Yesteryear: A Novel

by Caro Claire Burke

“A social media celebrity, a wife and mother who sells her fantasy pioneer lifestyle of sourdough and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of followers, suddenly wakes up cold, dirty, and hungry in the year 1805 and must uncover the nature – hoax, reality show, test from God – of her terrifying new existence in this sensational debut novel. “My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.” Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy? What Natalie’s followers – all 8 million of them – don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal – and just so happens to be building an empire from it. Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children – they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a brutal reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible. A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.” — Provided by publisher.

“The way some women so willingly compromised every ounce of themselves in the name of building a life for themselves that they didn’t enjoy.”
― Caro Claire Burke, Yesteryear, Goodreads.com – source.

Milkman: A Novel

by Anna Burns

“In Northern Ireland during the Troubles of the 1970s, an unnamed narrator finds herself targeted by a high-ranking dissident known as Milkman. In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister is our protagonist. She is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her nearly-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman (which for the life of her, she cannot work out how it came about). But when first brother-in-law, who of course had sniffed it out, told his wife, her first sister, to tell her mother to come and have a talk with her, middle sister becomes ‘interesting’. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous. Milkman is a searingly honest novel told in prose that is as precise and unsentimental as it is devastating and brutal. A novel that is at once unlocated and profoundly tethered to place is surely a novel for our times.”

Campfire Cooking in Another World With My Absurd Skill: Volume 1

by Ren Eguchi

“Mukouda Tsuyoshi was nothing special in modern Japan, so when he was summoned to a world of swordplay and sorcery, he thought he was ready for the adventure of a lifetime. Too bad the kingdom that summoned him only got him by mistake! Not only was he not one of the three summoned heroes, but his stats were laughable compared to theirs. On top of that, there’s something really sketchy about this kingdom… “Ah, these people are the kind to try and use the Hero,” he realized, and immediately left to make his own way in this other world.”

Campfire Cooking in Another World With My Absurd Skill #1

See One, Do One, Teach One: The Art of Becoming a Doctor: A Graphic Memoir

by Grace Farris, MD

“In her graphic memoir debut, Grace looks back on her journey through medical school and residency in her iconic palate of pastels. Through candid comics, readers experience the box of bones Grace must take home to study, the overwhelming smell of formaldehyde that emanates from the cadaver she dissects, the endless mnemonics and “-ologies” she must learn, and the racism and sexism that confront her in the healthcare system. As she works grueling, thirty-hour shifts and meets with patients from all walks of life, she discovers moments of joy, too: making her first correct diagnosis, matching at a top residency program, and, when she least expects it, falling in love. At the end of her residency, Grace takes on two new roles–attending physician and mother.” –Amazon.com

Conclave: A Novel

by Robert Harris

“The Pope is dead. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election. They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals. Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.” – Goodreads

Lucas Wars

by Laurent Hopman

“In a tale befitting the saga he created, Lucas Wars follows George Lucas’s journey from aimless dreamer to filmmaking trailblazer and prodigy of the New Hollywood movement. While his fellow rising stars―directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese―craft The Godfather, Jaws, and Taxi Driver, Lucas follows his childhood dreams and begins work on an epic fantasy . . . which, he soon discovers, is not without its epic challenges. Writer Laurent Hopman and artist Renaud Roche dive deep into the creative process behind Star Wars: A New Hope, from the hell of casting to the nightmare of filming. Lucas is forced to juggle actor quarrels, a secret love affair, costume and set mishaps, and constant pushback from film execs. But despite it all, a landmark movie emerges―one that changes the medium of film forever. Lucas Wars is an exhilarating underdog story and a unique glimpse into the world of cinema. But most of all, it’s an ode to the magic of childhood and the value of perseverance.” –Amazon.com

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”

by Zora Neale Hurston

“In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past–memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War. Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo’s unique vernacular, and written from Hurston’s perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.”

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

by George R.R. Martin

“Taking place nearly a century before the events of A Game of Thrones, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms compiles the first three official prequel novellas to George R. R. Martin’s ongoing masterwork, A Song of Ice and Fire. These never-before-collected adventures recount an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living consciousness. Before Tyrion Lannister and Podrick Payne, there was Dunk and Egg. A young, naïve but ultimately courageous hedge knight, Ser Duncan the Tall towers above his rivals–in stature if not experience. Tagging along is his diminutive squire, a boy called Egg–whose true name is hidden from all he and Dunk encounter. Though more improbable heroes may not be found in all of Westeros, great destinies lay ahead for these two… as do powerful foes, royal intrigue, and outrageous exploits.” — Dust jacket flap.

The Tales of Dunk & Egg #1-3

Barkskins: A Novel

by Annie Proulx

“Barkskins opens in New France in the late 18th century as Rene Sel, an illiterate woodsman makes his way from Northern France to the homeland to seek a living. Bound to a “seigneur” for three years in exchange for land, he suffers extraordinary hardship and violence, always in awe of the forest he is charged with clearing. In the course of this epic novel, Proulx tells the stories of Rene’s children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, as well as the descendants of his friends and foes, as they travel back to Europe, to China, to New England, always in quest of a livelihood or fleeing stunningly brutal conditions–war, pestilence, Indian attacks, the revenge of rivals.”– Provided by publisher.

Dr. Werthless: He Studied Murder… And Nearly Killed the Comics Industry

by Harold Schechter

“Reviled by comic book fans as a witch-hunting zealot who stirred up a panic among the parents of America for his own self-promoting purposes, he was also a renowned psychiatrists who, among other accomplishments, opened a clinic in Harlem for disadvantaged African-American patients and played an important role in the desegregation of the nation’s schools. Believing that murder could be abolished through a proper understanding of the mental and social roots of criminal violence, he took a genuinely humane approach to some of the most notorious homicidal maniacs of his time, while simultaneously exploiting their stories for his own commercial ends. Acclaimed true crime author, Harold Schechter, and multiple Eisner award winning cartoonist, Eric Powell, present a graphic novel that takes an unbiased look at this flawed and enormously and complex man–whose obsessive dream of freeing the world from violence nearly murdered the comics industry.” — Provided by publisher.