To find these selections and many other new titles, see the NMC library catalog.
New Non-Fiction
That Librarian by Amanda Jones
One of the things small town librarian Amanda Jones values most about books is how they can affirm a young person’s sense of self. So in 2022, when she caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss “book content,” she knew what was at stake. Schools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGTBQ+ references, discussions of racism, and more to be purged from the shelves. Amanda would be damned if her community were to ban stories representing minority groups. She spoke out that night at the meeting. Days later, she woke up to a nightmare that is still ongoing. Amanda Jones has been called a groomer, a pedo, and a porn-pusher; she has faced death threats and attacks from strangers and friends alike. Her decision to support a collection of books with diverse perspectives made her a target for extremists using book banning campaigns–funded by dark money organizations and advanced by hard right politicians–in a crusade to make America more white, straight, and “Christian.” But Amanda Jones wouldn’t give up without a fight: she sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance.
Replaceable You by Mary Roach
The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available–sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we’re attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet? In this book, Mary Roach explores the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body’s failings. Her travels take her to the OR at a legendary burn unit in Boston, a “superclean” xeno-pigsty in China, and a stem cell “hair nursery” in the San Diego tech hub. She talks with researchers and surgeons, amputees and ostomates, printers of kidneys and designers of wearable organs. Roach immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable, and surreal quest to build a new you.
Slow Drinks by Danny Childs
Weeding the garden might yield the makings for Dandelion Mead, while an early spring walk reveals the green shoots perfect for brewing Spruce Beer. Danny Childs brings his training as an ethnobotanist to the world of drinks, and with loving regard for even the humblest ingredients, explores each season’s offerings to make sodas, syrups, wines, beers, and amari. Organized by season, this book teaches home cooks, industry pros, homebrewers, and foragers how to transform botanical ingredients–whether gleaned, grown in the garden, or purchased from the store–into singular beverages and cocktails. Equipped with all the basic information needed to ferment, infuse, and pickle, and the reminder to attune your eyes to the bounty of the fields, gardens, and neighborhoods around you, this is your guide to making drinks that tell a story of time and place.
Comrades in Art by Andy Friend
From the depths of the Slump in 1933 to the turning tide of war in 1943, the lives and work of British artists intersected with a world in crisis. A compelling group biography, this work tells the fascinating, previously overlooked story of the political factions behind the development of modern art in Britain. It explores how, from student beginnings to the Popular Front through to war, an artists’ network opposing fascism generated work, ideas and actions that would help to shape the post-war world. Featuring some of the best-known names in British and European art, such as Barbara Hepworth, Paul Nash, Pablo Picasso, and Henry Moore, this book is rooted in the lives of its diverse protagonists. Taking the first ten years of the Artists International Association as his point of focus, Andy Friend brings to life the captivating drama of the organization as it rapidly grew to command the allegiance of a majority of Britain’s aspiring and established artists, offering new insights into art and culture during this decade of political extremes.
The Green Ages by Annette Kehnel
In this work, historian Annette Kehnel explores sustainability initiatives from the Middle Ages, highlighting communities that operated a barter trade system on the Monte Subiaco in Italy, sustainable fishing at Lake Constance, common lands in the United Kingdom, transient grazing among Alpine shepherds in the south of France, and bridges built by crowdfunding in Avignon. Kehnel takes these medieval examples and applies their practical lessons to the modern world to prove that we can live sustainably-we’ve done it before! Premodern history is full of inspiring examples and concepts ripe for rediscovery, and we urgently need them as today’s challenges-finite resources, the twilight of consumerism, and growing inequality-threaten what we have come to think of as a modern way of living sustainably. This is a stimulating and revelatory look at a past that has the power to change our future.
New Fiction
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashanhte Wilson
Since leaving his homeland, the earthbound demigod Demane has been labeled a sorcerer. With his ancestors’ artifacts in hand, the Sorcerer follows the Captain, a beautiful man with song for a voice and hair that drinks the sunlight. The two of them are the descendants of the gods who abandoned the Earth for Heaven, and they will need all the gifts those divine ancestors left to them to keep their caravan brothers alive. The one safe road between the northern oasis and southern kingdom is stalked by a necromantic terror. Demane may have to master his wild powers and trade humanity for godhood if he is to keep his brothers and his beloved captain alive. Critically acclaimed author Kai Ashante Wilson makes his debut with this striking, wondrous tale of gods and mortals, magic and steel, and life and death that will reshape how you look at sword and sorcery.
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud’s open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic orbits: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone—or something—is monitoring the town’s citizens. Casting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate. Rumors of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with a mysterious shipping container sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy—one that may just bring them closer together.
This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin
Moving from Pakistan’s sophisticated cities to its most rural farmlands, this novel captures the extraordinary proximity of extreme wealth to extreme poverty in a land where fate is determined by class and social station. Daniyal Mueenuddin paints a powerful portrait of contemporary feudal Pakistan, and a farm on which the destinies of a dozen unforgettable characters are linked through violence and love, resilience, and tragedy. From Afra, who rose from abject poverty to the role of trusted servant to an affluent gangster, to Saqib, an errand boy who is eventually trusted to lead his boss’s new farming venture, where he becomes determined to rise above his rank by any means necessary. In matters of both business and the heart, Mueenuddin’s characters struggle to choose between the paths that are moral and the paths that will allow them to survive the systems of caste, capital, and social power that so tightly grip their country.
Strangers by Belle Burden
In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together—building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume. In this memoir, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was—someone nicknamed “Belle the Good”—gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice.
Vigil by George Saunders
Not for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion. She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others. The powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it? This novel transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning.
Summaries and images adapted from publishers.