We Were Once a Family is a work of nonfiction that follows the Hart family tragedy of 2018 while examining the distortions in the American child welfare system. Through testimony and reporting, it shows how separation, poverty, race, and institutional failure shaped the lives of the families involved.

By following one tragedy closely, the book gradually reveals the structural distortions that divide families.

The Berry Pickers is a novel that begins with the disappearance of a young Mi'kmaq girl in 1960s Maine and moves between the perspectives of Joe and Norma as buried family secrets come to light. Loss, memory, and the search for identity unfold in a quiet but emotionally forceful story.

The memory of a missing child and the family secrets that surface years later meet in a story that keeps widening in scope.

An Immense World is a science book that follows the radically different sensory worlds of animals, tracing hidden layers of smell, sound, touch, and electric and magnetic perception. It challenges human-centered assumptions by showing how other species experience reality in ways we can only partly imagine.

Using the eyes of other animals, the book opens a door to sensory layers most of us never notice.

A crack in the neighborhood pool unsettles the routines of its swimmers and opens into a story about memory, care, and loss. At the center is a mother losing her memory and the daughter who can no longer keep the old life intact.

A crack in the pool becomes a crack in memory and family life.

This essay collection traces Black performance through cultural history and personal memory, showing how acts of expression shape American life. Each scene opens into a larger meditation on art, power, and inheritance.

A quiet but forceful reading of the history held inside performance.

Ming Tsu, a Chinese American assassin, crosses the American West in a revenge quest after his life is shattered. The novel mixes the frontier Western with magical realism and a forceful sense of loss.

A debut novel that remakes the Western as a story of revenge and loss.

A nonfiction work that uses whales as a clue to examine the relationship between humans and the ocean, cultural history, and scientific history. Combining ecological perspectives and literary considerations, this work reconsiders humankind's understanding and ethics of the ocean.

A nonfiction work that uses whales as a clue to examine the relationship between humans and the ocean, cultural history, and scientific history.

An ensemble drama set in Brooklyn in 1969, depicting the lives of residents whose lives intersect in the wake of a shooting incident. It depicts race, poverty, and forgiveness with humor and compassion, illuminating the complex bonds of community.

An ensemble drama set in Brooklyn in 1969, depicting the lives of residents whose lives intersect in the wake of a shooting incident.

A nonfiction work that reconstructs in detail the occurrence and background of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. Technical factors, human judgment, and political cover-ups are illustrated using primary documents and testimonies to reveal the full picture of the accident.

A nonfiction work that reconstructs in detail the occurrence and background of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.

An experimental feature film that takes the form of a family vacation and deals with the immigration issue and the separation of children at the border between Mexico and the United States. Questioning the boundaries between records and stories, exploring the multilayered nature of voices and the role of memory.

An experimental feature film that takes the form of a family vacation and deals with the immigration issue and the separation of children at the border between Mexico and the United States.

A frank memoir that uses the weight of the body, secrecy, addiction, and family ties to examine the pressures of living as a Black man. Personal pain opens outward into larger social structures.

A memoir that reads social gravity through the memory carried in one body.

A novel moving between 1980s Chicago and present-day Paris, depicting the losses, friendships, and family ruptures left by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The memory of crisis continues to shape the present.

A novel that looks at the time of crisis and the years that followed, connecting both into a single arc of loss.

Set in Brooklyn from the Great Depression into the Second World War, this historical novel follows Anna Kerrigan as she searches for the truth behind her father's disappearance and pushes into the male world of naval-yard diving. Organized crime on the waterfront, family silence, and the pull of the sea converge in a story about loneliness and the hunger for freedom in a city at war.

For Anna, descending into the dark sea is also a search for her missing father and for herself.

A nonfiction book by Matthew Desmond that uses Evicted to explore politics and low-income housing, with eviction in view.

A story where politics meets low-income housing.

Colson Whitehead's novel follows the enslaved girl Cora as she escapes the American South through the Underground Railroad and confronts the violence and historical wounds that shape her search for freedom.

An escape story that reveals the shape of history itself.

A memoir with photographs that traces the photographer's family history, mortality, and artistic life.

A spy novel narrated by a double agent who leaves Saigon and struggles with loyalty, exile, and divided identity.

A memoir that follows wrongful convictions and criminal-justice reform efforts to argue for mercy and accountability.

A World War II novel in which the lives of a blind French girl and a German boy cross in occupied France.

A nonfiction portrait of photographer Edward Curtis, following his determination to preserve Indigenous cultures through image-making while also tracing the larger history of the American West.

Behind the photographs lies a relentless urge to record a vanishing world.

A novel in which teenage Dell Parsons is uprooted by his parents’ bank robbery and carried toward Canada, where violence, loss, and crossing borders reshape his life.

One family crime pushes a boy’s life across the border.

A biography of Catherine the Great that combines intimate portraiture with imperial history, tracing both her personality and the transformation of Russia under her rule.

A portrait of one empress reveals an empire.

A novel about love and regret set against the collapse of Ireland’s boom economy, where a private affair mirrors wider social and financial upheaval.

The aftermath of an affair echoes a national collapse.