Archives par étiquette : Crown Publishing Group

THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS de Kirsten Menger-Anderson

Steeped in math and misfortune, THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS is a taut, genre-bending historical mystery perfect for readers looking for their next dark academia fix.

THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS
by Kirsten Menger-Anderson
Crown, March 2025

In Half Moon Bay, California, 2016, a young woman waits for her father’s sailboat to arrive at port. They have agreed to meet on this day and time. Yet he never shows. He had told her this day might come. And if it did, she was ready. Go to the library in Berkeley, find a certain book, follow the instructions. But what if the instructions lead to more questions than answers?

In 1933, a young man arrives in Vienna to begin a new post as a professor of mathematics at the University. There he finds himself part of the Engelhardt Castle, a group of intellectuals that have recently been dubbed a target by a growing, anti-academic mob. The circle includes the preeminent minds of their time, and a cast of characters desperate to get invited into their midst, many of whom will stop at nothing to get there. As fascism rises, and polarization increases, moderate voices are drowned out. There are whispers of a machine, a music box, which can transport someone through time. But no one can confirm if it’s a rumor, or true. And the only people who know first-hand are not talking.

What does a young woman who lives off the grid and spends her free time editing Wikipedia entries and picking fights with people online have to do with a circle of intellectuals debating time and space in Vienna on the eve of World War II? Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s beautiful meditation on time, love, and obsession shows us how we never truly know what happened in the past, and often how the past eerily mirrors the future.

Steeped in math and misfortune, THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS is a taut, genre-bending historical mystery perfect for readers looking for their next dark academia fix.

“A touching and deftly constructed story about the most precious thing we have—time. From modern-day San Francisco to Croatia before the Great War and 1930s Vienna, Kirsten Menger-Anderson follows her characters as they try to solve the mysteries of science, faith, and love. A glorious book.”―Laila Lalami, author of Pulitzer Prize-finalist The Moor’s Account

“The Expert of Subtle Revisions begins with a mysterious disappearance and ends with a moving discovery. Along the way, Kirsten Menger-Anderson weaves together history, time travel, and a haunting love story. She also manages to raise stirring questions about identity, family, and what it means to record and revise history, especially one’s own. A powerful and original novel that defies expectations in almost every chapter.”―Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life and The Object of My Affection

“Smart. Propulsive. Addictive. Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s The Expert of Subtle Revisions grabbed hold with the opening sentence and didn’t let go until its surprising and satisfying conclusion. Brilliantly plotted and filled with deft twists and unforgettable characters, this dual-timeline novel about obsession, madness, and love is a must-read for fans of both mystery and historical fiction. I loved this book.”―Peggy Townsend, author of The Beautiful and the Wild

Kirsten Menger-Anderson is the author of Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain (Algonquin), a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in fiction and one of Time Out Chicago’s top ten books of the year. Her short stories and essays have appeared in publications including Ploughshares, the Southwest Review, LitHub, and Undark. She currently lives in San Francisco with her family.

OUR BIGGEST FIGHT de Frank H. McCourt

The internet as we know it is broken. Here’s how we can seize back control of our lives from the corporate algorithms and create a better internet—before it’s too late.

OUR BIGGEST FIGHT
Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age
by Frank H. McCourt, Jr. with Michael Casey
Crown Hardcover, March 2024

It was once a utopian dream. But today’s internet, despite its conveniences and connectivity, is the primary cause of a pervasive unease that has taken hold in the U.S. and other democratic societies. It’s why youth suicide rates are rising, why politics has become toxic, and why our most important institutions are faltering.

Information is the lifeblood of any society, and our current system for distributing it is corrupted at its heart. Everything comes down to our ability to communicate openly and trustfully with each other. But, thanks to the dominant digital platforms and the ways they distort human behavior, we have lost that ability—while, at the same time, we’ve been robbed of the data that is rightfully ours.

The roots of this crisis, argue Frank McCourt and Michael Casey, lie in the prevailing order of the internet. In plain but forceful language, the authors—a civic entrepreneur and an acclaimed journalist—show how a centralized system controlled by a small group of for-profit entities has set this catastrophe in motion and eroded our personhood.

And then they describe a groundbreaking solution to reclaim it: rather than superficial, patchwork regulations, we must reimagine the very architecture of the internet. The resulting “third-generation internet” would replace the status quo with a new model marked by digital property rights, autonomy, and ownership.

Inspired by historical calls to action like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT argues that we must act now to embed the core values of a free, democratic society in the internet of tomorrow. Do it right and we will finally unlock its immense potential.

Frank H. McCourt, Jr. is the executive chairman and former CEO of McCourt Global, as well as the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, a visionary effort to transform the internet through a new, equitable technology infrastructure and rebuild social media in a way that enables users to own and control their personal data.

Michael J. Casey is chief content officer at CoinDesk, a podcaster and the chairman of the Consensus conference. He has worked as a journalist on five continents, including 18 years with Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. Casey’s previous books include The Age of Cryptocurrency, The Social Organism, and The Truth Machine.

OUTOFSHAPEWORTHLESSLOSER de Gracie Gold

In this explosive tell-all memoir, Gracie Gold, Olympic medalist, offers an unprecedented look inside the pressure-packed world of figure skating and reveals her battle to survive mental illness, eating disorders, and crippling perfectionism.

OUTOFSHAPEWORTHLESSLOSER
A Memoir of Figure Skating, F*cking Up, and Figuring It Out
by Gracie Gold
Crown, February 2024

When Gracie Gold stepped onto center stage (or ice, rather) as America’s sweetheart at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, she instantly became the face of America’s most beloved winter sport. Beautiful, blonde, Midwestern, and media-trained, she was suddenly being written up everywhere from The New Yorker to Teen Vogue to People and baking cookies with Taylor Swift.

But little did the public know what Gracie was facing when the cameras were off. In 2017, she entered treatment for what was publicly announced as eating disorder and anxiety treatment, but what was, in reality, suicidal ideation. While Gracie’s public star was rising, her private life was falling apart: Cracks within her family were widening, her bulimia was getting worse, and she became a survivor of sexual assault. The pressure of training for years with demanding coaches and growing up in a household that accepted nothing less than gold had finally taken its toll. As Gracie entered treatment, she was asked to cite only her eating disorder and anxiety in the announcement: suicidal ideation wasn’t “palatable.”

In OUTOFSHAPEWORTHLESSLOSER, Gracie shares the less “palatable” parts of her life, revealing exclusive, and harrowing, details about her struggles: the battles with her family, her coaches, the powers-that-be at her federation, and the voice in her head that she calls « outofshapeworthlessloser. » Gracie’s memoir is not only a forceful reckoning from a world-class athlete, but also an intimate account of surviving as a young woman in a society that rewards appearances more than anything and demands perfection at all costs.

Gracie Gold is a two-time U.S. figure-skating champion and an Olympic bronze medalist. Gold is the first and only American woman to win an NHK Trophy title and holds the record for the highest short-program score ever recorded by an American woman. Her writing has been published in The Cut. She lives in Wilmington, Delaware, and trains in suburban Philadelphia.

THE OXHERD BOY de Regina Linke

“Are we on the right path?” asked the rabbit. The boy looked around. “Maybe there is no path. Maybe the path is made simply by walking.”

THE OXHERD BOY
Parables of Love, Compassion, and Community
by Regina Linke
Clarkson Potter, March 2024

Following in the footsteps, hooves and pawprints of the bestselling illustrated inspirational book The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse comes Regina Linke’s exquisite fable THE OXHERD BOY.

Largely based on the wisdom of classical Asian philosophy and religion, the story gently cultivates resilience, compassion and humility through the small adventures and conversations of these three friends. As the boy, the rabbit, and the ox (who represent the three core beliefs of classical Chinese thought) wander through the day, meeting villagers, forging rivers, tilling fields, and planting rice, they muse about ways to live mindfully in an often stormy world. Artist and writer Regina Linke’s magnificent paintings are executed in the ancient Chinese technique known as gongbi that uses highly detailed brushstrokes and careful layering of color over fine line drawings to create magical, immersive scenes and emotive, engaging characters.

Regina Linke is a Taiwanese American artist specializing in contemporary Chinese gongbi painting. She writes and illustrates stories that celebrate East Asian folklore and philosophy in an accessible and modern way. Her most notable creation is “The Oxherd Boy,” a single-panel, adult webcomic with a highly engaged audience whose characters volunteers from around the world have translated the comics into ten languages. Regina Linke lives in Taipei, Taiwan with her husband and young son, who inspires her every day as a real-life oxherd boy.

A GORGEOUS EXCITEMENT de Cynthia Weiner

A GORGEOUS EXCITEMENT by Cynthia Weiner (the words Freud used to describe a cocaine high) is Sweet Bitter meets The Girls with some Girl, Interrupted thrown in.

A GORGEOUS EXCITEMENT
by Cynthia Weiner
Crown, TBD

Set against the summer of 1986 in NYC, beginning with the gruesome razor blade slashing of an aspiring model outside a midtown bar in June, and ending with the strangulation of an 18 year old girl in Central Park whose half-clothed body was discovered behind the Metropolitan Museum – Nina Jacobs starts her summer with two goals: to lose her virginity before she goes to college, and avoid provoking her mother’s depression fueled rages at home. Temping meaningless jobs by day, and hanging out at Flanagans, the bar on the upper east side that is a magnet for the private school set, during this summer Nina will discover just how dangerous the world is for women, but also that she is tougher than anyone, including herself, thinks.

Cynthia Weiner’s short stories have been published in Ploughshares, The Sun, Open City, and Epiphany, and one of them, « Boyfriends, » received a Pushcart Prize. She has an M.F.A. from Brown University and is the Assistant Director of The Writers Studio in New York where she teaches fiction writing. A GORGEOUS EXCITEMENT was inspired by Weiner’s teenage years on the Upper East Side in the 80s.