Archives de catégorie : Nos incontournables

DEMON COPPERHEAD de Barbara Kingsolver

A modern retelling of Dickens’s David Copperfield, which transposes that epic novel, chapter by chapter, to a modern place and time: the American south.

DEMON COPPERHEAD
by Barbara Kingsolver
‎ HarperCollins USA, Fall 2022
(via Frances Goldin Literary)

DEMON COPPERHEAD is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. A modern retelling of Dickens’s David Copperfield, which transposes that epic novel, chapter by chapter, to a modern place and time: the American south.

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of nine bestselling novels, including The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees. Her work of narrative nonfiction is the enormously influential bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than 20 languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal, the highest honor for service through the arts in the United States, as well as the prestigious Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her body of work.

CAN I STRAY de Jenna Adams

CAN I STRAY follows the story of Brooke’s age-gap relationship with Matt and the lasting impact it has on her life. It explores themes of consent, mental health, co-dependency and toxic relationships.

CAN I STRAY
by Jenna Adams
‎ Neem Tree Press, October 2022
(via Randle Editorial & Literary)

Fourteen-year-old Brooke Tyler has spent her whole life waiting for a boy to choose her. Matt is about to go to university, scared to leave behind everything he knows. When both are cast as romantic leads in Romeo and Juliet, they fulfil the roles of forbidden lovers both on and off the stage. Brooke is sure that her fairy tale is coming true – and best of all, Matt is older.
Brooke considers secrets and lies a small price to pay for her first boyfriend, but the relationship is set to cost her the moment they have sex. When Brooke learns that Matt’s actions that night were illegal, her world shatters.
Years later, Brooke and Matt reunite as adults. Matt wants to undo all the damage he caused, but Brooke makes a choice which forces them both to question their relationship.
Told in three acts, this debut reveals a young woman’s journey for independence as she strays away from everything she has ever known to navigate her traumatic past.

Jenna Adams lives in London and writes from her third-floor flat which is covered in plants. She always has a book in her handbag, and runs a Twitter and Instagram where she posts about her favourite novels.

DEPORTED de Caitlin Dickerson

From an award-winning investigative reporter currently at The Atlantic and formerly of the New York Times, the definitive book to address the American deportation system.

DEPORTED: The Hidden Toll of American Expulsion
by Caitlin Dickerson
Random House, Autumn 2024
(via The Gernert Company)

Deportation is a system that pervades every aspect of American life, yet remains largely invisible. In popular discourse, it is treated as a discrete event affecting one person at a single time; in fact, the devastating ripple effect of deportation has a closer analogue in the destabilization felt by millions of Black American households when their sons and fathers are swept into our mass incarceration system. The households of deported immigrants, as well as those who live with the daily fear of expulsion, have been grappling with a similar reality on a massive and underrecognized scale.
Based on her many years of reporting on our immigration system, DEPORTED will be the definitive book to address the complexity and complicity of the American deportation system. Following the people caught in the middle of the system, it is a multi-generational story that spans cities, suburbs, and farmland and knits together an entire continent. Dickerson will reveal how the “deportation machine” has grown largely unchecked into both a multibillion dollar industry and a powerful lobbying force behind harsher policies designed to further increase profits. The narrative centers on the millions of “essential workers” we rely on every day to to pick and serve our food, to clean and build our houses, to care for our children and our elders. At its heart, DEPORTED asks: how did we come to subjugate an entire population living alongside us to a permanent lower class? What harms have resulted, and how can we begin to repair them?

Caitlin Dickerson is a staff writer at the Atlantic where she covers immigration and the American experience. She joined the Atlantic after five years at the New York Times, where she broke news about changes in deportation and detention policy and its consequences. She also served as a frequent guest and guest-host for “The Daily.” Dickerson is the winner of a Peabody and Edward R Murrow Award and three-time finalist for the Livingston Award. She lives in Brooklyn.

OUT OF YOUR MIND de Jorge Cham & Dwayne Godwin

From the creator of We Have No Idea, an introductory journey into your own mind—if your inner voice had a Ph.D. in brain science, cracked jokes, and drew cartoons.

OUT OF YOUR MIND:
The Biggest Mysteries of the Human Brain
by Jorge Cham & Dwayne Godwin
Pantheon, January 2024
(via The Gernert Company)


Why do you love? Why do you lie? What makes you happy? Every single thought you have comes from one place: your brain. But what makes it tick? How much of it have we decoded, and how much of it remains an impenetrable mystery? Join best-selling author and online cartoonist Jorge Cham and neuroscientist Dwayne Godwin on a deep dive into the fascinating world of the human brain, in which they will explore questions such as: What is consciousness? Where is you in the brain? And do we have free will? All while illuminating everything we know (and DON’T know) about one of the most complex objects in the known universe. Think of it as conversation-ammunition for your next cocktail party, or a quick fascinating read while you’re in the bathroom (don’t worry, the chapters aren’t that long). Centered around questions we all ask ourselves at some point but don’t usually have answers to, OUT OF YOUR MIND is an illustrated book about the brain that isn’t too brainy. Playful, accessible, and deeply insightful, it’s the one brain book that’s truly accessible and suitable for all brains.

Jorge Cham is the Daytime Emmy-nominated and best-selling cartoonist creator of the popular online comic strip “Piled Higher and Deeper” (known as PHD Comics – phdcomics.com). He is the co-creator, Executive Producer and Creative Director of “Elinor Wonders Why,” one of the highest-rated animated shows on PBS Kids, and the co-author of two popular science books: the best-selling and award-winning We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe and Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe, as well as the children’s book Oliver’s Great Big Universe. Jorge is also the co-host and co-creator of “Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe” a popular podcast and radio show. He obtained his Ph.D. in robotics from Stanford University and was an Instructor and Research Associate at Caltech from 2003-2005. He is originally from Panama.

Dwayne Godwin is a neuroscientist, an educator, and an academic leader who is a professor in the Department of Translational Neuroscience and served as graduate dean at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His research centers on the cellular basis of abnormal brain rhythms, including active projects on calcium channel function, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury. His goal is to use emerging insights about the brain to develop treatments and potential cures for neurological diseases. His science outreach includes Mind in Pictures, cocreated with Jorge Cham for Scientific American Mind, as well as blogs for the Society for Neuroscience and the Museum of the Moving Image.

LAST SUMMER ON STATE STREET de Toya Wolfe

For fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Brit Bennett, a striking coming-of-age debut about friendship, community, and resilience, set in the housing projects of Chicago during one life-changing summer.

LAST SUMMER ON STATE STREET
by Toya Wolfe
‎ William Morrow, June 2022
(via The Gernert Company)

Even when we lose it all, we find the strength to rebuild. Felicia “Fe Fe” Stevens is living with her vigilantly loving mother and older teenaged brother, whom she adores, in building 4950 of Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes. It’s the summer of 1999, and her high-rise is next in line to be torn down by the Chicago Housing Authority. She, with the devout Precious Brown and Stacia Buchanan, daughter of a Gangster Disciple Queen-Pin, form a tentative trio and, for a brief moment, carve out for themselves a simple life of Double Dutch and innocence. But when Fe Fe welcomes a mysterious new friend, Tonya, into their fold, the dynamics shift, upending the lives of all four girls.
As their beloved neighborhood falls down around them, so too do their friendships and the structures of the four girls’ families. Fe Fe must make the painful decision of whom she can trust and whom she must let go. Decades later, as she remembers that fateful summer—just before her home was demolished, her life uprooted, and community forever changed—Fe Fe tries to make sense of the grief and fraught bonds that still haunt her and attempts to reclaim the love that never left.
Profound, reverent, and uplifting, LAST SUMMER ON STATE STREET explores the risk of connection against the backdrop of racist institutions, the restorative power of knowing and claiming one’s own past, and those defining relationships which form the heartbeat of our lives. Interweaving moments of reckoning and sustaining grace, debut author Toya Wolfe has crafted an era-defining story of finding a home — both in one’s history and in one’s self.

Toya Wolfe grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago’s South Side. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. Her writing has appeared in African Voices, Chicago Journal, Chicago Reader, Hair Trigger 27, and WarpLand. She is the recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston-Bessie Head Fiction Award, the Union League Civic & Arts Foundation Short Story Competition, and the Betty Shifflet/John Schultz Short Story Award. She currently resides in Chicago. LAST SUMMER ON STATE STREET is her debut novel.