University Book Store

University Book Store Presents Patricia Briggs with Special Guest Anne Bishop

Mated werewolves Charles Cornick and Anna Latham must discover what could make an entire community disappear–before its too late–in Wild Sign, a thrilling new entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling Alpha and Omega series. In the wilds of the Northern California mountains, all the inhabitants of a small town have gone missing. Its as if the people picked up and left their possessions behind. With a mystery on their hands and no jurisdiction on private property, the FBI dumps the whole problem in the lap of the land owner, Aspen Creek, Inc.–aka the business organization of the Marroks pack. Somehow, the pack of the Wolf Who Rules is connected to a group of vanished people. Werewolves Charles Cornick and Anna Latham are tasked with investigating, and soon find that a deserted town is the least of the challenges they face. Death sings in the forest, and when it calls, Charles and Anna must answer. Something has awakened in the heart of the California mountains, something old and dangerous–and it has met werewolves before.

Patricia Briggs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series and the Alpha and Omega novels. http://www.patriciabriggs.com/

RUINS

A spring day oozes through Trastevere. A nun in turquoise sneakers contemplates the stairs. Ragazzi everywhere, the pus in their pimples pushing up like paperwhites in the midday sun. Every hard bulb stirs. The fossilized egg in my chest cracks open against my will. I was so proud not to feel my heart. Waking means being angry. The dead man on the Congo road was missing an ear, which had either been eaten or someone was wearing it around his neck. The dead man looked like this. No, that. Here's a flock of tourists in matching canvas hats. This year will take from me the hardened person who I longed to be. I am healing by mistake. Rome is also built on ruins.

-- Eliza Griswold, from her latest book, If Men, Then: Poems, from FSG.

“Time now to write of that rare thing, originality -- the opposite of imitation and its outlier, plagiarism. It’s the pearl among white peas.” -- Nicholas Delbanco, from his new book, Why Writing Matters, new from Yale University Press.

Beautiful reissue from Picador, Where Joy Resides: A Christopher Isherwood Reader, edited by Don Bachardy and James P. White.

New from Ballantine Books, Here For It:, Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays, by R. Eric Thomas.

“Pop culture–obsessed, Sedaris-level laugh-out-loud funny . . . [R. Eric Thomas] is one of my favorite writers.”—Lin-Manuel Miranda.

New from Rizzoli, Eyes Over the World: The Most spectacular Drone Photography, by Dirk Dallas.

New from Grove Press, a wonderfult debut novel, Braised Pork, by An Yu. (Read the Guardian review here.)

New from Norton and Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri, Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why: Essays.  These impossibly cheerful essays on the routine horrors of the present era explain everything from the resurgence of measles to the fiasco of the presidency. (Read more about the humorist here.)

New from Forge, Remembrance: A Novel by Rita Woods.  "Stunning. ... Family is at the core of Remembrance, the breathtaking debut novel by Rita Woods." -- The Boston Globe. This breakout historical debut with modern resonance is perfect for the many fans of The Underground Railroad and Orphan Train.

This Frightful Friday sees our Summer Symposium on Promethean Horror draw to a close with a very special guest lecturer, Mary Shelley, the woman whose novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus inspired and named the sub-genre. Based on a sensational true-life account, “Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman” explores a few of the same themes from her famous novel, though with a far lighter tone.

In a new edition from Red Lightening Books,The Boy Who Loved Batman: A Memoir, by Michael E. Uslan. The author is Originator and Executive Producer of the Batman movie franchise. He was the first instructor to teach an accredited course on comic book folklore at any university.

New from Agora and novelist Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Untamed. Here’s our staff recommendation: “Moreno-Garcia deftly plays with the trope of the femme fatale in this tale of jealousy, escape, and greed. Written in prose every bit as surging and brutal as the hidden beaches and shark-hunting she describes.” -- Anna

New from Ten Speed Press and the author of Candy Is Magic, Baking Gold: How to Bake (Almost) Everything with 3 Doughs, 2 Batters + One Magic Mix, by Jami Curl. (Read more about the magic Jami Curl here.)

New from Yale University Press in their marvelous Jewish Lives Series, Stan Lee: A Life in Comics, by Liel Leibovitz.

New from Tin House Books, The Last Taxi Driver: A Novel, by Lee Durke.

“A wild, funny, poetic fever dream that will change the way you think about America.”—George Saunders

Now in paperback from Simon and Schuster, We Speak for Ourselves: How Woke culture Prohibits Progress, by D. Watkins. Read more by and about the author here.

New from Soho, Quotients: A Novel, by Tracy O’Neill.  Two people search for connection in a world of fractured identities and aliases, global finance, big data, intelligence bureaucracies, algorithmic logic, and terror. (Read the review in Ploughshares here.)

Our Frightful Friday Summer Symposium on Promethean Horror continues this lovely day with “Some Experiments with a Head” from our venerable guest lecturer Dick Donovan. 

New from Picador, Good Kids, Bad City: A Story of Race and Wrongful Conviction in America. In his new book, The Washington Post's Kyle Swenson examines the wrongful conviction of three black Cleveland men and the flawed justice system that imprisoned them. (Read the Kirkus review here.)

New from Henry Holt, The Unsuitable, by Molly Pohlig. The book  is a fierce blend of Gothic ghost story and Victorian novel of manners that’s also pitch perfect for our current cultural moment.

"The Unsuitable is a fiercely feminist Gothic novel of manners and body horror, that portrays spinsterhood, self-image, and mental illness in Victorian times in fresh light." --Book Riot "20 Must-Read Debut Novels of 2020"