NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter, from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean Richly textured with memories from her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion is an intensely personal and moving account of her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness and growing old. As she reflects on her daughter’s life and on her role as a parent, Didion grapples with the candid questions that all parents face, and contemplates her age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept. Blue Nights—the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, “the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning”—like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profound.

Think adolescence is hell? You have no idea... Welcome to Dante's Inferno, by way of The Breakfast Club, from the mind of American fiction's most brilliant troublemaker. "Death, like life, is what you make out of it." So says Madison, the whip-tongued 11-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk's subversive homage to the young adult genre. Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas while her parents are off touting their new film projects and adopting more orphans. Over the holidays she dies of a marijuana overdose--and the next thing she knows, she's in Hell. This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno inspired by both the most extreme and mundane of human evils, where The English Patient plays on repeat and roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb. However, underneath Madison's sad teenager affect there is still a child struggling to accept not only the events of her dysfunctional life, but also the truth about her death. For Madison, though, a more immediate source of comfort lies in the motley crew of young sinners she meets during her first days in Hell. With the help of Archer, Babette, Leonard, and Patterson, she learns to navigate Hell--and discovers that she'd rather be mortal and deluded and stupid with those she loves than perfect and alone.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In these coolly observant essays, the iconic bestselling writer looks at the American political process and at "that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life." Through the deconstruction of the sound bites and photo ops of three presidential campaigns, one presidential impeachment, and an unforgettable sex scandal, Didion reveals the mechanics of American politics. She tells us the uncomfortable truth about the way we vote, the candidates we vote for, and the people who tell us to vote for them. These pieces build, one on the other, into a disturbing portrait of the American political landscape, providing essential reading on our democracy.

Newsweek, Lit Hub, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Atlanta Journal Constitution pick Race Man by Julian Bond as one of their Most-Anticipated Books of 2020! "This compilation of works by social activist and civil rights leader Julian Bond should be required reading in 2020."—Juliana Rose Pignataro, Newsweek "Bond's essays, speeches and interviews were powerful weapons in his lifelong fight for civil rights."—The New York Times "Justice and equality was the mission that spanned his life. Julian Bond helped change this country for the better. And what better way to be remembered than that."—President Barack Obama An inspiring, historic collection of writings from one of America's most important civil rights leaders. No one in the United States did more to advance the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. than Julian Bond. Race Man—a collection of his speeches, articles, interviews, and letters—constitutes an unrivaled history of the life and times of one of America’s most trusted freedom fighters, offering unfiltered access to his prophetic voice on a wide variety of social issues, including police brutality, abortion, and same-sex marriage. A man who broke race barriers and set precedents throughout his life in politics; co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center and long-time chair of the NAACP; Julian Bond was a leader and a visionary who built bridges between the black civil rights movement and other freedom movements—especially for LGBTQ and women's rights. As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, there is no better time to return to Bond's works and words, many of them published here for the first time. "Endlessly grateful for this collection of work that shows the expansive nature of Julian Bond's ideas of black liberation, and how those ideas are woven into the fabric of both resistance and uplift. Race Man is the map of a journey that was not only struggle and not only triumph."—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us: Essays "Race Man is the essential collection of Julian Bond's wisdom—and required reading for the organizers and leaders who follow in his footsteps today."—Marian Wright Edelman, President Emerita, Children's Defense Fund "Race Man is a staggering collection that offers a genealogy of Bond's freedom-oriented politics and soul work as captured in his written words. Race Man is a book that looks back and speaks forward. It is a timely example of what movement building can look like when servant leaders refuse to leave the most vulnerable out of their visions for Black freedom. We need that reminder, like never before, today."—Darnell L. Moore, author of No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America " [An] essential volume that will appeal to a broad audience of readers interested in the civil rights movement and human rights overall . . ."—Library Journal, Starred Review "Bond's years as an activist also offer a guide through the intellectual and political history of the left in the second half of the 20th century . . . Bond's essays capture the intellectual world that inspired him and that he helped inspire in turn."—Robert Greene II, The Nation

“A California classic . . . California, it should be remembered, was very much the wild west, having to wait until 1850 before it could force its way into statehood. so what tamed it? Mr. Starr’s answer is a combination of great men, great ideas and great projects.”—The Economist From the age of exploration to the age of Arnold, the Golden State’s premier historian distills the entire sweep of California’s history into one splendid volume. Kevin Starr covers it all: Spain’s conquest of the native peoples of California in the early sixteenth century and the chain of missions that helped that country exert control over the upper part of the territory; the discovery of gold in January 1848; the incredible wealth of the Big Four railroad tycoons; the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906; the emergence of Hollywood as the world’s entertainment capital and of Silicon Valley as the center of high-tech research and development; the role of labor, both organized and migrant, in key industries from agriculture to aerospace. In a rapid-fire epic of discovery, innovation, catastrophe, and triumph, Starr gathers together everything that is most important, most fascinating, and most revealing about our greatest state. Praise for California “[A] fast-paced and wide-ranging history . . . [Starr] accomplishes the feat with skill, grace and verve.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “Kevin Starr is one of california’s greatest historians, and California is an invaluable contribution to our state’s record and lore.”—MarIa ShrIver, journalist and former First Lady of California “A breeze to read.”—San Francisco

In The White Album, Joan Didion famously wrote that "a place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively...loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image." Cruising in her Daytona yellow Corvette Stingray, taking it all in behind dark glasses, Joan Didion claimed California for all time. Slouching Towards Los Angeles is a multi-faceted portrait of the literary icon who, in turn, belongs to us. This collection of original essays covers the turf that made Didion a sensation--Hollywood and Patty Hearst; Malibu, Manson and the Mojave; the Summer of Love and the Central Park Five--while bringing together some of the finest voices of today's Los Angeles and beyond. Slouching Towards Los Angeles is a love letter and thank you note; personal memoir and social commentary; cultural history and literary critique. Fans of Didion, lovers of California, and fellow writers alike will all find something to dig into, in this rich exploration of the inner and outer landscapes Joan Didion traveled, shaping our own journeys in the process. Featuring essays by Ann Friedman Jori Finkel Margaret Wappler Jessica Hundley Christine Lennon Catherine Wagley Su Wu Joshua Wolf Shenk Lauren Sandler Michelle Chihara Sarah Tomlinson Linda Immediato Tracy McMillan Dan Crane Steph Cha Caroline Ryder Joe Donnelly Monica Corcoran Harel Alysia Abbott Stacie Stukin Heather John Fogarty Marc Weingarten Scott Benzel Ezrha Jean Black

“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University