Books – Detail

A transportive work of historical fiction chronicling the life, loves, and iconic successes of Rafael Guastavino, the influential yet largely forgotten Spanish architect of New York's Gilded Age.

David Trent is an aspiring novelist hoping to make a name for himself in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a place where ambitious writers lurk around every corner. He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale who, beneath his celebrated image, is . . . haughty and disdainful, definitely not of the mentor variety. Until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book. Silas is at last interested . . . and jealous. But soon the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, which forces the writer into a set of desperate choices. Then fate intervenes--and nothing can ever go back to normal

In 1961, an interracial couple drove through the dark mountains of New Hampshire when a mysterious light began to follow them. Years later, through hypnosis, they recalled an unbelievable brush with extraterrestrial life. Unintentionally, a genre was born--the alien abduction narrative. In Ilana Masad's Beings, the couple's experience serves as one part of a trio of intertwined threads.

An insanely competitive housing market. A buyer pushed to the breaking point. How far would you go for the American Dream? Eighteen months and eleven lost bidding wars into house-hunting in the overheated Washington, DC, suburbs, thirty-seven-year-old publicist Margo Miyake gets a tip about the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, slated to come up for sale in one month. Desperate to escape the cramped apartment she shares with her husband Ian--and, in turn, fix their marriage, have a baby, and get their life started--Margo becomes obsessed with buying the house before it's publicly listed and the masses descend with all-cash offers in hand. With some (harmless!) stalking and a bit of (very light!) trespassing, she worms her way into the homeowners' lives.

What does it mean to connect with another person? What impels us to touch someone, to be touched by them, to stay in touch? How do we let them go? In yet another tour de force of fiction, Claire-Louise Bennett explores the mystery of how people come into and go out of our lives, leaving us forever in their grasp.

From New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard comes a page-turning drama that explores the beauty of female friendship; the relationship between money, power, and sex; and the very human desire to protect the ones we love most.

The year is 1920, in a small, unnamed city in a colonial empire. Soraya Matas believes she has found the ideal job as a personal maid to the eccentric Mrs. Hattingh, whose beautiful, decaying home is not far from The Muslim Quarter where Soraya lives with her parents. As Soraya settles into her new role, she discovers that the house is alive with spirits. While Mrs. Hattingh eagerly awaits her son's visit from London, she offers to help Soraya stay in touch with her fiancé Nour by writing him letters on her behalf. So begins a strange weekly meeting where Soraya dictates and Mrs. Hattingh writes--a ritual that binds the two women to one another and eventually threatens the sanity of both.

Cécé La Flamme, as she's known by her loyal Facebook friends, captures photographs of still bodies. Figures scorched and bruised, left to the rubble of the Cité of Divine Power. When she posts an image of a corpse, Cécé's followers skyrocket. "Nothing got more attention than a good corpse that was nice and warm or already rotting." Just beside visions of rot and neglect, she posts pictures of her toes, gullies crisscrossing the cité, and her own lips painted blue. With every image, Cécé seeks control and wants to create a frank, intimate record of the terror in her cité. Cécé's world begins and ends with the cité - a slum peopled by gangs, yelping kids, grandmothers, junkies, and preachers.

"A short, intense mystery novel that begins in gentle elegy and ends in diabolism and - murder. Three plots, three time-scales, three relationships are tightly woven into a single work, with three main voices, as in an opera by Monteverdi, who provides the sound-track. The main voice is that of a translator who moves from London to Paris and then to Wales, the setting for an unexpected conflagration. The ending at once confirms and suspends the reader's darkest intuitions."--Provided by publisher.

An epic novel about the building of Stonehenge.

The ninth book in the series behind Slow Horses, an Apple original series now streaming on Apple TV+. "Old spies grow ridiculous, River. Old spies aren't much better than clowns." Or so David Cartwright, the late retired head of MI5, used to tell his grandson. He forgot to add that old spies can be dangerous, too, especially if they've fallen on hard times-as River Cartwright is about to learn the hard way.

Sybil is seventy-three years old, in the winter of her life. Sybil has always made sense of the world through writing letters and through this epistolary novel we see how she comes to terms with her past and present and learns forgiveness.

One hundred years after the shipwreck of the Valbanera, known to history as the 'poor man's Titanic,' Mara Denis gets an assignment to report on the Canary Islands, where her ancestors lived before they moved to Cuba. Unexpectedly, she discovers that the grandmother her mother cherished was listed among the dead of the Valbanera, years before Mara's mother was even born. This fateful twist changes everything Mara thought she knew about her family and herself, and sends her on a quest to find the truth. If her great grandmother is a ghost, who is she and where did she come from?

This dazzling, genre-defying collection from Jonathan Lethem features seven major stories published since his last collection, along with his best work spanning more than three decades.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala began publishing fiction in 1956 and continued to do so until her death in 2013. Her short stories have appeared in various journals and magazines, many of them in The New Yorker. Disinheritance showcases some of the finest of these efforts, all demonstrating Jhabvala's powers of keen observation as she examines the westernization of India's middle class, the interplay of social and romantic ambition, and the social mores that plague her characters, regardless of their geographical background.

Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to life's final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his work-India, England, and America-and feature an unforgettable cast of characters.

An analyst at the heart of the European Union revisits his past and anticipates the future after his father's death, in this brilliant, nuanced novel of love, politics, masculinity, and memory.

The Humpty Dumpty Club is distraught when their powerhouse leader, Joan Hargrove, takes a bad fall down her stairs, knocking her out of commission. Now, as well as running errands and shepherding those less able to their doctors' appointments, they have to pick up the slack. Between navigating their own relationships and aging bodies and attending choir practice, these invisible yet indomitable women help where they can. They bake cookies, they care for pets, they pick up prescriptions, they sit vigil by the sick, and most of all, they show up for the people they've pledged to help.

"Eric and Carl live in Dorset in a small white cottage under the shadow of a big cliff. Eric sells old records and antiques. Carl cooks, cleans and crochets. Nearing 70, Eric is a lifelong accumulator of obscure objects whose easygoing, chaotic approach to life masks some of the unaddressed sadness of his past. The significantly younger Carl is an old soul who has a sophisticated emotional intelligence and likes swimming, mid-century female novelists, fibre arts and Dolly Parton. If you passed them on a walk, you may not pay them much attention. Most likely you would see Carl's long floppy ears, tail and fur and mistake him for a dog. The story of Eric and Carl's friendship spans 21 years: a constant anchor in a changing world."--Publisher.

From Booker Prize finalist and “the shrewdest writer on contemporary masculinity we have” (Esquire), a “captivating...hypnotic...virtuosic” (The Baffler) novel about a man whose life veers off course due to a series of unforeseen circumstances.

Winner of the 2025 Booker Prize

In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and blight, Ma, her two year old daughter Mishti, and her elderly father Dadu are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma's husband in the home he has been building for them in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited passports and visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma's purse, with all the treasured documents within it, has been stolen. A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma and her family, their struggle to emigrate to America, and their devastation in the wake of the theft that changes their fate to one of implacable tragedy; and Boomba, the thief, whose hunger and desperation to care for his family drive him to commit a crime whose consequences he cannot fathom.

Finalist for the 2025 National Book Award in Fiction

Esquire: The 27 Best Books of 2025 (So Far)

Written with the superb wit and emotional sensitivity fans and critics of Lily King have come to adore, Heart the Lover is a deeply moving story that celebrates love, friendship, and the transformative nature of forgiveness.

The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2025
Time: The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025

The tense and emotional saga of a young woman's survival in the lawlessness of post-World War II France, by the New York Times bestselling author of the Aimée Leduc series.

"In 2123, the world is dying--and Antarctica's last remaining glaciers are the final source of fresh water. Controlled by the all-powerful StarCross Corporation, Spigot--the continent's largest water extraction facility--feeds a desperate planet. But off this continent's frigid shore lies a secret that could change everything. -- Provided by publisher.

In this follow-up to the critically-acclaimed The Laughter-winner of the Washington State Book Award-a middle-aged woman starts a firestorm when she holds a contest, based on an ancient Indian ritual, in which men must compete to win her affections

It's Me They Follow is a meta-romance about love in the time of mass upheaval and uncertainty. It follows The Shopkeeper, a bookseller and reluctant matchmaker. Helping others find love through books comes easily for The Shopkeeper, except when it comes to finding someone for herself.

Jeannine A. Cook is the founder and owner of Harriett’s Bookshop in Philadelphia.

As six Californians get together to form a book club to discuss the novels of Jane Austen, their lives are turned upside down by troubled marriages, illicit affairs, changing relationships, and love.

Part of our lounge display celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen.

A woman on a journey through Europe is drawn to the grave sites of her literary idols. As she moves from city to city and lover to lover, she is drawn to the site of Cesare Pavese's suicide, and her journey transmutes passion for literature into a desire for meaning.

"This collection from one of the great pre-war writers, himself a member of Europe's Jewish diaspora, highlights the precarious position that Jewish people have occupied throughout millennia, in stories that move across centuries and nations but show the unchanging pressure of outsider status."-- Provided by publisher.

Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. But her mother has taught her that if you're not too bound by the Big Man's rules, there are many ways a woman can find shelter in this world. Now her ma is dead in a trick gone wrong and young Tibb is orphaned and alone. As she wends her way across the fields and forests of medieval England, Tibb will discover there are people who will care for her, as well as those who mean her harm. And there are a great many others who are prepared to believe just about anything.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.

Shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize
Finalist for the Kirkus Prize

A researcher abroad in Rome eagerly awaits a visit from her long-distance lover, only to find he is not the same man she remembers. An expat meets a childhood friend on a layover and is dismayed by her unexpected contentment. A newly pregnant woman considers the American taboo of sharing the news too soon, but can't resist when an opportunity comes to patch up a damaged friendship.

One snowy morning, after arguing with her husband, Miquel's mother walks out from their home high up in the Pyrenees and does not return. With his younger brother stationed far away on military service and his father cast out by the people of the town, Miquel and his father are left to fend for themselves. Together they will be forced to battle the elements, and their resentment of each other, through the long winter.

A perceptive novel about a gay Black painter navigating the worlds of art, desire, and creativity.

This exquisitely beautiful novel by National Book Award-winner László Krasznahorkai-perhaps his most serene and poetic work-describes a search for the unobtainable and the riches to be discovered along the way.

Krasznahorkai is the winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature

Setting out from New Bedford in 1878, the crew of the Esther is confident the sea will be theirs: in addition to cruising the Pacific for whale, they intend to hunt the teeming northern grounds before the ice closes. But as they sail to their final destination in the Chukchi Sea, where their captain Arnold Lovejoy has an urgent directive of his own to attend to, their encounters with the natural world become more brutal, harrowing, ghostly, and strange.

Finalist for the 2025 National Book Award in Fiction

Chino de la Cruz and Paco Rojas seem well-mannered, at least for Chicanos, to the white cops that pull them over for littering on the long drive from California to Trinity, Texas. So well-mannered, in fact, that Captain Frank McKellan lets them off with a warning and recommends them a job at Stanzik Farms, the largest independent melon grower in the area. But Chino and Paco didn't drive all this way for work.

Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board the ship to Portland, Maine; her mother is murdered by anti-Semites in Portland. Dr. Larch knows it won't be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther; in fact, he won't find any family who'll adopt her. When Esther is fourteen, soon to be a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows, a philanthropic New England family with a history of providing foster care for unadopted orphans. The Winslows aren't Jewish, but they despise anti-Semitism. Esther's gratitude for the Winslows is unending; even as she retraces her roots back to Vienna, she never stops loving and protecting the Winslows.

Two Indian American siblings are drawn into the dark allure of a beauty-tech company. Kashmira uses a product that can alter her appearance to escape her grief, while her brother Nikhil joins the company hoping to make a difference. But when the product's harmful effects surface, both must face painful truths about beauty, identity, and the cost of perfection.

After a stay in a psychiatric facility for depression, New York architect Tate Donovan heads to Cape Cod to design his best friend's summer home and start over. Still haunted by his sister Sylvia's death--and her unsettling claim that their family can see spirits--Tate tries to ground himself in logic and work. But everything changes when he meets Wren, a captivating young woman whose warmth and mystery draw him in instantly. As their connection deepens, Tate begins to sense that something dark lies beneath Wren's seemingly perfect small-town life.

Julia Esdaile is hired to restore the historic gardens at Havenworth Manor -- the grounds of which are now an abandoned snarl of bramble and weeds -- to their original splendor. For the enigmatic lady of the manor, ninety-three-year-old Margaret Clarke, the reason for the restoration is the deeply private story of a promise made a lifetime ago, and a vow to keep it before she dies.

Paul was reading a newspaper. Catherine was reading a novel. So begins Room on the Sea, André Aciman's scorching and elegiac love-story about a middle-aged man and woman who meet in the bullpen of jury selection and spend a sultry summer's week trespassing ever further into each other's hearts.

Set in an isolated hamlet, Satantango unfolds over the course of a few rain-soaked days. Only a dozen inhabitants remain in the bleak village, rank with the stench of failed schemes, betrayals, failure, infidelity, sudden hopes, and aborted dreams. At the center of Satantango is the eponymous drunken dance

Krasznahorkai is the winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature

Cumin Baleen is a forty-one-year-old writer living in Philadelphia-this city of hospitals-who works at the upscale grocery Sea & Poison and is navigating the onset of an autoimmune condition.

Service examines the plight of the unrepentant artistic outsider in an unforgiving day and age. It alternates between passages that painstakingly describe the protagonist's fraught attempts to write his novel and such scenes of service work as wrapping children's books for Silver Lake moms and being 'pilloried by dunces' on Yelp. As his writing process stalls in a 'stale ceremony' of indolence and self-doubt, these unfamiliar humiliations become a toxic wellspring for his irascible observations.

Milwaukee 1932, the Great Depression going full blast, repeal of Prohibition just around the corner, Al Capone in the federal pen, the private investigation business shifting from labor-management relations to the more domestic kind. Hicks McTaggart, a one-time strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he's found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine case, locating and bringing back the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune who's taken a mind to go wandering. By the time Hicks catches up with her he will find himself entangled with Nazis, Soviet agents, British counterspies, swing musicians, practitioners of the paranormal, outlaw motorcyclists, and the troubles that come with each of them.

Time: The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is bestselling author Marina Lewycka's hilarious and award winning debut novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.'

It is September 1974. Two men meet in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realizing the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini's Casanova. A young apprentice is just what he needs.

A family saga about the lives of three sisters and a narrator named Jonas, spanning three decades and three continents

Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction

Publishers Weekly: 10 Best Books of 2025

The New York Times: 10 Best Books of 2025

1664. Alouette Voland is the daughter of a master dyer at the famed Gobelin Tapestry Works, who secretly dreams of escaping her circumstances and creating her own masterpiece. When her father is unjustly imprisoned, Alouette's efforts to save him lead to her own confinement in the notorious Salpãetriáere asylum, where thousands of women are held captive and cruelly treated. But within its grim walls, she discovers a small group of brave allies, and the possibility of a life bigger than she ever imagined. 1939. Kristof Larson is a medical student beginning his psychiatric residency in Paris, whose neighbors on the Rue de Gobelins are a Jewish family who have fled Poland. When Nazi forces descend on the city, Kristof becomes their only hope for survival, even as his work as a doctor is jeopardized.

New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hawkins is back with a thrilling new gothic suspense set in a Gulf Coast beach motel where hurricane season can be murder.

Mina is thirty and living in London. She fled there at twenty to reinvent herself to escape her small-town past, but a decade later she is drifting, untethered and uncertain. When her Moroccan-born father Omar dies, she returns to her childhood home on the Calabrian coast, where he ran a bar called the Tangerinn. It was more than just a bar--it was a gathering place, a haven for migrants and misfits, a dream that Mina's sister, Aisha, is struggling to keep alive.

One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from ... or why ... His name is Theo. Theo of Golden is a beautifully crafted novel about the power of creative generosity, the importance of wonder to a purposeful life, and the invisible threads of kindness that bind us to one another.

The trendy rural town of Griffin has become a popular destination for weekenders and the city's second homeowners, but now a congressional race in this swing district is highlighting tensions between life-long residents and new arrivals. The campaign pits local pub owner and town supervisor Chip Riley against the wealthy young carpetbagger Paul Banks, challenging the social and political loyalties of their families and friends with lasting repercussions.

When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn't be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget.

Winner of the 2025 National Book Award in Fiction

In an Italian monastery, a sculptor named Mimo lays on his deathbed. For decades, he has lived among the monks who watch over his masterpiece, an arresting statue that haunts all who see it. During his final hours, he reveals his life story: his impoverished childhood, brutal apprenticeship, and, most important, his meeting with Viola Orsini, the only daughter of a powerful and dangerous aristocratic family.

The Wayfinder is a novel set in the Polynesian islands of the South Pacific during the height of the Tu'i Tonga Empire. At its heart is Korero, a young girl chosen to save her people from the brink of starvation. Her quest takes her from her remote island home on a daring seafaring journey across a vast ocean empire built on power, consumption, and bloodshed.

2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife's birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, 'A Corona for Vivien'. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery.

The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2025

Inspired by a shocking true story, this haunting debut novel of love, brotherhood, resilience, and redemption set in Pakistan calls to mind the modern classics The Kite Runner and The Beekeeper of Aleppo. On the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, a large yellow moon hung low in the sky when the men came with dogs and guns and cricket bats. In front of his family's small hut on the edge of a looming brick kiln, Lalloo's brother was murdered. Unable to escape the memory of that horrible night, Lalloo's parents and sisters remain trapped, the kiln chimney churning black smoke into the sky as the family slave, brick by brick, to pay off their debts. To rescue them, Lalloo must free himself from his past and carve out his own destiny.

April is a young mother raising her daughter in an intergenerational house of unspoken secrets and loud arguments. Her only refuge is to hide away in a locked bathroom, her ears plugged into an ambient soundscape, and a mantra on her lips: dead inside. That is, until one day, as she finds herself spiraling toward the volcanic rage she calls the white hot, a voice inside her tells her to just...walk away.

Amid a global pandemic, one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together-of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease.