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The tight-knit Izquierdo family is grappling with misfortunes none of them can explain. Their beloved patriarch has suffered from an emotional collapse and is dying; eldest son Gonzalo's marriage is falling apart as he tries to care for his father; daughter Dina, beleaguered by fear that her nightmares are real, is a shut-in. When Gonzalo digs up a strange object in the backyard of the family home, the Izquierdos take it as proof that a jealous neighbour has cursed them-could this be the reason for all their troubles? As the Izquierdos face a distressing present and an uncertain future, they are sustained by the blood that binds them and a divine presence which manifests in visions, signs, wonders and an abiding love for one another. Told in a series of soulful voices brimming with warmth and humour, Ruben Degollado's book is a tender narrative of a family at a turning point.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A college grad with the six-figure debt to prove it, Ethan Block views San Francisco as the place to be. Yet his job at hot new dating app DateDate is a far cry from what he envisioned. Instead of making the world a better place, he reviews flagged photo queues, overworked and stressed out. But that's about to change. Reeling from a breakup, Ethan decides to view his algorithmically matched soulmate on DateDate. He overrides the system and clicks on the profile. Then, he disappears. One minute, he's in a windowless office, and the next, he's in a field of endless grass, gasping for air. When Ethan snaps back to DateDate HQ, he's convinced a coding issue caused the blip. Except for anyone to believe him, he'll need evidence. As Ethan embarks on a wild goose chase, moving from dingy startup think tanks to Silicon Valley's dominant tech conglomerate, it becomes clear that there's more to DateDate than meets the eye. With the stakes rising, and a new world at risk, Ethan must choose who - and what - he believes in. Adventurous and hyper-timely, Please Report Your Bug Here is an inventive millennial coming-of-age story, a dark exploration of the corruption now synonymous with Big Tech, and, above all, a testament to the power of human connection in our digital era.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

An intelligent machine built to study methods of social warfare struggles to understand and communicate the lived experience of race In a narrative full of social significance and poetically decorated with monks, vampires, and mythical statistics, Race in the Machine presents a world where the stories we use to explain race all simultaneously exist, within and around us, dictating our interactions and innermost beliefs. The nameless protagonist, an enigmatic social mechanic at Nearbay Institute, living in a population of socially connected intelligent machines, encounters a simple query in the context of an introductory lecture: "What exactly is race? And what is it in the context of the social machine?" This prompt guides the protagonist along a twisting intellectual tale surrounding a series of experiments which explore: How many racists does it take to create systems of inequality? What role do non-racists actors play in upholding them? How is bias learned? How does it spread? The narrator develops a distinct understanding of race through the figurative bending of time, dreams of a "race code" and by confronting a series of mysterious communications that remain just outside comprehension. Over the course of this journey, the answers to important questions about racial inequality quietly emerge for the protagonist. Scholarly encounters with both antagonistic colleagues and unexpected allies, culminate when the hero is forced to reach a devastating conclusion about themself and the world. Stirring and luminous, Race in the Machine deftly oscillates between the allegorically simplified and the impossibly complex to weave an utterly unique and nuanced portrait of race in the modern world.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"This short novel explores Willa Cather's friendship with Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, with a focus on the aesthetic argument that shaped much of their relationship: art versus politics and tradition versus innovation"-- Provided by publisher

A novel that imagines a future in which sweeping civil conflict has forced America's young people to flee its borders, into an unwelcoming world. One such American is Ron Patterson, who finds himself on distant shores, working as a repairman and sharing a room with other refugees. In an unnamed city wedged between ocean and lush mountainous forest, Ron can almost imagine a stable life for himself. Especially when he makes the first friend he has had in years--a mysterious migrant named Marlise, who bears a striking resemblance to a onetime classmate. Nearly a decade later--after anti-migrant sentiment has put their whirlwind intimacy and asylum to an end--Ron is living in "Little America," an enclave of migrants in one of the few countries still willing to accept them. Here, among reminders of his past life, he again begins to feel that he may have found a home. Ron adopts a stray dog, observes his neighbors, and lands a repairman job that allows him to move through the city quietly. But this newfound security, too, is quickly jeopardized, as resurgent political divisions threaten the fabric of Little America. Tapped as an informant against the rise of militant gangs and contending with the appearance of a strangely familiar woman, Ron is suddenly on dangerous and uncertain ground

• - About the Festival and List of all playwrights from the past 11 Season - Foreword "The Privilege of Identity and Why I Founded The Fire This Time Festival Play Sections 1.Section 1: Vanna White, Brook Shields, and Beyonce: Beauty Standards and Self Acceptance in Black America Featuring Katori Hall's Beyonce Effect, Derek Lee McPhatter's Citizen Jane, Antoinette Nwandu's Vanna White Has Got To Die, and Roger Q. Mason's Hard Palate 2. Section 2: The Cost of Education: Confronting the Effects of Racial Disparity in America's Education System Featuring Dominique Morisseau's Third Grade-- Fransica Da Silviera's scholarship babies-- and Tracey Conyer Lee's Poor Posturing 3. Section 3: The Shots Heard Round The World: Policing Black Bodies in White America Featuring C.A. Johnson's The Fucking World and Everything in It-- William Watkins' BLACK WHITE & BLUE-- Jordan E. Cooper's Ain't No Mo-- and Natyna Bean's Assumed Positions 4. Section 4: Birth: Contemplating the next generation in a complicated system Featuring Dennis A. Allen II's Untainted Wombs, and Deneen Reynolds-Knott's Antepartum 5. Section 5: Maintaining Roots: Addressing Gentrification in Historically Black Neighborhoods Featuring Bernard Tarver's Just Another Saturday in the Park and Cyrus Aaron's Panopticon
• 6. Section 6: The Black Family: How We Thrive in the Face of Oppression Featuring Camille Darby's Exodus-- Marcus Gardley's The Sporting Life of Icarus Jones-- Charly Evon Simpson's The House-- Kendra Augustin's Sisterhood in the Time of the Apocalypse-- and Samantha Godfrey's C.O.G.s. 7. Section 7: Black Love: Why We Hope Featuring Jonathan Payne's The Weatherin'-- Tyler English-Beckwith's Maya and Rivers-- Fredrica Bailey's Love and Happiness-- Angelica Cheri's Slow Gin Fits-- and Josh Wilder's Gravity,
• The Fire This Time Creative Team.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

While the past decade proved to be some of the most tumultuous times in modern US history, the Black community has been resilient, opening up dialogues and sustaining advocacy. Nowhere has this been more apparent than at the Obie Award-winning The Fire This Time Festival in New York City. Since being founded in 2009, this theater festival has become the destination for emerging and early career playwrights from the African diaspora. Inequality in education and healthcare, skewed and negative images of Black people in mainstream media, racism in policing, widespread gentrification and its effects on multi-generational Black neighbourhoods, and the growth of Black love; these conversations have been happening in the US, and The Fire This Time Festival has borne witness. 25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Resilience, Rebirth, and Black Theater reflects this fantastic legacy, containing 25 ten-minute plays originally produced by the eponymous festival. Together, these pieces bookend the Black experience in the US from 2009 to the present day: from the hope for further progress and equity under the Obama administration, to the existential threat faced by Black people under the Trump presidency. Edited and curated by Kelley Nicole Girod, the anthology divides the plays into seven thematic sections concerning multi-faceted aspects of the Black experience, featuring work by seminal writers such as Katori Hall, Antoinette Nwandu, Dominique Morisseau, C.A. Johnson, and Marcus Gardley. Both timely and timeless, 25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival presents an exciting, eclectic mix of 21st century theater that is perfect for study, performance, and reflection.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"When Francine Ephesians Didwell loses the love of her life, she is forced to reconnect with her estranged family. She's led two lives up until now, one with her evangelical charismatic family, and another of emancipated rebellion with her lover."-- Provided by publisher

"From the award-winning author Alan Heathcock comes an American myth of the future: a vision of civil war, spectacle, and disaster of biblical proportions"-- Provided by publisher

"A hard-boiled crime story with a bi-sexual love triangle peppered with double-crosses. A music professor, an unhappily married woman, and a Mexican bartender band together to steal a buried fortune"-- Provided by publisher

Evoking such classics as Elmer Gantry and The Day of the Locust, William Giraldi's About Face boldly transfers the perennial literary themes of celebrity, ambition, and obsession to twenty-first-century Boston. There we meet Val Face, a charismatic self-help guru who captivates multitudes with his uncanny ability to heal adherents using only the power of his words, the mysterious touch of his hands, and the transcendent beauty of his face. Assigned to write a profile of Val Face during his much-hyped New England tour, thirty-year-old impoverished journalist Seger Jovi pens a brutal hatchet job. But Seger, at once curious and incredulous, is soon sucked into the mystic's vortex of fame, becoming a devotee himself as he contends with the machinations and absurdities of Face's many protectors, from beefcake bodyguards to helicoptering handlers to Face's unwavering spouse, Nimble. At first unwilling to sacrifice his principles to fulfill his own ambition and rise from privation, then touched by Face's unexpected humanity, Seger oscillates between acting as Face's cynical foil and becoming his unlikely ally. Just as the exalted guru appears to be reaching the apex of his powers, danger threatens from the periphery in the form of an obsessive stalker who wants Face dead. To curb this stalker before he can do harm, Face's security team enlists the aid of Jackie Jaworski, an ex-Marine and resourceful Boston detective who moonlights as a novelist of thrillers. And so About Face, building to a denouement that will astonish readers, takes us into the convergence of violence and fame that has come to define so much of American popular culture over the last half-century. With its indelible array of characters, hypnotic pacing, and shocking conclusion-and "a mesmerizing prose style that is downright pyrotechnic in its brilliance" (Andre Dubus III)-About Face is a novel in the grand tradition that dances along the tenuous line between the sacred and the profane.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

How do we take stock of a life-by what means, and by what measure? This is the question that preoccupies Alice, a Taiwanese immigrant in her late thirties. In the off-hours from her day job, Alice struggles to create a project about the enigmatic downtown performance artist Tehching Hsieh and his monumental, yearlong 1980s performance pieces. Meanwhile, she becomes the caretaker for her aging stepfather, a Vietnam vet whose dream of making traditional Chinese furniture dissolved in alcoholism and dementia. As Alice roots deeper into Hsieh's radical use of time-in one piece, the artist confined himself to a cell for a year; in the next, he punched a time clock every hour, on the hour, for a year-and his mysterious disappearance from the art world, her project starts metabolizing events from her own life. She wanders from subway rides to street protests, loses touch with a friend, and tenderly observes her father's slow decline. Moving between present-day and 1980s New York City, with detours to Silicon Valley and the Venice Biennale, this vivid debut announces Lisa Hsiao Chen as an audacious new talent. Activities of Daily Living is a lucid, intimate examination of the creative life and the passage of time.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"Eve--a young, queer woman living in Brooklyn--has never sent a naked picture of herself to anyone, though she keeps hundreds of nudes on her phone. On a night she feels both beautiful and particularly interested in attention, she posts three of them online, with no accompanying text. Curiously, a woman messages her the next day. This is how Eve meets Olivia, and--through Olivia--her partner, Nathan. It's not long before she finds herself entangled in a complicated three-way affair with the couple. At once exhilarating and disturbing, theirs is an intense sexual relationship that tests all of their boundaries, and one which starts to stray into--and threaten--their personal and professional lives. Over the course of a year, the terms of their arrangement become clear: Nathan is the mastermind, Eve and Olivia compete for his affections, and all parties share equally in the pleasure"-- Provided by publisher

• Adventure
• Holderhaven
• Scenes from the renaissance
• Ash City stomp
• Horses blow up dog city --The master key --Circa
• At the fair
• Pete and Earl
• The ornithopter
• Stronghold
• Delta function
• Give up
• Chcemistry set
• Under green
• Sunnyside

"Flawless. . . . Readers of John Crowley, Ray Bradbury, and Sally Rooney alike will find a home."-Publishers Weekly (starred review) Remember the girl you once knew, the theater kid? Now she's become the Queen, and you might need to rescue her. There's the historic house, where someone once saw a ghost and you almost fell in love. An ornithopter hangs in the lobby of your corporate workplace: your co-worker thinks he might be able to operate it. Once you found a tunnel under your old high school, and couldn't resist going to see where it led. Sometimes a door will open into a new world, sometimes into the past. Putting on a costume might be the restart you are half hoping for. There are things buried here. You might want to save them. You might want to get out of the way. Butner's allusive and elusive stories reach into the uncanny corners of life-where there are no job losses, just HCAPs (Head Count Allocation Procedures), where a tree might talk to just one person, where Death's Fool is not to be ignored.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"At 19, she was an Instagram celebrity. Now, at 35, she works behind the cosmetic counter at the "black and white store," peddling anti-aging products to women seeking physical and spiritual transformation. She too is seeking rebirth. She's about to undergo the high-risk, elective surgery Aesthetica, a procedure that will reverse all her past plastic surgery procedures, returning her, she hopes, to a truer self. Provided she survives the knife. But on the eve of the surgery, her traumatic past resurfaces when she is asked to participate in the public takedown of her former manager/boyfriend, who has rebranded himself as a paragon of "woke" masculinity in the post-#MeToo world. With the hours ticking down to her surgery, she must confront the ugly truth about her experiences on and off the Instagram grid. Propulsive, dark, and moving, Aesthetica is a Veronica for the age of "Instagram face," delivering a fresh, nuanced examination of feminism, MeToo, and mother-daughter relationships, all while confronting our collective addiction to followers, filters, and faux realities"-- Provided by publisher.

"Reminiscent of Gabriela Garcia's OF WOMEN AND SALT, Leah Franqui brings us an engrossing, deeply personal novel with a mystery at its heart as a daughter returns to Puerto Rico to search for her troubled father, who has gone missing after Hurricane Maria"-- Provided by publisher
Elena Vega's life is aimless and lacking in connection. Something has always been amiss in her life: her father, the brilliant but deeply troubled Santiago Vega. Born in rural Puerto Rico, Santiago arrived in New York as a small child, raised by his mentally ill mother and his formidable grandmother. He is the shining star of his migrant family-- but he is a haunted man, plagued by trauma, bipolar disorder, and alcoholism. When Hurricane Maria strikes, Elena returns to Puerto Rico to find Santiago-- and unravel the truth about who her father is. - adapted from jacket

"Xavier "Scarecrow" Wallace, a mixed-race MMA fighter on the wrong side of thirty, is facing the fight of his life. Xavier is losing his battle with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), or pugilistic dementia--a struggle he can no longer deny. Through the fog of memory loss, migraines, and paranoia, Xavier does his best to keep in shape while he waits for the call that will reinstate him after a year-long suspension. Until then, he watches his diet and trains every day at the Philadelphia gym owned by his cousin-cum-manager, Shot, a retired champion boxer to whom Xavier owes an unpayable debt. Xavier makes ends meet by teaching youth classes at Shot's gym and by living rent-free in the house of his white father, whom Xavier has been forced to commit to a nursing home because of the progress of his end-stage Alzheimer's. Dementia has revealed a shocking truth about Sam Wallace, and Xavier finally gains insight into why his Black mother left the family when Xavier was young. As Xavier battles his aging body and his failing brain, each day is filled with challenges and setbacks. Then Xavier is offered a chance at redemption: a last-minute comeback fight in the largest MMA promotion. If he can get himself back in the game, he'll be able to clear his name and begin to pay off Shot. But with his memory in shreds and his life crumbling around him, can Xavier hold onto the focus he needs to survive? After the Lights Go Out is a haunting, unflinching look at the aftermath of a career in MMA-as Xavier forgets everything around him, you'll want to remember every single word"-- Provided by publisher

Alice Ogilvie's disappearance last summer is the biggest scandal at Castle Cove High School--until her ex-boyfriend is accused of murdering his new girlfriend, and Alice must pair up with her tutor Iris Adams to clear his name by relying on the wisdom of Agatha Christie
Last summer Alice Ogilvie's basketball-star boyfriend Steve dumped her... then she disappeared for five days. Where she went and what happened to her is the biggest mystery in Castle Cove, because she's not talking. Now, another one of Steve's girlfriends has vanished: Brooke Donovan, Alice's ex-best friend. And it doesn't look like Brooke will be coming back. Iris Adams, Alice's tutor, has her own reasons for wanting to disappear, but doesn't have the money or the means. The reward Brooke's grandmother is offering could change that. The police are convinced Steve is the culprit, but Alice and Iris set out to prove his innocence-- using the complete works of Agatha Christie as their guide. -- adapted from jacket

• Introduction
• Stories. When all this was Bay Ridge ; Scared rabbit ; Seven eleven ; Rubber gun ; The amnesty box ; Indigenous
• Essays. Ralph and Sam ; Surfing the crime wave ; Opening day ; Maharaja for a year (1999-2000) ; Abraham, Martin, and Greg Scarpa ; Excited utterances ; Pimps and hoes

In Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Tim McLoughlin draws upon his three-decade career in the criminal justice system with his characteristic wit and his fascination with misfits and malfeasance. A lifetime immersed in New York City feeds short stories that evoke a landscape of characters rife with personal arrogance and misjudgment; and nonfiction essays about toeing the line when the line keeps disappearing. An opioid-addicted catsitter electronically eavesdrops on his neighbors only to hear devastating truths. A degenerate gambler stakes his life on a long shot because he sees three lucky numbers on the license plate of a passing car. In the nonfiction essays, we learn that the system plays a role in supporting vice, as long as it gets a cut. Altar boys compete to work weddings and funerals for tips in the shadow of predatory priests. Cops become robbers, and a mob boss just might be a civil rights icon. McLoughlin shines a light on worlds that few have access to. A recurring theme in his urban, often New York?centric work is chronic displacement, people standing still in a city that is always changing. These are McLoughlin?s ghosts, these casualties of progress, and he holds them dear and celebrates them