Archives de catégorie : Nos incontournables

IN THE DARK I SEE YOU de Mallika Narayanan

IN THE DARK I SEE YOU is an exciting debut novel of psychological suspense from successful short story writer Mallika Narayanan.

IN THE DARK I SEE YOU
by Mallika Narayanan
Union Square & Co., October 2023
(via The Weis Agency)

When a young woman, Sarah Connelly, is found murdered in her home in New York’s elite Sleepy Point suburb, it triggers questions about the neighbor who discovered the body, Audrey Hughes. This kind of attention is the last thing Audrey wants. Moving to Sleepy Point was supposed to provide her with a new, quiet start after a trauma left her with incurable blindness. But the other reason she settled next door to Sarah was to spy on her. Police scrutiny moves Audrey like a pawn on a chessboard from witness to suspect, after it’s revealed that she had a volatile argument with Sarah hours before her death. The deeper the police delve into the case, the murkier the truth becomes. As the book twists and turns through alternating points of view and timelines, a compelling and complex scheme emerges that threatens all involved . . . and the ticking clock of investigation collides with the explosive secrets Audrey and Sarah have been keeping.

Mallika Narayanan is a Pittsburgh-based writer of psychological suspense, mysteries, and historical fiction. Her short stories are featured in Ellipsis Zine, Bath Flash Fiction, and elsewhere. She was a runner-up in the Retreat West 2022 Flash Fiction Prize and has been longlisted and shortlisted for various other prizes, including the Bath Flash Fiction Prize 2022 and the Fractured Lit Micro Fiction Prize 2021.

THE STARS ARE DYING de Chloe Peñaranda

Shadow and Bone meets Caraval in a dark romantic fantasy loosely inspired by the Greek myths of Astraea with a page-turning new epic world and a darkly seductive star-crossed romance.

THE STARS ARE DYING
by Chloe Peñaranda
Bramble, October 2024

In a world abandoned by the celestial guardians and left to suffer a tyrant king’s reign, all Astraea knows is safety in seclusion. With fragmented memories of only five years of her life, she’s determined to discover more about her past, even if that means fleeing the cruel arms that hold her safe from the wicked vampires rumored to roam the land. But when Astraea stumbles upon the mysterious Nyte, she soon realizes determination alone isn’t enough to guard her heart. He lingers like the darkness that expands between the stars, and soon she discovers her captor’s wicked means of control weren’t based on a lie to keep her under lock after all. In her desperation, Astraea accepts Nyte’s help before she can decide if she might have sold her allegiance to one of the bloodthirsty beings the people of her world fear. Once their bargain is struck, Astraea’s chance to escape comes in the form of accompanying her best friend Cassia to the King’s Central. There on royal territory it’s the centenary of the Libertatem, a succession of trials hosted by the king in which five human lands compete for a cycle of safety from the vampires seeking blood, claiming souls, and savaging after dark. So when tragedy strikes, Astraea must decide if taking the place of a murdered participant for the safety of her kingdom is a ruse worth dying for, or if protection—and the answers to her past—really are her strongest desires.

Chloe Peñaranda is the USA Today bestselling author of The Nytefall Trilogy and An Heir Comes to Rise Series. A lifelong avid reader and writer, Chloe discovered her passion for storytelling in her early teens. Her stories have been spun from years of building on fictional characters and exploring Tolkien-like quests in made up worlds. During her time at the University of the West of Scotland, Chloe immersed herself in writing for short film, producing animations, and spending class time dreaming of far off lands. In her spare time from writing in her home in scenic Scotland, Chloe enjoys digital art, graphic design, and down time with her three little dogs. When the real world calls…she rarely listens.

WHAT ARE CHILDREN FOR? d’Anastasia Berg & Rachel Wiseman

Aimed at philosophers and non-philosophers alike, this is a modern argument about the ambivalence towards childbearing and how to overcome it.

WHAT ARE CHILDREN FOR?
Affirming Life in an Age of Ambivalence
by Anastasia Berg & Rachel Wiseman
St. Martin’s Press, June 2024

Becoming a parent, once the expected outcome of adulthood, is increasingly viewed as a potential threat to the most basic goals and aspirations of modern life. We seek self-fulfillment; we want to liberate women to find meaning and self-worth outside the home; and we wish to protect the planet from the ravages of climate change. Weighing the pros and cons of having children, the Millennial and Gen Z generations are finding it increasingly hard to judge in its favor. WHAT ARE CHILDREN FOR? seeks to loosen the grip of the shallow narratives that either lament growing childlessness as a mark of cultural decline, or celebrate it as unambiguous evidence of social progress. Berg and Wiseman explore philosophical and cultural examples of this debate, whether from modernist writers like Virginia Woolf, second-wave feminists in the 1970s, or the current trend of dystopian novels and stories. In the tradition of Jenny Odell and Amia Srinivasan, Berg and Wiseman write with clear logic and passionate prose to offer those struggling the guidance necessary to move beyond their uncertainty. They argue that when we make the individual decision whether or not to have children we confront a profound philosophical question, that of the goodness of life itself. How can we justify perpetuating human life given the catastrophic harm and suffering of which we are always at once both victims and perpetrators? WHAT ARE CHILDREN FOR? concludes that we must embrace the fundamental goodness of human life—not only in theory, but in our everyday lives.

Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman first explored these questions in an essay for The Point on choosing to have children, the rare work of philosophical inquiry to have gone viral; Berg recently discussed her own decision to pursue having a family in the context of the novel coronavirus in a widely read op-ed in the New York Times. Frequent collaborators and close friends, Anastasia Berg is currently based in Cambridge and will start as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University. She is expecting her first child. Rachel Wiseman lives in Chicago, where she is the managing editor of The Point, an award-winning nonfiction literary magazine.

SUPREMACY de Parmy Olson

SUPREMACY will reveal the truths behind Big Tech’s exploitation of the greatest invention in history, who those players are, and why their work deserves far more scrutiny. We are entering an age where the world’s biggest monopolies are amassing even more power through tools that threaten our economies and culture. It is time to push back..

SUPREMACY
AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Changed the World
by Parmy Olson
St. Martin’s Press, July 2024

In November of 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was a chatbot called ChatGPT. OpenAI launched it quietly, letting anyone who registered experiment with the new tool. The word spread. ChatGPT was unlike anything people had experienced before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. It could tell you where snowy owls lived or give you a recipe for French onion soup in plain language, as if a real person was writing the answer. It could give health advice and write letters of condolence. ChatGPT’s sister tool, called DALL-E 2, creates images from any text prompt. OpenAI wanted to combine those tools to make an even more powerful system that would create all kinds of content, like magic. In Supremacy, Parmy Olson, tech writer at Bloomberg, sharply alerts readers to the real threat of artificial intelligence: the silent, profit-driven spread of flawed-technology into industries, education and medicine. OpenAI and soon Google are selling their language models to law firms and consulting firms across the globe to help implement them into businesses. Despite the rush, nobody seems to know what the misinformation rate is for these tools or how many employees are behind the modeling.

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of We Are Anonymous.

THE SUNFLOWER HOUSE d’Adriana Allegri

Shedding light on a little-known aspect of the Nazi regime, this is a heartfelt, emotional novel of friendship, love, and secrets that is sure to resonate with historical fiction fans.

THE SUNFLOWER HOUSE
by Adriana Allegri
St. Martin’s Press, September 2024

In a sleepy German village, Allina Gottlieb’s life is idyllic: she works at the bookshop with her uncle, makes strudel with her aunt, and spends the weekends with her friends and fiancé. But it’s 1939, and on one fateful night, her life changes forever.

THE SUNFLOWER HOUSE is a meticulously-researched debut historical novel set at Hochland Home, part of the notorious Lebensborn Program in Nazi Germany—a real-life Handmaid’s Tale. Women of “pure” blood resided there for the sole purpose of perpetuating the Aryan population, giving birth to hundreds of babies who were then raised—and neglected—in this state-run baby factory.

With her life on the line, Allina is forced to work as a nurse in Hochland Home. Her Jewish identity must remain a secret in order for her to survive, but when she discovers the neglect occurring within the home, she is determined not only to save herself, but also the children in her care. When Allina meets Karl, a high-ranking SS officer with secrets of his own, the two must decide how much they are willing to share with each other—and how much they can stand to risk. The threads of this poignant and heartrending novel weave a tale of loss and love, friendship and betrayal, and the secrets we bury in order to save ourselves.

As a first-generation American with parents who lived in Europe during World War II, Adriana Allegri grew up on stories about how small acts of compassion and kindness saved lives. That theme shows up in everything she writes, regardless of genre. She has worked in education, as a high school teacher and program administrator; as a writer/project manager for a leading data analytics company, and as an author. 2015 was her Big Risk Year, as she left her corporate job to concentrate on writing. THE SUNFLOWER HOUSE is her first novel.