The author of THE THINGS THEY CARRIED delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery sparks “a satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit” (Kirkus, starred review).

The author of THE THINGS THEY CARRIED delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery sparks “a satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit” (Kirkus, starred review).

An American Master returns: the author of THE THINGS THEY CARRIED delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery sparks “a satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit” (Kirkus, starred review).

At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National Bank in Northern California.

“How much is on hand, would you say?” he asked the teller. “I’ll want it all.”

“You’re robbing me?”

He revealed a Temptation .38 Special.

The teller, a diminutive redhead named Angie Bing, collected $81,000.

Boyd stuffed the cash into a paper grocery bag.

“I’m sorry about this,” he said, “but I’ll have to ask you to take a ride with me.”

So begins the adventure of Boyd Halverson --- star journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JCPenney manager --- and his irrepressible hostage, Angie Bing. Haunted by his past and weary of his present, Boyd has one goal before the authorities catch up with him: settle a score with the man who destroyed his life. By Monday, the pair reach Mexico; by winter, they are in a lakefront mansion in Minnesota. On their trail are hitmen, jealous lovers, ex-cons, an heiress, a billionaire shipping tycoon, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, and the ghosts of Boyd’s past. Everyone, it seems, except the police.

In the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, AMERICA FANTASTICA delivers a biting, witty and entertaining story about the causes and costs of outlandish fantasy, while also marking the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. And at the heart of the novel, amid a teeming cast of characters, readers will delight in the tug-of-war between two memorable and iconic human beings --- the exuberant savior-of-souls Angie Bing and the penitent but compulsive liar Boyd Halverson. Just as Tim O’Brien’s modern classic, THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, so brilliantly reflected the unromantic truth of war, AMERICA FANTASTICA puts a mirror to a nation and a time that has become dangerously unmoored from truth and greedy for delusion.

With echoes of EDUCATED and BORN A CRIME, HOW TO SAY BABYLON is the stunning story of Safiya Sinclair’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

With echoes of EDUCATED and BORN A CRIME, HOW TO SAY BABYLON is the stunning story of Safiya Sinclair’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

With echoes of EDUCATED and BORN A CRIME, HOW TO SAY BABYLON is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.

In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.

HOW TO SAY BABYLON is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, HOW TO SAY BABYLON is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.

From Jesmyn Ward --- the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow --- comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.

From Jesmyn Ward --- the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow --- comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.

From Jesmyn Ward --- the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow --- comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.

LET US DESCEND is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing and replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land --- the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps and rivers of the American South. LET US DESCEND is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.