“Stan,” I said, and I said it kind of loud so of course he had to look up. “Tomorrow morning: 8:37. The red van with the out-of-state plates? You go head to head. You lose. You die.” After freakishly foretelling the death of a friend, Luke Hunter becomes big news in Stokum, his rank little pinprick of a hometown. Terrified, but pretending not to be, Luke holds everyone—the local media, his buddy Fang, the Polish widow next door—at arm’s length as he lurches through a personal minefield studded with previously unconsidered existential ponderings, Christian fundamentalists, a missing teen’s frantic mother, and a dream girl who isn’t his. Hormonal and funny, exhilarating and wise, Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet slyly explores the need to belong, the isolation of youth, and the powerful brew of fear and truth, music and noise, that plays inside us all.

Perfect for fans of Rick Moody, Lauren Groff, and Celeste Ng, a propulsive literary breakout about three suburban families whose lives spiral dangerously out of control after tragedy strikes. Who suffers when the privileged fall? One frigid winter night, Mia and Michael Slate's comfortable world dissolves in an instant when they discover that their best friend has cheated them out of their life savings. At the same time, a few doors down, their teenaged son passes out in the snow at a party--a mistake whose consequences will shatter not just their family, but an entire community. In this arresting, masterful page-turner shot through with fierce, clear-eyed compassion and a sublime insight into human fragility, award-winning novelist Proulx explores the savage underpinnings of betrayal, infidelity, and revenge--and a multilayered portrait of love, in all its glory, that no reader will soon forget.

Luke Hunter thinks heâe(tm)s joking when he tells a good friend exactly when âe" 8:37 the following morning âe" and how âe" hit by a red van from out of town âe" that friend will die. But when events unfold as Luke foretold, he wants none of it: he has enough problems being an average teenager without the added burden of seeing into the future âe" not to mention the ever-after. Terrified, but pretending not to be, Luke pushes his friends and family away, while the local news crew, a Christian fundamentalist preacher and a missing girlâe(tm)s frantic mother all draw nearer, seeking to profit from Lukeâe(tm)s new-found âe~giftâe(tm). Written in clear, precise prose, Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet is a darkly comic coming-of-age novel with a difference. Hormonal and humorous, exhilarating and wise, it is a book about fear and truth, life and death, and the music that plays inside us all. Written in clear, precise prose, Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet is a darkly comic coming-of-age novel about death and life.

“A blistering thriller that follows a group of teenagers on an adventure through an apocalyptic America much like our own.” ―Entertainment Weekly Bestselling author of Before the Fall and Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Noah Hawley (FX’s Fargo) returns with a chilling and prophetic allegory of America as it is now and as it could be. It begins with a Song... In a country divided by pandemic, climate change, and incendiary rhetoric, a new plague infects American teens via social media: a contagious new meme spreading chaos and fear. Desperate parents look for something, anything to stop the madness. At the Float Anxiety Abasement Center, in a suburb of Chicago, Simon Oliver is trying to recover from his sister’s tragic passing. He breaks out to join a woman named Louise and a man called the Prophet on a quest as urgent as it is enigmatic. Who lies at the end of the road? A man known as the Wizard, whose past encounter with Louise sparked her own collapse. Their quest becomes a rescue mission as those most in danger race to save one life – and the country’s future. Anthem is rich with unforgettably vivid characters, as fast and bright as pop cinema. Noah Hawley takes readers along for a leap into the idiosyncratic pulse of the American heart, written with the playfulness, biting wit, literary power, and foresight that have made him one of our most essential writers.

It promises to be a less-than-thrilling summer for 16-year-old Manhattanite Max Whooten. He doesn’t have a job. His parents are annoying. His younger sister is even more annoying. His buddy Trevor just got out of a mental institution and the hottest girl he knows is Leila, his best friend, who he’ll never get with. All he’s got to keep him company is his own anger. An anger he seemingly has no control over and which is increasingly taking over his life. But an unexpected turn of events (well, not so unexpected— the family cat, Mozart, aka Crappy, was sure to choke on a hairball sometime) leads him to his aunt’s place in Woodstock. After Crappy is safely laid to rest next to his sister Madame Chow, Max decides to stick around Woodstock for a few weeks. Sure, his Aunt Ginny might be a bit eccentric, but she does introduce Max to Zini, a young artist who turns out to be his muse. This just might be the recipe for finding love, and most definitely finding himself./DIVDIV Max lets us into his frustrated, highly hormonal, comical, and sometimes inspired world through a series of diary entries in this coming-of-age story about an ordinary boy becoming an extraordinary person and writer.

The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this “forceful, beautifully written” (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays “full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph” (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU’s spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU’s stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.

A journey to Florida's coast becomes an inescapable nightmare in this supernatural thriller from international bestselling author Michael Koryta. Arlen Wagner has seen it in men before: a trace of smoke in their eyes that promises imminent death. He is never wrong. When Arlen awakens on a train one hot Florida night and sees death's telltale sign in the eyes of his fellow passengers, he tries to warn them. Only 19-year-old Paul Brickhill believes him, and the two abandon the train, hoping to escape certain death. They continue south, but soon are stranded at the Cypress House -- an isolated Gulf Coast boarding house run by the beautiful Rebecca Cady -- directly in the path of an approaching hurricane. The storm isn't the only approaching danger, though. A much deadlier force controls the county and everyone living in it, and Arlen wants out -- fast. But Paul refuses to abandon Rebecca to face the threats alone, even though Arlen's eerie gift warns that if they stay too long they may never leave. From its chilling beginning to terrifying end, The Cypress House is a story of relentless suspense from "one of the best of the best" (Michael Connelly).

The classic collection of Dr. King’s sermons that fuse his Christian teachings with his radical ideas of love and nonviolence as a means to combat hate and oppression. As Martin Luther King, Jr., prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his most well known homilies. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail in July 1962. While behind bars, he spent uninterrupted time preparing the drafts for works such as “Loving Your Enemies” and “Shattered Dreams,” and he continued to edit the volume after his release. Strength to Love includes these classic sermons selected by Dr. King. Collectively they present King’s fusion of Christian teachings and social consciousness and promote his prescient vision of love as a social and political force for change.

LONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE From Emma Hooper, acclaimed author of Etta and Otto and Russell and James, a People magazine “Pick of the Week,” comes a “haunting fable about the transformative power of hope” (Booklist, starred review) in a charming and mystical story of a family on the edge of extinction. Newfoundland, 1992. When all the fish vanish from the waters and the cod industry abruptly collapses, it's not long before the people begin to disappear from the town of Big Running as well. As residents are forced to leave the island in search of work, ten-year-old Finn Connor suddenly finds himself living in a ghost town. There's no school, no friends, and whole rows of houses stand abandoned. And then Finn's parents announce that they too must separate if their family is to survive. But Finn still has his sister, Cora, with whom he counts the dwindling boats on the coast at night, and Mrs. Callaghan, who teaches him the strange and ancient melodies of their native Ireland. That is until his sister disappears, and Finn must find a way of calling home the family and the life he has lost.

The book of Hebrews appeared during a critical time in the history of the early church. The destruction of Jerusalem was impending and many of the believers believed the end of the world was near. However, Paul warned the church against entertaining a false hope, for he knew they were misguided with their beliefs. It was a critical time—the apostles were passing away, and soon the church would be left alone. It was in this hour of perplexity that the book of Hebrews appeared with needed light and comfort. The people needed a clear conception of the work Christ was doing for them in the courts above, and this book explained the delay in His return, and restored their wavering faith. The conditions and problems which the church then had to meet are not unlike those facing the church today. While the early church was living at the time of the fulfillment of the first part of Christ’s prophecy—the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the temple, we are living at the time of the fulfillment of the second part of the prophecy—the coming of the Lord Jesus in the clouds of heaven. As there was misconceptions of Christ’s work in the sanctuary then, so there are those now who likewise err. There is as much need today of a thorough study of the Scriptures as there was then, and more so. The book of Hebrews was a great factor in stabilizing the apostolic church in the crisis hour before the fall of Jerusalem, and it is hoped that a discussion of the mighty themes of the book of Hebrews will be of some help to the church of God today. All need to have their eyes fastened on our great High Priest and the work He is doing in the sanctuary above. And may it be the blessed privilege of many with “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.” (Heb. 10:19, 20.) This was the prayer and hope of the author of Hebrews, and this also is the hope of the author of this volume.