Books

Black Candle Women Diane Marie Brown Four generations, one house, and a family curse that a teenage crush finally forces into the open. 1 recommender Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West Eleven hundred pages through the Balkans as fascism rose, part travelogue and part argument about why Europe was about to tear itself apart again. 1 recommender Black Reconstruction in America W. E. B. Du Bois W. E. B. Du Bois overturned the accepted history of Reconstruction by putting Black Americans at the center of it. 1 recommender Blessed Unrest Paul Hawken Hundreds of thousands of small groups are working to heal the planet. Hawken asks what they add up to. 1 recommender Blink Malcolm Gladwell Snap judgements are often better than considered ones, and sometimes catastrophically worse. What separates the two? Blitzscaling Reid Hoffman How a handful of companies grew from startup to giant at breakneck speed, and the counterintuitive rules that let them Blonde Joyce Carol Oates Norma Jeane Baker imagined from the inside, at length, as a novel rather than a life. 1 recommender Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story Barry Mazor Their close harmony shaped the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkel, and their partnership collapsed into a decade of not speaking to each other. 1 recommender Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy A scalp-hunting gang crosses the 1850s borderlands, and the desert regards the violence with exactly the same attention it gives a rock. 2 recommenders Bloomberg by Bloomberg Michael Bloomberg Fired from Salomon at 39, Bloomberg tells how he bet the payout on a single machine and built a media empire from it Blue Moon Alicia Keys Poems and reflections framed as the shared journal of Mama Mae and LeeLee, blending verse with illustration. Blue Sisters Coco Mellors Three sisters return to an empty New York apartment a year after the fourth one died. 1 recommender Blueprint Nicholas A. Christakis Christakis argues evolution wired us for cooperation and friendship, not just tribalism and conflict. 1 recommender Blues Legacies and Black Feminism Angela Davis Three blues singers read as social theorists who had the language decades before the movement did. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin Marion Meade The Jazz Age through the lives of Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald and Edna Ferber. 1 recommender Bodies Susie Orbach Why so many people treat their own bodies as a problem to fix, and who profits when they do. 1 recommender Bodily Harm Margaret Atwood A journalist chasing a soft travel feature lands in a Caribbean election that turns violent, and cannot write her way out. Body of Evidence Patricia Cornwell Kay Scarpetta investigates the murder of a writer whose last manuscript has vanished, in the second Scarpetta novel. Bodyline Autopsy David Frith 1 recommender Bone in the Throat Anthony Bourdain Bourdain's debut novel: a young chef in a mob-owned Little Italy restaurant gets caught between a killing he witnessed and the FBI who wants him to talk. Book of Birds Robert Macfarlane Spells and prose set against Jackie Morris watercolours, rigorous about ornithology and unembarrassed about wonder. The follow-up to The Lost Words, made for reading aloud. 1 recommender Book of Uncommon Prayer: 100 Celebrations of the Miracle & Muddle of the Ordinary Brian Doyle A hundred prayers for bad drivers, teenagers and cancer wards, written in sentences that keep going long after they might stop. 1 recommender Bootstrap Your Life Oliver Cookson Building Myprotein from a spare room into a business sold for hundreds of millions, without a penny of outside investment. 1 recommender Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City Bench Ansfield American cities burned through the 1970s, and a good deal of it was landlords collecting insurance. 1 recommender Born to Buy Juliet B. Schor How marketers target children, and what growing up surrounded by advertising does to them. Borne Jeff VanderMeer A scavenger in a ruined city finds a small creature tangled in the fur of a giant flying bear. Bournville Jonathan Coe Jonathan Coe's novel following one English family through seventy-five years, in the Europa Editions edition. 1 recommender Box 21 Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström's crime novel about sex trafficking from Romania to Sweden, in the Picador paperback. Boyd Robert Coram A difficult genius fights the Pentagon bureaucracy and changes how America's armed forces fight. 1 recommender Boys & Sex Peggy Orenstein Young men talk candidly about sex, love and masculinity, and about what nobody is teaching them. Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer Robin Wall Kimmerer's 2013 book on reciprocity between people and the land, from Milkweed Editions. 1 recommender Brain Rules for Baby John Medina A molecular biologist separating what research supports about early childhood from what is merely sold to parents. 1 recommender Braintrust Patricia S. Churchland Morality traced to the neurobiology of attachment and care rather than to rules handed down. 1 recommender Brandon Sanderson’s White Sand Volume 1 Brandon Sanderson, Rik Hoskin A Cosmere graphic novel set on Taldain, where sand mastery is power and the weakest of the Sand Masters is suddenly the only one left. Brandon Sanderson’s White Sand Volume 2 Brandon Sanderson, Rik Hoskin Kenton fights to hold the Sand Masters together against a Diem that wants him gone, while Khriss keeps her own reasons quiet. Brave Men Ernie Pyle The most-read correspondent of the war, writing about privates rather than generals. 1 recommender