General Books

"Gaudy Night stands out even among Miss Sayers's novels. And Miss Sayers has long stood in a class by herself." --Times Literary Supplement

The great Dorothy L. Sayers is considered by many to be the premier detective novelist of the Golden Age, and her dashing sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, one of mystery fiction's most enduring and endearing protagonists. Acclaimed author Ruth Rendell has expressed her admiration for Sayers's work, praising her "great fertility of invention, ingenuity, and wonderful eye for detail." The third Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night features an introduction by Elizabeth George, herself a crime fiction master. Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet's alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats.

When it comes to the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton are generally considered the great minds of early America. George Washington, instead, is toasted with accolades regarding his solid common sense and strength in battle. Indeed, John Adams once snobbishly dismissed him as "too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation." Yet Adams, as well as the majority of the men who knew Washington in his life, were unaware of his singular devotion to self-improvement.

Based on a comprehensive amount of research at the Library of Congress, the collections at Mount Vernon, and rare book archives scattered across the country, Kevin J. Hayes corrects this misconception and reconstructs in vivid detail the active intellectual life that has gone largely unnoticed in conventional narratives of Washington. Despite being a lifelong reader, Washington felt an acute sense of embarrassment about his relative lack of formal education and cultural sophistication, and in this sparkling literary biography, Hayes illustrates just how tirelessly Washington worked to improve. Beginning with the primers, forgotten periodicals, conduct books, and classic eighteenth-century novels such as Tom Jones that shaped Washington's early life, Hayes studies Washington's letters and journals, charting the many ways the books of his upbringing affected decisions before and during the Revolutionary War. The final section of the book covers the voluminous reading that occurred during Washington's presidency and his retirement at Mount Vernon. Throughout, Hayes examines Washington's writing as well as his reading, from The Journal of Major George Washington through his Farewell Address. The sheer breadth of titles under review here allow readers to glimpse Washington's views on foreign policy, economics, the law, art, slavery, marriage, and religion-and how those views shaped the young nation..

Ultimately, this sharply written biography offers a fresh perspective on America's Father, uncovering the ideas that shaped his intellectual journey and, subsequently, the development of America.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR

"To read Maggie Smith is to embrace the achingly precious beauty of the present moment." --Time
"A captivating collection from a wise, accessible poet." --People

From the award-winning poet and bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Keep Moving, and Good Bones, a stunning poetry collection that celebrates the beauty and messiness of life.

With her breakout bestseller Keep Moving, Maggie Smith captured the nation with her "meditations on kindness and hope" (NPR). Now, with Goldenrod, the award-winning poet returns with a powerful collection of poems that look at parenthood, solitude, love, and memory. Pulling objects from everyday life--a hallway mirror, a rock found in her son's pocket, a field of goldenrods at the side of the road--she reveals the magic of the present moment. Only Maggie Smith could turn an autocorrect mistake into a line of poetry, musing that her phone "doesn't observe / the high holidays, autocorrecting / shana tova to shaman tobacco, / Rosh Hashanah to rose has hands."​

Slate called Smith's "superpower as a writer" her "ability to find the perfect concrete metaphor for inchoate human emotions and explore it with empathy and honesty." The poems in Goldenrod celebrate the contours of daily life, explore and delight in the space between thought and experience, and remind us that we decide what is beautiful.

When Medicine River was published in 1990, the New York Times said of Thomas King, "He knows his territory. His first novel is economical, precise, and elegant." Now King returns with his totally fresh voice - carefully controlled, yet without artifice - to present a complex web of character, myth, folklore, and contemporary and universal experience. Green Grass, Running Water is the story of five Blackfoot Indians in the town of Blossom and its nearby reserve, whose very different lives nevertheless continually cross. Alberta, a university professor who wants a child but not a marriage, is involved with two men who seem to represent opposite possibilities: Charlie, a flashy lawyer, and Lionel, a self-effacing TV salesman. Latisha, Lionel's sister, runs the Dead Dog Cafe, a local hangout and tourist trap. And then there's Eli, who moved to the city and its white man's establishment, never intending to look back to Blossom or the reservation's ancient way of life. All the while, four old Indians, escapees from a mental institution, drift mysteriously and hilariously in and out of time, from the beginnings of the universe to its undecided future. Wildly combining Native American and Western spiritual traditions in the stories they tell, they attempt to recreate and reorder the world. And the trickster Coyote follows along, wreaking havoc as he prowls through the novel. This is a rich tale, weaving subtle, magical humor, revisionist history, muted nostalgia, and sacred humanity into one bright, whole cloth.