Archives de catégorie : Nos incontournables

UNSER GLÜCK de Natalie Buchholz

What happens to us when our home becomes a financial bargaining chip?

UNSER GLÜCK
(Our Good Fortune)
by Natalie Buchholz
‎ Penguin Germany/PRH Verlagsgruppe, February 2022

When the young parents Franziska and Coordt find a lovely – and affordable – flat in one of Munich’s best neighbourhoods, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. But there’s a condition attached: it won’t be just them and their small boy living there. Tempted by the chance of owning their own home, and one they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford, they agree to a deal that will put their love to the test. Like a catalyst, the new flat accelerates and deepens existing cracks in their relationship, and their son, too, is aware of the increasing friction between them. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has turned out to be a trap. Will they find a way out?
Natalie Buchholz has created an irresistible story, written in clear, rhythmic prose. A novel set up like an experiment, showing the freedom that improved living conditions can bring – and the destructive power of financial pressure.

Natalie Buchholz, born in France in 1977, studied Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice at the University of Hildesheim and at the Université Aix-Marseille. In 2018, her debut novel The Red Swimming Pool was published. In 2020 she was awarded the Spiegelungen Prize for minimal prose.

OPEN THROAT de Henry Hoke

A mountain lion is on the brink of starvation in the urban landscape of Los Angeles. As it observes the city’s perilous beauty and confronts climate change, inequality and love, the animal asks itself: Does it want to eat a human, or become one?

OPEN THROAT
by Henry Hoke
‎ MCD/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Summer 2023
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

A stinging, elegiac snapshot of contemporary Los Angeles, told, you guessed it, from the perspective of a queer, dangerously hungry mountain lion, isolated and struggling to survive in a drought-devastated Griffith Park. As it protects the precarious welfare of a nearby homeless encampment from its thicket, it confronts a carousel of temptations and threats, taking us on a tour that spans the city’s cruel inequalities to the toll of climate grief, all while grappling with the complexities of its own gender identity and memories of a vicious, absent father.
In stinging, unpunctuated prose, OPEN THROAT delivers searching, exclamatory observations of a strange, seductive and elusive world, rich with wonder and menace, for a creature who knows it’s come to the wrong place at the wrong time. Even as salvation (in the form of a loving and witchy teen daughter of an aging rock star) appears within reach, there’s no escaping our primal pressures as the inevitable reckoning rushes in like wildfire.

Henry Hoke is the author of the memoir, Sticker (Bloomsbury Object Lessons), The Book of Endless Sleepovers, the story collection, Genevieves, and the novel, The Groundhog Forever. His work has appeared in Electric Literature, Triangle House, The Offing, and the Catapult anthology, Tiny Crimes. He holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught for five years, and presently teaches at the University of Virginia Young Writers Workshop and lives in Brooklyn. Praise for his work can be found here: https://henryhoke.com/

THE PUZZLE MASTER de Danielle Trussoni

“An ingenious literary thriller that combines everything I want in a book: immersive, exhilarating, intellectually provocative, unputdownable—an absolutely blistering Russian nesting doll of fascinating stories that unveil and dismantle some of the most deeply engrained ideas about good, evil, and the origins of humankind. In short: THE PUZZLE MASTER = (The Da Vinci Code + The Silent Patient + sprinkle of Stephen King) x gorgeous writing” –Angie Kim, bestselling author of Miracle Creek

THE PUZZLE MASTER
by Danielle Trussoni
‎ Random House, June 2023
(via Writers House)

All the world is a puzzle, and 28-year-old Mike Brink—a celebrated and ingenious puzzle constructor—understands its patterns like no one else. Once a promising football star, he was transformed by a traumatic brain injury that caused a rare (but real) medical condition: Sudden Acquired Savant Syndrome. The injury left him with a mental superpower—he can solve puzzles, calculate equations, and see patterns in ways the rest of us can’t. But his condition has also left him damaged: he feels deeply isolated because of his talent, and unable to fully connect with other people. Puzzle-solving has become Mike Brink’s only way to manage his gift and maintain emotional well-being.
Jess Price is serving 30 years in prison for murder but she has not spoken a word since her arrest five years before. When she draws a perplexing puzzle, her psychiatrist believes it will explain the crime she committed, and arranges for Mike Brink to meet Jess in prison and decipher the puzzle. What begins as a desire to crack a strange an alluring cipher quickly morphs into an obsession with the woman who drew the puzzle. When Jess Price reveals that there is something more urgent, and more dangerous, behind her silence, Mike Brink is thrust into the hunt for truth.
THE PUZZLE MASTER is a tantalizing, addictive novel of ideas that grabs the reader from page one, escalates tension with each puzzle, and delivers a dizzying finale. Blending elements of religious mysticism and historical research (the research information sheet is here) with vivid fictional elements, Danielle Trussoni creates a seamless world where reality and imagination meet.

Danielle Trussoni, author of the Angelology series, is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and winner of the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award. A New York Times, USA Today, internationally bestselling novelist, her work has been translated into over 30 languages and has been chosen as one of the NYTBR Ten Best Books of the Year.

THE VICIOUS CIRCLE de Katherine St. John

For fans of We Were Never Here and Nine Perfect Strangers, a twisty, escapist suspense about a woman who inherits a multimillion-dollar estate and travels to a mysterious wellness commune in the Mexican jungle where she discovers dark, and potentially violent, secrets.

THE VICIOUS CIRCLE
by Katherine St. John
‎ William Morrow, Fall/Winter 2022
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

On a river deep in the Mexican jungle stands the colossal villa Xanadu, a retreat center that’s home to The Mandala, an ardent spiritual group devoted to self-help guru Paul Bentzen and his enigmatic wife Kali. But when, mysteriously, Paul suddenly dies, his entire estate—including Xanadu—is left to his estranged niece Sveta, a former model living in New York City.
Shocked and confused, Sveta travels to Mexico to pay her respects. At first, the retreat center seems like a secluded paradise with its tumbling gardens, beautiful people, transcendent vibe, and mesmerizing de-facto leader Kali. But soon the mystical façade wears thin, revealing a group of brainwashed members drunk on false promises of an impossible utopia and a disturbing, dangerous belief system—and leader—guiding them.
As the sinister forces surrounding Sveta become apparent, she realizes, too late, she can’t escape. Frantic and terrified, she discovers her only hope for survival is to put her confidence in the very person she trusts the least.

Katherine St. John is a native of Mississippi, graduate of the University of Southern California, and author of the critically acclaimed novels The Lion’s Den and The Siren.

INTERSTELLAR de Avi Loeb

From the New York Times bestselling author of Extraterrestrial comes a mind-expanding new book explaining why becoming an interstellar species is imperative for humanity’s survival and detailing a game plan for how we can settle among the stars.

INTERSTELLAR:
The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars
by Avi Loeb
‎ Mariner Books, August 2023
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

In the New York Times bestseller Extraterrestrial, Avi Loeb, the longest serving Chair of Harvard’s Astronomy Department, presented a theory that shook the scientific community: our solar system, Loeb claimed, had likely been visited by a piece of advanced alien technology from a distant star. This provocative and persuasive argument opened millions of minds internationally to the vast possibilities of our universe and the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth. But a crucial question remained: now that we are aware of the existence of extraterrestrial life, what do we do next? How do we prepare ourselves for interaction with interstellar extraterrestrial civilization? How can our species become interstellar?
Now Loeb tackles these questions in a revelatory, powerful call to arms that reimagines the idea of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Dismantling our science-fiction fueled visions of a human and alien life encounter, INTERSTELLAR provides a realistic and practical blueprint for how such an interaction might actually occur, resetting our cultural understanding and expectation of what it means to identify an extraterrestrial object. From awe-inspiring searches for extraterrestrial technology, to the heated debate of the existence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Loeb provides a thrilling, front-row view of the monumental progress in science and technology currently preparing us for contact. He also lays out the profound implications of becoming—or not becoming—interstellar; in an urgent, eloquent appeal for more proactive engagement with the world beyond ours, he powerfully contends why we must seek out other life forms, and in the process, choose who and what we are within the universe.
Combining cutting edge science, physics, and philosophy, INTERSTELLAR revolutionizes the approach to our search for extraterrestrial life and our preparation for its discovery. In this eye-opening, necessary look at our future, Avi Loeb artfully and expertly raises some of the most important questions facing us as humans, and proves, once again, that scientific curiosity is the key to our survival

Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University and bestselling author of Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth (on lists of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, L’Express and more). He received a PhD in Physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative, and was subsequently a longterm member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Loeb wrote 8 books and more than 800 papers on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, and the future of the Universe. He was the longest serving Chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy, Founding Director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, and is Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. Loeb is a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies and a current member of the Advisory Board for « Einstein: Visualize the Impossible » of the Hebrew University. He also chairs the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative and serves as the Science Theory Director for all Initiatives of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. In 2012, TIME magazine selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space. Smithsonian Magazine printed a 12-page feature on Loeb and his work in their October 2021 issue.