"The Secret History meets The Price of Salt" (Vogue) in this "equal parts dangerous and delicious" (Entertainment Weekly) novel about queer desire, religious zealotry, and the hunger for transcendence among the members of a cultic chapel choir at a Maine boarding school--and the ambitious, terrifyingly charismatic girl that rules over them. When shy, sensitive Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan's Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by Byronic "prep school prophet" (and St. Dunstan's alum) Sebastian Webster, who died at nineteen, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. She soon finds the intensity she is looking for among the insular, Webster-worshipping members of the school's chapel choir, which is presided over by the charismatic, neurotic, overachiever Virginia Strauss. Virginia is as fanatical about her newfound Christian faith as she is about the miles she runs every morning before dawn. She expects nothing short of perfection from herself--and from the member of the choir. Virginia inducts the besotted Laura into a world of transcendent music and arcane ritual, illicit cliff-diving and midnight crypt visits: a world that, like Webster's novels, finally seems to Laura to be full of meaning. But when a new school chaplain challenges Virginia's hold on the "family" she has created, and Virginia's efforts to wield her power become increasingly dangerous, Laura must decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go. The World Cannot Give is a "hypnotic and intense" (Shondaland) meditation on the power, and danger, of wanting more from the world.

In Strange Rites, Tara Isabella Burton takes a tour through contemporary American religiosity. As the once dominant totems of civic connection and civil discourse--traditional churches--continue to sink into obsolescence, people are looking elsewhere for the intensity and unity that religion once provided. We're making our own personal faiths - theistic or not - mixing and matching our spiritual, ritualistic, personal, and political practices in order to create our own bespoke religious selves. We're not just building new religions in 2019, we're buying them, from Gwyneth Paltrow's gospel of Goop, to the brilliantly cultish SoulCycle, to those who believe in their special destiny on Mars. In so doing, we're carrying on a longstanding American tradition of religious eclecticism, DIY-innovation and "unchurched" piety (and highly effective capitalism). Our era is not the dawn of American secularism, but rather a brand-bolstered resurgence of American pluralism, revved into overdrive by commerce and personalized algorithms, all to the tune of "Hallellujah"--America's most popular and spectacularly misunderstood wedding song.

The author of Social Creature and The World Cannot Give returns with a New York City fairy tale about two sisters that fall under the spell of an underworld cabaret troupe that might be a dangerous cult--but one that makes the capitalist world left in its wake feel like a sinister cult itself. Rose has come a long way. Raised--and often neglected--by a wayward mother in New York City's chaotic bohemia, Rose has finally built the life she's always wanted: a good job at a self-help startup, a clean apartment, an engagement to a stable if self-satisfied tech CEO who shares her faith in human potential, hard work, and the sacrifice of childish dreams. Rose's sister Cecilia, on the other hand, never grew up. Irresponsible and impetuous, prone to jetting off to a European monastery one month and a falcon rescue the next, Cecilia has spent her life in pursuit of fairy-tale narratives of transcendence and true love--grand ideas Rose knows never work out in the real world. When Cecilia declares she's come home to New York for good, following the ending of a whirlwind marriage, Rose hopes Cecilia might finally be ready to face adulthood: compromises and all. But then Cecilia gets involved with the Avalon: a cultish-sounding cabaret troupe--one that appears only at night, on a mysterious red boat that travels New York's waterways--and soon vanishes: one of a growing number of suspicious disappearances among the city's lost and loneliest souls. The only way Rose can find Cecilia is by tracking down the Avalon herself. But as Rose gets closer to solving the mystery of what happened to her sister, the Avalon works its magic on her, too. And the deeper she goes into the Avalon's underworld, she more she begins to question everything she knows about her own life, and whether she's willing to leave the real world behind.

As a pandemic and racial reckoning exposed society's faults, Christian thinkers were laying the groundwork for a better future. A public health and economic crisis provoked by Covid-19. A social crisis cracked open by the filmed murder of George Floyd. A leadership crisis laid bare as the gravity of a global pandemic met a country suffocating in political polarization and idolatry. In the spring of 2020, Comment magazine created a publishing project to tap the resources of a Christian humanist tradition to respond collaboratively and imaginatively to these crises. Plough soon joined in the venture. So did seventeen other institutions. The web commons that resulted - Breaking Ground - became a one-of-a-kind space to probe society's assumptions, interrogate our own hearts, and imagine what a better future might require. This volume, written in real time during a year that revealed the depths of our society's fissures, provides a wealth of reflections and proposals on what should come after. It is an anthology of different lenses of faith seeking to understand how best we can serve the broader society and renew our civilization. Contributors include Anne Snyder, Susannah Black, Mark Noll, N. T. Wright, Gracy Olmstead, Doug Sikkema, Patrick Pierson, Jennifer Frey, J. L. Wall, Michael Wear, Dante Stewart, Joe Nail, Benya Kraus, Patrick Tomassi, Amy Julia Becker, Jeffrey Bilbro, Marilynne Robinson, Cherie Harder, Joel Halldorf, Irena Dragas Jansen, Katherine Boyle, L. M. Sacasas, Jake Meador, Joshua Bombino, Chelsea Langston Bombino, Aryana Petrosky Roberts, Stuart McAlpine, Heather C. Ohaneson, Oliver O'Donovan, W. Bradford Littlejohn, Anthony M. Barr, Michael Lamb, Shadi Hamid, Samuel Kimbriel, Christine Emba, Brandon McGinley, John Clair, Kurt Armstrong, Peter Wehner, Jonathan Haidt, Dhananjay Jagannathan, Phil Christman, Gregory Thompson, Duke Kwon, Carlo Lancellotti, Tara Isabella Burton, Charles C. Camosy, Joseph M. Keegin, Luke Bretherton, Tobias Cremer, and Elayne Allen.

'This funny, startling, insightful story of the selfie, from Dürer to the Kardashians, is a must read if you want to understand how we reinvent ourselves every time we reveal ourselves' PETER POMERANTSEV Today's defining celebrities have crafted public personae that walk the tightrope between authenticity and artificiality. Ordinary people now follow suit: lovingly tending our 'personal brands' for economic gain and self-expression alike. Instagram culture is part of a story that goes back centuries. The vision that we not only can but should 'make' our own selves to shape our own destiny is an inextricable part of the formation of the modern world. As traditional powers of pre-modernity - church and throne - waned, a new myth took their place: that of the 'self-made man', whose unique powers of personality - or canny self-presentation - give him not just the opportunity, but the obligation, to remake reality in the image of what he wants it to be. From the Renaissance genius to the Regency dandy, the American prophets of capitalism to the aspirational übermensch of European fascism, Hollywood's Golden Age to today's Silicon Valley, Self-Made takes us on a dazzling tour of modern history's most prominent self-makers, uncovering both self-making's liberatory power, and the dangers this idea can unleash. 'Self-Made is both revelatory and a warning about the ways that focus on the self distorts our individual lives and the broader society' FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

'A Ripleyesque exploration of female insecurity set among the socialites of Manhattan' Guardian, Books of the Year

'An irresistible novel about a toxic friendship taken to the extreme' Elle

Lavinia has it all.

Lavinia has an apartment on the Upper East Side.

Lavinia goes to glittering parties that last from dusk till dawn.

Lavinia wants to seize life and live it to the fullest.

Lavinia is going to die soon.

Louise knows this.

You know this.

In Strange Rites, Tara Isabella Burton takes a tour through contemporary American religiosity. As the once dominant totems of civic connection and civil discourse--traditional churches--continue to sink into obsolescence, people are looking elsewhere for the intensity and unity that religion once provided. We're making our own personal faiths - theistic or not - mixing and matching our spiritual, ritualistic, personal, and political practices in order to create our own bespoke religious selves. We're not just building new religions in 2019, we're buying them, from Gwyneth Paltrow's gospel of Goop, to the brilliantly cultish SoulCycle, to those who believe in their special destiny on Mars. In so doing, we're carrying on a longstanding American tradition of religious eclecticism, DIY-innovation and "unchurched" piety (and highly effective capitalism). Our era is not the dawn of American secularism, but rather a brand-bolstered resurgence of American pluralism, revved into overdrive by commerce and personalized algorithms, all to the tune of "Hallellujah"--America's most popular and spectacularly misunderstood wedding song.

'We're all now self-makers, whether we like it or not - and this witty, sceptical book is the thought-provoking story of how we got here' GUARDIAN 'This funny, startling, insightful story of the selfie, from Dürer to the Kardashians, is a must read if you want to understand how we reinvent ourselves every time we reveal ourselves' PETER POMERANTSEV Today's defining celebrities have crafted public personae that walk the tightrope between authenticity and artificiality. Ordinary people now follow suit: lovingly tending our 'personal brands' for economic gain and self-expression alike. Instagram culture is part of a story that goes back centuries. The vision that we not only can but should 'make' our own selves to shape our own destiny is an inextricable part of the formation of the modern world. As traditional powers of pre-modernity - church and throne - waned, a new myth took their place: that of the 'self-made man', whose unique powers of personality - or canny self-presentation - give him not just the opportunity, but the obligation, to remake reality in the image of what he wants it to be. From the Renaissance genius to the Regency dandy, the American prophets of capitalism to the aspirational übermensch of European fascism, Hollywood's Golden Age to today's Silicon Valley, Self-Made takes us on a dazzling tour of modern history's most prominent self-makers, uncovering both self-making's liberatory power, and the dangers this idea can unleash. 'Both revelatory and a warning about the ways that focus on the self distorts our individual lives and the broader society' FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

'This funny, startling, insightful story of the selfie, from Dürer to the Kardashians, is a must read if you want to understand how we reinvent ourselves every time we reveal ourselves' PETER POMERANTSEV Today's defining celebrities have crafted public personae that walk the tightrope between authenticity and artificiality. Ordinary people now follow suit: lovingly tending our 'personal brands' for economic gain and self-expression alike. Instagram culture is part of a story that goes back centuries. The vision that we not only can but should 'make' our own selves to shape our own destiny is an inextricable part of the formation of the modern world. As traditional powers of pre-modernity - church and throne - waned, a new myth took their place: that of the 'self-made man', whose unique powers of personality - or canny self-presentation - give him not just the opportunity, but the obligation, to remake reality in the image of what he wants it to be. From the Renaissance genius to the Regency dandy, the American prophets of capitalism to the aspirational übermensch of European fascism, Hollywood's Golden Age to today's Silicon Valley, Self-Made takes us on a dazzling tour of modern history's most prominent self-makers, uncovering both self-making's liberatory power, and the dangers this idea can unleash. 'Self-Made is both revelatory and a warning about the ways that focus on the self distorts our individual lives and the broader society' FRANCIS FUKUYAMA