DEATH VALLEY is the most profound book yet from the visionary author of MILK FED and THE PISCES, a darkly funny novel about grief that becomes a desert survival story.

DEATH VALLEY is the most profound book yet from the visionary author of MILK FED and THE PISCES, a darkly funny novel about grief that becomes a desert survival story.

The most profound book yet from the visionary author of MILK FED and THE PISCES, a darkly funny novel about grief that becomes a desert survival story.

In Melissa Broder’s astounding new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow --- for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path, thanks to a receptionist who recommends a nearby hike.

Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant.

This is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal and finest. This is DEATH VALLEY.

EVERYTHING I LEARNED, I LEARNED IN A CHINESE RESTAURANT tells the story of Curtis Chin’s time growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in 1980s Detroit.

EVERYTHING I LEARNED, I LEARNED IN A CHINESE RESTAURANT tells the story of Curtis Chin’s time growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in 1980s Detroit.

This “vivid, moving, funny, and heartfelt” memoir tells the story of Curtis Chin’s time growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in 1980s Detroit (Lisa Ko, author of THE LEAVERS).

1980s Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone --- from the city’s first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples --- could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned to embrace his identity as a gay ABC, or American-born Chinese; where he navigated the divided city’s spiraling misfortunes; and where --- between helpings of almond boneless chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and some of his own, less savory culinary concoctions --- he realized just how much he had to offer to the world, to his beloved family and to himself.

Served up by the cofounder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and structured around the very menu that graced the tables of Chung’s, EVERYTHING I LEARNED, I LEARNED IN A CHINESE RESTAURANT is both a memoir and an invitation: to step inside one boy’s childhood oasis, scoot into a vinyl booth and grow up with him --- and perhaps even share something off the secret menu.