Here's a Six Pack of New Titles Just Put On The Shelves

From PEN/Hemingway award winner Brando Skyhorse comes this stunning, heartfelt memoir in the vein of The Glass Castle or The Tender Bar, the true story of a boy's turbulent childhood growing up with five stepfathers and the mother who was determined to give her son everything but the truth.

When he was three years old, Brando Kelly Ulloa was abandoned by his Mexican father. His mother, Maria, dreaming of a more exciting life, saw no reason for her son to live his life as a Mexican just because he started out as one. The life of "Brando Skyhorse," the American Indian son of an incarcerated political activist, was about to begin.

Through a series of letters to Paul Skyhorse Johnson, a stranger in prison for armed robbery, Maria reinvents herself and her young son as American Indians in the colorful Mexican-American neighborhood of Echo Park, California. There Brando and his mother live with his acerbic grandmother and a rotating cast of surrogate fathers. It will be over thirty years before Brando begins to untangle the truth of his own past, when a surprise discovery online leads him to his biological father at last.

From an acclaimed, prize-winning novelist celebrated for his "indelible storytelling" (O, The Oprah Magazine), this extraordinary literary memoir captures a son's single-minded search for a father wherever he can find one, and is destined to become a classic.

In the bestselling tradition of Defending Jacob, this taut legal thriller follows the trail of a man determined to protect his community--and his family--at any cost.

"Sometimes a simple walk in the woods can lead you down the deadliest of trails..."

When birdwatcher Cassandra Randall stumbles upon two men digging what appears to be a grave in a state park, she immediately reports it to the authorities. Federal prosecutor Nick Davis is initially incredulous about her claims, but he agrees to investigate. To his surprise, the far-fetched account turns up a body, and Nick is drawn into a case that will shake both his morals and his personal life to their very core.

One body quickly leads to another. The danger Cassandra has uncovered is just the beginning of a game of deadly stakes that implicates small-time drug dealers, petty thieves turned murderers, domestic abuse perpetrators, child pornographers, the highest offices of the legal system...and a criminal who is closer to Davis than he can even imagine.

The riveting account of one of history's greatest adventures and a study of the seven character traits all great explorers share.

In 1856, two intrepid adventurers, Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke, set off to unravel mankind's greatest geographical mystery: finding the source of the Nile River. They traveled deep into a forbidding and uncharted African wilderness together, coming near death on several occasions. Ultimately, Burton and Speke arrived at two different conclusions about the Nile's origin. Before leaving Africa they became sworn enemies.

The feud became an international sensation upon their return to England, and a public debate was scheduled to decide whose theory was correct. What followed was a massive spectacle with an outcome no one could have ever foreseen.
In The Explorers, New York Times bestselling author Martin Dugard shares the rich saga of the Burton and Speke expedition. To better understand their motivations and ultimate success, Dugard guides readers through the seven vital traits that Burton and Speke, as well as many of history's legendary explorers, called upon to see their impossible journeys through to the end: curiosity, hope, passion, courage, independence, self-discipline, and perserverence. In doing so, Dugard demonstrates that we are all explorers, and that these traits have a most practical application in everyday life.

The Explorers is a book about survival and courage. It is also a book about stepping into the darkness with confidence and grace, aware on some profound level--as were Burton and Speke--that the Promised Land we are searching for is not some lost corner of the world, but a place within ourselves.

A moving and eloquent novel about love, grief, renew, and the powerful language of flowers.

Ruby Jewell knows flowers. In her twenty years as a florist she has stood behind the counter at the Flower Shoppe with her faithful dog, Clementine, resting at her feet. A customer can walk in, and with just a glance or a few words, Ruby can throw together the perfect arrangement for any occasion.

Whether intended to rekindle a romance, mark a celebration, offer sympathy, or heal a broken heart, her expressive floral designs mark the moments and milestones in the lives of her neighbors. It’s as though she knows just what they want to say, just what they need.

Yet Ruby’s own heart’s desires have gone ignored since the death of her beloved sister. It will take an invitation from a man who’s flown to the moon, the arrival of a unique little boy, and concern from a charming veterinarian to reawaken her wounded spirit. Any life can be derailed, but the healing power of community can put it right again.

An acclaimed author reflects on his upbringing in a post–World War II blue-collar family and comes to terms with the racism, sexism, and other toxic values he inherited.
 
Love & Fury tells a story that comprises five generations of an American family, examining the continuing impact of history as it shapes the lives of people struggling with the complexities of contemporary life.

From the author’s grandfather, a “breaker boy” sent down into the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania at the age of ten, to his young grandson, whose father is among the estimated one million young black men incarcerated today, Love & Fury offers an examination of the social, familial, and ethical contours of American life. With honesty and compassion, Hoffman grapples with the values he inherited in his boomer-generation boyhood from a father whose ideas about masculinity, race, class, violence, women, and religion were a product of his time.

At the book’s core are the author’s questions about boyhood, fatherhood, and grandfatherhood, and about what it means to be a good man in our modern society. A masterful memoirst, Hoffman writes not only to tell a gripping story but also to understand, through his family, the America in which we live.

A new collection of short stories by a master of the form with a common focus on the turmoils of romantic love

Ready!
 

Aim!
 

On command the firing squad aims at the man backed against a full-length mirror. The mirror once hung in a bedroom, but now it’s cracked and propped against a dumpster in an alley. 

 

The condemned man has refused the customary last cigarette but accepted as a hood the black slip that was carelessly tossed over a corner of the mirror’s frame. The slip still smells faintly of a familiar fragrance.
 

So begins “Tosca,” the first in this vivid collection of Stuart Dybek’s love stories. Operatically dramatic and intimately lyrical, grittily urban and impressionistically natural, the varied fictions in Paper Lantern all focus on the turmoil of love as only Dybek can portray it. An execution triggers the recollection of a theatrical romance; then a social worker falls for his own client; and lovers part as giddily, perhaps as hopelessly, as a kid trying to hang on to a boisterous kite. A flaming laboratory evokes a steamy midnight drive across terrain both familiar and strange, and an eerily ringing phone becomes the telltale signature of a dark betrayal. Each story is marked with contagious desire, spontaneous revelation, and, ultimately, resigned courage. As one woman whispers when she sets a notebook filled with her sketches drifting out to sea, “Someone will find you.”
 

Some of Dybek’s characters recur in these stories, while others appear only briefly. Throughout, they—and we—are confronted with vaguely familiar scents and images, reminiscent of love but strangely disconcerting, so that we might wonder whether we are looking in a mirror or down the barrel of a gun. “After the ragged discharge,” Dybek writes, “when the smoke has cleared, who will be left standing and who will be shattered into shards?”

 

Paper Lantern brims with the intoxicating elixirs known to every love-struck, lovelorn heart, and it marks the magnificent return of one of America’s most important fiction writers at the height of his powers.