Contemporary Culture

Listeners of this book will gain a clear understanding of what makes the Japanese, and their society, tick.

"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...

“[Narrator Waikamania] Seve's voice grows more dynamic as Korero grows into a heroine, while narrator Caleb Teaupa brings to life the wider world of Tongan society. Both performers beautifully convey the sounds of Pacific islands--from the trilling birds to the crashing waves."—AudioFile A...

The Namesake follows the Ganguli family through its journey from Calcutta to Cambridge to the Boston suburbs. Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli arrive in America at the end of the 1960s, shortly after their arranged marriage in Calcutta, in order for Ashoke to finish his engineering degree at MIT...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of the runaway phenomenon Unbroken comes a universal underdog story about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend. “Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only with a vivid portrait of a...

From a seasoned political journalist, an eye-opening examination of Tucker Carlson’s rise through conservative media and politics, and his ideological transformation over the past thirty years, tracking the concurrent shifts in the political and media landscapes which have both influenced and...

“The best book about adultery since Madame Bovary.” —Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection A New Yorker, NPR, ELLE, and Esquire Best Book of the Year A hilariously acerbic sliding doors novel about a chance meeting between two young parents, both happily married (just not to each other)...

Ash shook off the images swarming his head and tried to focus on her again; it wasn’t hard. She was so beautiful, those plump lips naturally lined by a darker stain of pink as they blossomed into a cherry in the center, those wide eyes so rich and opaque he could stare into them for hours and never separate pupil from iris. The lashes kissing the delicate smattering of freckles on her mahogany cheek—“I can’t begin to tell you how much your friendship means to me,” Ash said, still drinking in her face. She was so close. It would take nothing to just come a little closer, just there...

“Goes for the heart and doesn’t miss.” –Booklist (starred review) Love is a wild ride. Hold on. When life lassoes Josie and Shawn back together three years after their dreamy first date, their second chance at love is anything but easy. A big-hearted rodeo romance set in Houston, Texas...

If she builds it, they will come. A sex toy engineer with one big secret finally meets her match, and together they’ll put their own products to the test in this steamy romantic comedy. Scout Porter is screwed. Not literally, of course. Literally, she’s a twenty-six-year-old virgin, thanks...

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko, a "mesmerizing" novel about the Korean-American daughter of first-generation immigrants striving to join Manhattan's inner circle (USA Today). Casey Han is a strong-willed, Queens-bred daughter of Korean immigrants immersed in a glamorous...

“In these kaleidoscopic stories of Jamaica and its diaspora we hear many voices at once. All of them convince and sing. All of them shine.”—Zadie Smith An O: The Oprah Magazine “Top 15 Best of the Year” A Well-Read Black Girl’s Pick Tenderness and cruelty, loyalty and betrayal...

Named a Best Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Time, Esquire, BookPage, and more This darkly hilarious and “delicious new novel that ravishes with sex and food” (The Boston Globe) from the acclaimed author of The Pisces and So Sad Today is a “precise blend of desire...

With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.

A bold, inventive, and fiercely original debut novel that begins with an uncle dead and his tween niece’s private confession to the reader—she and her sister killed him, and they blame the British. "I have been waiting for Nina McConigley's debut novel for years and it's even better than I...

When an ordinary nurse becomes the target of a relentless online hate storm, her quiet life is shattered overnight. But what begins as an isolated personal crisis soon sets off a chain of events that brings the fate of America and the entire world into the balance. Note from the author These are truly turbulent times we are living through, and as a European watching an increasingly polarized America tear itself apart from within, I can't help but wonder how it will all end. Is it still possible for people to find a uniting MIDDLE GROUND before it all comes crashing down? Or is it already ...

A propulsive and wickedly entertaining debut thriller for fans of Laura Dave and Ashley Elston that explores the dark underside of the American dream, about a couple whose financial problems are seemingly answered when they begin receiving growing sums of money from an unknown source . . . a...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER *WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER * Bestselling author Andy Borowitz, “one of the funniest people in America” (CBS Sunday Morning), brilliantly “chronicles our embrace of anti-intellectualism” (Walter Isaacson) in modern American...

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...