Book cover of The Wicked Boy: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London by Kate Summerscale
Biography & Autobiography

The Wicked Boy: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London

In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London — for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they had been left home alone while their mother visited family in Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old Bailey.  […Learn More]

Book cover of Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz
Biography & Autobiography

Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide

With Spying on the South, the best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic returns to the South and the Civil War era for an epic adventure on the trail of America’s greatest landscape architect. In the 1850s, the young Frederick Law Olmsted was adrift, a restless farmer and dreamer in search of a mission. He found it during an extraordinary journey, as an undercover correspondent in the South for the up-and-coming New York Times. […Learn More]

Book cover of Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe by Ella Frances Saunders
Astronomy & Space Science

Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe

A beautifully illustrated exploration of the principles, laws, and wonders that rule our universe, our world, and our daily lives, from the New York Times bestselling creator of Lost in Translation

Have you ever found yourself wondering what we might have in common with stars, or why the Moon never leaves us? Thinking about the precise dancing of planets, the passing of time, or the nature of natural things? 
[…Learn More]

Book cover of What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forche
Biography & Autobiography

What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman’s radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life. […Learn More]

Book cover of The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine by Ben Ehrenreich
History

The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine

From an award-winning journalist, a brave and necessary immersion into the everyday struggles of Palestinian life 

Over the past three years, American writer Ben Ehrenreich has been traveling to and living in the West Bank, staying with Palestinian families in its largest cities and its smallest villages. Along the way he has written major stories for American outlets, including a remarkable New York Times Magazine cover story […Learn More]