming finished. Prepare to meet a real-life wizard.