A spin on Huckleberry Finn, this harrowing (and characteristically witty) account of his adventures is narrated by James, a runaway slave. It's a scary reflection on racism today.
Abdurraqib's meditation on Black music and performance, A Little Devil in America, was inspired. This new book, a literary memoir about basketball and what it takes to be successful, what it... read more
A many-layered memoir from the Pulitzer-winning author of The Sympathizer: the American dream, the Vietnam War, the life of the refugee, adoption, violence, identity.
A green macaw who likes murmuring to itself is one of a trio of characters caught up together in the pandemic; the others are a middle-aged professor and a young drop-out. A novel of unlikel... read more
1990s' Chicago: two students fall in love. Twenty years on, theirs is a suburban life of detoxes and home improvements. A warm and sardonic novel by the author of The Nix.
Joseph Seligman arrived in the US with $100 sewn into the lining of his clothes; the Lehman brothers followed; then Marcus Goldman and the 'forty-eighters' fleeing European anti-semitism. A ... read more
Matar's photographs at sites of lethal police violence in the US and her fastidious research make for a quietly devastating critique. The formality of her images and the directness of her g... read more
The story of the first contact between the Haida and other indigenous peoples of the Pacific North West with Europeans - and what came after. Told very powerfully in a graphic form that comb... read more
A teacher of photography on a New England campus remembers his West African childhood: Cole may be writing about himself here. The novel is a subtle, quiet exploration of memory, the passage... read more
A singular, haunting coming-of-age story set in the Canadian Arctic, in which myth and savage reality blur into each other. An acclaimed debut by an Inuk author.
Johan Jakob Astor left Germany for a flute-making business in London in the late C18th, and then moved to New York where he dealt in pianos, opium, furs and real estate: what glistered was i... read more
Fleeing starvation in the Jameston settlement, a servant girl sets out alone into the wilderness. An historical novel set in early colonial America, by the author of Matrix.
Published last year in the US, this account of the rich in mid-C20th New York, and Capote's multiple betrayals of friendships, is both fascinating and shocking.
Where did refugees from the American and French Revolutions go? This remarkable historical perspective shows how opening doors can be more profitable than closing borders.
A lively account of the origins of the American Dream - an idea which Moore traces back across the Atlantic to the intellectual and political bustling of Enlightenment Britain.
This glorious tapestry of a novel returns to Taylor's accustomed stomping ground - the university campus - with whisper-close third-person narration and minute observation worthy of his reve... read more
Madison quietly set about creating a revolution in vegetarian cooking at Greens restaurant in San Francisco; she'd also done time at Chez Panisse. First published in 1987, this excellent boo... read more
Ellison is reputed to be little short of a genius - for forty years a carpenter, cabinet-maker, industrial designer, sculptor, welder; and capable of realising the three-dimensional processe... read more
A taut, brilliantly uneasy novel about a young woman drifting through the glamorous world of Long Island as an uninvited and rather desperate guest. By the author of The Girls.
Edie's older sister attempts to understand how her younger sibling progressed from an isolated, privileged Californian childhood to become Warhol's muse.
As the ultra-conservative director of the FBI for nearly 50 years, Hoover is arguably more responsible for the emergence of the US far right than anyone else. Who was he? What happened?
Better known perhaps as a writer (Invisible Man, 1952), Ellison was also a fine photographer, who turned his camera as well as his pen on everyday life in America, especially the Black exper... read more
A simple cottage that became "a Federal-style manse" complete with bowling alley and tennis pavilion. All beautifully decorated by our Nina. (Perhaps also a dojo upholstered with fabulous fl... read more
Bridges was an American painter(1834-1923). Her oddly static pictures of birds and flowers were celebrated during her lifetime and display a startling intensity.
A prelapsarian tale about a haven of racially integrated citizens, based on a real island off the coast of Maine which became - for a while - an exotic utopia in the late C18th.
Scanlan's prose is pared back to the bone in this slim novel about an Iowa horse trainer and the scuzzy, feverish world of racing with its trailers and motels...
On the face of it, this is a novel about a diver and a sunken jet - but it doesn't really matter what it's about: once again, McCarthy has delivered an utterly stupendous piece of writing.
From his early figurative work to his late colour field paintings. The text is by Rothko's children, with contributions by the art historian Alexander Nemerov, and by Hiroshi Sugimoto, the J... read more
Argues that today's Sino-American rivalry in micro-processing is as important in geopolitical terms as the economics of oil was at the time of the first Gulf War.
A re-issue of LB's famous and very funny memoir about working in a New York Hotel. He came to the US in 1914, aged sixteen, and worked at the 'Hotel Splendide' as he called it for the next t... read more