Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far removed from America’s own in this explosive debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of FRIDAY BLACK.

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far removed from America’s own in this explosive debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of FRIDAY BLACK.

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own in this explosive debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of FRIDAY BLACK.

She felt their eyes, all those executioners…

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE --- or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment --- a highly popular, highly controversial, profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators, and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE’s corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo, and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar’s path have devastating consequences.    

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a “new and necessary American voice” (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review).

From the New York Times bestselling author of CUTTING FOR STONE comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, and following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret.

From the New York Times bestselling author of CUTTING FOR STONE comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, and following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret.

From the New York Times bestselling author of CUTTING FOR STONE comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, and following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret.

THE COVENANT OF WATER is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller CUTTING FOR STONE, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, THE COVENANT OF WATER is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: In every generation, at least one person dies by drowning --- and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a 12-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her 40-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl --- and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi --- will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph, as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, THE COVENANT OF WATER is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.