This April, we bring you an enthralling, and utterly unique selection of books. An unforgettable debut work of speculative fiction, a quietly mind-altering novel, a simple guide to living your ultimate life, the biography of an internationally beloved author, and a powerful analysis of the American moment from one of its most significant political thinkers.

Related

The Endling
A feminist utopia crumbles with one impossible birth.
On an isolated mountaintop, a small feminist community is fracturing under the weight of ideological divides and dwindling numbers. Mila struggles to hold the women together, while deeper in the bush her aunt Frank — an ailing recluse — lives with only her dog, Chicken Midnight, for company. Nearby, an orchid endling approaches its own death, and the extinction of its entire species.
As Frank grows increasingly unwell and secretive about her condition, the community women begin mysteriously falling pregnant. When Mila gives birth to the only boy, their hardline separatist ideals face an impossible test.
Vividly expressed, wildly funny, and wholly original, The Endling examines the volatile intersection of community and politics, exploring what happens when the borders we construct between species, between sexes, between self and world prove more porous than we imagine.

Coming Up Short
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A thought-provoking, principled, clear-eyed chronicle of the culture, politics, and economic choices that have landed America where it is today — with irresponsible economic bullies and corporations with immense wealth and lobbying power on top, demagogues on the rise, and increasing inequality fuelling anger and hatred across the country.
Nine months after World War II, Robert Reich was born into a united America with a bright future — which went unrealised for so many as big money took over. His encounter with school bullies on account of his height — just under five foot — set him on a determined path to spend his life fighting American bullies of every sort. He recounts the death of a friend in the civil rights movement; his political coming of age witnessing the Berkeley free speech movement; working for Bobby Kennedy and Senator Eugene McCarthy; experiencing a country torn apart by the Vietnam War; meeting Hillary Rodham in college, Bill Clinton at Oxford, and Clarence Thomas at Yale Law. He details his friendship with John Kenneth Galbraith during his time teaching at Harvard, and subsequent friendships with Bernie Sanders and Ted Kennedy; and his efforts as labor secretary for Clinton and economic advisor to Barack Obama.
Ultimately, Reich asks: What did his generation accomplish? Did they make America better, more inclusive, more tolerant? Did they strengthen democracy? Or did they come up short? With characteristic spirit and humour, he lays out how progressives can reclaim a sense of community and salvage a democratic capitalism based on American ideals.

The Old Fire
The building looks tired, the ivy-covered roof sagging above the brick-work, like a weary giant gasping for breath. There’s a car parked under the hazelnut tree. Bracken forces its way between the cracks in the front steps. Through the window, I can see a light inside.
In the wake of her father’s death, Agathe leaves New York and returns to her childhood home in the French countryside, after fifteen years away. Agathe and her sister Véra have not seen each other in all that time apart. Now, they must empty their home before it is knocked down. Véra stopped speaking when she was six, and as the pair clean and sift through a lifetime’s worth of belongings, old memories and resentments surface.
Tender, melancholic, and evocative, The Old Fire is Elisa Shua Dusapin’s most personal and moving novel yet. An exploration of time and memory, of family and belonging, of the unsaid and the unanswered, it is also a graceful and profound exploration of how loss and grief can live alongside life and abundance.

Judy Blume
The definitive, all-access biography of one of the world’s most beloved literary voices, showcasing a life as triumphant and inspiring as the stories she crafted.
To know the name Judy Blume is to know and love literature. Her influential novels turned classics — including Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; Deenie; and Summer Sisters — touched the lives of tens of millions of readers. For more than fifty-five years her work has done something revolutionary: it rewired the world’s expectations of what literature for young people can be — frank, candid, earthy, and unafraid to show the messier sides of humanity. But little has been written about the real woman behind the iconic persona and the unlikely journey of her literary ascension, until now.
In Judy Blume, journalist, historian, and longtime Blume aficionado Mark Oppenheimer pens a beautiful, multidimensional portrait of the acclaimed author through extensive interviews with Blume herself, invaluable access to her papers and correspondence, and thoughtful analysis of Blume’s beloved novels, including early, unpublished works that shed light on the pathbreaking writer she would become. Oppenheimer goes deep, exploring Blume’s middle-class 1940s upbringing, complicated childhood, varied relationships and marriages, unabashed sexual experiences, bouts of heartache and loss, and enduring legacy as a champion of free speech and contemporary literature. He pulls back the curtain to reveal the woman behind the literary empire in all her complex, multifaceted glory — a true gift for anyone who grew up reading and loving these extraordinary books.

Born to Flourish
For anyone who is overwhelmed, stressed, or lonely in today’s world, or who simply senses they have an untapped potential to lead a more fulfilling life, here are ways to flourish.
The human species is experiencing a massive mental health crisis. Depression is now the leading cause of morbidity globally. Loneliness is more dangerous to our health than smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Suicide rates in different groups in some parts of the world are skyrocketing and cut across social class and income. Distractibility and impairments of concentration are at an all-time high, and teens are spending more time on social media than they do sleeping.
Now, based on decades of neuroscientific research, Dr Richard Davidson, a pioneering neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author, and Dr Cortland Dahl, one of the world’s foremost experts on the science and practice of meditation, share their groundbreaking scientific model — the Healthy Minds Framework — that highlights the four core skills of human flourishing to counteract such problems.
Each skill — awareness, insight, connection, and purpose — translates into practices that all of us can do in simple ways, every day, with enormous positive results. When we cultivate these skills, we can navigate life’s ups and downs with far more resilience and calmness, on a path to a life that feels balanced, rich, and rewarding.

Keely Jobe
Keely Jobe is a writer of fiction and nonfiction living on the east coast of Lutruwita/Tasmania with her partner and two staffies. Her work has appeared in The Monthly, Island Magazine, Australian Geographic, and Cosmos. She has a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Tasmania and is the nonfiction editor at Island Magazine. The Endling is her first novel.
Robert Reich
Robert B. Reich recently retired as Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He served in three presidential administrations, including as secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, and has written 18 books, including The Work of Nations (translated into 22 languages). His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He is a columnist for Newsweek and The Guardian, and writes a daily newsletter at robertreich.substack.com. He is co-creator of the award-winning film Inequality for All and the Netflix original Saving Capitalism, and co-founder of Inequality Media.

Elisa Shua Dusapin
Elisa Shua Dusapin was born in France in 1992 and raised in Paris, Seoul, and Switzerland. Her first novel, Winter in Sokcho, was published in 2016 to wide acclaim and was awarded the Prix Robert Walser, the Prix Régine Desforges, and, after its translation into English, the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Mark Oppenheimer
Mark Oppenheimer holds a PhD in religious studies from Yale, and has taught at Stanford, Wesleyan, Wellesley, NYU, Boston College, and Yale, where he was the founding director of the Yale Journalism Initiative. From 2010 to 2016, he wrote the ‘Beliefs’ column for The New York Times, and has written for The New Yorker, The Nation, GQ, Slate, and many more. He is the author of five books, most recently, Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shootingand the Soul of a Neighborhood. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, four daughters, one son, dog, and (alas) cat.
Richard J. Davidson
Dr Richard J. Davidson is the New York Times bestselling co-author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain. He is the recipient of numerous awards, and is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, and founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Cortland Dahl
Dr Cortland Dahl, who also works at the Center, is a scientist, translator, and leading expert on meditation and the cultivation of human flourishing. He is the author of A Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism: the path of awareness, compassion, and wisdom.
Aneesa Abbas Higgins
Aneesa Abbas Higgins has translated books by Elisa Shua Dusapin, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Ali Zamir, and Nina Bouraoui. Seven Stones by Vénus Khoury-Ghata was shortlisted for the Scott-Moncrieff Translation Prize, and both A Girl Called Eel by Ali Zamir and What Became of the White Savage by François Garde won PEN Translates awards.










