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From National Book Award in Fiction finalist Andrew Krivak comes a gorgeous fable of Earth's last two human inhabitants, and a girl's journey home In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen. A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature's dominion.

An Instant National Bestseller • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025 • Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Vanity Fair "There couldn’t be a timelier book . . . searingly poignant, essential . . . Macy follows closely in the footsteps of . . . Barbara Ehrenreich and Tracy Kidder, combining memoir with reportage, a raft of sobering statistics and, most uniquely in our era, a willingness to engage in uncomfortable conversations." —The Washington Post From one of our most acclaimed chroniclers of the forces eroding America’s social fabric, her most personal and powerful work: a reckoning with the changes that have rocked her own beloved small Ohio hometown Urbana, Ohio, was not a utopia when Beth Macy grew up there in the ’70s and ’80s—certainly not for her family. Her dad was known as the town drunk, which hurt, as did their poverty. But Urbana had a healthy economy and thriving schools, and Macy had middle-class schoolmates whose families became her role models. Though she left for college on a Pell Grant and then a faraway career in journalism, she still clung gratefully to the place that had helped raise her. But as Macy’s mother’s health declined in 2020, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her town had dramatically hardened. Macy had grown up as the paper girl, delivering the local newspaper, which was the community’s civic glue. Now she found scant local news and precious little civic glue. Yes, much of the work that once supported the middle class had gone away, but that didn’t begin to cover the forces turning Urbana into a poorer and angrier place. Absenteeism soared in the schools and in the workplace as a mental health crisis gripped the small city. Some of her old friends now embraced conspiracies. This was not an assignment Beth Macy had ever imagined taking on, but after her mother’s death, she decided to figure out what happened to Urbana in the forty years since she’d left. The result is an astonishing book that, by taking us into the heart of one place, brings into focus our most urgent set of national issues. Paper Girl is a gift of courage, empathy, and insight. Beth Macy has turned to face the darkness in her family and community, people she loves wholeheartedly, even the ones she sometimes struggles to like. And in facing the truth—in person, with respect—she has found sparks of human dignity that she has used to light a signal fire of warning, but also of hope.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A Chinese family becomes enmeshed in a dramatic story, uncovers past secrets and tragedies, and learns that love can transcend death in this “engrossing [and] thought-provoking meditation on what it means to be human” (People, Critic’s Choice) from the acclaimed author of Snow Flower and The Secret Fan. “Electrifying . . . a fascinating and often surprising story of women helping women, women hurting women, and women misunderstanding each other.”—The Miami Herald In seventeenth-century China, in an elaborate villa on the shores of Hangzhou’s West Lake, Peony lives a sheltered life. One night, during a theatrical performance in her family’s garden, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man and is immediately overcome with emotion. So begins Peony’s unforgettable journey of love and destiny, desire and sorrow, the living world and the afterworld. Eventually expelled from all she’s known, Peony is thrust into a realm where hungry ghosts wander the earth, written words have the power to hurt and kill, and dreams are as vivid as waking life. Peony in Love, based on actual historical events, evokes vividly another time and place and will make you ache in heart and mind for young Peony and all the women of the world who want to be heard.

Featured in the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots Bestselling author Ken Liu selects his multiple award-winning stories for a groundbreaking collection—including a brand-new piece exclusive to this volume. With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. This mesmerizing collection features many of Ken’s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), “Mono No Aware” (Hugo Award winner), “The Waves” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” (Nebula and Sturgeon Award finalists), “All the Flavors” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, “The Paper Menagerie” (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards). Insightful and stunning stories that plumb the struggle against history and betrayal of relationships in pivotal moments, this collection showcases one of our greatest and original voices.

In this 10th Anniversary Edition, Shonda Rhimes, executive producer of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton, Queen Charlotte, and more, not only revisits her galvanizing New York Times bestseller but gives fans an extraordinary cache of brand-new stories that showcase the continuing power that saying YES has had on her life. In Shonda’s own words: “This book is the same as before, but it also is not. It is brand-new. It has changed. Transformed. Evolved. Grown. Just like me.” In 2015, Shonda Rhimes, the trailblazing creative force behind some of television’s most beloved series, took on a challenge that would change her life forever. She decided to say yes to everything for a year, and the results were exhilarating. Hailed as “honest, raw, and revelatory” (The Washington Post) and “as fun to read as Rhimes’s TV series are to watch” (Los Angeles Times), Year of Yes quickly became a New York Times bestseller, captivating readers everywhere and inspiring them to undertake their own YES journeys. In this celebratory and expanded anniversary edition, you’ll find more wildly candid and transformational chapters that reveal how the mega-talented Shonda, once a self-described introvert, achieved badassery worthy of a Shondaland character—and how you can, too.