"Books written out of great emotional distress are ... rarely great literature. Thomas Melle's [The World at My Back] is great literature because he pulls it off without a single false note." --Deutschlandfunk (German National Radio) A FINALIST FOR THE GERMAN BOOK PRIZE * TRANSLATED INTO EIGHTEEN LANGUAGES Addicted to culture, author Thomas Melle has built up an impressive personal library. His heart is in these books, and he loves to feel them at his back, their promise and challenge, as he writes. But in the middle of a violent dissociative episode, when they become ballast to his increasingly manic self, he disperses almost overnight what had taken decades to gather. Nor is this all he loses: descending further into an incomprehensible madness, he loses friendships and his career as a novelist and celebrated playwright, but the most savage cruelty is that he no longer either knows or understands himself. Vulnerable and claustrophobic, shattering and profoundly moving, Thomas Melle's The World at My Back is a book dedicated to the impossibility of reclaiming what has been lost, its lines both a prayer and reminder that, on the other side of madness, other possibilities await.

THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLERA BETWEEN THE COVERS PICKSelected as a book of the year by AMAZON, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW YORK TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN, VOGUE, IRISH TIMES, IRISH EXAMINER and RED MAGAZINE'One of the best books I have ever read . . . unbelievably moving' Elizabeth Day 'An extraordinary story, beautifully told' Louise O'Neill 'A memoir to stand alongside the classics . . . compelling and joyous' Sunday Times Tara Westover grew up preparing for the end of the world. She was never put in school, never taken to the doctor. She did not even have a birth certificate until she was nine years old.At sixteen, to escape her father's radicalism and a violent older brother, Tara left home. What followed was a struggle for self-invention, a journey that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes, and the will to change it.'It will make your heart soar' Guardian 'Jaw-dropping and inspiring, everyone should read this book' Stylist 'Absolutely superb . . . so gripping I could hardly breathe' Sophie Hannah

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker PrizeWinner of the 2022 Anisfield-Wolf Book AwardFinalist for the 2022 PEN/Jean Stein Book AwardFinalist for the 2023 Dublin Literary AwardLonglisted for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionAn uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of TelephonePercival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till.The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can’t look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America’s pulse.

This book is perfect for people who are funny and for those who aren't funny (thus it is marketable to 100 percent of the population). As we all know, true creativity comes from simple formulas and the memorization of data. This new bible makes the secrets of comedy accessible, not only to those funny few among us, but also to those who might not have the ability or talent to be funny. One no longer need worry about originality -- just find the right comedy number and apply as needed... and then you're on your way to POPULARITYVILLE (c) Comedy by the Numbers is a NEARLY comprehensive list of all comedy characters, bits, scenarios, sketches, skits, shtick, and much more. (We say nearly because we want to leave room for Volume 2.) Included are special hints, tips, and unboring comedy history. Comedy by the Numbers is the brainchild of Prof. Eric Hoffman (Mr. Show) and Dr. Gary Rudoren (Annoyance Theatre) -- AND features loads of comedy fun facts that you can memorize and use to impress people at parties

A compassionate, heartrending memoir of a mother’s quest to accept her son’s journey through psychosis. One night in 2009, Tanya Frank finds her nineteen-year-old son, Zach—gentle and full of promise—in the grip of what the psychiatrists would label a psychotic break. Suddenly and inexplicably, Tanya is thrown into a parallel universe: Zach’s world, where the phones are bugged, his friends have joined the Mafia, and helicopters are spying on his family. In the years following Zach’s shifting psychiatric diagnoses, Tanya goes to war for her son, desperate to find the right answer, the right drug, the right doctor to bring him back to reality. She struggles to navigate archaic mental healthcare systems, first in California and then in her native London during lockdown. Meanwhile, the boy she raised—the chatty, precocious dog-lover, the teenager who spent summers surfing with his big brother, the UCLA student—suffers the effects of multiple hospitalizations, powerful drugs that blunt his emotions, therapies that don’t work, and torturous nights on the streets. Holding on to startling moments of hope and seeking solace in nature and community, Tanya learns how to abandon her fears for the future and accept the mysteries of her son’s altered states. With tenderness, lyricism, and generous candor, this compelling story conveys the power of a mother’s love. Zig-Zag Boy is both a moving lamentation for things lost and a brave testament to the people we become in difficult circumstances.

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. John Armstrong has worked as a paperboy, a caddy, and a Bible camp counsellor; as a janitor at the Regal Theatre, a shipper of video porn, and a real live punk rock star. As if those jobs weren't punishment enough, at the tender age of thirty he entered the trenches of journalism. "Get up, get dressed so you can hurry to a place you don't want to be, and do things you don't want to do for people you don't like, all for very little money at some far distant point in the future." Armstrong doesn't let it get him down. Whether he's writing about the Bobbsey Twins, a pair of strippers who really love their vegetables, the Golden Road personal fulfillment seminar, where you learn that you choose your own cancer, or the literal bowels of hometown paper the Picayune-Standard, Armstrong simultaneously excoriates and delights. WAGES is a laugh-til-you-cry account of one man's remarkable working life or attempt at a lack thereof. This eccentric, irreverent, and witty chronicle is vintage John Armstrong.

WINNER, NON FICTION BOOK 2023, BOOKS ARE MY BAG AWARDS SHORTLIST, NERO BOOK AWARDS SHORTLIST, BOOKSHOP.ORG INDIE CHAMPIONS SHORTLIST, AMAZON NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR SHORTLIST, GOODREADS CHOICE BOOK OF THE YEARAudible Books of the Year 2023The Times Books of the Year 2023Apple Best Audiobooks of 2023BOOKSHOP.ORG Book of the Month January 2024THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'I tore through this hilarious, smart, sad, revealing book' - Bob Odenkirk 'Funny, sharp and has incredible clarity' - Jon Ronson'An absolute riot. I'm literally going to read it again once I've finished, and I'm a miserable bastard...it's a belter' - FRANKIE BOYLE'Strong Female Character is a testament to the importance of self-knowledge.' - Rachael Healy, The GuardianA summary of my book:1. I'm diagnosed with autism 20 years after telling a doctor I had it.2. My terrible Catholic childhood: I hate my parents etc.3. My friendship with an elderly man who runs the corner shop and is definitely not trying to groom me. I get groomed.4. Homelessness.5. Stripping.6. More stripping but with more nervous breakdowns.7. I hate everyone at uni and live with a psycho etc.8. REDACTED as too spicy.9. After everyone tells me I don't look autistic, I try to cure my autism and get addicted to Xanax.10. REDACTED as too embarrassing.'Fern's book, like everything she does, is awesome. Incredibly funny, and so unapologetically frank that I feel genuinely sorry for her lawyers.' - PHIL WANG'Of course it's funny - it's Fern Brady - but this book is also deeply moving and eye-opening'- ADAM KAY'It made me laugh out loud and broke my heart and made me weep...I hope absolutely everyone reads this, and it makes them kinder and more curious about the way we all live' - DAISY BUCHANAN'Glorious. Frank but nuanced, a memoir that doesn't sacrifice voice or self-awareness. And it has brilliant things to say about being autistic and being funny' - ELLE MCNICOLL'A set text for all of us in 2023' - DEBORAH FRANCES-WHITE'Fern is a brilliant, beautiful writer with a unique voice and even more unique story. Astute, honest and very, very funny.' - LOU SANDERS'So funny and brilliant' - HOLLY SMALE'Witty, dry, and gimlet-eyed, Strong Female Character is a necessary corrective. Brady offers a compelling, messy, highly resonant portrait of what masked Autism feels like.' - Devon Price, author of Unmasking Autism

Author of the acclaimed novel Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor leads us into a different kind of hell: paradise Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor—an attractive married woman and mother—while Polo dreams about quitting his grueling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme. Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society—with its racist, classist, hyperviolent tendencies—and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.

“Like the best noir practitioners, Murphy uses the mystery as scaffolding to assemble a world of fallen dreams and doom-bitten characters . . . Murphy’s hard-boiled rendering of the city is nothing short of exquisite . . . For anyone who wants a portrait of this New York, few recent books have conjured it so vividly.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice• A Best Book of the Year from The New Yorker, LitHub, CrimeReads, and more!A sharp and stylish debut from the editor-in-chief of CrimeReads in which an unwitting private eye gets caught up in a crime of obsession between a reclusive literary superstar and her bookseller husband, paying homage to the noir genre just as smartly as it reinvents itAfter leaving behind the comforts and the shackles of a prestigious law firm, a restless attorney makes ends meet in mid-2000s Brooklyn by picking up odd jobs from a colorful assortment of clients. When a mysterious woman named Anna Reddick turns up at his apartment with ten thousand dollars in cash and asks him to track down her missing husband Newton, an antiquarian bookseller who she believes has been pilfering rare true crime volumes from her collection, he trusts it will be a quick and easy case. But when the real Anna Reddick—a magnetic but unpredictable literary prodigy—lands on his doorstep with a few bones to pick, he finds himself out of his depth, drawn into a series of deceptions involving Joseph Conrad novels, unscrupulous booksellers, aspiring flâneurs, and seedy real estate developers. Set against the backdrop of New York at the tail end of the analog era and immersed in the worlds of literature and bookselling, An Honest Living is a gripping story of artistic ambition, obsession, and the small crimes we commit against one another every day.