From the acclaimed author of Foreskin’s Lament, a memoir of the author’s attempt to escape the biblical story he’d been raised on and his struggle to construct a new story for himself and his family.

Shalom Auslander was raised like a veal in a dysfunctional family in the Orthodox community of Monsey, New York: the son of an alcoholic father; a guilt-wielding mother; and a violent, overbearing God. Now, as he reaches middle age, Auslander begins to suspect that what plagues him is something worse, something he can’t so easily escape: a story. The story. One indelibly implanted in him at an early age, a story that told him he is fallen, broken, shameful, disgusting, a story we have all been told for thousands of years, and continue to be told by the religious and secular alike, a story called “Feh.”

Yiddish for “Yuck.”

Feh follows Auslander’s midlife journey to rewrite that story, a journey that involves Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a Pulitzer-winning poet, Job, Arthur Schopenhauer, GHB, Wolf Blitzer, Yuval Noah Harari and a pastor named Steve in a now-defunct church in Los Angeles.

Can he move from Feh to merely meh? Can he even dream of moving beyond that?

Auslander’s recounting of his attempt to exorcize the story he was raised with—before he implants it onto his children and/or possibly poisons the relationship of the one woman who loves him—isn’t sacred. It is more-than-occasionally profane. And like all his work, it is also relentlessly funny, subversively heartfelt and fearlessly provocative.

Shalom Auslander was raised in Monsey, New York. Nominated for the Koret Award for writers under thirty-five, he has published articles in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Tablet magazine, The New Yorker, and has had stories aired on NPR’s This American Life. Auslander is the author of the short story collection Beware of God, the memoir Foreskin’s Lament, and the novel Hope: A Tragedy. He is the creator of Showtime’s Happyish. He lives in Los Angeles.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years―she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan―which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined―and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

Alison Espach is the author of the novels The Adults, a New York Times Editors' Choice and a Barnes & Noble Discover pick, and Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, which was named a best book of 2022 by the Chicago Tribune and NPR. Her short stories and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, Vogue, Outside, Joyland, and other places. She is a professor of creative writing at Providence College in Rhode Island.

The debut of a dynamite new voice from the South, Love and Hot Chicken is a spicy and hilarious Tennessee story about family, friendship, fried chicken, and two girls in love.

The Chickie Shak is something of a historical landmark. Red clapboard walls, thriving wasp population, yard-toilets resplendent with sunflowers. My best friend Lee Ray and I used to come after our softball games and snag a picnic table while our mammas ordered the home team special. Truth is, most people around here order the same thing until the day somebody throws their ashes off a roller coaster at Dollywood. The line snakes around the building as far as you can see, the grimiest bunch of Jessies, Pearls, and Scooters you ever did behold, hobnobbing in the parking lot from noon until night.

When PJ Spoon returns home for her beloved daddy’s funeral, she doesn’t expect to stick around. Why abandon her PhD program at Vanderbilt for the humble charms of her hometown, Pennywhistle, Tennessee? Mamma’s broken heart, that’s why. But truth be told, PJ’s own heart ain’t doing too good either. She impulsively takes a job as a fry cook at Pennywhistle’s beloved Chickie Shak, where locals gather for Nashville-style hot chicken. It may not be glamorous, but it’s something to do.

Fate shakes up PJ’s life again when the town rallies around the terribly retro and terribly fun Hot Chicken Pageant. PJ finally notices her cute redheaded coworker Boof, a singer-songwriter with a talent as striking as her curly hair, and learns to fear her smack-talking manager, Linda.

As PJ and Boof fall for each other, Boof’s search for her birth mother—a Pennywhistle native—catapults the budding couple into a mystery that might be better left unsolved. The Chickie Shak pageant takes off, spurring old rivalries and new friendships in this tale of unexpected connections and new beginnings.

Mary Liza Hartong lives and writes in her hometown of Nashville. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in English and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She also holds a master's from Dartmouth in Creative Writing and a master's from the University College Cork in British and American Literature via Fulbright grant. Mary Liza is the aunt of five boisterous nieces and a proud member of the queer community. When she's not writing, you can find her combing yard sales for treasures with her fiancée, Bridget. Love and Hot Chicken is her first novel.

From comedy legend Eric Idle, the fascinating inside story of bringing Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Broadway as the unlikely theatrical hit Spamalot.

On March 17, 2005, Spamalot debuted on Broadway to rapturous reviews for its star-studded creative team, including creators Eric Idle and John du Prez, director Mike Nichols, and stars Hank Azaria, David Hyde Pierce, Sara Ramirez, Tim Curry, and more. But long before the show was the toast of Broadway and the winner of three Tony Awards, it was an idea threatening to fizzle out before it could find its way into existence.

Now, in The Spamalot Diaries, Eric Idle shares original journal entries and raw email exchanges—all featuring his whip-smart wit—that reveal the sometimes bumpy, always entertaining path to the show’s unforgettable run. In the months leading up to that opening night, financial anxieties were high with a low-ceiling budget and expectations that it would take two years to break even. Collaborative disputes put decades-long friendships to the test. And the endless process of rewriting was a task as passionate as it was painstaking. Still, there’s nothing Idle would change about that year. Except for the broken ankle. He could do without the broken ankle.

Chronicling every minor mishap and triumph along the way, as well as the creative tension that drove the show to new heights, The Spamalot Diaries is an unforgettable look behind the curtain of a beloved musical and inside the wickedly entertaining mind of one of our most treasured comic performers.

Eric Idle is a comedian, actor, author, and singer-songwriter who found immediate fame on television with the sketch-comedy show Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Following its success, the group began making films that include Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Eric wrote, directed, and created The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, the world’s first-ever mockumentary, as well as the Tony Award–winning musical Spamalot. His memoir Always Look on the Bright Side of Life was a New York Times bestseller.

Patrick O’Hara is called back to his guncle duties . . . this time for a big family wedding in Italy.

Patrick O’Hara is back. It’s been five years since his summer as his niece Maisie and nephew Grant’s caretaker after their mother’s passing. The kids are back in Connecticut with their dad, and Patrick has relocated to New York to remain close by and relaunch his dormant acting career. After the run of his second successful sit-com comes to a close, Patrick feels on top of the world . . . professionally. But some things have had to take a back seat. Looking down both barrels at fifty, Patrick is single again after breaking things off with Emory. But at least he has a family to lean on. Until that family needs to again lean on him.

When Patrick’s brother, Greg, announces he’s getting remarried in Italy, Maisie and Grant are not thrilled. Patrick feels drawn to take the two back under his wing. As they travel through Europe on their way to the wedding, Patrick tries his best to help them understand love, much as he once helped them comprehend grief. But when they arrive in Italy, Patrick is overextended managing a groom with cold feet; his sister, Clara, flirting with guests left and right; a growing rivalry with the kids’ charming soon-to-be-launt (lesbian aunt), and two moody young teens trying to adjust to a new normal, all culminating in a disastrous rehearsal dinner.

Can Patrick save the day? Will teaching the kids about love help him repair his own love life? Can the change of scenery help Patrick come to terms with finally growing up? Gracing the page with his signature blend of humor and heart, Steven Rowley charms with a beloved story about the complicated bonds of family, love, and what it takes to rediscover yourself, even at the ripe age of fifty.

Steven Rowley is the New York Times bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus, a Washington Post Notable Book; The Editor, an NPR Best Book of the Year; The Guncle, winner of the 2023 Thurber Prize for American Humor in Writing, and Goodreads Choice Awards finalist for Novel of the Year; The Celebrants, a Today Show Read with Jenna book club pick; The Guncle Abroad, a USA Today bestseller; and The Dogs of Venice. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages. He resides in Palm Springs, California.

Tabitha is a lonely fifty-year-old biographer who, in order to restore her self-respect and pay her rent, attempts to write two biographies simultaneously: one about an actor so famous his face is on the side of buses, and the other about a popular writer of children’s books recently outed as an author of erotic fiction.

Is Tabitha ready to deal with interviewing an actor so handsome and charismatic she thinks he should be bottled and sprayed on belligerent people as a form of crowd control? Can she form a genuine friendship with a cult novelist who pressures her to compromise her values?

While facing these and other challenges, Tabitha is bedeviled by memories of her long-ago divorce and the terrible wedding when, accidentally bumped on a balcony, she shot off into the shrubbery. Is it true, she wonders, that there’s probably a dead body beneath the floating rot of any marriage? When surrounded by pretentious beautiful people, does it help to imagine their intestines are full of worms? Are champagne bubbles the devil’s air pockets? Is it ever too late to change your life—from the bottom up?

Lee Upton is a poet, novelist, and essayist. Her books include Wrongful, Visitations: Stories, The Tao of Humiliation, Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles, and The Day Every Day Is (winner of the Saturnalia Books Prize). A sequel to Tabitha, Get Up is forthcoming in 2026. Lee Upton’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, and in many other journals, as well as three editions of Best American Poetry. Her awards include the Open Book Award from the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, the Lyric Poetry Award and The Writer/Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, and the National Poetry Series Award.

In this engaging follow up to How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, the recipient of PEN New England Award for nonfiction and finalist for the National Book Award sharply examines and explains Black life and culture with equal parts candor and humor.

In Magically Black and Other Essays, Jerald Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique to create a bracing and often humorous examination of Black American life. He thoughtfully addresses the inherent complexities of topics as eclectic as incarceration, home renovations, gentrification, the crip walk, pimping, and the rise of the MAGA movement, approaching them through various Black perspectives, including husband, father, teacher, and writer. The collection’s overarching theme is captured in the titular essay, which examines the culture of heroic action African Americans created in response to their enslavement and oppression, giving proof to Albert Murray’s observation that the “fire in the forging process . . . for all its violence, does not destroy the metal that becomes the sword.”

Jerald Walker’s work has appeared in publications such as the Harvard Review, Creative Nonfiction, the Iowa Review, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Mother Jones, as well as six editions of The Best American Essays series and the Pushcart Prizes. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the James A. Michener Foundation, Walker is a professor of creative writing and African American literature at Emerson College. He lives outside Boston, Massachusetts.