Posted on September 10, 2019 at 10:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

The New York Times declares that today is Super Tuesday for books, and that’s no exaggeration.

In addition to The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, the following four books are hitting virtual and physical bookshelves today:

The Institute, by Stephen King.

From the blurb: "In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. … 

"In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal."

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, by Malcolm Gladwell.

From the blurb: "(Gladwell) revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland — throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt.

"Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world."

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement, by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.

From the blurb: "Nothing could have prepared (reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey) for what followed the publication of their initial (Harvey) Weinstein story on October 5, 2017. Within days, a veritable Pandora’s box of sexual harassment and abuse was opened.

"Women all over the world came forward with their own traumatic stories. Over the next twelve months, hundreds of men from every walk of life and industry were outed following allegations of wrongdoing. But did too much change — or not enough?"

Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America, by James Poniewozik.

From the blurb: "Television has entertained America, television has ensorcelled America, and with the election of Donald J. Trump, television has conquered America. In Audience of One, New York Times chief television critic James Poniewozik traces the history of TV and mass media from the Reagan era to today, explaining how a volcanic, camera-hogging antihero merged with America’s most powerful medium to become our forty-fifth president."

And as a bonus, we learned today that Elena Ferrante will publish a new book in November — her first in four years.

Ferrante gained widespread fame for her Neapolitan quartet that began with My Brilliant Friend, later adapted into an HBO series.

Neither her Italian nor English publisher released the title, but the latter did tweet an excerpt.

Categories: Today in Books

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