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Beneath the Wage retheorizes capitalism from the perspective of the service economy, challenging conventional assumptions about how work is waged, regulated, managed, and automated

Today, 80 percent of U.S. workers do service work, from delivering takeout to mopping floors to teaching. Each time we are handed a bag of groceries or a cup of coffee, call for a cab or have our homework graded, we confront both the enormity and the intimacy of the contemporary service sector.

Do these jobs have anything in common? Who is doing this work? And what kind of labor politics does it generate?

If service work has often been treated as a footnote to modern capitalism, Beneath the Wage reveals it as crucial to understanding how exploitation functions today. Uncovering a history that runs from eighteenth-century servants to present-day gig workers, Annie McClanahan retheorizes capitalism from the perspective of the service economy, challenging conventional assumptions about how work is waged, regulated, managed, and automated.

Assembling a diverse set of sources for understanding and reimagining service work--from reality television and conceptual poetry to novels and workers' own descriptions of what they do--McClanahan explores three paradigmatic types of contemporary service labor: superexploited tipwork, deskilled clerical microwork, and informalized gigwork. She shows how work done "beneath the wage" depends on racialized and gendered forms of economic domination, is often excluded from labor organizing and regulation, and yet has begun to generate a new politics of social reproduction and solidarity.

Robert Cooper--deputy assistant attorney general for counterintelligence in the DOJ's National Security Division--has built a storied career distinguished by high-profile arrests and prosecutions of enemy spies. One morning, he's approached by a Russian sleeper agent looking to defect. The agent offers Cooper alarming information: Russian operatives have infiltrated the US government at its highest levels, including a mole in the senior ranks of the FBI. Cooper's investigations lead to the discovery of a clandestine Russian plot involving deep-cover agents in senior government positions. As Cooper and his team at the DOJ race to uncover the Kremlin's plans and unmask the traitors, a coup in Russia brings to power a militant extremist regime seemingly intent on sidelining the US on the world stage while Russia retakes its former Soviet territories. In Robert B. McCaw's fast-paced novel, high-stakes political intrigue mixes with riveting moments of international espionage.

Postwar New York City famously expired in a 1970s tableau of burning Bronx tenements, subway graffiti, crushing debt, and the tabloid headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead." From its ashes the city reemerged to reach new heights, whether in stock averages or the gleaming pencil towers punctuating Midtown. But at ground level the city's basic institutions were cracking. The city was rebuilt on a foundation of deep inequality.

This elegant history traces the making of contemporary New York over the half-century from the fiscal crisis of the 1970s to the Covid pandemic. The focus is on city life in three of its key dimensions: housing, schooling, and policing. With finance and real estate driving the city's growth, each of these areas became more exclusive, less democratic. Affordable housing grew scarce, with the homeless population surging and working New Yorkers paying rents well above the 30 percent standard of affordability. Underfunded public schools were crowded out by better-resourced charter schools and academies, magnet schools, and gifted-and-talented programs. Policing was the most volatile flashpoint over this fifty-year period. Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Broken Windows strategy of attacking crime by cracking down on minor offenses escalated into Michael Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk policy, which targeted young Blacks and Latinos and yielded relatively few arrests. The city's deepening inequality was heavily racialized, one of many connections between this New York story and those of cities across the country.

The rich cast of characters ranges from mayors, governors, and headline public figures like Al Sharpton, to behind-the-scenes reformers like the progressive educator Deborah Meier, to the everyday New Yorkers who organized to support rent guidelines or local control of the schools. It is in a widespread civic engagement that the city's progressive traditions continue to thrive.

A poet watches the limbs of a eucalyptus tree get sawed off: the image persists, refracting and recurring across poems of art, language, selfhood, memory, and loss.

Joan Mitchell said, When I talk about love, I mean loving a tree. When I talk about love, I mean loving where a tree used to be.

Men assess the eucalyptus tree growing on the poet's street; a crane arrives. The sound of a chainsaw rings in the air and branches begin to fall. This tree-cutting haunts the poet and becomes the locus from which the rest of the collection spirals. It refracts across works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Mitchell, and Hilma af Klint, whose painting series lends the collection its title and who becomes a model for engaging with the world. At the core of the collection, the long poem "Eureka" examines the violent 1885 expulsion of Chinese Americans from the eponymous California town. Roving, evocative, and intricate, Tree of Knowledge is rooted in Victoria Chang's crystalline voice and generous, probing gaze, and by certain images --trees, a hanging figure, a branch, fingertips, a briefcase--that resurface like apparitions.

What do you do when someone you love, maybe the person you love most in the world, is in trouble--even drowning? Do you jump in to save them? Will you be able to bring both of you back to shore?

One night, Virginia Eubanks received the kind of news we all fear. Her beloved partner had been brutally beaten, just steps from their house.

Virginia jumped into the water.

She dived into the responsibilities of being a primary caregiver. In the weeks, months, and years that followed, she and her partner struggled to stay afloat in the sea of tasks required to keep them both safe and alive despite wave upon wave of setbacks: police disinterest, suspended health insurance, inadequate medical care, lost income, lost friends, endless paperwork, and, for J, a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, Virginia herself developed what is known as collateral PTSD, a condition common among caregivers but rarely discussed.

Virginia looked for help.

She turned to reliable sources for survival tips: scientists, therapists, trauma theorists, social movements. But it wasn't until she happened on an old lifesaving manual that she found advice that actually helped. Inspired by its lessons, she signed up for instruction in wilderness first aid, kayak self-rescue, Winter Survival 101, map and compass use, bushwhacking, lifeguarding. She went out in search of other people's stories and of experts, interviewing everyone from neuroscientists to forest rangers. She gathered skills and knowledge that made her feel strong, competent, more prepared for the challenges ahead.

As disarmingly funny as it is quietly wise, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving is the story--heart-wrenching and all too relatable--of how one woman tried to save her beloved and learned that she would also have to save herself. It is a moving, hopeful love story about two people
caught in their own kind of wilderness, trying not just to survive but to truly care for each other. Built from
cataclysmic loss and tenacious love, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving challenges readers to reconsider the ways in which we tend our loved ones and ourselves, and it reminds us: no one survives the wilderness alone.

The quintessential guide for new parents while they navigate the joys and challenges of their baby's first year.

Parenting these days is harder than ever, and having a new baby in the age of social media is both a blessing and a curse. It can be hard to know what information out there is sound and trustworthy.

In Hiccups: A Pediatrician Mom's Guide to Surviving Your First Year of Parenthood, Dr. Diane Arnaout provides a down-to-earth and (very, very) honest guide for the first year of your baby's life. She covers the most common questions she gets daily in her office and on social media-she's seen and heard it all-and breaks down the science of babies in an easy way for any parent looking to be led by evidence, not influencers. From reflux to snot, food allergies to vaccines, sleep regressions to illnesses, Dr. Diane leaves no stone unturned. And every topic discussed feels like a conversation with a good friend-who also happens to be a pediatrician.

Hiccups provides new parents with encouragement and reassurance from a pediatrician mom who's been there, with a dose of humor and personal anecdotes alongside evidence and science. Featuring easy-to-read recommendations for at-home care and guidance for when to call the doctor, Hiccups lets parents know the weird "normals" of babies, understand the science behind the way they are, and experience the joy of every milestone reached.

From an acclaimed archaeological writer, a worldwide history of hunting

"Offers a comprehensive, authoritative history tracing hunting's influence on culture and society through the ages."--Bill Heavy, Wall Street Journal

Hunting is one of humanity's most ancient and universal activities. It has been embedded in every facet of our lives, shaping social bonds, power hierarchies, and interactions with the spirit world. This book tells the story of how hunting evolved from a means of survival practiced with clubs and spears to a genteel display of royal power, and how it has become, in today's world, complicated and hotly contested.

In this wide-ranging study, Brian Fagan discusses how Neanderthals stalked prey and killed at close range, how hunting evolved as a political spectacle, and how commercial and trophy hunting precipitated an ecological crisis. He invites us to hunt with Charlemagne, explains how there was more to the demise of North American bison herds than rifles, and describes how influential figures such as John Muir, George Bird Grinnell, and Theodore Roosevelt fought for conservation during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Filled with lively stories, fascinating discoveries, and compelling characters, Fagan's exploration of hunting--a companion to his Fishing--offers an informed and entertaining history of an essential human pursuit.

In Null Entity, sequel to Seth Haddon's bloody and sapphic Volatile Memory, Wylla and Sable take their revenge to the very corporation keeping the galaxy turning.

"A gorgeously tender exploration of human connection in a post-human universe."--The Washington Post, on Volatile Memory

With her identity erased from the Corporate Federation, Wylla is a ghost in the machine: untraceable, unpredictable, and fueled by vengeance. She fights alongside Sable, the digital consciousness she loves in ways no system could ever define. Together, they've built a reputation for tearing through VisorForge's carefully constructed lies.

But notoriety has a cost.

When one of their attacks draws the attention of the Edenic Order--a clandestine eco-resistance whose insurgents bloom with Old Earth flora--Wylla and Sable are offered something more than revenge: a chance to dismantle VisorForge from the roots up.

As they fall deeper into the Order's radical vision, tensions rise. Wylla: aching to change the world yet seduced by thoughts of a quiet life, free of bloodshed. Sable: pushed to her moral limits when what she's wanted since death is at her fingertips.

To survive, they'll need to embrace what makes them dangerous: two minds, one body, and a shared resolve to bring down a corporatized dystopia--no matter the cost.

This deluxe special edition features eye-catching patterned edges with sparkling magical books, allowing readers to step into the world of Waterfall Way!

In this delightful cozy fantasy, an Unremarkable girl with a remarkable destiny must save a magic library to find her forever home. Perfect for fans of Greenwild and Kiki's Delivery Service!

The Alterran Empire hasn't seen an Unremarkable in centuries . . . until Lyra Hunt. All Lyra wants is a guild to call home--preferably one with a library full of storybooks--but because she is cursed with horrible luck, nearly everyone has rejected her.

Then Lyra stumbles upon the secretive Guild of Scholars in the cozy village of Waterfall Way. With their tight-knit community and magical Library, this might finally be the perfect place for her. However, to be accepted, she must recover the Scholars' crystal, the source of their magic that was lost in a terrible fire. With the help of a mischievous furry friend, Lyra must brave the Library's cursed halls.

Lyra may have an Extremely Unremarkable past, but she'll do whatever it takes to find a home where she belongs.

The incredible true story of how three tiny sun bears in Borneo were rescued from poachers, rehabilitated, and released back into the rainforest where they belong.

Southeast Asian rainforests are home to one of the rarest and most endangered bears of all: the sun bear. Sun bears belong deep in the forest, far from humans. But this is the true story of three little bears who were taken from their wild home . . .

Follow Tan-Tan, Boboi, and Kitud from their heartbreaking beginnings as cubs stolen from their natural habitat, through their heroic rescue by conservationists, until at last they are released back into the wild rainforest of Borneo--because that's where a bear belongs.

This captivating nonfiction picture book features insightful fact pages about the amazing flora and fauna of the rainforest and the importance of this incredible ecosystem alongside inspiring information about how to protect endangered sun bears.

In this blistering science fiction epic, international bestselling author Richard Swan presents a thrilling tale of survival and an eviscerating examination of totalitarianism.

THE INFINITE STATE begins at a flashpoint in the lives of a widowed party member, a disgraced investigator, and a hypersled pilot--entangled in a plot to escape the suffocating authority of a fascist state.

WHO GIVES YOU LIFE?
PATER AETERNUS.

Katherine Fuller's husband is dead. As an esteemed member of Pater Aeternus--governing party of the fascist, galaxy-spanning Decurion Empire--he has left behind an estate of immeasurable wealth. And Katherine is going to inherit it.

WHO GIVES YOU PURPOSE?
PATER AETERNUS.

Life under the Eternal Father is rigidly stratified, surveilled, and controlled--each new day to be endured, not lived. But with Katherine's newfound fortune, she is presented with a rare and dangerous opportunity: purchase a virgin world, and create a better, fairer society.

WHO GIVES YOU JOY?
PATER AETERNUS.

But the Empire cannot allow its wayward daughter to succeed. And as Katherine works in secret, recruiting allies she's not even sure she can trust, she will discover exactly how far Pater Aeternus is willing to go to stop her. Because Katherine is going to create something nobody has seen for many years.

A democracy.

An Icelandic night may hide secrets and affairs - or even bodies - in this gruesomely cathartic horror thriller from the author of The Night Guest.

Unnur was living a normal, if lonely, life until a black cat showed up at her door.

When she tracks down the cat's wayward owner, she finds a young woman just as lost and in need of help. Like a gust of cold air in a Reykjavík night, Ásta and her pet slip into Unnur's life.

It's unexpected, but welcome. Unnur likes the company, and she begins to rely on Ásta in turn. But like a black cat, trouble has been tailing her new friend, and Unnur is the only one there for Ásta when things take a violent turn.

The two women quickly learn: nothing tests a friendship like blood on your hands.

Also by Hildur Knútsdóttir:
The Night Guest

"Furry feline fun that youngsters will clamor for again and again." --Kirkus Reviews

Oliver the cat wants to climb higher. From the chair to the table, from the table to the cupboard, from the cupboard to the tree, from the tree to the roof . . . Being up high is the perfect place to be . . . right?

A playful and heartwarming story full of humor and a touch of magic. For children ages 4 years and up who love challenges and surprises.

Seventeen-year-old Lottie Mitchell is a liar. She might also be a horrible person--because someone good wouldn't have caused the death of her best friend, Val. Messina, Lottie's other best friend, has her own secrets to worry about--she's running from her terrifying, abusive stepfather. When the friends learn that Val had planned to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, they set off into the desert with Val's ashes and her beloved copy of Wild to fulfill her dream. The only problem, aside from being woefully underprepared for the treacherous terrain and the fast-approaching fire season, is that without Val playing peacekeeper, Lottie and Messina are at each other's throats. The secrets they carry are heavier than their packs, and they're going to have to find their trust in each other--and themselves--if they're going to survive.

We Became Wild is a gripping, feral story about grief, friendship, and what it means to be a woman alone in the world.