Books – Detail

Click on a genre link to see the matching books; click again to return to the full Athenaeum Bookshelf. Please click Guidebooks, Youth, Poetry or Graphic Works Collection to see the Find Library catalog listings for these categories.

Advance Britannia: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1942-1945
Alan Allport

The author of Britain at Bay--which The Wall Street Journal said may be "the single best examination of British politics, society, and strategy [from 1938 to 1941] that has ever been written"--picks up his sweeping social history in 1942, when what was once a regional war has become an intricate, globe-spanning conflict, with profound consequences for the British Empire and for a British people already exhausted after more than two years of fighting.

631 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life
Sophia Rosenfeld

A sweeping history of the rise of personal choice in the modern world and how it became equated with freedom.

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2025

Athenaeum Literary Award Finalist

462 pp. Hardcover - Miscellaneous

America's Founding Son: John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick
Bob Crawford

"An accessible and entertaining biography of our nation's greatest public servant and original political maverick John Quincy Adams, from the bassist of the Grammy-nominated band the Avett Brothers."--Amazon.

319 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

American Han: A Novel
Lisa Lee

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, Jane Kim and her brother, Kevin, dutifully embodied the model minority myth as their parents demanded: both stellar tennis players and academically gifted, they worked hard to make their parents proud. Jane went on to law school. Kevin came close to becoming a professional tennis player. But where they started is nowhere near where they have ended up: Jane has stopped going to her law school classes, and Kevin, now a policeman, has become increasingly distant.

276 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health
Daisy Fancourt

In Art Cure, world-leading expert and award-winning scientist Professor Daisy Fancourt reveals the life-changing power of the arts, including how: Songs support the architectural development of children's brains. Creative hobbies help our brains to stay resilient against dementia. Visual art and music act just like drugs to reduce depression, stress, and pain. Dance build new neural pathways for people with brain injuries. Going to live music events, museums, exhibitions, and the theatre decreases our risk of future loneliness and frailty.

335 pp. Hardcover - Art, Architecture & Design

Autobiography of Cotton: A Novel
Cristina Rivera Garza ; translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney

In 1934, a young Jose Revueltas traveled to Tamaulipas to support the cotton workers' strike in Estacion Camaron, which became the basis of his landmark novel Human Mourning. In her own groundbreaking novel, Autobiography of Cotton, Cristina Rivera Garza recounts her grandparents' journey from mining towns to those same cotton fields as it intersects with Revueltas's life in a vivid and evocative history of cotton cultivation along the Mexico-US border.

268 pp. - Fiction

The Banker who Made America: Thomas Willing and the Rise of the American Financial Aristocracy, 1731-1821
Richard Vague

If you haven't followed the money, chances are you don't know the real story of America and its revolution. Nothing gives a clearer insight into this history than the life of early America's dominant merchant trader, first bank president, and first central banker, Thomas Willing. In this book, Richard Vague shows how Willing bankrolled--and in the process helped save--the Revolution and then fundamentally shaped the financial architecture of the young Republic.

438 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

A Beautiful Loan: A Novel
Mary Costello

A young woman finds herself in and out of love in this intimate, intense novel from "a truly startling talent" (Kevin Barry).

213 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Belgrave Road: A Love Story
Manish Chauhan

Mira's days are filled with duty and light on freedom. In a new country, living with a husband she barely knows--and who she fears she'll never love--Mira is desperate to discover all that her new life in England might offer. And then there's Tahliil. The quiet, beautiful man she sees at work each day.

328 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

The Best Dog in the World: Essays on Love
edited by Alice Hoffman

"Fourteen beloved authors celebrate the life-changing bond with their canine companions in this heartwarming essay collection..."--Provided by publisher.

216 pp. Hardcover - Miscellaneous

Bitter Fall
Bruce Robert Coffin

This crime fiction novel follows Detective Brock Justice and his partner, Detective Chloe Wright, as they investigate the mysterious death of a woman on a remote backcountry road in Maine.

389 pp. - Mystery/Thriller

The Blue Place
Nicola Griffith

The first of Nicola Griffith's beloved sapphic crime series, the novel that introduced the fierce and beguiling Aud Torvingen.

319 pp. - Mystery/Thriller

The Bookbinder's Secret
A.D. Bell

Set in Oxford and London at the beginning of the 20th century, this novel follows Lilian Delaney, an apprentice bookbinder working in a traditionally male trade. While assisting with a private collection, she encounters a damaged book containing a concealed letter dating back fifty years that references a past relationship and a violent crime. As Lilian searches for additional books containing hidden documents, she uncovers a story of forbidden love and unresolved wrongdoing.

388 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
Bench Ansfield

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!' That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation's urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color. Yet as historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates in Born in Flames, the vast majority of the fires were not set by residents, as is commonly assumed, but by landlords looking to collect insurance payouts.

Athenaeum Literary Award Finalist

350 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln
Matthew Pinsker

A biography of Abraham Lincoln that examines his career-long political strategies and coalition-building skills.

564 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science, and the Crisis of Belief
Richard Holmes

In this dazzling new biography, Richard Holmes, critically acclaimed author of The Age of Wonder, discovers in Young Tennyson an astonishingly magnetic and mercurial personality, a secretly expressive and highly emotional man haunted by the great intellectual and scientific issues of his time

431 pp. Hardcover - Biography/Memoir

Brawler: Stories
Lauren Groff

Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region--from New England to Florida to California--these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans' dark and light angels.

275 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age
Ibram X. Kendi

In Chain of Ideas, internationally bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi offers an unsettling but indispensable global history of how great replacement theory brought humanity into this authoritarian age--and how we can free ourselves from it.

550 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

Churn: The Tension That Divides Us and How to Overcome It
Claude M. Steele

With Malcolm Gladwell-like clarity, Churn captures the most commonplace tensions of life in a multifaceted democracy and how to minimize their corrosive effects in everyday life.

201 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

Clutch
Emily Nemens

Clutch follows a group of five friends as they navigate the biggest challenges of their lives, asking: When you're hanging on by your fingernails, how can you extend a hand to the ones you love?

370 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

The Copywriter: A Novel
Daniel Poppick

A portrait of the poet as an office worker, plumbing the depths of the spiritual gulf between art and work.

210 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Crux
Gabriel Tallent

In this story of intense friendship and grit, two down-and-out teens escape the hopelessness of their lives and chase a different future through rock climbing.

408 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Daughter of Egypt
Marie Benedict

Known for her "delightful blend of historical fiction and suspense" (People), New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict returns with a sweeping tale of a young woman who unearths the truth about a forgotten Pharaoh--rewriting both of their legacies forever.

338 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

The Dentist
Tim Sullivan

Detective Sergeant George Cross can be difficult to work with, but he doesn't miss a clue. So when the body of an elderly homeless man is discovered, he insists on scrutinizing the smallest details, even after his police colleagues dismiss the murder as an act of random violence. As Cross delves into the dead man's past, he discovers a connection to a case that has been cold for fifteen years. The same tragedy that led to his homelessness may have also led to his death.

The Athenaeum also has the second and third installments in the series: The Cyclist and The Patient.

353 pp. Hardcover - Mystery/Thriller

Departure(s): A Novel
Julian Barnes

Shortly after our narrator, a writer named Julian, begins this compact book by discussing the workings of involuntary memory, he interrupts himself with a bulletin to the reader: "There will be a story--or a story within the story--but not just yet." Of course, whether Departure(s) is mostly fiction or not, there is a lot of its author in it.

160 pp. - Fiction

The Disappearing Act
Maria Stepanova ; translated by Sasha Dugdale

The writer M has lived in the city of B ever since her homeland declared war on a neighboring state. While in exile, she is unable to write and suffers from loneliness, shame, and despair. But then M is invited to give a reading at a literary festival in a nearby country, and after a series of missed connections and mishaps, including losing her phone, she finds herself all alone in the wrong coastal town. She feels a flicker of liberation--the possibility of starting over--but memories of childhood, books, films and tarot cards pull her back, the last fragments of a vanishing world. Then she meets a troupe of circus performers who invite her to join them ... In this brief interlude, severed from reality, it seems as if M may finally escape from herself, from her past, from her nationality.

118 pp. Paperback - Fiction

Discipline: A Novel
Larissa Pham

Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor ten years prior. Now on the road, she's seeking answers--about how to live a good life and what it means to make art--through intimate conversations with strangers, past lovers, and friends. But when the antagonist of her novel--her old painting professor--reaches out in a series of sly communiques after years of silence to tell her he's read her book, Christine must reckon with what it means to lose the reins of a narrative she wrote precisely to maintain control. When her professor invites her to join him at his house, on a remote island off the coast of Maine, their encounter threatens to change the very foundations of her life as she's imagined it.

210 pp. - Fiction

A Drawing a Day: Unlock Your Inner Artist
Tamara Michael

A beginner-friendly guide to drawing. Filled with fun prompts and easy step-by-step techniques for sketching and shading, it will help you find calm and creativity as you capture everyday moments in its pages. Whether you're new to drawing or rediscovering your artistic side, this is the perfect place to start!

195 pp. - Art, Architecture & Design

Drexel Park
Michele Murray

Drexel Park, founded in 1924, is a result of the city of Philadelphia bursting at its seams as it experienced an industrial boom fueled by advances in manufacturing, transportation, and technology.

127 pp. Paperback - History/Politics

Eat Yourself Healthy
Jamie Oliver

From New York Times bestselling author Jamie Oliver comes a new cookbook to help you build a celebratory relationship with nourishing food that will make you feel healthier and happier.

317 pp. Hardcover - Miscellaneous

Eating Ashes: A Novel
Brenda Navarro ; translated by Megan McDowell

Alone and adrift in Barcelona, an unnamed narrator is haunted by the death of her teenage brother, Diego. Diego, the little boy she helped raise in Mexico while their mother struggled to make a living in Spain.

235 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Effingers
Gabriele Tergit ; translated from the German by Sophie Duvernoy

Three generations of German Jewish family undergo the tumult, upheaval, and brutality of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history in this panoramic and skillfully nuanced family drama, rich with gossip and incident, capturing a Germany now lost to time.

853 pp. Paperback - Fiction

Eradication: A Fable
Jonathan Miles

Reeling from tragedy, a former jazz musician–turned–schoolteacher named Adi answers a job listing advertising a chance to save the world. The assignment: to spend five weeks alone on the tiny, isolated Pacific Island of Santa Flora righting an ecological balance that’s gone severely out of whack, with the aim of preserving countless bird and plant species from certain extinction. What follows, however, is anything but balanced. The threats to the once-Edenic island, Adi soon learns, aren’t exactly what his employers said they were—and, complicating things further, he discovers he’s not alone on the island.

159 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Everyone Deserves a Home
Baer Charlton

This gripping tale of love, family, and identity will captivate fans of historical fiction. This touching story spans a century, following a family's secret across the American Deep South, World War II London, and modern Seattle.--Page 4 of cover

300 pp. Paperback - Fiction

Evil Genius: A Novel
Claire Oshetsky

In this sly, darkly funny novel, a young woman becomes increasingly obsessed with tales of love and death, and begins subconsciously plotting to murder her abusive husband.

229 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Exit Lane
Erika Veurink

After a postgraduation drive from Iowa City to NYC, Teddy and Marin have both had enough of each other to last the rest of their lives. But that doesn't stop their paths from crossing over eight rocky years, punctuated by chance encounters and transatlantic visits, on a journey that eventually brings them right back to where it all started.

217 pp. Paperback - Fiction

Feather Wars: And the Great Crusade to Save America's Birds
James H. McCommons

The Feather Wars traces the early bird-protection movement in the United States, beginning with growing public concern after the extinction of the passenger pigeon. The book examines how hunting, fashion, and assumptions about limitless natural resources contributed to declining bird populations, and how a national conservation effort emerged in response.

393 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

The Final Problem: A Novel
Arturo Pérez-Reverte ; translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle

In this locked-room mystery set in 1960, a washed-up actor puts his on-camera detective skills to the test when a suspicious death shatters the quiet peace for a group of strangers staying at an isolated Greek island resort.

303 pp. - Mystery/Thriller

The Final Score: Six Short Novels
Don Winslow

This collection of interconnected crime stories presents a series of high-stakes events involving a range of characters, including a legendary casino robber, a college-bound teenager involved in illicit activities, law enforcement officers facing ethical dilemmas, and individuals entangled in organized crime.

286 pp. Hardcover - Mystery/Thriller

Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age of Disaster
Jacob Soboroff

Firestorm is the story of the costliest wildfire in American history, the people it affected and the deeply personal connection to one journalist covering it. It is a love letter to Los Angeles, a yearning to understand the fires, and why America's new age of disaster we are living through portends that--without a reckoning of how Los Angeles burned--there is more yet, and worse, to come.

252 pp. Hardcover - Science/Nature

Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China
Jung Chang

In this follow-up to Chang's Wild Swans, "Deng Xiaoping opened the door of Communist China, and Jung--twenty-six years old and unstoppably curious, despite years of brainwashing--seized the propitious moment and became one of the first Chinese to leave the tightly sealed country and come to the West. [This memoir] chronicles her journey and that of her family, along with that of China, as it rose from a decrepit and isolated state to a world power challenging American dominance

309 pp. Hardcover - Biography/Memoir

Frank Gehry & Robert Tannen: Art, Architecture & Ideas
Frank Gehry, Robert Tannen

Documenting the 50 year friendship and collaborative efforts of noted architects and friends Frank Gehry and Robert Tannen. The book features essays, personal notes, and collaborative and individual work in a range of media, including architectural models, sculpture, painting, printmaking, urban planning, and product design.

pp. Paperback - Art, Architecture & Design

A Gift Before Dying: A Novel
Malcolm Kempt

In a gripping and hauntingly atmospheric novel set against the unforgiving landscape of the Arctic Circle, a disgraced police investigator discovers that his path to redemption is paved with ice-and blood.

260 pp. - Mystery/Thriller

The Girls Before: A Novel
Kate Alice Marshall

A new novel about a search & rescue expert, a kidnapped woman, and the lost girls who haunt them both.

308 pp. Hardcover - Mystery/Thriller

Good and Evil and Other Stories
Samanta Schweblin ; translated by Megan McDowell

Sculpted and lucid, strange and uncanny, here is a masterpiece of suggestiveness. Step by step these seven stories lure us into the shadows to confront the monsters of everyday life - ourselves. Guilt, grief, and relationships severed permeate this collection - but so do unspeakable bonds of family, love, and longing, each sinister and beautiful.

176 pp. - Fiction

Grave Dealings: Body Snatching in Philadelphia, 1762-1883
Tim Dewysockie

 Grave Dealings explores the social, cultural, practical, and legal aspects of body snatching in America’s first capital city and relates it to the continuing ethical struggles that surround the treatment of human remains to this day.

Athenaeum Literary Award Finalist

238 pp. Paperback - Miscellaneous

Heirs and Graces: A History of the Modern British Aristocracy
Eleanor Doughty

In Heirs and Graces Eleanor Doughty draws on her unparalleled access to a bewildering range of dukes, duchesses, earls and others to create a vivid picture of who they are and how they tick. En route she traces their progress from a post-war era when they and their like were described by one future Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer as 'selfish, depraved, dissolute and decadent' to their diverse current roles as farmers, financiers, guardians of vast ancestral mansions and much else besides. She looks at key rites of passage, from cradle, via boarding school to grave. And she tells stories of their ups and downs, and of the doings of the heroes and villains who fill their ranks.

601 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

How to Cook a Coyote: The Joy of Old Age
Betty Fussell

As Fussell recalls family, friends, enemies, and lovers with wry humor, affection, and a sharp-eyed confrontation with morality, all the while the coyote watches. An emblem of the wild and her metaphor for all the things one can't control, this coyote stalks her, taking on greater emotional and metaphorical resonance as the day progresses. Ultimately, this exciting new work from an incomparable voice in American writing provides a recipe for how to enjoy each moment as if it were the last day of your life.

164 pp. Hardcover - Biography/Memoir

How to Test Negative for Stupid: And Why Washington Never Will
Senator John Kennedy

Senator John Kennedy offers his tongue-in-cheek guidebook through Washington, punctuated by his thoughts on various issues and humorous stories about life from Louisiana politics and inside the Senate.

216 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

I Give You My Silence: A Novel
Mario Vargas Llosa ; translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West

In his final novel, the Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa returns to his native Peru.

246 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

I Hope You Find What You're Looking For: A Novel
Bsrat Mezghebe

A radiant, highly anticipated debut from the Well-Read Black Girl books series, delving into the secret lives of three women on the eve of Eritrean independence.

281 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

I See You've Called in Dead: A Novel
John Kenney

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.

294 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Indigenous Citizens: Native Americans' Fight for Sovereignty, 1776-2025
Paul C. Rosier

A sweeping history of Native Americans' fraught relationship with United States citizenship and their efforts to protect tribal sovereignty.

348 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

The Infamous Gilberts
Angela Tomaski

Thornwalk, a once-stately English manor, is on the brink of transformation. Its keys are being handed over to a luxury hotelier who will undertake a complete renovation, but in doing so, what will they erase? Through the keen eyes of an enigmatic neighbor, the listener is taken on a guided tour into rooms filled with secrets and memories, each revealing the story of the five Gilbert siblings.

277 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island
Mike Pitts

A vital and timely work of historical adventure and reclamation by British archeological scholar Mike Pitts--a book that rewrites the popular yet flawed history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and uses newly unearthed findings and documents to challenge the long-standing historical assumptions about the manmade ecological disaster that caused the island's collapse.

345 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

Jean: A Novel
Madeleine Dunnigan

Set over one hot summer, a startlingly assured debut about the kinds of love that break us and make us whole.

216 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Kin: A Novel
Tayari Jones

An unforgettable novel about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.

343 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Kingfisher
Rozie Kelly

Most of us are poets, she said. It's just a question of how it comes out. When a creative writing academic becomes infatuated with his colleague - the poet - it is not long before it begins to threaten his relationship with his partner, Michael. Michael is beautiful. Michael is safe. But the poet is everything he isn't; she has everything he wants.

204 pp. Paperback - Fiction

Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon /
Toni Morrison ; introduction and notes by Claudia Brodsky

Toni Morrison's lectures on the American canon, illuminating the relationship between race, the arts, and life beyond the page. From Herman Melville's Moby Dick to Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin to the works of Faulkner and Hemingway, Morrison interrogates major works of American literature as only she can.

207 pp. Hardcover - Miscellaneous

Leaving Home: A Memoir in Full Colour
Mark Haddon

Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. His parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. ... This is a book about being different and seeing the world differently.

213 pp. Hardcover - Biography/Memoir

Life: A Love Story: A Novel
Elizabeth Berg

As 92-year-old 'Flo' Green writes a long letter to Ruthie, the woman who, as a little girl, lived next door to Flo, she thinks, 'This is an autobiography in things.' And this letter will transform her--and those around her--in ways she couldn't even imagine.

188 pp. - Fiction

Lost Lambs: A Novel
Madeline Cash

Lost Lambs follows a suburban family of five unspooling at the seams, navigating a disastrous open marriage, teenage rebellion, and an unexpected human trafficking/body-hacking crime conspiracy.

323 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

A Mask the Color of the Sky
Bassem Khandaqji, translated from the Arabic by Addie Leak

Nur, a young Palestinian refugee from a camp near Ramallah, is often mistaken for an Ashkenazi Jew. When he discovers an Israeli ID card in the pocket of a secondhand coat, he assumes a false identity and is hired for an archaeological dig near Megiddo. Passing as an Israeli, he moves through a world previously off-limits, gaining insight into the lives and beliefs of those he's been taught to see as enemies. But as Nur's borrowed identity deepens, so does the rift within: between Nur, the Palestinian, and "Ur," the Israeli.

186 pp. Paperback - Fiction

Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose
Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Mattering examines the concept of "mattering," defined as the perception of being valued and having opportunities to contribute, and its relationship to individual and social well-being.

272 pp. Hardcover - Miscellaneous

The Maverick's Museum: Albert Barnes and His American Dream
Blake Gopnik

A fascinating biography of the philanthropist Albert Barnes, whose pioneering collection of modern art was meant to transform America’s soul.

Athenaeum Literary Award Finalist

403 pp. Hardcover - Art, Architecture & Design

The Method
Matthew Quirk

Actress Anna Vaughn is fearless--on screen, at least. She tends to play doomed brunettes with a badass streak, and has put in countless hours training for parts and learning how to fight, shoot, and drive like a pro. She likes to believe she is as tough as her characters, but off-camera she leads a far quieter life: trying to keep her acting career alive so she can take care of her younger sister. When her best friend Natalie, her rock, disappears after a night out with a mysterious new man, the signs point to foul play and a circle of spies operating in Manhattan. Anna must use all the tricks she's learned for her roles to hunt for her missing friend.

408 pp. Hardcover - Mystery/Thriller

Michelangelo & Titian: A Tale of Rivalry and Genius
William E. Wallace

Wallace traces how, over the span of some forty years, this unspoken rivalry was reciprocal and mutually beneficial, with each learning from the other's brilliance, quietly seeking to best the other's work and secure his own legacy.

198 pp. Hardcover - Art, Architecture & Design

The Midnight Taxi
Yosha Gunasekera

When one of her fares turns up dead in her backseat, a Sri Lankan American taxi driver works off the clock to clear her name in this mystery novel by debut author Yosha Gunasekera.

321 pp. - Mystery/Thriller

Missing: A Novel
E. A. Jackson

In August 1990, London is suffering through an unprecedented heatwave when baby Bella Carpenter is snatched through the open window of her hotel room. Detective Inspector Martha Allen is assigned the high-profile case and, knowing that it could make or break her career, is determined to find Bella. When a young woman named Nell Beatty walks into the police station with a baby who appears to be Bella, and whom Nell claims she found on a bench, it seems that the mystery is solved. Her family, the police, and the press are overjoyed at her return. But DI Allen isn't convinced, something about Nell's story doesn't ring true.

298 pp. Hardcover - Mystery/Thriller

Missing Sam: A Novel
Thrity Umrigar

One night after a party, old grievances surface between married couple Aliya and Sam and the night ends badly with a heated argument. Sam goes for a run early the next morning to clear her head--and doesn't come back. Aliya reports her wife missing, but as a gay, Muslim daughter of immigrants, she can't escape the scrutiny and suspicion of those around her.

308 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family
Dorothy Roberts 307 pp. Hardcover - Biography/Memoir

The Monk
Tim Sullivan

When the body of a monk is found savagely beaten to death in a woodland near Bristol, Cross is eager to throw himself into the case. The problem is, no one in the Bristol station has any leads. Nothing is known about Brother Dominic's past. How can Cross unpick a crime when they don't know anything about the victim? And why would someone want to harm a monk?

370 pp. Hardcover - Mystery/Thriller

Monument Lab: Re:Generation
edited by Paul M. Farber and Sue Mobley

Catalogs a nationwide participatory public art and history exhibition seeking to elevate the next generation of monuments that reckon with and reimagine public memory.

268 pp. Hardcover - Art, Architecture & Design

More Than Enough: A Novel
Anna Quindlen

High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club, which is why they've become her closest friends and, along with the support of her veterinarian husband, the bedrock of her life. Her private school students, her fraught relationship with mother, her struggles with IVF-Polly's book club friends have heard it all. But when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. Despite it seeming clear that this match is a mistake, Polly cannot help combing through her own family history for answers. Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways.

240 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Murder in the Reading Room
Con Lehane

Raymond Ambler, crime-fiction curator at New York City’s prestigious 42nd Street Library, doesn’t consider it a big deal when he misses a call from visiting professor Robin Cartwright . . . until she turns up dead in a hotel room. Who killed the quiet academic, and why?

First in the series: Murder at the 42nd Street Library

228 pp. Hardcover - Mystery/Thriller

The Natural Way of Things
Charlotte Wood

The prescient feminist fable and international classic described as "The Handmaid's Tale for our age" (The Economist), from the Booker-shortlisted author of Stone Yard Devotional.

315 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

New York 2020: Architecture and Urbanism at the Beginning of a New Century
Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, Jacobe Tilove

The culmination of Robert A.M. Stern's monumental history of architecture in New York City and a comprehensive record of building over the last twenty-five years. A landmark in architectural publishing, New York 2020 explores the planning and politics of building in New York City during the first decades of the 21st century.

1,488 pp. Hardcover - Art, Architecture & Design

The news from Dublin: Stories
Colm Tóibín

"... A brilliant collection of nine short stories, many never-before-published, set across Ireland, Spain, and America--about the complexities of family, longing, loss, and love."--Provided by publisher.

287 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

The Old Fire: A Novel
Elisa Shua Dusapin ; translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins

Agathe leaves New York and returns to her home in the French countryside, after fifteen years away. She and her sister Véra have not seen each other in all those years, and they carry the weight of their own complicated lives. But now their father has died, and they must confront their childhood home on the outskirts of a country estate ravaged by a nearby fire before it is knocked down. They have nine days to empty it.

175 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

On Morrison
Namwali Serpell

This is Morrison as you've never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre--her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry--with contextual guidance, archival discoveries, and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, On Morrison is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time, but also on how to read great works of literature in general.

369 pp. Hardcover - Miscellaneous

Opera Wars: Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for its Future
Caitlin Vincent

Blunt, irreverent, and at times wittily subversive, Opera Wars spotlights opera's colorful and sometimes warring personalities, increasingly fierce controversies over content, and the battles being waged for its economic future.

286 pp. Hardcover - Miscellaneous

The Optimists: A Novel
Brian Platzer

Mr. Keating is an extraordinary teacher: brilliant, dedicated, and possibly a few pages ahead in a book no one else is reading. He's a magician, able to enchant fourteen-year-olds into a love of writing and literature. Yet no student has lived up to the promise of their potential more than Clara Hightower. Over the course of three decades, Clara goes from kindergarten thief to a high school genius, Silicon Valley celebrity, and, finally, animal rights activist turned terrorist. But to tell Clara's story, Mr. Keating must tell his own, including his courtship and marriage, his dreams of writing and comedy, his days in the classroom in lower Manhattan and his rivalry and friendship with his head of school, and his eventual stroke and the isolation that follows.

291 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Paper Cut
Rachel Taff

A page-turning suspense debut that tells the story of a woman who rose to fame after escaping a cult as a teenager, but whose future is threatened when dangerous secrets come back to haunt her.

291 pp. Hardcover - Mystery/Thriller

Pinky Swear: A Novel
Danielle Girard

Lexi thought she knew everything about Mara Vannatta. Best friends since middle school, they drifted apart after a tragedy derailed their senior year. But when Mara shows up on Lexi's doorstep sixteen years later fleeing an abusive husband, Lexi takes her in without question. Lexi's own marriage has been strained by her desire to have a baby, and when Mara offers to become her surrogate, their friendship feels stronger than ever. But four days before the due date, Mara disappears. Lexi is shocked but certain there must be something wrong--Mara would never willingly leave with her unborn child. Or would she?

229 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Plastic Inc.: The Secret History and Shocking Future of Big Oil's Biggest Bet
Beth Gardiner

Award-winning journalist Beth Gardiner gives readers an up-close look at the plastic industry's relentless growth, its extraordinary profits, its toxic pollution and its hidden role in exacerbating climate change.

340 pp. Hardcover - Science/Nature

The Politician
Tim Sullivan

A ransacked room. A dead politician. A burglary gone wrong--or a staged murder? DS George Cross loves puzzles--he's good at them--and he immediately spots one when he begins investigating the death of former mayor Peggy Frampton. To most, the crime scene looks like a burglary that went horribly wrong. But George can see what others can't: This was murder.

400 pp. Hardcover - Mystery/Thriller

A Private Man: A Novel
Stephanie Sy-Quia

"A debut novel inspired by the true story of the author's grandparents, tracing the slow-burn love story between a Catholic priest and a progressive theology teacher across Rome and England during the twentieth century"-- Provided by publisher.

277 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America
Jeffrey Rosen

In The Pursuit of Liberty, Jeffrey Rosen explores the clashing visions of Hamilton and Jefferson about how to balance liberty and power in a debate that continues to define -- and divide -- our country: Jefferson championed states' rights and individual liberties, while Hamilton pushed for a strong Federal government and a powerful executive.

Athenaeum Literary Award Finalist

419 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

Python's Kiss: Stories
Louise Erdrich

Written over the past two decades, Louise Erdrich's magnificent story collection features a range of characters--a tribal newsletter editor whose son tells her a story that nothing in her experience can encompass, immigrant farmers whose tenuous hold on the earth, and sanity, is challenged, and ordinary people, bird lovers, artists, grade-school teachers, and romantics.

222 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

The Quantity Theory of Morality: Together with Five Supporting Propositions and the Epilogue
Will Self

In The Quantity Theory of Morality, Will Self 's unconventional new novel, his pen remains dipped in vitriol and elegance as ever. In this dark yet hilariously satirical "state-of-an-era novel," Self 's target is a collective morality that is nothing more or less than pure sociability.

355 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

The Reckoning
Kelli Stanley

California, Southern Humboldt County, 1985. Renata Drake steps off a Greyhound bus and into small-town Garberville, hoping to disappear. She checks the papers. She's not headline news. Not yet. But she's made a mistake. The FBI have the cannabis-producing "Emerald Triangle" town-- and its corrupt residents--in their sights. Even worse, a teenage girl is missing, and when she turns up dead, the third in three years, it's clear a serial killer is living among them.

320 pp. Hardcover - Mystery/Thriller

Red Is My Heart
Antoine Laurain & [illustrated by] Le Sonneur ; translated by Jane Aitken

How do you mend a broken heart? Write a letter to the woman who left you - and post it to an imaginary address? Buy a new watch, to reset your life? Or walk the streets of Paris, mapping the landmarks of a love affair? Combining the wry musings of a rejected lover with soulful drawings in red, black and white, bestselling author Antoine Laurain and renowned street artist Le Sonneur have created a striking addition to the literature of unrequited love.

192 pp. - Fiction

The Reservation: A Novel
Rebecca Kauffman

On the morning of the most important booking in the long history of the celebrated restaurant, Aunt Orsa's erupts into chaos with the discovery that twenty-two rib eye steaks have been stolen. Hers is the most august of fine-dining establishments in this Midwestern college town, and tonight Orsa is set to host a large party honoring a very special guest--a bestselling author of national renown. And what's up with the recent spate of online reviews, from insulting to frankly terrible? Is Orsa, who wants only to be loved, being sabotaged on several fronts?

257 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries
Nicholas Lemann

The author examines three generations of his family, who emigrated from Germany to the South, and embraces the Jewish traditions that they eschewed as they sought acceptance by New Orleans society.

395 pp. Hardcover - Biography/Memoir

The River was Waiting
Cordelia Frances Biddle

The year is 1963. Raped by a supposedly respectable older man, graduate student Mabel Gorne flees New England for Manhattan. She's unaware that the perpetrator died in a murder-suicide. If she reveals the truth, will she be blamed for the crime? Mabel carries another dark secret. She's pregnant. Her rapist is the father. With abortion confined to shady doctors, back alleys, and coat-hangers, how will she endure her unwanted pregnancy? In this sequel to They Believed They Were Safe, Mabel vacillates between hope and fear, struggling to find equilibrium in the midst of a huge, uncaring city

241 pp. Paperback - Fiction

Saoirse: A Novel
Charleen Hurtubise

For fans of Colm Tóibín and Claire Keegan, Saoirse is a propulsive story set in the US and Ireland about one woman and the lies she has told in order to survive.

246 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

The School of Night
Karl Ove Knausgaard ; translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken

London. 1985. A city rife with possibility and desire. One young man who wants it all. In a thrilling twist on Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Karl Ove Knausgaard masterfully spins a cautionary tale about the lengths that we will go to achieve success--and how far we are willing to fall.

503 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

The Short Story of Queer Art
Dawn Hoskin

The Short Story of Queer Art offers a fuller picture of the history of art--from the barriers broken and breakthroughs that queer artists have made, to the important contributions to key artistic movements, and the forgotten and obscured artists who are now being rediscovered and reassessed.

224 pp. Hardcover - Art, Architecture & Design

Shut Up and Read: A Memoir from Harriett's Bookshop
Jeannine A. Cook

Jeannine Cook always thought she'd open a bookshop in her old age. Raised by a blind librarian, books were integral to her life, and she expected she would eventually write one as well. On February 1, 2020, Jeannine fulfilled her dream and opened a bookstore in Philadelphia which she named after her hero and inspiration, Harriet Tubman. Harriet's Bookshop would be a place to celebrate women authors, artists, and activists. But in only six weeks, Jeanne would be forced to shut the shop's doors when Covid turned the world upside down--not knowing whether her dream would survive. Five years later, this small independent bookshop is thriving, with satellite stores in unconventional places, from movie theaters to horse trailers.

262 pp. Hardcover - Biography/Memoir

Sir Edwin Lutyens: Britain's Greatest Architect?
Clive Aslet

Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) was one of the great architects of the twentieth century. His Edwardian country houses, surrounded by rhapsodic gardens, beguiled clients with their romance and wit. After 1918, the war memorials that he created symbolised a grieving nation's sense of loss.

256 pp. Hardcover - Art, Architecture & Design

Sisters in Yellow: A Novel
Mieko Kawakami ; translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio

Rising star Mieko Kawakami reaches new heights in this pacy, thrilling novel, a Japanese Breaking Bad, in which a group of friends fight for freedom, independence, and survival in Tokyo of the 1990s, a world rapidly dividing into haves and have-nots.

429 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

So Old, So Young: A Novel
Grant Ginder

Six Friends. Five Parties. Twenty Years... How did we get So Old, So Young? From Grant Ginder, the bestselling author of The People We Hate at the Wedding, comes a novel of impending millennial middleage that is part love story, part tragic comedy. Five parties over the course of two decades bring six college friends together, exploring the ways we can run from and cling to our friends in love, life,and death.

372 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Son of Nobody: A Novel
Yann Martel

From the author of the international bestseller Life of Pi, a brilliant retelling of the Trojan War from the perspective of two commoners: an ancient soldier and a modern scholar.

334 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Spaces That Make Us: Why Design is Broken and How We Can Create a Happier, Healthier World
Danish Kurani ; with Chris Weller

Explore how the design of our homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods impacts our health, happiness, and relationships. With practical approaches, scientific insights, and real-world examples, this book will inspire you to create spaces that help you feel and live better.

263 pp. - Art, Architecture & Design

The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB
Gordon Corera

The Spy in the Archive tells the remarkable story of how Vasili Mitrokhin - an introverted archivist who loved nothing more than dusty files - ended up changing the world. As the in-house archivist for the KGB, the secrets he was exposed to inside its walls turned him first into a dissident and then a spy, a traitor to his country but a man determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, forces still at work in the country today.

323 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945
Ian Buruma

An astonishing account of the human capacity for survival amidst a great city's descent into utter annihilation.

382 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945
Ian Buruma 382 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage
Belle Burden

It was a great love story, one for the ages. The speed of our beginning and the speed of our ending felt like matching bookends. They both came out of nowhere. He wanted it, he wanted me. And then he didn't. In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha's Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together--building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whiskey sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her.

241 pp. Hardcover - Biography/Memoir

The Suspect
Rob Rinder

When Jessica Holby, darling of UK morning TV, dies live on screen in front of millions of viewers, the nation is devastated. More devastated still when it becomes clear that her death was not an accident. The evidence points to one culprit: celebrity chef Sebastian Brooks. But junior barrister Adam Green is about to discover that the case is not as open-and-shut as it first seemed.

325 pp. Paperback - Mystery/Thriller

That's What Friends Are For
Wade Rouse

Theodore Copeland has created a fabulous life in the desert oasis of Palm Springs, where he shares a fabulous pink mid-century home with three fabulous friends: Barry, a former actor still clinging to his youth, his hair, and the memory of the dream role that killed his career; Ron, an uprooted Christian from the Midwest with a big heart but no one to give it to; Sid, who, after coming out late in life, has never found love. Teddy is the caustic, unspoken leader of "The Golden Gays"--the foursome's monthly drag tribute to The Golden Girls.

344 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

They
Helle Helle ; translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

Following a number of moves from one shabby rental to another, they--the mother and daughter of this elusive, strangely riveting novel set in 1980s Denmark--now reside in an apartment over the hairdresser shop in the same island town where they've always lived. It's only the two of them, and they are so enmeshed that it can be hard to tell them apart: they share the same manners, habits, and opinions to an almost comic degree.

151 pp. - Fiction

This is Not About Us
Allegra Goodman

Was this just a brief skirmish, or the beginning of a thirty-year feud? In the Rubenstein family, it could go either way. When their beloved older sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into decades of stubborn silence.

310 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

The Tournament
John Clarke ; introduced by Michael Heyward

The most unusual tennis tournament in history is about to start. Einstein's seeded fourth. Chaplin, Freud and van Gogh are also in the top rankings. World number one is Tony Chekhov. In all, 128 of the world's most creative players--everyone from Louis Armstrong to George Orwell, Gertrude Stein to Coco Chanel--are going to fight it out until the exhilarating final on centre court. First published in 2002, John Clarke's The Tournament is a brilliant, bizarre comic novel.

280 pp. Paperback - Fiction

Transit Tourism: The Iconic Art and Design of 22 Subway Systems Around the World
David Seltzer

Readers embark on a visual journey through the world's bustling subway systems, where each station tells a story of its city's soul.

268 pp. Hardcover - Art, Architecture & Design

True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color, From Azure to Zinc Pink
Kory Stamper

An irresistibly wry, culturally rich exploration of color and how it shapes our world-from the leading lexicographer of our time"-- Provided by publisher.

302 pp. Hardcover - Miscellaneous

Twice Round the Clock
Billie Houston

Horace Manning, scientist, recluse, and "closed book" even to his friends, is found dead in his study at 4 a.m., following a dinner in honour of his daughter's engagement. An ivory-handled carving knife rests between his shoulder blades as the houseguests gather round to witness the awful crime. The telephone line has been sabotaged--a calculated murder has been committed.

British Library Crime Classics series

 

247 pp. - Mystery/Thriller

Two Women Living Together
Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo ; translated by Gene Png

When most of their peers were moving in with romantic partners and having children, Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo chose independence--savoring solitude, quiet mornings, and the unmitigated freedom of living alone. But in their forties, something shifted, and they were met with a new, unexpected loneliness. Refusing to settle for the outdated choice between marriage or isolation, Hana and Sunwoo made a radical decision: to buy a home and live together--not as lovers, not as roommates, but as chosen family. Now a bustling household of two women and four cats, Hana and Sunwoo still value solitude, but can do so while sharing a life and its meaning with someone else.

241 pp. Hardcover - Biography/Memoir

The Unfinished Business of 1776: Why the American Revolution Never Ended
Thomas Richards, Jr.

A clarion call for taking back the American Revolution from the far right, published for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Who gets to claim the legacy of the American Revolution and the mantle of patriotism that goes along with it? In a sharp, irreverent, deeply informed account of the nation's founding moment and its enduring legacies, historian Thomas Richards Jr. invites us to see the Revolution not just as a one-time fight for political freedom from Britain but as an ongoing struggle for equality, justice, and social and political independence for all Americans.

338 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

Unholy Murder
Lynda La Plante

A coffin is dug up by builders in the grounds of an historic convent - inside is the body of a young nun. In a city as old as London, the discovery is hardly surprising. But when scratch marks are found on the inside of the coffin lid, Detective Jane Tennison believes she has unearthed a mystery far darker than any she's investigated before.

The Athenaeum Mystery Book Group will be discussing this title in May 2026.

 

388 pp. - Mystery/Thriller

Upward Bound: A Novel
Woody Brown

Interlocking narratives about the clients of an adult day care center for the disabled community in Los Angeles.

189 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

Vigil
George Saunders

Not for the first time, Jill 'Doll' Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion. She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this one, she soon discovers, isn't like the others. The powerful K.J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn't it?"

174 pp. Hardcover - Fiction

We Would Have Told Each Other Everything: A Novel
Judith Hermann ; translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire

When Judith Hermann runs into her psychoanalyst in the middle of the night on Berlin's Kastanienallee, the meeting sparks an exploration of the moments and memories that have made a life: an intense friendship with another young mother; an unconventional childhood with long summers spent on the German coast; and the ties of familial trauma that echo through generations.

197 pp. - Fiction

When the Declaration of Independence Was News
Emily Sneff

Publishing for the 250th anniversary of the United States, When the Declaration of Independence Was News focuses on the nation's founding document at the moment of its creation in 1776, before anyone knew what the legacy of the Declaration would be or if the United States would win the war against Great Britain. It explores how the Declaration was communicated to people in the new nation and around the Atlantic world and reveals the stories of the many people involved in the process of declaring independence, from printers to soldiers to diplomats to translators.

258 pp. Hardcover - History/Politics

Where We Keep the Light
Josh Shapiro with Emily Jane Fox

A grounded and intimate portrait of life by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Where We Keep the Light is the story of public service and personal faith.

260 pp. Hardcover - Biography/Memoir

Windower
Michael Loughran

Michael Loughran’s Windower is a memoir of grief, an account of the years before and after losing his wife to suicide, a document of love’s impossible forms. It is a report back—tender and uncompromising—from a place we could call hell, the place where we outlive those we love.

189 pp. Paperback - Biography/Memoir

Women
photographs by Annie Leibovitz

First published in 1999, Annie Leibovitz's landmark collection of portraits of women is back in print, together with a new book of photographs. The broad array of subjects reflects what women look like now: dancers, actors, astronauts, artists, politicians, farmers, writers, CEOs, philanthropists, soldiers, musicians, athletes, socialites, scientists.

pp. Hardcover - Art, Architecture & Design

A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness
Michael Pollan

In A World Appears, Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives -- scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic -- to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life.

280 pp. Hardcover - Miscellaneous

Young Man in a Hurry :A Memoir of Discovery
Gavin Newsom

From California Governor Gavin Newsom, an intimate and reflective memoir laying bare the defining moments of his liminal childhood splintered by his parents' divorce that shaped Newsom's visionary and relentless commitment to the state and nation.

291 pp. Hardcover - Biography/Memoir

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