From the acclaimed author of American Mermaid (“I loved it…and have never read anything like it”—Elizabeth Gilbert) comes a wise, funny, and wildly original examination of female desire and the price women pay for giving in to their appetites—starring an apparition of Monica Lewinsky    Forty-five-year old Jean Dornan cannot escape the shadow of something she did several decades ago. On a study abroad program to France in the summer of 1998, she embarked on a deeply inappropriate relationship with her professor. When the professor contacts her out of the blue to invite her to his retirement ceremony, she is jolted out of her malaise and filled with the need to understand why the affair derailed her life.    Rereading her old diaries, she is shocked to realize her relationship with the professor occurred during the summer of the Lewinsky scandal, yet she never saw the parallels. In a frenzy of guilt and regret, she finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky—as if she were some kind of secular saint, the patron of persecuted and demonized women, perhaps?—and begging Monica’s forgiveness for not understanding everything they had in common. To her shock, Saint Monica appears to her—like a saucy Ghost of Christmas Past—and leads her back in time to reassess what happened. Had Jean merely been weak, stupid, blind, as she has told herself for years? What was it about her that led her into the affair? What did she really do that summer?     Told in flashbacks of those sun-lit six weeks that changed Jean's life, interspersed with irreverent accounts of real female martyrs and visitations from Saint Monica offering insight about Jean’s younger self, Dear Monica Lewinsky is a tender, hilarious, and thought-provoking examination of desire and how it shapes us. It is also a timely examination of what grace and forgiveness look like, in our lives and throughout history.

A charming and moving debut memoir about how a man with a mystery illness saves a pigeon, and how the pigeon saves the man. On a spring evening in Montana, Brian Buckbee encounters an injured baby pigeon. Heartbroken after the loss of the love of his life and increasingly isolated by a mysterious illness that overtook him while trekking through Asia, Brian is unaware that this bird—who he names Two-Step—will change his life. Brian takes in Two-Step, and more injured birds, eventually transforming his home into a madcap bird rehabilitation and rescue center. As Brian and Two-Step grow closer, an unexpected kinship forms. But their paths won’t converge as Two-Step heals and finds love, Brian’s condition worsens, and with his friend’s release back into the world looming closer, Brian must decide where this story leaves him.We Should All Be Birds follows Brian, unable to read or write due to a never-ending headache, as he dictates the end of his old life—as an adventurer, an iconoclastic university instructor, and endurance athlete—through his relationship with a pigeon that comes to define his present. Limited to dictation, Brian teams up with Carol Ann Fitzgerald, an editor who channels the details of his personal history to the pages. Raw and perceptive, delirious and devastating, We Should All Be Birds is an unflinching exploration of chronic illness, grief, connection, and the spectacular beauty of the natural world—and the humble pigeon. The surprising, heartwarming relationship between man and bird provides insight into what it means to love, to suffer, and to “never forget, even for a second, how big it all is.”

A quiet alien cowboy, a human woman on the run, and one very messy marriage of convenience. What could possibly go wrong?In debt and on the run from a crime lord whose nose I may or may not have broken, I take the first ticket off-world that comes my way. It's an all-expenses-paid, one-way trip to an isolated ranching outpost.The only catch?I have to marry an alien cowboy.My plan is simple enough. Shack up with my groom Silar and convince him to keep me during the first month of our marriage. As long as he doesn't decide to send me packing after the thirty-day trial period, I'll be safe.But maybe my plan isn’t so great after all. Silar talks more to his animals than he does to me, seems perplexed by every wifely duty I try to perform for him, and goes to offensively great lengths to avoid touching me.Other than his eyes glowing bright white every time he looks at me, I have no idea what's going on in my new husband’s head. Meanwhile, he shows me in subtle, wordless ways just how good a man he can be when he thinks that no one's watching.Yup. My plan officially sucks. Because now, it's not just my life at risk if Silar sends me away after thirty days…It’s my stupid human heart.Welcome to the cowboy colony planet, where men outnumber women ten to one and cattle outnumber them all...

A dark and propulsive new epic fantasy from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Fallen Gods trilogy. An intricate tale of warring kingdoms, female rage and a wild magic that refuses to be tamed. “Death is come to take you home, death of blood and thorn and bone…” Tilde has always heard the whispers of the kithwood, the voices of her ancestors speaking through the mysterious forest of her homeland. But now both the kithwood and her kingdom are in danger. For Tilde is the only surviving heir of a conquered land. To unite the people and finally stop the bloodshed, she marries the aging warlord, King Liran. Her duty is to bind their nations and bear him a son. But the swan king’s court is dangerous. Tilde is a threat to the claim of Liran’s older sons, who will do whatever it takes to remove her, to the princess Elise who has only ever known loyalty to her family, and to the priests who own them all. Yet none of them know that Tilde is a snake in their midst, with allies on her side and dark, forbidden power of her own. She wants her kingdom back, and she will sacrifice everything to claim it. For the queen to rise, the swans must fall.

Kissen’s family were killed by zealots of a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing gods, and enjoys it. That is until she finds a god she cannot kill: Skedi, a god of white lies, has somehow bound himself to a young noble, and they are both on the run from unknown assassins. Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, they must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favour. Pursued by demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning – something is rotting at the heart of their world, and only they can be the ones to stop it.

An irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing At 24, Hera is a clump of unmet potential. To her, the future is nothing but an exhausting thought exercise, one depressing hypothetical after another. She’s sharp in more ways than one, adrift in her own smug malaise, until her new job moderating the comments section of an online news outlet—a role even more mind-numbing than it sounds—introduces her to Arthur, a middle-aged journalist. Though she's preferred women to men for years now, she soon finds herself falling into an all-consuming affair with him. She is coming apart with want and loving every second of it! Well, except for the tiny hiccup of Arthur’s wife—and that said wife has no idea Hera exists. With its daringly specific and intimate voice, Green Dot is a darkly hilarious and deeply felt examination of the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the twenty-first century and the winding, tortuous, and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.

Naomi I can't understand why – out of the four hockey players I'm sharing a house with this semester – Finn Howard's the one who catches my eye. The guy never smiles. He doesn't say much and disapproves plenty. But, something about him feels familiar. Something about him feels safe. I'm not falling for Finn, I'm just curious. Could I make him smile? It wouldn't hurt to try. I love a good challenge. And who knows, maybe it'll distract me from pining over a guy I meet online. Finn I don't get nervous unless I'm on the ice. So why does my chest feel tight whenever Naomi Lewis looks in my direction? She's witty, kind, and happy. How is someone that happy all the time? If her sunny disposition isn't enough to distract me, the fact that her voice sounds exactly like the streamer I anonymously moderate for will. If Naomi is her, she's in for a huge disappointment. I'm not the guy she thinks I am...not anymore, at least. And for that reason alone, I should stay away from her. I should stop trying to get closer. I should stop wanting her because she fell for someone else. Someone I will never be again.

When her cousin and wife fail to return from a walk, this story takes a sinister turn to a quest of survival A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains, spending a few days with her cousin and his wife in their hunting lodge. When the couple fails to return from a walk, the woman sets off to look for them. But her journey reaches a sinister and inexplicable dead end. She discovers only a transparent wall behind which there seems to be no life. Trapped alone behind the mysterious wall she begins the arduous work of survival. This is at once a simple account of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one's name, and simultaneously a disturbing dissection of the place of human beings in the natural world. **PERFECT FOR FANS OF THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, STATION ELEVEN AND THE MARTIAN VINTAGE EARTH is a collection of novels to transform our relationship with the natural world. Each one is a work of creative activism, a blast of fresh air, a seed from which change can grow. The books in this series reconnect us to the planet we inhabit - and must protect. Discover great writing on the most urgent story of our times.

A myth-shattering view of the Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations and the role they played in sparking the European Renaissance. Many of the innovations that we think of as hallmarks of Western science had their roots in the Arab world of the middle ages, a period when much of Western Christendom lay in intellectual darkness. Jim al- Khalili, a leading British-Iraqi physicist, resurrects this lost chapter of history, and given current East-West tensions, his book could not be timelier. With transporting detail, al-Khalili places readers in the hothouses of the Arabic Enlightenment, shows how they led to Europe's cultural awakening, and poses the question: Why did the Islamic world enter its own dark age after such a dazzling flowering?

Inspired by the tale of Bluebeard, A Dark and Wild Wood is the lush and atmospheric story of a maiden with dark magic who becomes the apprentice to Lord Death—for a price. Perfect for fans of Juniper and Thorn and The Year of the Witching. Ever since she was a child, Salomé has been plagued by visions of spirits and dangerous powers she can’t control. After watching her foster mother burn as a witch, she and her beloved sister Rochelle are raised together in a convent, a grim and dreary existence. Until one day, Rochelle vanishes. Determined to find a way to save her, Salomé runs: first to a brothel, and then, after a terrible accident, away from the village and into the woods. Deep amongst the trees of the wild Black Forest, she comes face-to-face with Lord Death. Rather than taking her life, he brings her to his home at the heart of the woods, a strange manor full of locked rooms and mysterious corridors, crumbling one moment, magnificent the next. He promises to make her his apprentice and teach her how to harness her mind and magic. His words are as seductive as his presence—but should one trust Death? A swirling mirage of dark fairy tale, gothic romance, and historical fantasy, A Dark and Wild Wood is a novel best devoured all at once. But proceed with caution, as everything is not what it seems...

A story of fame, friendship and conspiracy, and the possibility of life beyond Earth When the Signal – a mysterious transmission pulsing from the edge of the solar system – arrives, the world changes overnight. Planes are grounded, satellites fail, and speculation abounds. With many believing it could be first contact with extraterrestrial life, humanity holds its breath. But for Alex, a thirtysomething lawyer who’s spent years distancing himself from the unexplainable, the Signal feels deeply personal – the opening of an old wound. Decades ago, Alex and a girl named Ana both vanished for thirty-six hours while on vacation in Palm Springs. When they returned, dazed but unharmed, the six-year-olds' account of the experience had all the hallmarks of an alien abduction. The media frenzy that followed made them famous, and the long months of child stardom, of talk shows and sitcom cameos, forged a seemingly unbreakable bond between them – until the mystery behind their disappearance began to tear them apart. Now, with the world on edge and the Signal growing stronger, Alex is drawn back to the one person who might have answers. Ana – now a professional advocate for experiencers of extraterrestrial contact – is leading a retreat near Palm Springs, a stone's throw from the site of their childhood disappearance. As the former best friends tentatively reunite, what starts as a quest to confront the reality of their original experience becomes a larger reckoning with friendship, faith, family, and truth itself – what it means to see the stories we tell ourselves for what they really are. With the imaginative soul and propulsive storytelling of Station Eleven and The Ministry of Time, Voyagers is a profoundly human, thrillingly original and brilliantly ambitious literary debut about friendship at the end of the world.

Two heroes. One brain cell.BROMANTASY is a cozy, queer fantasy about the mortifying ordeal of being known by your totally platonic best friend and the epic quest that might force you to confront the truth.This deluxe limited first run edition will feature beautifully designed colored edges—while supplies last!Fellas, is it gay to kiss your bff while on a quest through the forest you’re unqualified for?Juniper O'Reilly is good at only two demolishing a pint of mead and finding the perfect skincare routine. Everything else—taking care of the farm, bartering for goods, any sort of manual labor—falls to Juniper’s best friend, the absurdly capable, endlessly patient Mo Elmthorn.But when Juniper accidentally volunteers them both for a quest to kill a fearsome monster, he knows he’s finally gotten in over his head. Juniper hates camping, he hates the dark, and there’s no way all these foraged mushrooms are going to sit well in his stomach. One thing he doesn’t hate? How good Mo’s thighs look in his questing pants—he doesn’t have time to think about that, though, with a monster to hunt and their futures on the line.But monsters come in all shapes and sizes. When Juniper and Mo realize that the terrifying beast they’ve sworn to kill is just a scared little girl torn from her family, they’re off to find not only the true villain of the story, but maybe even a happy ending.