New Releases: September 2023 Edition

Check out these highly anticipated September releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!  

FICTION

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll - Pamela was never the same after she witnessed the murder of two of her sorority sisters and the wounding of two others at her University of Florida sorority house in 1978. When she meets another young woman convinced that the same perpetrator killed one of her friends two years previously, the two join forces to bring him to justice. If these few details bring to mind the crimes of serial killer Ted Bundy, the resemblance is intentional. Knoll, however, quietly subverts the myth of the charismatic killer by focusing her narrative on his victims and their survivors in this suspenseful, thought-provoking thriller. 

The Long Game: a Novel by Elena Armas - An unlikely duo find love while coaching a team of unruly nine-year-olds on the soccer field in this steamy, sporty rom-com set in small-town North Carolina. When disgraced soccer exec Adalyn Reyes, who has been exiled from her home in Miami and tasked with helping the hapless Green Turtles turn their fortunes around, meets retired hotshot goalie Cam Caldani, she can’t help but think he might be the perfect companion on her road to redemption. But, no, due to a series of mishaps and misunderstandings, Cam can’t stand her. Adalyn, however, is not one to take no for an answer. Eventually, the Green Turtles triumph and, perhaps not surprisingly, enmity gives way to romance.  

The North Woods by Daniel Mason - When a pair of young lovers abscond from a repressive Puritan colony to the north woods, little do they know that over centuries and through generations, the humble cabin in which they take refuge will host a multitude of characters human and non-human alike: a lovelorn painter, a stalking panther, an anguished ghost, a sinister con-man, and an amorous beetle among them. This panoramic novel teems with inter-connected stories that explore love, and madness, greed and generosity, hope and humor, the natural world and the occult, all against the backdrop of the dark and wondrous north woods.

NONFICTION

Failures of Forgiveness: What We Get Wrong and How to Do Better by Myisha Cherry - Forgiveness is essential to the healing of both the individual psyche and the world. Spiritual leaders, philosophers, and pop culture icons agree. However, scholar Myisha Cherry asks what does it really mean to forgive? Are there circumstances in which forgiveness is not the appropriate response to injustice? Cherry contrasts “superficial repair” of broken relationships be they personal or political, with the “radical repair” predicated on addressing the situation that gave rise to the need to forgive in the first place. In addition, she says, “We can only learn to do forgiveness better, not perfectly.”

 

The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City’s Soul by Scott W. Berg - The late summer of 1871 had been uncommonly hot and dry and the booming metropolis of Chicago was a tinderbox. Contrary to legend, a cow was not the culprit, but when fire did strike on the evening of October 8th, it swept through the city’s neighborhoods, destroyed the central business district, killed hundreds, and left an estimated 100,000 homeless. No sooner had the firefight ended than a new battle erupted between private interests representing native born, Protestant elites, and the city’s burgeoning immigrant population, determined not to be left behind. Regardless of circumstances, however, the city’s rapid transformation from a pile of ashes on the shore to cultural and industrial powerhouse was, indeed miraculous.

Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City by Elyssa Maxx Goodman -  This expansive, celebratory survey of the richness, diversity and resilience of drag in the Big Apple, takes us from Jazz Age masquerade balls to RuPaul’s Drag Race and features a cast of characters who can only be described as marvelous. Although consistently lively and entertaining, the ongoing social and political issues faced by participants in drag life then and now, are addressed in depth in this heavily researched, seminal history.