"An examination of how individuals strive for social status and how this creates our culture as a whole. Contrary to belief, status signaling isn't just the province of the immature or insecure but a fundamental human need to secure social standing. It drives our behavior, forms our tastes, determines what we buy, and ultimately shapes who we are. It's what's behind 'cool' and what drives fashion, music, food, sports, slang, travel, hairstyles, and...

"The city of San Siroco is sinking. The basement of Dr. Tamsin Rivers, the arrogant, selfish head of the research team assigned to find the source of the subsidence, is sinking faster. As Tamsin grows obsessed with the distorting dimensions of the room at the bottom of the stairs, she finds a door that didn't exist before -- and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her. This doppelgänger is sweet and biddable where Tamsin is calculating...

The Other Name follows the lives of two men living close to each other on the west coast of Norway. The year is coming to a close and Asle, an aging painter and widower, is reminiscing about his life. He lives alone, his only friends being his neighbor Asleik, a bachelor and traditional Norwegian fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in Bjørgvin, a couple hours' drive south of Dylgja, where he lives. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another...

"In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a social circle of lovers and friends navigate tangled webs of connection as they try to figure out what they want, and who they are"-- In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. At the group's center are Seamus, a frustrated young poet; Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who...

When Atia, a monster hunted by the Gods, and mortal Silas join forces to avenge her family and break his curse and restore his humanity, they discover that only together can they finally rewrite their destinies. Atia is a monster who feeds on fear. As the last of her kind, she hides in the shadows of the world to escape the wrath of the unpredictable Gods. Silas is a Herald, carrying messages and ferrying the dead as punishment for a past he can't...

"At age nineteen, young Eton graduate Eric Blair set sail for India, dreading the assignment ahead. Along with several other young conscripts, he would be trained for three years as a servant of the British Empire, overseeing the local policemen in Burma. Navigating the social, racial, and class politics of his fellow British at the same time as he learned the local languages and struggled to control his men would prove difficult enough. But doing...

Portraying the vastness and complexity of diasporic communities, this unflinching and unforgettable collection of stories from the beloved award-winning author confront themes of identity, belonging and the collision of cultures across countries and centuries. A boy searches for his father, a prison guard on Sakhalin Island. In Barcelona, a woman is tasked with spying on a prizefighter who may or may not be her estranged son. A samurai escorts an...

"French Vietnamese writer Line Papin's stunning English-language debut, The Girl Before Her offers a window onto the existential anguish of displacement as experienced by a child on the cusp of becoming a woman. Uprooted without explanation from the sunshine and chaos of Hà Nội at the age of ten, the narrator finds herself adrift in the unfamiliar, gray world of France and grappling with a deep sense of uncertainty about who she is and where she...

"2019. Moud is an out gay teen living in Los Angeles with his distant father, Saeed. When Moud gets the news that his grandfather in Iran is dying, he accompanies his dad to Tehran, where the revelation of family secrets will force Moud into a new understanding of his history, his culture, and himself. 1978. Saeed is an engineering student with a promising future ahead of him in Tehran. But when his parents discover his involvement in the country's...

In 1968, five-year-old Bezhig Little Bird was forcibly removed from Long Pine Reserve and adopted into a Jewish family in Montreal, and renamed Esther Rosenblum. Eighteen years later, she embarks on a journey to unravel her history.