To find these selections and many other new titles, see the NMC library catalog.
New Non-Fiction
Jesus Wept by Philip Shenon
When the jolly Italian peasant-turned-cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli of Venice was elected Pope John XXIII in 1958, change was in the air. The Church, many said, had refused to enter the 20th century. In response, Pope John launched Vatican II, an “ecumenical council” that summoned hundreds of church leaders to Rome. It marked one of the most progressive turns the Church had taken in centuries: “medicine of mercy,” as Pope John called it. Yet, not everyone in the Church was prepared to accept this modernization. The battle lines were drawn. In this book, Philip Shenon takes us inside the Holy See to reveal its intricacies, hypocrisies, and hidden maneuverings, bringing all the momentous disputes vividly to life: priestly celibacy, birth control, homosexuality, restoring ties with other Christians and Jews, shameful sex abuse crimes, the role of women in the Church. In his rich portrayals of the popes from John to Francis, Shenon draws on research across four continents, including hundreds of interviews and the exhaustive use of archives.
The Art and Science of Natural Dyes by Joy Boutrup and Catharine Ellis
This guide serves as a tool to explain the general principles of natural dyeing, and to help dyers to become more accomplished at their craft through an increased understanding of the process. Photos of more than 450 samples demonstrate the results of actual dye tests, and detailed information covers every aspect of natural dyeing including theory, fibers, mordants, dyes, printing, organic indigo vats, finishing, and the evaluation of dye fastness. Special techniques of printing and discharging indigo are featured as well. The book is intended for dyers and printers who wish to more completely understand the “why” and the “how,” while ensuring safe and sustainable practices. Written by a textile engineer and chemist (Boutrup) and a textile artist and practitioner (Ellis), its detailed and tested recipes for every process, including charts and comparisons, make it the ideal resource for dyers with all levels of experience.
Bright Circle by Randall Fuller
In November 1839, a group of young women in Boston formed a conversation society ‘to answer the great questions’ of special importance to women: ‘What are we born to do? How shall we do it?’ The lives and works of the five women who discussed these questions are at the center of this work: a group biography of remarkable thinkers and artists who played pathbreaking roles in the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism remains the most important literary and philosophical movement to have originated in the United States. Most accounts of it, however, trace its emergence to a group of young intellectuals (primarily Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) dissatisfied with their religious, literary, and social culture. Yet there is a forgotten history of transcendentalism — a submerged counternarrative — that features a network of fiercely intelligent women who were central to the development of the movement even as they found themselves silenced by their culturally-assigned roles as women.
Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words—until now. In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell’s grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of this book preserve her voice—and her legacy—forever.
Born in Blackness by Howard W. French
In a sweeping narrative that traverses 600 years, one that eloquently weaves precise historical detail with poignant personal reportage, Pulitzer Prize finalist Howard W. French retells the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in America, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the “darkest” continent. This work dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures whose stories have been repeatedly etiolated and erased over centuries, from unimaginably rich medieval African emperors who traded with Asia; to Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers; to ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage. In doing so, French tells the story of gold, tobacco, sugar, and cotton-and the greatest “commodity” of all, the millions of people brought in chains from Africa to the New World, whose reclaimed histories fundamentally help explain our present world.
New Fiction
The Twist by Colum McCann
When Elαn trapped a salmon-stealing raven in his cupboard, he never expected it would hold the key to saving his people from the shapeshifting Koosh invaders plaguing their shores. In exchange for its freedom, the raven offers a secret that can save Elαn’s home: the Koosh have lost one of their most powerful weapons, and only the raven knows where it is. Elαn is tasked with captaining a canoe crewed by an unlikely team including a human bear-cousin, a massive wolf, and the endlessly vulgar raven. To retrieve the weapon, they will face stormy seas, cannibal giants and a changing world. But Elαn is a storyteller, not a warrior. As their world continues to fall to the Koosh, and alliances are challenged and broken, Elαn must choose his role in his own epic story.
House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk
A woman settles in a remote Polish village where she knows no one. It has few inhabitants, but it teems with the stories of the living and the dead. There’s the drunk Marek Marek, who discovers that he shares his body with a bird, and Franz Frost, whose nightmares come to him from a newly discovered planet. There’s the man whose death – with one leg on the Polish side, one on the Czech—was an international incident. And there are the Germans who still haunt a region that not long ago they called their own. From the founding of the town to the lives of its saints, these shards piece together not only a history, but a cosmology. Another brilliant “constellation novel” in the mode of Tokarczuk’s International Booker Prize-winning Flights, this book reminds us that the story of any place, no matter how humble, is boundless.
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
From Alix E. Harrow, the New York Times bestselling author, comes a moving and genre-defying quest about the lady-knight whose legend built a nation, and the cowardly historian sent back through time to make sure she plays her part-even if it breaks his heart. Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest hero: the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters-but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten. Centuries later, Owen Mallory–failed soldier, struggling scholar–falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives-and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs. But that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una’s legend–if they want to tell a different story–they’ll have to rewrite history itself.
Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino
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. But just when she believes she’s won them over, they uncover her scheme and shut her out.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.
Summaries and images adapted from publishers.