Archives de l’auteur : WebmasterBenisti

THE UNWEDDING d’Ally Condie sélectionné par le Reese’s Book Club

Reese Witherspoon a sélectionné ce mois-ci pour son célèbre book club le nouveau roman d’Ally Condie, THE UNWEDDING, dans lequel une femme récemment divorcée voit ses vacances dans un luxueux resort californien gâchées lorsqu’elle découvre un cadavre le jour d’un mariage.

Un premier roman pour adulte pour l’autrice, mélangeant adroitement murder mystery et women’s fiction. Précédemment, Ally Condie a publié plusieurs romans pour la jeunesse : la série « Matched » (Promise, chez Gallimard Jeunesse), Summerlost (L’été de Summerlost, Gallimard Jeunesse), ou encore la série « Darkdeep » (Michel Lafon).

“Our June Reese’s Book Club pick is the perfect summer read!!! THE UNWEDDING by Ally Condie opens with a wedding at a gorgeous resort in Big Sur… but everything begins to fall apart when the main character Ellery discovers a dead body the morning of the ceremony.” ―Reese Witherspoon

“Ally Condie’s adult debut THE UNWEDDING is a clever, witty, and fast-paced whodunit. I read it in one sitting and can’t wait for the next.”―Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Mesmerizing! Equal parts a clever whodunit and compelling character’s journey, THE UNWEDDING will speak to anyone who’s been there, done that, and had the vacation from hell thrown on top of it all. This Big Sur luxury resort closed-room mystery will stay with you well past the final page.”―Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Les droits de langue française sont toujours disponibles.

THE 1619 PROJECT: A VISUAL EXPERIENCE

An illustrated edition of The 1619 Project, with newly commissioned artwork and archival images, The New York Times Magazine‘s award-winning reframing of the American founding and its contemporary echoes, placing slavery and resistance at the center of the American story.

THE 1619 PROJECT: A VISUAL EXPERIENCE
by Nikole Hannah-Jones
and The New York Times Magazine
Clarkson Potter, October 2024

Here, in these pages, Black art provides refuge. The marriage of beautiful, haunting and profound words and imagery creates an experience for the reader, a wanting to reflect, to sit in both the discomfort and the joy, to contemplate what a nation owes a people who have contributed so much and yet received so little, and maybe even, to act. –Nikole Hannah-Jones, from the Preface

Curated by the editors of The New York Times Magazine, led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, this illustrated edition of The 1619 Project features seven chapters from the original book that lend themselves to beautiful, engaging visuals, deepening the experience of the content. The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience offers the same revolutionary idea as the original book, an argument for a new national origin story that begins in late August of 1619, when a cargo ship of enslaved people from Africa arrived on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia. Only by reckoning with this difficult history and understanding its powerful influence on our present can we prepare ourselves for a more just future.

Filled with original art by thirteen Black artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Calida Rawles, Vitus Shell, Xaviera Simmons, on the themes of resistance and freedom, a brand-new photo essay about slave auction sites, vivid photos of Black Americans celebrating their own forms of patriotism, and a collection of archival images of Black families by Black photographers, this gorgeous volume offers readers a dynamic new way of experiencing the impact of The 1619 Project.

Complete with many of the powerful essays and vignettes from the original edition, written by some of the most brilliant journalists, scholars, and thinkers of our time, The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience brings to life a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of American history and culture.

The 1619 Project began in 2019 as a special project from in The New York Times Magazine to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It is led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, along with New York Times editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein and New York Times Magazine editors Ilena Silverman and Caitlin Roper.

THE POET EMPRESS de Shen X. Tao

In the declining Azalea Dynasty, where poetry magic is forbidden to women, rice farmer Wei tricks her way into being selected as imperial concubine to a cruel tyrant and must harden her heart and learn to wield literomancy in secret in order to change the fate of an empire.

THE POET EMPRESS
by Shen X. Tao
on submission
(via Mushens Entertainment)

In the waning years of the Azalea Dynasty, the emperor is dying, the land is consumed by a famine, and poetry magic is lost to all except the powerful. After the fifth death of a sibling, young rice farmer Wei Yin is determined to save her family from desperate hunger, a difficult feat when women are forbidden from education, and crucially, literacy.

Wei finds her chance to improve the conditions of her family and her village when Prince Terren, the cruel, unkillable heir to the throne, begins a search for concubines to bear him a son. Wei tricks her way into the inner court, but little does she know, life in the lush and enchanted Azalea Palace is rife with danger and brutality she wasn’t ready for. For one, there is a covert succession war; Terren’s influential eldest brother, the one who should have been heir, has long been eyeing the crown. For another, Terren’s thirty concubines are fighting a war of their own, for the position of future empress. They know to whisper sweet words and deliver pretty smiles in public, but when nobody is looking, they are not afraid to sabotage each other with rumours or poison.

But most terrifying of all is the prince himself. Terren turns out to be just as sadistic as the rumours, willing to torture even the most powerful of those who cross him, let alone a peasant girl with no status. To survive in court, Wei must harden her heart, rely on her wit, and become dangerous herself, even if it means learning the forbidden art of poetry magic and wielding the most powerful spell of all—a heart spirit poem that requires the wielder to love the target in order to kill them.

Chinese-Canadian author Sophia Tao (writing as Shen X. Tao) has dreamed of publishing fantasy stories since she was seven. Though her roots lie in Nanchang and Toronto, she later moved to Seattle to be closer to the mountains and the ocean, where she currently resides with her partner, her piano, and her menagerie of stuffed critters. When not working as an engineer, she can be spotted hiking, taking long walks in the city, or feeding the local park geese. Sophia is a finalist for the Mike Resnick Memorial Award for science fiction and a two-time finalist for the PNWA unpublished novel contest, and a graduate of the 2023 Taos Toolbox and Viable Paradise speculative fiction workshops.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLACK HOLES de Becky Smethurst

Award-winning University of Oxford researcher Dr Becky Smethurst charts five hundred years of scientific breakthroughs in astronomy and astrophysics.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLACK HOLES
by Becky Smethurst
Macmillan UK, September 2022
(via Northbank Talent Management)

Right now, you are orbiting a black hole.

The Earth orbits the Sun, and the Sun orbits the centre of the Milky Way: a supermassive black hole, the strangest and most misunderstood phenomenon in the galaxy.

In this cosmic tale of discovery, Dr Becky Smethurst takes us from the earliest observations of the universe and the collapse of massive stars, to the iconic first photographs of a black hole and her own published findings.

She explains why black holes aren’t really ‘black’, that you never ever want to be ‘spaghettified’, how black holes are more like sofa cushions than hoovers and why, beyond the event horizon, the future is a direction in space rather than in time.

Told with humour and wisdom, this captivating book describes the secrets behind the most profound questions about our universe – all hidden inside black holes.

Becky Smethurst is based at the University of Oxford, where her specialism is in how galaxies evolve together with their supermassive black holes. In 2022, she was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Research Fellowship. Her YouTube channel, Dr Becky, has over 750,000 subscribers and engages 2 million viewers each month with her videos on weird objects in space, the history of science and monthly recaps of space news. She also has 128k followers on Instagram and 40k on TikTok.

OUR FAMILIARS d’Anne Coombs

How do animals guard, serve, and care for us? And how and why do we love them so much?

OUR FAMILIARS:
The meaning of animals in our lives
by Anne Coombs
Upswell (Australia), August 2024
(via Black Inc. Books)

Anne Coombs spent a lifetime working to understand the profound answers that come from these two deceptively simple questions. Before her death in late 2021 she researched the topic extensively and reflected deeply on her own experiences with animals, both domestic and in the paddocks. The animals in her life were privy to her deepest and darkest emotions: her despair, her tears and her love. Opening with the story of Anne’s childhood familiar, Elsie the goat—and introducing Lena the donkey, her beloved dogs, Charlie the cat, the cows on the farm, and Vincent the horse—this tender book takes us on an expansive journey that is part personal memoir, part insightful research, and part noble call to action.

In OUR FAMILIARS Anne has left us with a beautiful meditation on the awe-inspiring responsibility we take on with other living creatures: from their containment and loss of freedom, to our intense and mysteriously mutual love. With wit, humour, and insight, she asks us to feel wonder as we watch how our animal companions live, and to empathise deeply with OUR FAMILIARS.

Anne Coombs was a journalist, author, political activist, and philanthropist. She authored five books, including No Man’s Land (Simon & Schuster, 1993), Sex and Anarchy: The life and death of the Sydney Push (Viking, 1996) and Broometime (Hodder Headline, 2001), co-authored with Susan Varga. Her final novel, Glass Houses, was published in 2023 by Upswell. Anne was one of the founders of Rural Australians for Refugees. She was a board member and chair of GetUp! She shared a passion with her partner for a fairer Australia, advocating for refugees and people seeking asylum. In recent years Anne was a frequent essayist and commentator, and a regular contributor to the Griffith Review. She also wrote a feature film script set in Australia’s far north, currently being developed for production. Anne died at her Exeter home in December 2021.