Archives par étiquette : Writers House

IF NIETZCHE WERE A NARWHAL de Justin Gregg

Funny and counter-intuitive, IF NIETZSCHE WERE A NARWHAL reveals how human intelligence may actually be more of a liability than a gift, and how the animal kingdom, in all its diversity, gets by just fine without it.

IF NIETZCHE WERE A NARWHAL:
What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity
by Justin Gregg
Little, Brown, August 2022
(via Writers House)

At first glance, human history is full of remarkable feats of intelligence. We invented writing. Produced incredible achievements in music, the arts, and the sciences. We’ve built sprawling cities and traveled across oceans—and space—and expanded to every part of the globe.
Yet, human exceptionalism can be a double-edged sword. With our unique cognitive prowess comes severe consequences, including existential angst, violence, discrimination, and the creation of a world teetering towards climate catastrophe. Understood side-by-side, human exceptionalism begins to look more like a curse.
As scientist Justin Gregg persuasively argues, there’s an evolutionary reason why human intelligence isn’t more prevalent in the animal kingdom. Simply put, non-human animals don’t need it to be successful. And, miraculously, their success arrives without the added baggage of destroying themselves and the planet in the process.
In seven mind-bending and hilarious chapters, Gregg highlights one feature seemingly unique to humans—our use of language, our rationality, our moral systems, our so-called sophisticated consciousness—and compares it to our animal brethren. What emerges is both demystifying and remarkable, and will change how you look at animals, humans, and the meaning of life itself.
Destined to become a classic, IF NIETZSCHE WERE A NARWHAL asks whether we are in fact the superior species. It turns out, the truth is stranger—and far more interesting—than we have been led to believe.

Justin Gregg is a Senior Research Associate with the Dolphin Communication Project and an Adjunct Professor at St. Francis Xavier University where he lectures on animal behavior and cognition. Originally from Vermont, Justin studied the echolocation abilities of wild dolphins in Japan and The Bahamas. He currently lives in rural Nova Scotia where he writes about science and contemplates the inner lives of the crows that live near his home.

BEST MEN de Sid Karger

A romcom that puts a gay spin on classic favorites like Bridesmaids or My Best Friend’s Wedding.

BEST MEN
by Sid Karger
Berkley, Spring 2023
(via Writers House)

Max Moody is in his 30s and thinks he has everything figured out, not the least of which is the best-of-best-friends a gay guy could ask for: Paige. She grew up with Max. She can light up any party. She finishes his sentences. She is always a reliable splunch (NOT brunch) partner. But then everything in Max’s life is turned upside down when Paige announces some big news: she’s engaged! And it turns out there’s not just one new man in Paige’s life… There are two. The groom, who’s a perfectly nice guy. And his charming, younger, and…really (really) hot gay brother, Chasten. As Paige’s wedding draws closer, Max and Chasten realize they’re like oil and water, yet they still have to figure out how to co-exist in Paige’s life while not making her wedding all about them. But can the tiny spark between them elevate their best man roles in a wedding to the best man in each other’s lives?

Sid Karger has been a contributing writer for SNL and Billy on the Street, and has also written and directed for Comedy Central, MTV, IFC, FX, NBC, CBS, SyFy, Sundance, BET, AMC and truTV. BEST MEN is his debut novel.

SNAKE OIL de Kelsey Rae Dimberg

From the author of Girl in the Rearview Window comes a stunning novel set in the high-stakes world of Silicon Valley.

SNAKE OIL
by Kelsey Rae Dimberg
William Morrow, Summer 2023
(via Writers House)

Radical is a fast-growing wellness startup, rumored to be approaching “unicorn” status. But on the night of a booze-fueled bacchanal celebrating another round of venture capital investment, a woman’s body is found outside the company’s San Francisco HQ. Did she fall from the roof? Did she jump? Or was she pushed?
Rhoda West, Radical’s luminous founder-CEO, has attracted both avid followers and vocal detractors in the building of her wellness company. Her Instagram page exhorts followers to #bebetter, showcasing intimate glimpses of Rhoda’s glamorous personal life alongside promotions for the mysterious, cult-status products created in Radical’s secretive Lab.
Dani is her enthusiastic employee—a “radigal”—who has fully immersed herself in the Radical lifestyle, eagerly testing products while covering up a pregnancy she’s not sure she’s ready for. When @Radicalidiocy, a twitter account devoted to lambasting the company online, starts to expose company secrets, Dani suspects her colleague and on-the-rocks friend Cecilia, a disgruntled customer service rep, might be running the account. As Rhoda engages in a cat-and-mouse chase with the Twitter author and struggles to maintain her power against mounting pressure, the women’s ambitions and beliefs will clash—with deadly results.
A page-turning literary thriller, Dimberg’s new book is an incisive examination of the high-stakes startup world, where the reputation of a leader carries outsize influence on the value of a brand, and the barbed double-standards applied to female CEOs.

Kelsey Rae Dimberg is the author of Girl in the Rearview Mirror. She received an MFA from the University of San Francisco and studied at Barrett Honors College of Arizona State University, where she was editor-in-chief of the literary magazine, Lux, and received the Swarthout Award in Fiction.

NO TWO PERSONS d’Erica Bauermeister

A story-in-stories about a debut novel and the people whose lives it touches, by NYT bestselling author of The Scent Keeper Erica Bauermeister.

NO TWO PERSONS
by Erica Bauermeister
‎ St. Martin’s Press, May 2023
(via Writers House)

In NO TWO PERSONS, Erica Bauermeister imagines the life of a novel sprung from the heart of a young woman named Alice, who loses her beloved brother too young. The novel Alice writes in tribute to him finds its way to a wide-ranging cast of characters: a literary agent and her assistant, an angry artist, a freediver, a movie intimacy coordinator, a homeless teenager, an exiled actor, an infatuated bookseller, and the caretaker of a ghost town. Together, their luminous and interconnected stories reveal how books can change us in the most unexpected of ways, connecting us not only to our own truths, but to our shared humanity.

Erica Bauermeister is the New York Times bestselling author of House Lessons, The Scent Keeper, The School of Essential Ingredients, Joy for Beginners, and The Lost Art of Mixing. She is also the co-author of non-fiction works, 500 Great Books by Women: A Reader’s Guide and Let’s Hear It For the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. She has a PhD in literature from the University of Washington, and has taught there and at Antioch University.

THE DIG d’Anne Burt

In the vein of Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok, and The Dry by Jane Harper, THE DIG features propulsive writing and magnetic main characters who seek to solve the puzzle of their own past.

THE DIG
by Anne Burt
‎Counterpoint, Spring 2023
(via Writers House)

After Antonia (Toni) King trades small-town Minnesota and her adopted family for a high-powered legal career, her brother’s mysterious disappearance pulls her back home. Toni has a complicated relationship with the past: after being found as a child in the rubble of a bombed-out apartment in Sarajevo, she and her brother Paul were taken in by the Kings, a family of contractors in the small Midwestern town of Thebes, Minnesota.
As a child, Toni fantasized about what life would be like if she were born in Minnesota with blond hair and blue eyes, instead of as a dark haired Bosniak with a traumatic history. Now in her adult life, Toni has a newly minted law degree from Harvard and plans to put it to good use in the cause of justice in Washington, D.C. —far away from Thebes. But when she wins a plum job at an influential Twin Cities law firm with international clientele, she feels herself pulled back to the Midwest.
Her adoptive uncle, Christopher King, is furious that she’s moved back to Minnesota but rejected the opportunity he’s offered to work as counsel for the family construction business. And shortly after her arrival, Toni learns that idealistic Paul has disappeared after vocally protesting their uncle’s next development site—a Somali Community Center. As Toni must search for her brother, fend off her uncle’s demand to disavow him, and all the while try to please her demanding new boss, she uncovers a strange connection between her client and her uncle’s business, and with that begins to excavate decades of family secrets and lies. Toni must suddenly come to terms with the fact that her perceived foundation upon which her life was based was false.
Over the course of a single day, Toni navigates the serpentine bureaucracy of her small-town’s justice system, unearthing salacious characters from the past along with decades of secrets and lies, leading to explosive revelations about her adoptive family—and the sinister truth behind her biological mother’s death—that will alter the course of her life, and change her definition of home forever.
THE DIG is a shimmering, heart-wrenching portrait of a woman at odds with her history.

Anne Burt is the editor of My Father Married Your Mother: Dispatches from the Blended Family, and co-editor, with Christina Baker Kline, of About Face: Women Write About What They See When They Look in the Mirror. Anne is a consultant for organizations including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Aspen Institute, and a lecturer at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. Anne’s essays and fiction have appeared in numerous publications and venues, including Salon, National Public Radio, and The Christian Science Monitor; she is a past winner of Meridian Literary Magazine’s Editors’ Prize in Fiction. Anne holds a B.A. in history from Yale University and an M.A. in creative writing from NYU. THE DIG is her first novel.