Clare Leslie Hall

Please note this is an advanced readers copy

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Oregon

An “evocative, sensitive, and compelling novel” (Delia Owens, New York Times bestselling author of Where the Crawdads Sing) that explores the deadly consequences of a love triangle in an English farming village as dangerous secrets from the past resurface—perfect for fans of The Paper Palace and Where the Crawdads Sing. “The farmer is dead. He is dead and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.” When her brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart all those years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son Bobby, who died a few years earlier. As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel and Leo’s lives, tensions around the village rise, and jealousy rears its ugly head. Beth and her gentle and kind husband Frank are happily married, but they have their fair share of secrets, and their relationship relies on the past staying buried. And when the truth begins to come out, events spiral out of control, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice—between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become. A sweeping, sexy love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.

Broken Country (ARC)

8f8c5c93-a8fe-448b-ae24-5954a76a68cc-0

Sanam Mahloudji

Please note this is an advanced readers copy 

A Novel

An irreverent and deeply-felt debut novel about a family confronting a past that is both keeping them together and preventing them from breaking free. Meet the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they’re nobodies. First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose who stayed in Tehran during the revolution. She lives in a shabby apartment, paranoid and alone. Except when she is visited by Niaz, her Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter who takes her debauchery with a side of purpose, and yet somehow manages to survive. Elizabeth’s daughters left for America in 1979: Shirin, a charismatic yet outrageous event planner in Houston who considers herself the family’s future, and Seema, a dreamy idealist-turned-housewife languishing in the chaparral-filled hills of Los Angeles. And then there’s the other granddaughter Bita, the self-righteous but lost law student spending her days in New York City eating pancakes and quietly giving away her belongings. When an annual vacation in Aspen goes wildly awry and Shirin ends up being bailed out of jail by Bita, the family’s brittle status quo is cracked open. Shirin embarks upon a grand but half-baked quest to restore the family name. But what does that even mean in a country where the Valiats never mattered? Will they ever realize that life is more than just an old story? These are five women who are pulled apart and brought together by revolution. Here is their past, present, and future. By turns satirical and philosophical, traveling from the 1940s Iran into a splintered 2000s, The Persians is a mordantly funny, heartbreakingly sad, and profoundly searching portrait of a family in crisis at the turn of the century, an American family saga reinvented.

The Persians (ARC)

1c90f57b-6736-46c5-b268-706e0be5f723-0

Emma Pattee

Set over the course of one day, a heart-racing debut about a woman facing the unimaginable, determined to find safety. Last night, you and I were safe. Last night, in another universe, your father and I stood fighting in the kitchen. Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk. Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she’s determined to change her life. A propulsive debut, Tilt is a primal scream of a novel about the disappointments and desires we all carry, and what each of us will do for the people we love.

Tilt (ARC)

ef838741-8dd0-4634-85b7-13adefe3ac19-0

Christina Li

Mexican Gothic meets Everything I Never Told You in Christina Li’s haunting novel about the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it. They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. But silence can be deadly. Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career and live out the rest of her life as a recluse. Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood home: Vivian’s grand, sprawling Southern California garden estate. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead—one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement. In hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. Amidst the grief and paranoia of the families’ unhappy reunion, Vivian’s daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother’s life, only to realize they are being haunted by something much more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth about the last fateful summer they spent in the house, or will they cling to their secrets until it’s too late? Told in dual timelines, spanning three generations, and brimming with romance, betrayal, ambition and sacrifice, The Manor of Dreams is a thrilling family gothic that examines the true cost of the American dream—and what happens when the roots we set down in this country turn to rot.

The Manor of Dreams (ARC)

5dc6d6e6-9e84-4644-873c-dba7baa9d769-0

Ariel Courage

Please note this is an advance readers copy!

Armed with a terminal diagnosis, a grudge, and a rental car, forty-year-old Hester sets out to fulfill her lifelong dream of killing her father in this brilliantly subversive and bleakly funny novel It’s Hester’s fortieth birthday when she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer, and she knows immediately what she must do: abandon her possessions and drive to California to kill her estranged father. With no friends or family tying her to the life she’s built in New York City, she quits her wildly lucrative job in corporate law and sets off. She hasn’t made it far when she runs into John, an environmental activist in need of a ride to different superfund sites across the United States. From five-star Midwestern hotels to cultish Southwestern compounds, the two slowly make their way across the country. But will the revelations they make along the way dissuade Hester from her final goal? Ragingly singular and surprisingly moving, Bad Nature is a novel of stunning detours and twists until its final destination. Part road trip novel, part revenge tale, part a lament of our ongoing ecological crisis, it’s ultimately a deft examination of the indulgence of holding grudges, moral ambivalence, and the eternal possibility of redemption.

Bad Nature (ARC)

6275bee1-ce8d-4353-a588-d76c1493b15b-0

Peter Ames Carlin

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A Biography

An electrifying cultural biography of the greatest and last American rock band of the millennium, whose music such as "Losing My Religion," "Man on the Moon," "The One I Love" and "It's the End of the World as We Know It" ignited a generation -- and reasserted the power of rock and roll, from New York Times bestselling music writer Peter Ames Carlin (BRUCE and PAUL McCARTNEY: A Life). In the spring of 1980, an unexpected group of misfits came together to play their very first performance at a college party in Athens, Georgia. Within a few short years, they had taken over the world - with smash records like OUT OF TIME, AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE, MONSTER and GREEN. Raw, outrageous, and expressive, Michael Stipe and R.E.M.'s distinctive musical flair was unmatched, and a string of mega-successes solidified them as generational spokesmen. In the tumultuous transition between the wide-open 80s and the anxiety of the early 90s - from Reagan to Bush to Clinton, followed by the resurgence of spirit, youth and MTV-politics - pop/rock music, led by R.E.M., felt as if it had a message again. Flowing from every FM radio were culturally influential songs like "Shiny Happy People," "Everybody Hurts," "Losing My Religion," "Man on the Moon," "The One I Love" and "It's the End of the World as We Know It." R.E.M. provided a sound track to the 80s and 90s, challenging the corporate and social order. R.E.M. pursued music like true artists, chasing a vision and working tirelessly to cultivate a magnetic, transgressive sound. In this breathtaking biography (by the critically acclaimed author of BRUCE, PAUL McCARTNEY: A Life, and HOMEWARD BOUND: The Life of Paul Simon), Peter Ames Carlin not only documents R.E.M.'s success in the music industry, but also opens a fascinating window into the lives of four college friends - Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry - who stuck together with a common goal. He paints a cultural history of the commercial peak and near-total collapse of rock 'n' roll, and the story of an era and the generation that came of age at the apotheosis of rock.

The Name of This Band Is R. E. M.

410f7b74-01cc-41c7-b552-605d2590a965-0

N.k. Jemisin

Rebecca Roanhorse

Tananarive Due

Nnedi Okorafor

An Anthology of New Black Horror

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The visionary writer and director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation. “Every piece is strong and memorable, making this not only likely to be the best anthology of the year, but one for the ages.”—The Guardian WINNER OF THE BRAM STOKER AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD AND THE LOCUS AWARD • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Esquire, Chicago Public Library, CrimeReads A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele’s anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and—like his spine-chilling films—its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world . . . and redefine what it means to be afraid. Featuring stories by: Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull.

Out There Screaming

f9acf514-fde5-4dcf-8d87-7b0adf06c234-0

Thurston Moore

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

A Memoir

From the founding member of Sonic Youth, a passionate memoir tracing the author's life and art—from his teen years as a music obsessive in small-town Connecticut, to the formation of his legendary rock group, to thirty years of creation, experimentation, and wonder "Downtown scientists rejoice! For Thurston Moore has unearthed the missing links, the sacred texts, the forgotten stories, and the secret maps of the lost golden age. This is history—scuffed, slightly bent, plenty noisy, and indispensable." —Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Underground Railroad and Harlem Shuffle Thurston Moore moved to Manhattan’s East Village in 1978 with a yearning for music. He wanted to be immersed in downtown New York’s sights and sounds—the feral energy of its nightclubs, the angular roar of its bands, the magnetic personalities within its orbit. But more than anything, he wanted to make music—to create indelible sounds that would move, provoke, and inspire. His dream came to life in 1981 with the formation of Sonic Youth, a band Moore cofounded with Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo. Sonic Youth became a fixture in New York’s burgeoning No Wave scene—an avant-garde collision of art and sound, poetry and punk. The band would evolve from critical darlings to commercial heavyweights, headlining festivals around the globe while helping introduce listeners to such artists as Nirvana, Hole, and Pavement, and playing alongside such icons as Neil Young and Iggy Pop. Through it all, Moore maintained an unwavering love of music: the new, the unheralded, the challenging, the irresistible. In the spirit of Just Kids, Sonic Life offers a window into the trajectory of a celebrated artist and a tribute to an era of explosive creativity. It presents a firsthand account of New York in a defining cultural moment, a history of alternative rock as it was birthed and came to dominate airwaves, and a love letter to music, whatever the form. This is a story for anyone who has ever felt touched by sound—who knows the way the right song at the right moment can change the course of a life.

Sonic Life

49b96619-dadc-4258-bcbf-e0b32596e05f-0

Jamil Zaki

Building Empathy in a Fractured World

A Stanford psychologist offers a bold new understanding of empathy, and shows how we can expand our circle of care, even in these divisive times Empathy is in short supply. Isolation and tribalism are rampant. We struggle to understand people who aren't like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States is suffering from an "empathy deficit." Since then, things only seem to have gotten worse. It doesn't have to be this way. In this groundbreaking book, Jamil Zaki argues that empathy is not a fixed trait--something we're born with or not--but rather a skill that we can all strengthen through effort. Drawing on both classic and cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, Zaki shows how we can harness this new mindset to overcome toxic cultural divisions. He also tells the stories of people who are living these principles--fighting for kindness in the most difficult of circumstances. We meet a former neo-Nazi who is now helping extract people from hate groups, ex-prisoners discussing novels with the judge who sentenced them, Washington police officers changing their culture to decrease violence among their ranks, and NICU nurses fine-tuning their empathy so that they don't succumb to burnout. Written with clarity and passion, The War for Kindness is an inspiring call to action. The future may depend on whether we accept the challenge.

The War for Kindness

1b1b6f4d-179e-4e6d-83cb-5f210209ec48-1

Jeffrey Eng

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

In Never Go Full Pai, immerse yourself in the world of backpacking and hostels. Join two young travelers on the backpacker circuit as they explore art, love, and develop an unlikely friendship during their adventures through Europe and Southeast Asia

Never Go Full Pai

fdbe2985-12c1-429b-b3fa-1d2dffcb3292-0

Mona Alvarado Frazier

Juana, a seventeen-year-old mother, is sentenced to prison for murdering her husband. She claims she's innocent--but no one believes her, including the prison staff and a gang leader in her block who torments her. Juana's troubles aren't confined to prison, however--she's undocumented, and her husband's bereaved family is now threatening to take her baby from her forever. Feeling hemmed in on all sides and desperate to stay out of trouble, Juana creates her own refuge in the prison yard: a garden she created. As she digs in the soil, nurturing the plants, she remembers her courageous, long-deceased mother, who she knows would never give in or give up. Juana's only hope for saving herself and her baby is to prove her innocence--but how?

The Garden of Second Chances

4d725027-0228-4221-bfd4-6fe43c202be6-1

Charles Yu

Stories

From the National Book Award–⁠winning author of Interior Chinatown, comes a hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly original collection of short stories. A big-box store employee is confronted by a zombie during the graveyard shift, a problem that pales in comparison to his inability to ask a coworker out on a date . . . A fighter leads his band of virtual warriors, thieves, and wizards across a deadly computer-generated landscape, but does he have what it takes to be a hero? . . . A company outsources grief for profit, its slogan: “Don’t feel like having a bad day? Let someone else have it for you.” Drawing from both pop culture and science, Charles Yu is a brilliant observer of contemporary society, and in Sorry Please Thank You he fills his stories with equal parts laugh-out-loud humor and piercing insight into the human condition. He has already garnered comparisons to such masters as Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams, and in this new collection we have resounding proof that he has arrived (via a wormhole in space-time) as a major new voice in American fiction.

Sorry Please Thank You

ffbd8242-4d12-4cac-95c6-0051570fdbcb-1

Mary H. K. Choi

From New York Times bestselling author Mary H.K. Choi comes a funny and emotional story about two estranged sisters and how far they’ll go to save one of their lives—even if it means swapping identities. Jayne and June Baek are nothing alike. June’s three years older, a classic first-born, know-it-all narc with a problematic finance job and an equally soulless apartment (according to Jayne). Jayne is an emotionally stunted, self-obsessed basket case who lives in squalor, has egregious taste in men, and needs to get to class and stop wasting Mom and Dad’s money (if you ask June). Once thick as thieves, these sisters who moved from Seoul to San Antonio to New York together now don’t want anything to do with each other. That is, until June gets cancer. And Jayne becomes the only one who can help her. Flung together by circumstance, housing woes, and family secrets, will the sisters learn more about each other than they’re willing to confront? And what if while helping June, Jayne has to confront the fact that maybe she’s sick, too?

Yolk

8b9ec595-9503-4e77-a20a-c125404ca16d-1

Mira T. Lee

A story of "two sisters--Miranda, the older, responsible one, always her younger sister's protector, [and] Lucia, the headstrong, unpredictable one, whose impulses are huge and often life changing. When their mother dies and Lucia starts hearing voices, it is Miranda who must find a way to reach her sister. But Lucia impetuously plows ahead, marrying a big-hearted, older man only to leave him suddenly to have a baby with a young Latino immigrant. She moves her new family from the States to Ecuador and back again, but the bitter constant is that she is, in fact, mentally ill"--

Everything Here Is Beautiful

fc49196f-a34d-49fe-ac11-747b3e6a2a77-1

Scott Kurtz

Growing pains, adventure, and 20-sided dice abound in this new graphic novel series about a middle school Dungeon & Dragons club from Eisner and Harvey award-winning cartoonist Scott Kurtz. Valeria Winters has an easier time finding trouble than making friends. A fantasy-obsessed nerd with the legendary confidence—and temper—of a Valkyrie, Val promises her mom that things will be different at her new school. “No more fighting!” As if by fate, she meets the Table Titans right away—Alan, Andrew, and Darius, who run the school’s tabletop gaming club. Finally, Val has found her own adventuring party! And even better . . . a place where she belongs. So when the future of the club is threatened, Val makes it her personal quest to save the Table Titans. She’ll have to face the fire-breathing wrestling coach and popular girl Kate, who seems out for revenge. Revenge for what? Val has no clue. As the quest grows more and more complicated, Val wishes she was like her peaceful druid Lulani from the Table Titans' campaign, whose calm voice always prevails. If she loses her cool in real life, Val might lose more than the Table Titans club. She'll have to roll a natural 20 in charisma to keep her new friends together. Set in the same universe as the Eisner Award-winning webcomic PvP, Scott Kurtz’s artwork blends zany, fantastical visuals with slice-of-life humor. For fans of fantasy and coming of age stories alike, Table Titans finds humor, heart, and adventure in a tale of friendship and finding your people.

Table Titans Club

4b7db548-9520-4da1-a916-3217929ef664-0

Zoë Schiffer

Inside Elon Musk's Twitter

"Zoë Schiffer has written the definitive book on perhaps the weirdest business story of our time. A fast-paced and riveting account of a hilarious and tragic mess." — Matt Levine, Bloomberg Opinion “Money Stuff” columnist “the bird is freed” - Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022 When Elon Musk took over Twitter, commentators were rooting for the visionary behind Tesla and SpaceX to succeed. Here was a tough leader who could grab back power from Twitter’s entitled workforce, motivate them to get “extremely hardcore,” and supercharge Twitter’s profit and potential. And it was all out of the goodness of his own heart, rooted in his fervent belief in the necessity of making Twitter friendlier to free speech. "I didn’t do it to make more money,” Musk said. “I did it to try and help humanity, whom I love.” Once Musk charged into the Twitter headquarters, the command-and-control playbook Musk honed at Tesla and SpaceX went off the rails immediately. Distilling hundreds of hours of interviews with more than sixty employees, thousands of pages of internal documents, Slack messages, presentations, as well as court filings and congressional testimony, Extremely Hardcore is the true story of how Musk reshaped the world’s online public square into his own personal megaphone. You’ll hear from employees who witnessed the destruction of their workplace in real-time, seeing years of progress to fight disinformation and hate speech wiped out within a matter of months. There’s the machine-learning savant who went all-in on Twitter 2.0 before getting betrayed by his new CEO, the father whose need for healthcare swept him into Musk’s inner circle, the trust and safety expert who became the subject of a harassment campaign his former boss incited, and the many other employees who tried to save the company from their new boss’s worst instincts. This is the story of Twitter, but it’s also a chronicle of the post-pandemic labor movement, a war between executives and a workforce newly awakened to their rights and needs. Riveting, character-driven, and filled with jaw-dropping revelations, Extremely Hardcore is the definitive, fly-on-the-wall story of how Elon Musk lit $44 billion on fire and burned down Twitter. It’s the next best thing to being there, and you won’t have to sleep in the Twitter office to get the scoop.

Extremely Hardcore

67840f4d-446f-4d10-bff6-aba7c26e06c4-0

Matthew Connelly

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

What History Reveals about America's Top Secrets

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDHILL HISTORY PRIZE • Every day, thousands of new secrets are created by the United States government. What is all this secrecy really for? And whom does it benefit? “A brilliant, deeply unsettling look at the history and inner workings of ‘the dark state'.... At a time when federal agencies are increasingly classifying or destroying documents with historical significance, this book could not be more important.” —Eric Schlosser, New York Times best-selling author of Command and Control Before World War II, transparent government was a proud tradition in the United States. In all but the most serious of circumstances, classification, covert operations, and spying were considered deeply un-American. But after the war, the power to decide what could be kept secret proved too tempting to give up. Since then, we have radically departed from that open tradition, allowing intelligence agencies, black sites, and classified laboratories to grow unchecked. Officials insist that only secrecy can keep us safe, but its true costs have gone unacknowledged for too long. Using the latest techniques in data science, historian Matthew Connelly analyzes a vast trove of state secrets to unearth not only what the government really did not want us to know but also why they didn’t want us to know it. Culling this research and carefully examining a series of pivotal moments in recent history, from Pearl Harbor to drone warfare, Connelly sheds light on the drivers of state secrecy— especially incompetence and criminality—and how rampant overclassification makes it impossible to protect truly vital information. What results is an astonishing study of power: of the greed it enables, of the negligence it protects, and of what we lose as citizens when our leaders cannot be held to account. A crucial examination of the self-defeating nature of secrecy and the dire state of our nation’s archives, The Declassification Engine is a powerful reminder of the importance of preserving the past so that we may secure our future.

The Declassification Engine

99363802-a316-49d3-b7bc-327a1df2a672-0

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Social Studies

Juvenile Justice

Charles Lemert

The Multicultural, Global, and Classic Readings

For over twenty years Charles Lemert has scoured the canon of social theory, pulling together long-established classics as well as engaging modern writing to create an essential collection of social theory from the nineteenth century to the present. In this heavily revised fifth edition, Lemert reevaluates the received canon and reasserts this iconic text's place in the standard curriculum. Classic, essential texts from thinkers like Marx, Durkheim, and James remain; other key writers, like Dewey and Connell, are presented in a new light; and leading figures in the discussion of twenty-first-century society, such as Elijah Anderson and Bruno Latour, are anthologized here for the first time. In addition to classic and multicultural readings, the new fifth edition introduces a discussion of global social theory as well as important new and evolving topics like mobile technologies, the virtual realm, masculinities, and bare life. For the first time, timelines are included to visually present readings against the backdrop of significant events in social and world history. With more than 100 authors, thinkers, and scholars represented, the fifth edition of Social Theory is an essential component of any course on social theory.

Social Theory

19f13f11-95c0-4aa9-9788-1203d9f735a5-1

An Introduction to Theories and Methods

Qualitative Research for Education

The book jacket is torn due to age but the cloth bound book itself is in pristine condition! 

Good Intentions

A comic experiment in sociology and self-absorption, the award-winning author Thomas Clerc's autobiographical Interior is a unique invitation into a professor's preoccupations and possessions within the rooms of a small Parisian apartment. Composed of bite-size vignettes, remembrances, and digressions, and filled with lighthearted transitions from pure description to quirky reminiscence and back, this meticulous tour through the rooms of Clerc's home reveals fascinating insights into the author's obsessions, desires, and frustrations. Each space is described in painstaking detail, sometimes down to the centimeter, and the history of every object and appliance is fully excavated with self-deprecating wit. From the ideal varieties of bathroom reading material to the color of his dish rack to the chaos of his sock drawer, Clerc happily and shamelessly guides us through the most intimate crannies of his home, as well as through all the strata of his existence as a bourgeois city dweller approaching middle age. Playful and irreverent, as well as a sly commentary on materialism, Interior finds drama in the domestic and dark humor in every doomed attempt to express individuality through the things that we own.

Interior

142e2e2d-0d09-4fb6-9800-9bf69cf0099a-1

#hardcover #scribnerbooks #essays #upupdowndown #chestonknapp

Essays

For fans of John Jeremiah Sullivan and Wells Tower, a “glittering,” (Leslie Jamison), “always smart, often hilarious, and ultimately transcendent” (Anthony Doerr) linked essay collection from the managing editor of Tin House that brilliantly explores the nature of identity. Daring and wise, hilarious and tender, Cheston Knapp’s exhilarating collection of seven linked essays, Up Up, Down Down, tackles the Big Questions through seemingly unlikely avenues. In his dexterous hands, an examination of a local professional wrestling promotion becomes a meditation on pain and his relationship with his father. A profile of UFO enthusiasts ends up probing his history in the church and, more broadly, the nature and limits of faith itself. Attending an adult skateboarding camp launches him into a virtuosic analysis of nostalgia. And the shocking murder of a neighbor expands into an interrogation of our culture’s prevailing ideas about community and the way we tell the stories of our lives. Even more remarkable, perhaps, is the way he manages to find humanity in a damp basement full of frat boys. Taken together, the essays in Up Up, Down Down amount to a chronicle of Knapp’s coming-of-age, a young man’s journey into adulthood, late-onset as it might appear. He presents us with formative experiences from his childhood to marriage that echo throughout the collection, and ultimately tilts at what may be the Biggest Q of them all: what are the hazards of becoming who you are? With “an ordnance of wit” (Wells Tower) and “a prose style that feels both extravagant and exact, and a big, booming heart” (Maggie Nelson), Up Up, Down Down signals the arrival of a truly one-of-a-kind voice.

Browse by categories

Clare Leslie Hall

Broken Country (ARC)

Sanam Mahloudji

The Persians (ARC)

Emma Pattee

Tilt (ARC)

Christina Li

The Manor of Dreams (ARC)

Ariel Courage

Bad Nature (ARC)

Peter Ames Carlin

The Name of This Band Is R. E. M.

N.k. Jemisin; Rebecca Roanhorse; Tananarive Due; Nnedi Okorafor

Out There Screaming

N.k. Jemisin; Rebecca Roanhorse; Tananarive Due; Nnedi Okorafor

Out There Screaming

Thurston Moore

Sonic Life

Jamil Zaki

The War for Kindness

Jeffrey Eng

Never Go Full Pai

Mona Alvarado Frazier

The Garden of Second Chances

Charles Yu

Sorry Please Thank You

Mary H. K. Choi

Yolk

Mira T. Lee

Everything Here Is Beautiful

Scott Kurtz

Table Titans Club

Zoë Schiffer

Extremely Hardcore

Matthew Connelly

The Declassification Engine

Kären M. Hess and Robert W. Drowns

Juvenile Justice

Charles Lemert

Social Theory

Robert C. Bogdan and Sari Knopp Biklen

Qualitative Research for Education

Ogden Nash

Good Intentions

Thomas Clerc

Interior

Cheston Knapp

Up up, down Down

Get The App