Contemporary Art Culture

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...

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...

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. ...

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 story of how we became. I write those words...

*** Global Book Awards 2024 SILVER MEDAL WINNER for Contemporary Romance *** She is madly in love. But he can’t see past his pain. Will he ever open up to her? Can a man with a tortured past allow himself to be loved? Axel, a striking young artist, haunted by his childhood trauma, finds peace within himself through art – expressing himself on canvas – and through the company of his favourite horse. His torment becomes the source of his inspiration to paint. One night, Hyunah stumbles into his atelier, igniting a spark neither of them could foresee. He takes her out to discover Vienna ...

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...

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...

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...

RYAN O’NEAL AND FARRAH FAWCETT. One of the most storied love affairs in Hollywood history, their romance has captivated fans and media alike for more than three decades. Fans of each other from afar, Ryan and Farrah met through her husband, Lee Majors, and fell passionately in love. Soon...

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.

“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...

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 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...

“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...

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. River Loughlin—the closest thing to a rock star the little town of Carrefour had ever seen—was setting off on a new career path that would keep him closer to home. What he didn’t know was that his life would evolve into an unrecognizable one that he’d ...

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...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE WINNER OF THE LAMBDA LITERARY DUGGINS PRIZE "Hypnotic...a haunting romance about desire, obsession, and ambition that is sure to get your heart rate up." —Time Magazine "R.O...

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...

Eight years ago, readers everywhere fell in love with Jim Glass, the precocious ten-year-old at the heart of Jim the Boy. Now a teenager, Jim returns in a tender and wise story of young love on the brink of World War Two. Jim Glass has fallen in love, as only a teenage boy can fall in love, with...

The intimate, inspiring memoir of a “curator extraordinaire” (The Guardian)—part unputdownable coming-of-age story, part insider’s tour of the contemporary art world, part user’s manual on how to live a life driven by curiosity, conversation, and coincidence “A few years ago...