To find these selections and many other new titles, see the NMC library catalog.
New Non-Fiction
The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art by Susan Owens
Drawing is at the heart of human creativity. The most democratic form of art-making, it requires nothing more than a plain surface and a stub of pencil, a piece of chalk or an inky brush. Our prehistoric ancestors drew with natural pigments on the walls of caves, and every subsequent culture has practised drawing—whether on papyrus, parchment, or paper. While painting and sculpture have been shaped heavily by money and influence, drawing has always offered extraordinary creative latitude. Susan Owens offers a glimpse over artists’ shoulders—from Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Hokusai to Van Gogh, Käthe Kollwitz, and Yayoi Kusama—as they work, think, and innovate, as they scrutinise the world around them or escape into imagination.
Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry by Austin Frerick
This is the story of seven titans of the food industry, their rise to power, and the consequences for workers, eaters, and democracy itself. Readers will meet a secretive German family that took over the global coffee industry in less than a decade, relying on wealth traced back to the Nazis to gobble up countless independent roasters. They will visit the Disneyland of agriculture, where school children ride trams through mechanized warehouses filled with tens of thousands of cows that never see the light of day. And they will learn that in the food business, crime really does pay—especially when you can bribe and then double-cross the president of Brazil. Frerick paints a stark portrait of corporate consolidation, but it also shows that a fair, healthy, and prosperous food industry is possible—if we take back power from the barons who have robbed us of it.
The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood, and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World by Elizabeth Rush
In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: the ominous Thwaites Glacier at Antarctica’s western edge. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans. And with them is author Elizabeth Rush, who seeks, among other things, the elusive voice of the ice. Rush shares her story of a groundbreaking voyage punctuated by both the sublime—the tangible consequences of our melting icecaps; the staggering waves of the Drake Passage; the torqued, unfamiliar contours of Thwaites—and the everyday moments of living and working in communit.
Asian American is Not a Color: Conversations on Race, Affirmative Action, and Family by OiYan A. Poon
Before being struck down by the US Supreme Court in June 2023, affirmative action remained one of the few remaining policy tools to address racial inequalities, revealing peculiar contours of racism and anti-racist strategies in America. Poon conducts interviews with Asian Americans throughout the US who have been actively engaged in policy debates over race-conscious admissions or affirmative action. Through these exchanges, she finds that Asian American identity remains deeply unsettled in a contest between those invested in reaching the top of the racial hierarchy alongside whiteness and those working toward a vision of justice and humanity co-constructed through cross-racial solidarity.
The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science by Dava Sobel
For decades Marie Curie was the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings, and despite constant illness she travelled far and wide to share the secrets of radioactivity, a term she coined. She is still the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Approaching Marie Curie from a unique angle, Sobel navigates her remarkable discoveries and fame alongside the women who became her legacy – from Norway’s Ellen Gleditsch and France’s Marguerite Perry, who discovered the element francium, to her own daughter, Irene, a Nobel Prize winner in her own right. This book deftly illuminates the trailblazing life and enduring influence of one of the most consequential figures of our time.
New Fiction
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve. In this novel, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself.
We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes
Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.
Isola by Allegra Goodman
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. That journey takes an unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island. 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.
City of Night Birds by Juhea Kim
On a White Night in 2019, prima ballerina Natalia Leonova returns to St. Petersburg two years after a devastating accident that stalled her career. Once the most celebrated dancer of her generation, she now turns to pills and alcohol to numb the pain of her past. She is unmoored in her old city as the ghosts of her former life begin to resurface: her loving but difficult mother, her absentee father, and the two gifted dancers who led to her downfall. Painting a vivid portrait of the Russian ballet world, where cutthroat ambition, ever-shifting politics, and sublime artistry collide, this novel unveils the making of a dancer with both profound intimacy and breathtaking scope.
Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become. A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, this is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.
Summaries and images adapted from publishers.