Books

The Möbius book

By Lacey, Catherine, 1985- author.

Adrift after a sudden breakup and its ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey's appetite vanished, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. Through relationships, travel, reading, and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith's absence and reemergence. She and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, grief-driven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and of narrative itself. The result is a book of uncommon vulnerability and wisdom, and heartbreaking -- and heart-mending -- exploration of endings and beginnings. A hybrid work with no beginning or ending, readable from either side, The Möbius Book troubles the line between memory and fiction with an openhearted defense of faith's power, and inherent danger.

The emperor of gladness : a novel

By Vuong, Ocean, 1988- author.

"A year in the life of a wayward young man in New England who, by chance, becomes the caretaker for an eighty-two-year-old widow living with dementia, powering a story of friendship, loss, and how much we're willing to risk to claim one of life's most treasured mercies: a second chance"--

Murder takes a vacation : a novel

By Lippman, Laura, 1959- author.

"Highly acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman returns with an irresistible mystery featuring Muriel Blossom, a former private investigator and middle-aged widow whose vacation on a Parisian river cruise turns into a deadly international mystery...that only she can solve"--

Atmosphere : a love story

By Reid, Taylor Jenkins, author.

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA's space shuttle program.

Bury our bones in the midnight soil

By Schwab, Victoria, author.

"From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger. Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532. London, 1827. Boston, 2019. Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots. One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild. And all of them grow teeth"--

Vera, or faith : a novel

By Shteyngart, Gary, 1972- author.

"The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original. Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world"--

Proof : a thriller

By Cowan, Jon, author.

"As a disgraced lawyer with a drinking problem that he doesn't view as a problem, Jake West is coasting on what's left of his charm and money. He used to be the kind of lawyer who could convince anyone of anything--until he decided to take on his father's biggest client and prove his dad was corrupt. Now Jake finds himself almost at rock bottom, and that's before his ex-best friend is murdered and Jake is accused of the crime. In a desperate bid to save himself, Jake must sober up and search for the real killer, whom he suspects might be hidden in one of the case files of his father's illustrious law firm. As he delves into a labyrinth of lies and corruption, Jake teams up with an eclectic group of equally broken people as they all must skirt the law in order to find the proof he needs . . . no matter the personal or professional cost"--

Food person : a novel

By Roberts, Adam D., author.

Isabella Pasternack is a food person. She revels in the beauty of a perfectly cooked egg, she daydreams about her first meal at Chez Panisse, and every inch of her tiny apartment teems with cookbooks, from Prune to Cooking by Hand to Roast Chicken and Other Stories. What Isabella is not, unfortunately, is a gainfully employed person.

The fact checker : a novel

By Kelley, Austin, 1973- author.

"An endearingly obsessive fact-checker stumbles around New York in search of truth, meaning, and a woman." -Kirkus

The crash

By McFadden, Freida, author.

There's no place like home... Blake Porter is riding high, until he's not.

The bright years : a novel

By Damoff, Sarah, author.

This multigenerational novel follows the Bright family across four generations as they navigate secrets, addiction, and unexpected reunions.

The man made of smoke : a novel

By North, Alex, 1976- author.

"Dan Garvie's life has been haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child--narrowly escaping an encounter with a notorious serial killer. He has dedicated his life since to becoming a criminal profiler, eager to seek justice for innocent victims. So when his father passes away under suspicious circumstances, Dan revisits his small island community, determined to uncover the truth about his death.

The case of the missing maid : a novel

By Osler, Rob, author.

Harriet Morrow has long been drawn to the idea of whizzing around the city on her bicycle as a professional detective, solving crimes for a living without having to take a husband ... she seizes the chance when the prestigious Prescott Agency hires her as its first woman operative.

Isola : a novel

By Goodman, Allegra, author. aut

"Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian--an enigmatic and volatile man--spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian's servant and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue. Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she'd never before needed. Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival"--

Bug Hollow : a novel

By Huneven, Michelle, 1953- author. aut http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut

"A family novel that follows the Samuelson clan over four decades as they hurt and heal one another"--

A Marriage at Sea. A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck.

By Elmhirst, Sophie.

The Möbius book

By Lacey, Catherine, 1985- author.

Adrift after a sudden breakup and its ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey's appetite vanished, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. Through relationships, travel, reading, and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith's absence and reemergence. She and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, grief-driven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and of narrative itself. The result is a book of uncommon vulnerability and wisdom, and heartbreaking -- and heart-mending -- exploration of endings and beginnings. A hybrid work with no beginning or ending, readable from either side, The Möbius Book troubles the line between memory and fiction with an openhearted defense of faith's power, and inherent danger.

The Odyssey

By Homer, author.

"A landmark new translation of Homer's most popular epic by distinguished author and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn. In 1961, the University of Chicago Press published Richmond Lattimore's translation of Homer's The Iliad. For more than sixty years, it has served to introduce readers to the ancient Greek world of gods and heroes and has been one of the most popular and respected versions of the work. Yet through all those decades, Chicago never published a companion translation of the best-known epic in the Western canon, The Odyssey-until now. With his new Odyssey, celebrated author, critic, classicist, and translator Daniel Mendelsohn has created a rendering worthy of Chicago's unparalleled reputation in classical literature. Widely known for his essays bringing classical literature and culture to mainstream audiences in the New Yorker and many other publications, Mendelsohn eschews the streamlining and modernizing approach of many recent translations, focusing instead on the epic's formal qualities-meter, enjambment, alliteration, assonance-in order to bring it to life in all its archaic grandeur. In this line-for-line rendering, the long, six-beat line he uses, closer to the original than that of other recent translations, allows him to capture each Greek line without sacrificing the amplitude and shadings of the original. The result is a magnificent feat of translation, one that conveys the poetics of the original while bringing to vivid life the gripping adventure, profound human insight, and powerful themes that make Homer's work continue to resonate today. Supported by an extensive introduction, notes, and commentary, Mendelsohn's Odyssey is poised to become the authoritative English-language version of this magnificent and enduringly influential masterpiece"--

The optimist : Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the race to invent the future

By Hagey, Keach, author.

From an acclaimed Wall Street Journal reporter comes the first biography of the enigmatic leader of the AI revolution, charting his ascent within the tech world as well as his ambitions for this powerful new technology. On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the world with its uncanny ability to hold humanlike conversations. Not even a year later, on November 17, 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was summarily fired on a video call by the company's board. The firing made headlines around the globe: OpenAI is the leader in the race to build AGI--artificial general intelligence, or AI that can think like a human being--and Altman is the most prominent figure in the field. Yet it was mere days before Altman was back running the company he had co-founded, with most of the directors who voted to fire him themselves removed from the board. The episode was a demonstration of how quickly the industry is moving, and of Altman's power to bend reality to his will. In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman's rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham's protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk, a former friend and now Altman's bitter opponent. Hagey conducted more than 250 interviews, with Altman's family, friends, teachers, mentors, co-founders, colleagues, investors, and portfolio companies, in addition to spending hours with Altman himself. The person who emerges in her portrait is a brilliant dealmaker with a love of risk, who believes in technological progress with an almost religious conviction--yet who sometimes moves too fast for the people around him. With both the promise and peril of AI increasing by the day, Hagey delivers a nuanced, balanced, revelatory account of the individual who is leading us into what he himself has called "the intelligence age." Altman is a figure out of Isaac Asimov or Neal Stephenson. Or he is the author himself: if it feels as though we have all collectively stepped into a science fiction short story, it is Altman who is writing it.

Empire of AI : dreams and nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

By Hao, Karen, author.

"From a brilliant longtime AI Insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy"--Dust jacket.

The project : how Project 2025 is reshaping America

By Graham, David A. (Journalist), author.

"The inside story of the CIA's secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves. Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA's most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous-even deadly-experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movements of animals via electrodes implanted into their brains. His goal was to develop methods of mind control that could turn someone into a real-life "Manchurian candidate." In conjunction with MKULTRA, Gottlieb also plotted the assassination of foreign leaders and created spy gear for undercover agents. The details of his career, however, have long been shrouded in mystery. Upon retiring from the CIA in 1973, he tossed his files into an incinerator. As a result, much of what happened under MKULTRA was thought to be lost-until now. Historian John Lisle has uncovered dozens of depositions containing new information about MKULTRA, straight from the mouths of its perpetrators. For the first time, Gottlieb and his underlings divulge what they did, why they did it, how they got away with it, and much more. Additionally, Lisle highlights the dramatic story of MKULTRA's victims, from their terrible treatment to their dogged pursuit of justice. The consequences of MKULTRA still reverberate throughout American society. Project Mind Control is the definitive account of this most disturbing of chapters in CIA history"-- Provided by publisher.

Super agers : an evidence-based approach to longevity

By Topol, Eric J., 1954- author.

"One of the most respected, celebrated, and influential medical researchers in the world gives a guided tour of the revolution in longevity science that is exploding now. This is an evidence-based approach to longevity in a market drenched in snake oil-Eric Topol doesn't promise a silver bullet to magically stop the aging process, he shows how preventing the development of killer chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease, cancer and neurodegeneration is completely changing what "old age" can be. And we can start long before middle age--or long after. Dr. Topol shows how and why you can deal with chronic problems now instead of waiting until it is too late. Breakthrough treatments have been developed from new tools, new understanding of how our personal genomes work, and what AI can see in our health data. We can now engineer cells, build proteins and find drugs that make us live longer, better. Many of these treatments are on the shelf now--or soon will be--and improving fast. Our author is the ultimate guide because he participated in developing and testing many of them. The first part of the book "The New Age of Healthspan" describes inspiring patients aged 90+, sets out the dimensions of the new advances in the treatments of age related diseases, and details an expanded definition of what a healthy lifestyle means now--good sleep, diet, exercise, sure, but much beyond. He calls it Lifestyle+. He then turns to the "Chronic Killers"--Obesity/Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer, and Neurodegeneration. Parts on the "Big Collateral Implications" and "Thinking Ahead" follow and include ways we might eventually come to reverse the aging process itself"--

Ellmann's Joyce : the biography of a masterpiece and its maker

By Leader, Zachary, author.

"Richard Ellmann's James Joyce, published in 1959, has been called "the greatest literary biography of the twentieth century." Ellmann's Joyce provides the biography of the biography--an eye-opening account of how Ellmann's book came to be, the intrigue surrounding it, and its enduring impact on both criticism and the study of literary lives"--

On muscle : the stuff that moves us and why it matters

By Tsui, Bonnie, author.

"Cardiac, smooth, skeletal--these three different types of muscles in our bodies make our hearts beat; push food through our intestines, blood through our vessels, babies out the uterus; attach to our bones and allow for motion. Tsui also traces how muscles have defined beauty--and how they have distorted it--through the ages, and how they play an essential role in our physical and mental health."--

Karl Marx in America

By Hartman, Andrew, author.

"The vital and untold story of Karl Marx's stamp on American life. To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation, but Marx's ideas have inspired a wide range of people to

Notes to John

By Didion, Joan, author.

How countries go broke : the big cycle

By Dalio, Ray, 1949- author.

Cryptic : from Voynich to the Angel Diaries, the story of the world's mysterious manuscripts

By Shaw, Garry J., author.

Nexus : a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI

By Harari, Yuval N., author

The invention of design : a twentieth-century history

By Gram, Maggie, author.

Start here : instructions for becoming a better cook

By El-Waylly, Sohla, author.

Capitalism and its critics : a history : from the Industrial Revolution to AI

By Cassidy, John, 1963- author.

When the going was good : an editor's adventures during the last golden age of magazines

By Carter, Graydon, author.

The lost orchid : a story of Victorian plunder and obsession

By Bilston, Sarah, author.

Fake work : how I began to suspect capitalism is a joke

By La Berge, Leigh Claire, author.

Zbig : the life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's great power prophet

By Luce, Edward, 1968- author.

Everything is tuberculosis : the history and persistence of our deadliest infection

By Green, John, 1977- author.