Somewhere, someone’s waking up Billie Joe Armstrong as September enters its last days, but here in the book world we’ve been trying to keep track of all the titles hitting our shelves this month. This week, Marilynne Robinson wraps her celebrated Gilead series, local author Ryan Holiday’s back with more from the Stoics, and a bevy of life stories debut just in time for cozy season. Gather ’round and read up on what we’re most excited for on this New Release Tuesday!
Jack by Marilynne Robinson
The winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the final installment in one of the greatest works of contemporary American fiction
Marilynne Robinson’s mythical world of Gilead, Iowa—the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, and Lila, and now Jack—and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world. Jack is Robinson’s fourth novel in this now-classic series. In it, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the son of a preacher. Their deeply felt, tormented, star-crossed interracial romance resonates with all the paradoxes of American life, then and now.
Robinson’s Gilead novels, which have won one Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Critics Circle Awards, are a vital contribution to contemporary American literature and a revelation of our national character and humanity.
Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
From the bestselling authors of The Daily Stoic comes an inspiring guide to the lives of the Stoics, and what the ancients can teach us about happiness, success, resilience and virtue.
Nearly 2,300 years after a ruined merchant named Zeno first established a school on the Stoa Poikile of Athens, Stoicism has found a new audience among those who seek greatness, from athletes to politicians and everyone in between. It’s no wonder; the philosophy and its embrace of self-mastery, virtue, and indifference to that which we cannot control is as urgent today as it was in the chaos of the Roman Empire.
In Lives of the Stoics, Holiday and Hanselman present the fascinating lives of the men and women who strove to live by the timeless Stoic virtues of Courage. Justice. Temperance. Wisdom. Organized in digestible, mini-biographies of all the well-known—and not so well-known—Stoics, this book vividly brings home what Stoicism was like for the people who loved it and lived it, dusting off powerful lessons to be learned from their struggles and successes.
More than a mere history book, every example in these pages, from Epictetus to Marcus Aurelius—slaves to emperors—is designed to help the reader apply philosophy in their own lives. Holiday and Hanselman unveil the core values and ideas that unite figures from Seneca to Cato to Cicero across the centuries. Among them are the idea that self-rule is the greatest empire, that character is fate; how Stoics benefit from preparing not only for success, but failure; and learn to love, not merely accept, the hand they are dealt in life. A treasure of valuable insights and stories, this book can be visited again and again by any reader in search of inspiration from the past.
Bestiary by K-Ming Chang
Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this spellbinding, corporeal debut about one family’s queer desires, violent impulses, and buried secrets.
One evening, Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman’s body. She was called Hu Gu Po, and she hungered to eat children, especially their toes. Soon afterwards, Daughter awakes with a tiger tail. And more mysterious events follow: Holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her grandmother; a visiting aunt arrives with snakes in her belly; a brother tests the possibility of flight. All the while, Daughter is falling for Ben, a neighborhood girl with strange powers of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmother’s letters, Daughter begins to understand that each woman in her family embodies a myth—and that she will have to bring her family’s secrets to light in order to change their destiny.
With a poetic voice of crackling electricity, K-Ming Chang is an explosive young writer who combines the wit and fabulism of Helen Oyeyemi with the subversive storytelling of Maxine Hong Kingston. Tracing one family’s history from Taiwan to America, from Arkansas to California, Bestiary is a novel of migration, queer lineages, and girlhood.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
From the New York Times bestselling author of Uprooted and Spinning Silver comes the story of an unwilling dark sorceress who is destined to rewrite the rules of magic.
I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life.
Every sorcerer has a gift: a talent for transformation, a taste for combat magic. And mastering their gifts in a unique magical academy means a chance of being invited into the enclaves, the world’s magical elite.
El Higgins’ talent is for mass destruction: Someday, she could level mountains or destroy untold millions with her power, and this dark talent has alienated her from others.
She protects herself from the scorn of the other magicians with her mordant wit and defiant spirit. But she also hopes that one day she will join a prestigious enclave, and that means ingratiating herself with the powerful and the privileged.
That includes Orion Lake: rich, beloved, and the most celebrated magician of his generation. But what she comes to learn about Orion opens her eyes to some shocking truths about both herself, the school, and their world.
It’s always been El against the world—but now she may be the only one who can save it.
With flawless mastery, Novik creates a heroine for the ages in El—a character so sharply realized and so richly nuanced that she is sure to live on in hearts and minds for generations to come.
The Meaning of Mariah by Mariah Carey
Global icon, award-winning singer, songwriter, producer, actress, mother, daughter, sister, storyteller, and artist Mariah Carey finally tells the unfiltered story of her life.
Carey’s story is an improbable and inspiring journey of survival and resilience as she struggles through complex issues of race, identity, class, childhood and family trauma during her meteoric rise to music superstardom. By pulling back the curtain on perceptions often told through the filtered lens of media, Carey bravely and beautifully walks through her battles with gender and power dynamics, emotional abuse, public embarrassments, personal failures and phenomenal victories. In her own words and song lyrics, Carey reveals untold moments and intimate experiences along with anecdotes of sacred moments with iconic figures to craft an honest, unique and vivid portrait of her extraordinary life.
“This book is composed of my memories, my mishaps, my struggles, my survival and my songs. Unfiltered.” Carey shared in a letter shared on social media yesterday, “Writing this memoir was incredibly hard, humbling and healing. My sincere hope is that you are moved to a new understanding, not only about me, but also about the resilience of the human spirit.”
The Meaning of Mariah Carey is the story of undeniable talent, unshakable faith, an unparalleled relationship with fans and unconditional love. Finally, the voice known around the world tells her own story – unrestrained.
Didn’t See That Coming by Rachel Hollis
I want you to know that what’s been good will always be good: the smell of coconut sunblock, a five year old showing you the spot where his front tooth used to be, a home-cooked meal, when your love kisses that exact spot on your neck, a grandmother’s handwriting, a job well done, the kindness of strangers, the human spirit, an Appaloosa horse, the ritual of your faith, laughing until you pee your pants a little, holiday dessert tables, first birthday parties, a perfect cup of coffee. What’s good will always be good, and one of the most awful, beautiful things about the hard seasons is that unless we experience hardship, we’ll never truly appreciate the goodness.
Fear. Grief. Loss. Betrayal. Rachel Hollis has felt all those things. Now, she takes you to the other side.
Rachel Hollis sees you. As the millions who read her #1 New York Times bestsellers Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing, attend her RISE conferences and follow her on social media know, she also wants to see you transform. When it comes to the “hard seasons” of life-the death of a loved one, divorce, loss of a job-transformation seems impossible when grief and uncertainty dominate your days. Especially when, as Didn’t See that Coming reveals, no one asks to have their future completely rearranged for them.
But, as Rachel writes, it is up to you how you come through your pain-you can come through changed for the better, having learned and grown, or stuck in place where your identity becomes rooted in what hurt you. With her signature humor, heartfelt honesty and true-life stories, in Didn’t See that Coming Rachel Hollis shares how to embrace the difficult moments in life for the learning experiences they are, and that a life well-lived is one of purpose and focused on the essentials. This is a small book about big feelings, inspirational, aspirational, and an anchor that shows that darkness can co-exist with the beautiful.
If you’re jazzed about this one, be sure to grab tickets for an exclusive virtual event on September 30th at 6:30PM CDT with Rachel Hollis herself! Presented in partnership with Cadenza, Rachel will be in conversation with Brit Barron about the book and making of it, plus, select orders will include signed copies! Don’t hesitate!
Just Like You by Nick Hornby
***TEXAS BOOK FESTIVAL FEATURED AUTHOR***
This warm, wise, highly entertaining twenty-first century love story is about what happens when the person who makes you happiest is someone you never expected
Lucy used to handle her adult romantic life according to the script she’d been handed. She met a guy just like herself: same age, same background, same hopes and dreams; they got married and started a family. Too bad he made her miserable. Now, two decades later, she’s a nearly-divorced, forty-one-year-old schoolteacher with two school-aged sons, and there is no script anymore. So when she meets Joseph, she isn’t exactly looking for love—she’s more in the market for a babysitter. Joseph is twenty-two, living at home with his mother, and working several jobs, including the butcher counter where he and Lucy meet. It’s not a match anyone one could have predicted. He’s of a different class, a different culture, and a different generation. But sometimes it turns out that the person who can make you happiest is the one you least expect, though it can take some maneuvering to see it through.
Just Like You is a brilliantly observed, tender, but also brutally funny new novel that gets to the heart of what it means to fall surprisingly and headlong in love with the best possible person—someone you didn’t see coming.
Whale Day: Poems by Billy Collins
Billy Collins’s thirteenth collection of poems gathers together over 50 new poems which showcase the deft mixing of the playful and the serious that has made him one of our country’s most celebrated and widely read poets.
These are poems of whimsy and imaginative acrobatics, but they are grounded in the familiar, common things of everyday experience. Collins takes us for a walk with an impossibly ancient dog, discovers the proper way to eat a banana, meets an Irish spider, and invites us to his own funeral. Facing both the wonders of being alive and the thrill of mortality, these new poems can only solidify Collins’s reputation as one of America’s most durable and interesting poets.
Now In Paperback
Furious Hours by Casey Cep — RSVP for our October 8th, 7PM CDT virtual event with Casey Cep and special guest, Michael Lewis!
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
Over the Top: My Story by Jonathan Van Ness
Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
These titles and more are available for purchase in-store or online from BookPeople today.
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