Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills--and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit--he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

The novel explores themes of identity, legacy, and the search for meaning through the eyes of Cyrus Shams, a young Iranian-American grappling with addiction, loss, and a fascination with martyrdom.

An extraordinarily compassionate and wise novel, Mary Coin imagines the life of Dorothea Lange's iconic "Migrant Mother." What emerges, in Silver's nuanced, resonant telling, is a poignant exploration of a single life that touches many others, and a powerful, moving portrait of America during the Great Depression.

"Is that our Melissa?" Patrice cries when she recognizes the woman at the speaker's podium. It is their Melissa-the foster child Patrice and her husband, Bob, haven't seen since she ran away from their comfortable home at the age of eleven. Now, she's a thirty-year-old woman at a fundraising dinner, describing her journey through foster care, teenage pregnancy, abuse, and the loss of her own children to the social services system. In an instant, two decades of buried shame and guilt come roaring back to Patrice: If only she hadn't failed Melissa as a foster mother. When they are finally reunited after twenty years, Melissa and her pre-teen daughters are facing eviction, presenting Patrice and Bob with the opportunity to make Melissa part of their family once again.

Mexican Gothic is a 2020 feminist Gothic novel by Silvia Moreno-Garcia that follows Noemí Taboada, a young socialite who travels to El Triunfo in 1950s Mexico to rescue her cousin, Catalina. The novel is set in a mansion called High Place, which represents the family's decline, and is filled with ghosts and other haunted elements.

The story follows Nora Seed, a depressed woman in her 30s overwhelmed by grief and regret. After attempting suicide, she awakens in an in-between realm containing infinite books of alternate lives. Guided by her librarian, she "tries on" these realities to escape her regrets.

A sweeping yet intimate novel set in North Dakota's Red River Valley against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crash. It weaves together a teenage love triangle, a fraught wedding, and themes of environmental damage, blending tender humor with profound questions about climate change and human resilience.

Seven-year-old Rachel is forcibly removed from her family's 1890s Honolulu home when she contracts leprosy and is placed in a settlement, where she loses a series of new friends before new medical discoveries enable her to reenter the world.

The novellas follow Sibling Dex, a tea monk, and Mosscap, a sentient robot, as they explore questions of purpose, happiness, and what humans truly need.

Mokhtar Alkhanshali is twenty-four and working as a doorman when he discovers the astonishing history of coffee and Yemen's central place in it. He leaves San Francisco and travels deep into his ancestral homeland to tour terraced farms high in the country's rugged mountains and meet beleagured but determined farmers. But when war engulfs the country and Saudi bombs rain down, Mokhtar has to find a way out of Yemen without sacrificing his dreams or abandoning his people.

The daughter of a curiosities museum's front man pursues an impassioned love affair with a Russian immigrant photographer, who after fleeing his Lower East Side Orthodox community, has captured poignant images of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

In this book, Oliver Sacks explores the power music wields over us; a power that sometimes we control and at other times don't. He explores, in his inimitable fashion, how it can provide access to otherwise unreachable emotional states, how it can revivify neurological avenues that have been frozen, evoke memories of earlier, lost events or states or bring those with neurological disorders back to a time when the world was much richer.

A memoir begun just months before Child's death describes the legendary food expert's years in Paris, Marseille, and Provence and her journey from a young woman from Pasadena who cannot cook or speak any French to the publication of her legendary Mastering cookbooks and her winning the hearts of America as "The French Chef."

"My Name Is Lucy Barton" is the story of a writer reckoning with the legacy of a scarred family life and slowly coming to terms with the costs and the rewards of her art.

Argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education, and public benefits create a permanent under caste based largely on race.

Nightcrawling details the story of seventeen-year-old Kiara Johnson, a young Black teenager who turns to sex work to pay her family's rent and care for the abandoned nine-year-old boy next door.

A historical fiction novel that explores the interconnectedness of nature and humanity over centuries, focusing on a specific house and its surrounding land in western Massachusetts.

Presents a modern fantasy about fear, love, magic, and sacrifice in the story of a family at the mercy of dark forces, whose only defense is the three women who live on a farm at the end of the lane.

The award-winning translator of Iliad and Oresteia introduces a new translation of Homer's age-old tale of the wanderings of Odysseus during his ten-year voyage back home to Ithaca after the Trojan War as he overcomes both divine and natural forces.

Smith tells us how to grow old with dignity, humor, and active participation in life during the sometimes puzzling retirement years.