Contemporary Art Culture

"Touching, infuriating and painfully true, Strange Girls is a superlative novel by one of our most perceptive writers. Sarvat Hasin is an artist whose work demands to be read." —Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea An award-winning international author’s stunning US debut about...

A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Riveting and unconventional, The Last Story of Mina Lee traces the far-reaching consequences of secrets in the lives of a Korean immigrant mother and her daughter Margot Lee's mother is ignoring her calls. Margot can’t understand why...

America’s most trusted and best-known film critic Roger Ebert presents two hundred brilliant essays on some of the best movies ever made in this two-book collection containing THE GREAT MOVIES and THE GREAT MOVIES II. Roger Ebert, the famed film writer and critic, wrote biweekly essays for a...

“Molly is one of the greatest young female characters I’ve had the luck of reading since I picked up Joy Williams’s The Quick and the Dead back in 2000 . . . I TRULY LOVE THIS BOOK!!!!!!” —Gillian Flynn, Gillian Flynn Books “Holly Wilson’s Kittentits is sacred and profane...

An exhilarating, darkly funny debut novel about the absurd and fleeting nature of childhood fame, and the ever-evolving desire for family and forgiveness. Lucy Gardiner felt like she was put on earth to dance. Amid the chaos of her Massachusetts upbringing—her loving, erratic brothers; her...

In this haunting work of journalistic investigation, Haruki Murakami tells the story of the horrific terrorist attack on Japanese soil that shook the entire world. On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to...

Crown The Noise isn’t an art history book. It’s a mixtape. A diary on subway walls. A crown painted in gold across broken concrete. Step into the chaos and brilliance of Jean-Michel Basquiat — the radiant child who turned the streets of New York into a studio, who made noise into poetry, and who crowned forgotten heroes with glory. Through fragments, quotes, and stories layered like his canvases, this book brings Basquiat alive on the page: his fire, his battles, his fame, his loneliness, and the eternal echo of his art. It’s not about looking at Basquiat. It’s about feeling him. ...

The year is 1853, and Princess Elisabeth “Sisi” of Bavaria has been very clear: She will wait for the head-over-heels love the poets speak of, or she will have no love at all. Just because her older sister, Helene, is eagerly heeding their mother’s advice and preparing to marry Emperor...

From Danny Pellegrino, creator of the hugely successful podcast Everything Iconic! Stories that will make you laugh, cry, and dig up all your awkward middle-school pictures. Growing up in small-town Ohio isn't easy, particularly when you're a closeted gay kid surrounded by... no one openly gay...

“I am a big fan of Women and Children First . . . Alina Grabowski is an astute and limber narrative artist and I could read her prose all day long and never grow weary.”―Lorrie Moore, author of A Gate at the Stairs A gripping literary puzzle that unwinds the private lives of ten women as...

In this enlightening and entertaining book, experience the evolution of country music, from the 1970s Appalachian hillbilly chitlin' circuit to the 1980s country music boom that paved the way for modern Americana. In a dim clearing off a county road in Kentucky sits a sagging outdoor stage...

In 1969, in Capitol Records' Hollywood studio, a blonde-haired troubadour named Larry Norman laid track for an album that would launch a new genre of music and one of the strangest, most interesting careers in modern rock. Having spent the bulk of the 1960s playing on bills with acts like The Who, Janis Joplin, and The Doors, Norman decided that he wanted to sing about the most countercultural subject of all: Jesus.

Award-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo, and the culture that worshiped her. “Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s...

Christian Music Appreciation: History, Theology, Genres, and Contemporary Culture provides a comprehensive, academically grounded exploration of the development of Christian music from biblical foundations to the digital streaming era. This college-level textbook traces the evolution of Christian musical expression across centuries and cultures—beginning with Hebrew psalmody and early church hymnody, progressing through Gregorian chant and Reformation chorales, examining Baroque sacred masterpieces and revival hymnody, and analyzing the emergence of African American spirituals, gospel ...

A "marvelous" (Lauren Groff) and "gentle, mysterious and profound” (Marina Abramović) novel about a woman who has come undone. A student moves to the city to research Gothic nudes, renting an apartment from a painter, Agnes, who lives in another town with her husband. One day, Agnes arrives...

The History of Hong Kong Photography From colonial beginnings to the digital age, The History of Hong Kong Photography traces the city’s evolution through the camera lens — a visual chronicle of transformation, resilience, and identity. This richly illustrated volume journeys across nearly two centuries of photographic heritage, from fragile glass negatives and sepia portraits to the vibrant imagery of today’s digital culture. Photography first reached Hong Kong in the mid-nineteenth century, when the territory was still a British outpost on the South China coast. Early foreign ...

A Best Book of 2025 from Chicago Review of Books For fans of Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, Great Disasters is a stirring debut novel about six young men coming of age, and the enduring friendships that make us who we are—even as our paths diverge. This is...

The behind-the-scenes story of the iconic film, featuring new interviews with the cast and crew. An unflinching confrontation of humanity’s dark side, Brian De Palma’s crime drama film Scarface gave rise to a cultural revolution upon its release in 1983. Its impact was unprecedented, making...

For the most part, the souls that live in the Crosswinds Apartments building in Carrefour—a small town located on the Missouri bank of the Mississippi River—form a tight knit diverse community . . . some living transparent lives while others have secrets to hide. And then there are those who have found themselves at a crossroads. Chance “Lucky” Loughlin is a retired Navy SEAL working as an operative for a private military contractor when he finds himself at his crossroads. Should he continue on the same path, or veer off toward new horizons? A couple of years after resettling in his...

When Bonnie and Mansour meet in New York in 1968―his piercing gaze in a downtown jazz club threatening to carry her away―their connection is undeniable. Both from fractured homes, with childhoods spent crossing the Atlantic, they quickly find peace with each other. And as Mansour's soaring...