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Best Wishes, Warmest Regards

Daniel Levy

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
GLOBE AND MAIL BESTSELLER

The official tie-in book for the beloved, nine-time Emmy® Award-winning series Schitt's Creek. 


This beautifully produced, keepsake coffee-table book is the ultimate celebration of the series, the town, the characters, and the state of mind that is Schitt's Creek. Capturing the essence and alchemy of all six seasons of what is now considered to be one of the most groundbreaking comedy television series of the last decade, Best Wishes, Warmest Regards is a gift to fans everywhere who have made the show their own.

Included are character profiles from the cast of Johnny, Moira, David, and Alexis, and all of the characters that populate the town, major moments from Moira's endorsement of Herb Ertlinger Winery, to Patrick and David's first kiss, to Cabaret and the Rose Family Christmas episode. Also included are special features, such as the complete, illustrated catalogs of David's knits and Moira's wigs, Moira's vocabulary, Alexis's adventures, and behind-the-scenes moments from Dan and Eugene Levy and the cast of Schitt's Creek.

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Face the Music

Peter Duchin

 

In this poignant memoir, the internationally celebrated bandleader reflects on family, illness, grief, and a bygone era of glamour, contemplating not just his career but the history of midcentury music and nightlife—and the enormously important role that the bandstand played in his life.

The internationally-famous bandleader Peter Duchin's six decades of performing have taken him to the most exclusive dance floors and concert halls in the world. He has played for presidents, kings, and queens, as well as for civil rights and cultural organizations. But in 2013, Duchin suffered a stroke that left him with limited use of his left hand, severely impacting his career.

Days of recuperating from his stroke—and later from a critical case of Covid-19—inspired Duchin to reconsider his complicated past. His father, the legendary bandleader Eddy Duchin, died when Peter was twelve; his mother, Marjorie Oelrichs Duchin, died when he was just six days old. In the succeeding decades, Duchin would follow his father to become the epitome of mid-20th Century glamour. But it was only half a century later, in the aftermath of his sudden illnesses, that he began to see his mother and father not just as the parents he never had, but as the people he never got to know; and at the same time, to reconsider the milieu in which he has been both a symbol and a participant.

More than a memoir, Face the Music offers a window into the era of debutantes and white-tie balls, when such events made national headlines. Duchin explores what “glamour” and “society” once meant, and what they mean now. With sincerity and humor, Face the Music offers a moving portrait of an extraordinary life, its disruptions, and revitalization.

 

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Dilla Time

Dan Charnas

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

"This book is a must for everyone interested in illuminating the idea of unexplainable genius.” —QUESTLOVE

Equal parts biography, musicology, and cultural history, Dilla Time chronicles the life and legacy of J Dilla, a musical genius who transformed the sound of popular music for the twenty-first century.

He wasn’t known to mainstream audiences, even though he worked with renowned acts like D’Angelo and Erykah Badu and influenced the music of superstars like Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson. He died at the age of thirty-two, and in his lifetime he never had a pop hit. Yet since his death, J Dilla has become a demigod: revered by jazz musicians and rap icons from Robert Glasper to Kendrick Lamar; memorialized in symphonies and taught at universities. And at the core of this adulation is innovation: a new kind of musical time-feel that he created on a drum machine, but one that changed the way “traditional” musicians play.

In Dilla Time, Dan Charnas chronicles the life of James DeWitt Yancey, from his gifted childhood in Detroit, to his rise as a Grammy-nominated hip-hop producer, to the rare blood disease that caused his premature death; and follows the people who kept him and his ideas alive. He also rewinds the histories of American rhythms: from the birth of soul in Dilla’s own “Motown,” to funk, techno, and disco. Here, music is a story of Black culture in America and of what happens when human and machine times are synthesized into something new. Dilla Time is a different kind of book about music, a visual experience with graphics that build those concepts step by step for fans and novices alike, teaching us to “see” and feel rhythm in a unique and enjoyable way.

Dilla’s beats, startling some people with their seeming “sloppiness,” were actually the work of a perfectionist almost spiritually devoted to his music. This is the story of the man and his machines, his family, friends, partners, and celebrity collaborators. Culled from more than 150 interviews about one of the most important and influential musical figures of the past hundred years, Dilla Time is a book as delightfully detail-oriented and unique as J Dilla’s music itself.

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Restoring Your Historic House

Scott T. Hanson

Although there are other books about renovating old houses, this is the first that prioritizes the identification and preservation of the historic, character-defining features of a house as a starting point in the process. That is the purpose of this book: to describe and illustrate a best-practices approach for updating historic homes for modern life in ways that do not attempt to turn an old house into a new one. The book also suggests many ways to save money in the process, without settling for cheap or inappropriate solutions.

Scott Hanson is a historic-building preservation professional and has 40 years' experience rehabilitating historic houses. He has illustrated this authoritative book with hundreds of step-by-step photos, illustrations, charts, and decision-making guides. Interspersed throughout are photo essays of 13 restored historic houses representing a range of periods and architectural styles: Italianate, Victorian, Queen Anne, Federal, Colonial, Colonial Revival, Greek Revival, Ranch, Adobe, Craftsman, Shingle, and Rustic. With interior and exterior photography by David Clough, these multi-page features show what can be achieved when a historic home is renovated with a desire to preserve or restore as much historic character as possible.

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Architects of an American Landscape

Hugh Howard

A dual portrait of America's first great architect, Henry Hobson Richardson, and her finest landscape designer, Frederick Law Olmsted--and their immense impact on America

As the nation recovered from a cataclysmic war, two titans of design profoundly influenced how Americans came to interact with the built and natural world around them through their pioneering work in architecture and landscape design.

Frederick Law Olmsted is widely revered as America's first and finest parkmaker and environmentalist, the force behind Manhattan's Central Park, Brooklyn's Prospect Park, Biltmore's parkland in Asheville, dozens of parks across the country, and the preservation of Yosemite and Niagara Falls. Yet his close friend and sometime collaborator, Henry Hobson Richardson, has been almost entirely forgotten today, despite his outsized influence on American architecture--from Boston's iconic Trinity Church to Chicago's Marshall Field Wholesale Store to the Shingle Style and the wildly popular "open plan" he conceived for family homes. Individually they created much-beloved buildings and public spaces. Together they married natural landscapes with built structures in train stations and public libraries that helped drive the shift in American life from congested cities to developing suburbs across the country.

The small, reserved Olmsted and the passionate, Falstaffian Richardson could not have been more different in character, but their sensibilities were closely aligned. In chronicling their intersecting lives and work in the context of the nation's post-war renewal, Hugh Howard reveals how these two men created original all-American idioms in architecture and landscape that influence how we enjoy our public and private spaces to this day.

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How to Talk to Your Boss About Race

Y-Vonne Hutchinson

An indispensable practical toolkit for dismantling racism in the workplace without fear

Reporting and personal testimonials have exposed racism in every institution in this country. But knowing that racism exists isn’t nearly enough. Social media posts about #BlackLivesMatter are nice, but how do you push leadership towards real anti-racist action?

Diversity and inclusion strategist Y-Vonne Hutchinson helps tech giants, political leaders, and Fortune 500 companies speak more productively about racism and bias and turn talk into action. In this clear and accessible guide, Hutchinson equips employees with a framework to think about race at work, prepares them to have frank and effective conversations with more powerful leaders, helps them center marginalized perspectives, and explains how to leverage power dynamics to get results while navigating backlash and gaslighting.

How to Talk To Your Boss About Race is a crucial handbook to moving beyond fear to push for change. No matter how much formal power you have, you can create antiracist change at work.

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Beyond Digital

Paul Leinwand

Two world-renowned strategists detail the seven leadership imperatives for transforming companies in the new digital era.

Digital transformation is critical. But winning in today's world requires more than digitization. It requires understanding that the nature of competitive advantage has shifted—and that being digital is not enough.

In Beyond Digital, Paul Leinwand and Matt Mani from Strategy&, PwC's global strategy consulting business, take readers inside twelve companies and how they have navigated through this monumental shift: from Philips's reinvention from a broad conglomerate to a focused health technology player, to Cleveland Clinic's engagement with its broader ecosystem to improve and expand its leading patient care to more locations around the world, to Microsoft's overhaul of its global commercial business to drive customer outcomes. Other case studies include Adobe, Citigroup, Eli Lilly, Hitachi, Honeywell, Inditex, Komatsu, STC Pay, and Titan.

Building on a major new body of research, the authors identify the seven imperatives that leaders must follow as the digital age continues to evolve:

  • Reimagine your company's place in the world
  • Embrace and create value via ecosystems
  • Build a system of privileged insights with your customers
  • Make your organization outcome-oriented
  • Invert the focus of your leadership team
  • Reinvent the social contract with your people
  • Disrupt your own leadership approach

 

Together, these seven imperatives comprise a playbook for how leaders can define a bolder purpose and transform their organizations.

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The Founders

Jimmy Soni

* Instant Bestseller * New York Times Editors’ Choice *

“A gripping account of PayPal’s origins and a vivid portrait of the geeks and contrarians who made its meteoric rise possible” (Wall Street Journal)—including Elon Musk, Amy Rowe Klement, Peter Thiel, Julie Anderson, Max Levchin, Reid Hoffman, and many others whose stories have never been shared.

“Deeply reported and bracingly written, this book is an indispensable guide to modern innovation and entrepreneurship.” —Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of Code Breaker

Today, PayPal’s founders and earliest employees are considered the technology industry’s most powerful network. Since leaving PayPal, they have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven twenty-first-century innovation and entrepreneurship. Their names stir passions; they’re as controversial as they are admired.

Yet for all their influence, the story of where they first started has gone largely untold. Before igniting the commercial space race or jumpstarting social media’s rise, they were the unknown creators of a scrappy online payments start-up called PayPal. In building what became one of the world’s foremost companies, they faced bruising competition, internal strife, the emergence of widespread online fraud, and the devastating dot-com bust of the 2000s. Their success was anything but certain.

In The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, award-winning author and biographer Jimmy Soni explores PayPal’s turbulent early days. With hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to thousands of pages of internal material, he shows how the seeds of so much of what shapes our world today—fast-scaling digital start-ups, cashless currency concepts, mobile money transfer—were planted two decades ago. He also reveals the stories of countless individuals who were left out of the front-page features and banner headlines but who were central to PayPal’s success.

Described as “an intensely magnetic chronicle” (The New York Times) and “engrossing” (Business Insider), The Founders is a story of iteration and inventiveness—the products of which have cast a long and powerful shadow over modern life. This narrative illustrates how this rare assemblage of talent came to work together and how their collaboration changed our world forever.

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The Revolution That Wasn't

Spencer Jakab

January 2021- in one week, a motley crew of retail traders on Reddit's r/wallstreetbets forum seemingly accomplish the impossible - they bring down some of the biggest, richest players on Wall Street. Their weapon is GameStop, a failing retailer whose shares briefly become the most-traded security on the planet and the subject of intense media coverage.

The Revolution That Wasn't is the riveting story of how the meme stock squeeze unfolded, and of the real architects (and winners) of the GameStop rally. Drawing on his years as a stock analyst at a major bank, Jakab exposes technological and financial innovations such as Robinhood's habit-forming smartphone app as ploys to get our dollars within the larger story of evolving social and economic pressures. The surprising truth? What appeared to be a watershed moment - a revolution that stripped the ultra-powerful hedge funds of their market influence and placed power back in the hands of everyday investors, only tilted the odds further in the house's favour.

In this nuanced analysis, Jakab shines a light on the often-misunderstood profit motives and financial mechanisms to show how this so-called revolution is, on balance, a bonanza for Wall Street. But, Jakab argues that there really is a way for ordinary investors to beat the pros- by refusing to play their game.
 

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How Are You Going to Pay for That?

Ryan Cooper

A compelling alternative view of the relationship between our politics and our economy.

Throughout America, structural problems are getting worse. Economic inequality is near Gilded Age heights, the healthcare system is a mess, and the climate crisis continues to grow. Yet most ambitious policy proposals that might fix these calamities are dismissed as wastefully expensive by default. From the kitchen table to Congress, debates are punctuated with a familiar refrain: “How are you going to pay for that?”

This question is designed to shut down policy pushes up front, minimizing any interference with the free market. It comes from neoliberalism, an economic ideology that has overtaken both parties. Proponents insist that markets are naturally-occurring and apolitical—and that too much manipulation of the economy will make our society fall apart. Ryan Cooper argues that our society already is falling apart, and the logically preposterous views of neoliberalism are to blame. Most progressives understand this instinctively, but many lack the background knowledge to make effective economic counterarguments.

How Are You Going To Pay For That? is filled with engaging discussions and detailed strategies that policymakers and citizens alike can use to assail even the most entrenched lines of neoliberal logic, and start to undo these long-held misconceptions. Equal parts economic theory, history, and political polemic, this is an essential roadmap for winning the key battles to come.

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Surrounded by Setbacks

Thomas Erikson

Part of the bestselling Surrounded by Idiots series!

In Surrounded by Setbacks, internationally bestselling author Thomas Erikson turns his attention to a universal problem: what to do when things go wrong.

Too often it seems like our dreams and ambitions—whether it’s finally getting that corner office, lacing up your running shoes again, or building a flourishing relationship with your partner—are derailed by one roadblock or another. So how do we learn to take setbacks in stride and still achieve our goals?

In Surrounded by Setbacks, Erikson answers that question. Using simple, actionable steps, Erikson helps readers identify the “why” behind their goal, create a concrete plan towards achieving it, and—most importantly—avoid many of the most common pitfalls that derail us when we attempt something new. The simple 4-color behavior system that made Surrounded by Idiots revolutionary now helps readers reflect on how they respond to adversity, giving them the self-awareness to negotiate the inevitable obstacles of life with confidence.

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The Awesome Human Project

Nataly Kogan

Stop struggling and start living your best life—with the inspiring, proven program that's transformed over a million people.

We are all experiencing unprecedented levels of stress and burnout. Exhaustion is at an all-time high. Leaders are depleted, employees are burning out at an alarming rate, and parents met their breaking point long ago. We are struggling and in desperate need of a new path forward.
 
In The Awesome Human Project, Nataly Kogan, emotional fitness and leadership expert and author of Happier Now, shows us the way. She makes the compelling case that while challenge in life is constant, struggle is optional. Here, she shares an accessible, super-practical, and unboring guide for reducing daily struggle and burnout—so you can live, work, and lead with more energy, joy, and meaning, even during difficult times.
 
Nataly wrote The Awesome Human Project in response to her own journey. A refugee who achieved tremendous success, she had come to see struggle as a way of life. But her burnout taught her a powerful lesson: you can’t give what you don’t have. She writes, “Strengthening your emotional fitness is an essential investment in your success and leadership, and an act of love to everyone you care about.”
 
Filled with simple, science-backed practices and Nataly’s contagious energy, The Awesome Human Project will teach you how to strengthen your emotional fitness skills, create a more supportive relationship with yourself as well as your thoughts and emotions, reduce self-doubt, and cultivate more honest and meaningful connections with others.
 
The Awesome Human Project is a book that you do—not just a book that you read. It includes:
 
•  Nataly’s proven, science-backed, five-week program to boost your emotional fitness
•  Bite-sized neuroscience lessons so that you can learn to be the boss of your brain
•  What awesome leaders do differently and why it matters
•  Ways to get rid of guilt around self-care for good
•  An “SOS” section to get you unstuck right now
•  Nataly’s wildly popular “Notes to Self,” with inspiration to support your progress
•  Awesome Human Awards!
 
There is an Awesome Human within every single one of us. The Awesome Human Project is the essential guidebook to help you embrace your Awesome Human and become the best version of yourself—with courage and compassion. 

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The Good Life Method

Meghan Sullivan

Two Philosophers Ask and Answer the Big Questions About the Search for Faith and Happiness

For seekers of all stripes, philosophy is timeless self-care. Notre Dame philosophy professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko have reinvigorated this tradition in their wildly popular and influential undergraduate course “God and the Good Life,” in which they wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes life meaningful.
 
Now they invite us into the classroom to work through issues like what justifies our beliefs, whether we should practice a religion and what sacrifices we should make for others—as well as to investigate what figures such as Aristotle, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Iris Murdoch, and W. E. B. Du Bois have to say about how to live well. Sullivan and Blaschko do the timeless work of philosophy using real-world case studies that explore love, finance, truth, and more. In so doing, they push us to escape our own caves, ask stronger questions, explain our deepest goals, and wrestle with suffering, the nature of death, and the existence of God.

Philosophers know that our “good life plan” is one that we as individuals need to be constantly and actively writing to achieve some meaningful control and sense of purpose even if the world keeps throwing surprises our way. For at least the past 2,500 years, philosophers have taught that goal-seeking is an essential part of what it is to be human—and crucially that we could find our own good life by asking better questions of ourselves and of one another. This virtue ethics approach resonates profoundly in our own moment.

The Good Life Method is a winning guide to tackling the big questions of being human with the wisdom of the ages.

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Death in Cornwall

G.M. Malliet

A humorous cozy set in the picturesque surroundings of Cornwall starring Cambridge DCI Arthur St. Just and his fiancée Portia De’Ath.

To celebrate their engagement, DCI Arthur St. Just and Portia De’Ath visit the quiet village of Maidsfell in Cornwall. Upon arriving they find the villagers in an uproar over plans to redevelop the local seafront.

The fishermen want to build a new slipway to aid their business, but many residents worry it will spoil the view for the tourists who help drive the economy. After a heated village meeting on the issue, St. Just overhears an argument involving Lord Bodwally – an unpopular aristocrat staunchly opposed to the plans. Later, Bodwally’s lifeless body is discovered. It’s murder.

Although Bodwally was disliked, who’d go so far as to kill him? St. Just, although an outsider from Cambridge, feels compelled to help local authorities investigate. Is Bodwally’s death linked to the seafront, his suspect business dealings, or a secret from the past? One thing is certain, the fallout threatens to change Maidsfell forever . . .

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Front Page Murder

Joyce St. Anthony

In this World War II-era historical mystery series debut by Joyce St. Anthony, small-town editor Irene Ingram has a nose for news and an eye for clues.

Irene Ingram has written for her father’s newspaper, the Progress Herald, ever since she could grasp a pencil. Now she’s editor in chief, which doesn’t sit well with the men in the newsroom. But proving her journalistic bona fides is the least of Irene’s worries when crime reporter Moe Bauer, on the heels of a hot tip, turns up dead at the foot of his cellar stairs.

An accident? That’s what Police Chief Walt Turner thinks, and Irene is inclined to agree until she finds the note Moe discreetly left on her desk. He was on to a big story, he wrote. The robbery she’d assigned him to cover at Markowicz Hardware turned out to be something far more devious. A Jewish store owner in a small, provincial town, Sam Markowicz received a terrifying message from a stranger. Moe suspected that Sam is being threatened not only for who he is…but for what he knows.

Tenacious Irene senses there’s more to the Markowicz story, which she is all but certain led to Moe’s murder. When she’s not filling up column inches with the usual small-town fare—locals in uniform, victory gardens, and scrap drives—she and her best friend, scrappy secretary Peggy Reardon, search for clues. If they can find the killer, it’ll be a scoop to stop the presses. But if they can’t, Irene and Peggy may face an all-too-literal deadline.

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Night of the Were-Cat

Eileen Watkins

Cassie McGlone’s Comfy Cats grooming service can turn a scruffy stray into a glamorous Cat-dashian. But with a drug-peddling killer at loose in her picturesque hometown of Chadwick, New Jersey, she’ll need to comb through some dangerous suspects to avert a catastrophe . . .

To an animal lover like Cassie, all cats are beautiful . . . though some may be more photogenic than others. When a customer brings in Quentin, a Maine Coon who looks more wolf than feline, it gives Cassie an idea. The owner of Chadwick’s retro movie theater wants to promote an upcoming werewolf movie marathon—how about a werewolf lookalike contest for pets?

Things are getting hairy around Chadwick in other ways too. A thief targets the clinic where Cassie’s veterinarian boyfriend Mark works, making off with anesthetics. Soon after, a young woman dies in a related drug incident. Wanting to help the police, Cassie and her good friend, Dawn, go undercover on the singles scene to investigate a suspected “party drug” ring, getting Mark’s protective hackles up. But the villain may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing—someone Cassie knows and trusts. And if her sleuthing skills aren’t up to scratch, the culprit may slink away to kill again . . .

Praise for Claw & Disorder
 
“Cat and mystery lovers alike will be charmed.”
Publishers Weekly



 

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The Family Chao: A Novel

Lan Samantha Chang

One of Literary Hub's and The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2022
A Goodreads Readers' Most Anticipated Mystery of 2022

An acclaimed storyteller returns with “a gorgeous and gripping literary mystery” that explores “family, betrayal, passion, race, culture and the American Dream” (Jean Kwok).

The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family’s secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last.

Before long, brash, charismatic, and tyrannical patriarch Leo is found dead—presumed murdered—and his sons find they’ve drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town. The ensuing trial brings to light potential motives for all three brothers: Dagou, the restaurant’s reckless head chef; Ming, financially successful but personally tortured; and the youngest, gentle but lost college student James. As the spotlight on the brothers tightens—and the family dog meets an unexpected fate—Dagou, Ming, and James must reckon with the legacy of their father’s outsized appetites and their own future survival.

Brimming with heartbreak, comedy, and suspense, The Family Chao offers a kaleidoscopic, highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town.

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One Italian Summer

Rebecca Serle

“[A] magical trip worth taking.” Associated Press

“Rebecca Serle is a maestro of love in all its forms.” —Gabrielle Zevin, New York Times bestselling author

The New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years returns with a powerful novel about the transformational love between mothers and daughters set on the breathtaking Amalfi Coast.

When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.

But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life.

And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening, or how—all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue.

Rebecca Serle’s next great love story is here, and this time it’s between a mother and a daughter. With her signature “heartbreaking, redemptive, and authentic” (Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author) prose, Serle has crafted a transcendent novel about how we move on after loss, and how the people we love never truly leave us.

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Hook, Line, and Sinker

Tessa Bailey

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES AND #1 USA TODAY BESTSELLER

In the follow-up to It Happened One Summer, Tessa Bailey delivers another deliciously fun rom-com about a former player who accidentally falls for his best friend while trying to help her land a different man…

King crab fisherman Fox Thornton has a reputation as a sexy, carefree flirt. Everyone knows he’s a guaranteed good time—in bed and out—and that’s exactly how he prefers it. Until he meets Hannah Bellinger. She’s immune to his charm and looks, but she seems to enjoy his… personality? And wants to be friends? Bizarre. But he likes her too much to risk a fling, so platonic pals it is.

Now, Hannah's in town for work, crashing in Fox’s spare bedroom. She knows he’s a notorious ladies’ man, but they’re definitely just friends. In fact, she's nursing a hopeless crush on a colleague and Fox is just the person to help with her lackluster love life. Armed with a few tips from Westport’s resident Casanova, Hannah sets out to catch her coworker’s eye… yet the more time she spends with Fox, the more she wants him instead. As the line between friendship and flirtation begins to blur, Hannah can't deny she loves everything about Fox, but she refuses to be another notch on his bedpost. 

Living with his best friend should have been easy. Except now she’s walking around in a towel, sleeping right across the hall, and Fox is fantasizing about waking up next to her for the rest of his life and… and… man overboard! He’s fallen for her, hook, line, and sinker. Helping her flirt with another guy is pure torture, but maybe if Fox can tackle his inner demons and show Hannah he’s all in, she'll choose him instead?

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Love in the Time of Bertie

Alexander McCall Smith

The latest installment in the delightful 44 Scotland Street series finds all our favorite residents up to their usual hilarious hijinks.

In the microcosm of 44 Scotland Street, all of life’s richness is found in the glorious goings-on of its residents. There’s Domenica, whose anthropological training has honed her observations of her neighbors; Matthew, whose growing triplets are more than a handful; Bruce, whose challenge as ever is thinking of anything but himself; and Big Lou, who may just have found her shot at romance. And of course, there’s young Bertie Pollock, whose starry-eyed explorations of Edinburgh’s New Town are a touching reminder that life itself is an adventure and there’s joy to be found wherever you choose to look.

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The Silent Sisters

Robert Dugoni

An Amazon Charts, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestselling series.

In this pulse-racing thriller by the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Agent, an American sleeper cell in Russia goes silent--and it's one man's duty to find them.

After a harrowing escape from Russian agents on his last mission, Charles Jenkins thinks he's finally done with the spy game. But then the final two of the seven sisters--American assets who have been deep undercover in Russia for decades--cut off all communication with their handlers. Are they in hiding after detecting surveillance? Or have they turned and become double agents? It's Jenkins's duty to find out, but he's been added to a Russian kill list. It will require all of Jenkins's knowledge of spycraft--and an array of disguises--to return to the country undetected.

But plans go awry his first night in Moscow when Jenkins gets involved in an altercation that ends in the death of the son of one of Russia's most powerful organized crime leaders. Pursued by mafia henchmen, Russian agents, and a particularly dogged Moscow police detective, Jenkins is determined to track down the final two sisters and get them to America--or die trying. As various forces close in, Jenkins fears this time he might've pushed his luck too far.

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Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead

Elle Cosimano

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER!

From Edgar-Award nominee Elle Cosimano, comes Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead—the hilarious and heart-pounding follow-up to Finlay Donovan is Killing It.

"Cosimano skillfully combines suspense and laughs in the manner of Janet Evanovich’s early (and best) novels, finished off with a metafictional twist."—New York Times Book Review


"A funny and smart, twisty and surprising series."—Megan Miranda

Finlay Donovan is—once again—struggling to finish her next novel and keep her head above water as a single mother of two. On the bright side, she has her live-in nanny and confidant Vero to rely on, and the only dead body she's dealt with lately is that of her daughter's pet goldfish.

On the not-so-bright side, someone out there wants her ex-husband, Steven, out of the picture. Permanently. Whatever else Steven may be, he's a good father, but saving him will send her down a rabbit hole of hit-women disguised as soccer moms, and a little bit more involvement with the Russian mob than she'd like.

Meanwhile, Vero's keeping secrets, and Detective Nick Anthony seems determined to get back into her life. He may be a hot cop, but Finlay's first priority is preventing her family from sleeping with the fishes... and if that means bending a few laws then so be it.

With her next book's deadline looming and an ex-husband to keep alive, Finlay is quickly coming to the end of her rope. She can only hope there isn't a noose at the end of it...

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The Prince of the Skies

Antonio Iturbe

A gripping narrative of friendship and exploration, and an homage to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, an unforgettable writer who touched the lives of millions of readers, and who was able to see the world through the eyes of a child.

In the 1920s, long before he wrote The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was an accomplished pilot. Along with Jean Mermoz and Henri Guillaumet, he was chosen to pioneer new mail routes across the globe. No distance was too far and no mountain too high—each letter had to reach its destination. The three friends soared through the air, while back on solid ground, they dealt with a world torn apart by wars and political factions.

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London Bridge is Falling Down

Christopher Fowler

"Unbeatable fun . . . [Christopher Fowler] takes delight in stuffing his books with esoteric facts." --The Guardian

The brilliant duo of Arthur Bryant and John May uncovers a nefarious plot behind the seemingly innocuous death of an old lady--and when the case leads them to London Bridge, it all comes down on the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

When ninety-one-year-old Amelia Hoffman dies in her top-floor flat on a busy London road, it's considered an example of what has gone wrong with modern society: she slipped through the cracks in a failing system.

But detectives Arthur Bryant and John May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit have their doubts. Mrs. Hoffman was once a government security expert, though no one can quite remember her. When a link emerges between the old lady and a diplomat trying to flee the country, it seems that an impossible murder has been committed.

Mrs. Hoffman wasn't the only one at risk. Bryant is convinced that other forgotten women with hidden talents are also in danger. And, curiously, they all own models of London Bridge.

With the help of some of their more certifiable informants, the detectives follow the strangest of clues in an investigation that will lead them through forgotten alleyways to the city's fabled bridge in search of a desperate killer.

But just when the case appears to be solved, they discover that Mrs. Hoffman was smarter than anyone imagined. There's a bigger game afoot that could have terrible consequences.

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A Dash of Death

Michelle Hillen Klump

 

A Houston reporter-turned-mixologist mixes it up with murder in this series debut from Michelle Hillen Klump, superbly catering to fans of Diane Mott Davidson and Lee Hollis.

Bad news for Samantha Warren: The plucky Houston, Texas, reporter lost her job and her fiancé in rapid succession. But Sam has a way of making lemonade out of the bitterest of lemons. At a meeting of the local historical-homes council, she serves up the homemade bitters that she made as gifts for her wedding party. She intends to use that as her “in” to become an in-demand party mixologist. But the party’s over for one of the council members, who keels over dead soon after he sips the bereft bride’s bitter brew.

It turns out that the victim, Mark, was poisoned—his drink spiked with oleander. Since Sam mixed the drink that Mark imbibed right before his demise, she finds herself at the front of the suspect line. Now, she’ll have to use all of her reporter’s wisdom and wiles to clear her name.

Who could have wanted Mark dead? His wife, Gabby? His girlfriend, Darcy? Someone who wanted his seat on the council? Or another citizen of this sweet Texas town that holds some seedy secrets?

Job hunting, building her mixology business, and fending off late-night phone calls from her nearly betrothed don’t leave much time for sleuthing. But if Sam can’t “pour” over the clues to find the killer, it may soon be last call for her.

 

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The Horsewoman

James Patterson

Emotions rule us all—and turn two women’s lives into a ride they can barely control in this “hugely entertaining, riveting page-turner.” —#1 bestselling author Louise Penny

Maggie Atwood and Becky McCabe, mother and daughter, both champion riders, vowed to never, ever, go up against one another. 
 
Until the tense, harrowing competitions leading to the Paris Olympics. 
 
Mother and daughter share a dream: to be the best horsewoman in the world.
 
Coronado is Maggie’s horse. An absolutely top-tier Belgian warmblood. 
Sky is Becky’s horse. A small, speedy Dutch warmblood. 
 
Only James Patterson could bring you such breakneck speed, hair-raising thrills and spills.  
 
Only hall of fame sportswriter Mike Lupica could make it all so real.

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Mercy

David Baldacci

FBI Agent Atlee Pine’s harrowing search for her long-lost sister Mercy reaches a boiling point in this breakneck thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci. 
 
For her entire life, FBI agent Atlee Pine has been searching for her twin sister, Mercy, who was abducted at the age of six and never seen again. Mercy’s disappearance left behind a damaged family that later shattered beyond repair when Atlee’s parents inexplicably abandoned her.
 
Now, after a perilous investigation that nearly proved fatal, Atlee has finally discovered not only the reason behind her parents’ abandonment and Mercy’s kidnapping, but also the most promising breakthrough yet: proof that Mercy survived her abduction and then escaped her captors many years ago. 
 
Though Atlee is tantalizingly close to her family at last, the final leg of her long road to Mercy will be the most treacherous yet. Mercy left at least one dead body behind before fleeing her captors years before. Atlee has no idea if her sister is still alive, and if so, how she has been surviving all this time. When the truth is finally revealed, Atlee Pine will face the greatest danger yet, and it may well cost her everything.

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A Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem

Manda Collins

"[Manda] Collins is a delight" (Elizabeth Hoyt) in this fun and flirty historical rom-com, where an intrepid female reporter matches wits with a serious, sexy detective -- perfect for fans of Tessa Dare, Julia Quinn, and Netflix's Enola Holmes!
England, 1865: Newspaper columnist Lady Katherine Bascomb finds herself the subject of speculation when her latest article leads to an arrest in the murders plaguing London. The English believe women ought not to write about such vulgar things as crime, and a particularly attractive detective inspector is incensed that she's interfered with his investigation. To escape her sudden notoriety, Katherine heads to the country-only to witness a murder upon her arrival.
Detective Inspector Andrew Eversham is appalled when Lady Katherine entangles herself in one of his cases-again. Her sensationalist reporting already nearly got him kicked off the police force, and he'll be damned if he permits her to meddle a second time. Yet, her questions are awfully insightful, and he can't deny his attraction to both her beauty and brains. As the clues point to a dangerous criminal, the two soon realize their best option is working together. But with their focus on the killer lurking in the shadows, neither is prepared for the other risk the case poses-to their hearts.

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Jane and the Year Without a Summer

Stephanie Barron

"If you have a Jane Austen-would-have-been-my-best-friend complex, look no further . . . [Barron] has painstakingly sifted through the famed author's letters and writings, as well as extensive biographical information, to create a finely detailed portrait of Austen's life—with a dash of fictional murder . . . Some of the most enjoyable, well-written fanfic ever created."—O Magazine
 
May 1816: Jane Austen is feeling unwell, with an uneasy stomach, constant fatigue, rashes, fevers and aches. She attributes her poor condition to the stress of family burdens, which even the drafting of her latest manuscript—about a baronet's daughter nursing a broken heart for a daring naval captain—cannot alleviate. Her apothecary recommends a trial of the curative waters at Cheltenham Spa, in Gloucestershire. Jane decides to use some of the profits earned from her last novel, Emma, and treat herself to a period of rest and reflection at the spa, in the company of her sister, Cassandra.
 
Cheltenham Spa hardly turns out to be the relaxing sojourn Jane and Cassandra envisaged, however. It is immediately obvious that other boarders at the guest house where the Misses Austen are staying have come to Cheltenham with stresses of their own—some of them deadly. But perhaps with Jane’s interference a terrible crime might be prevented. Set during the Year without a Summer, when the eruption of Mount Tambora in the South Pacific caused a volcanic winter that shrouded the entire planet for sixteen months, this fourteenth installment in Stephanie Barron’s critically acclaimed series brings a forgotten moment of Regency history to life.

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Putin and Russia

Darryl Cunningham

"Author of more than six acclaimed graphic novels and well-known for his economical drawing and clear, explanatory narrative, Cunningham shows how the West and its leaders have been culpable in aiding Putin's rise--Obama being a particular example. Areas covered include Brexit and Trump; the crackdown on human rights, especially on homosexuality in Russia; and the poisonings--among them, journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Russia, Alexander Litvinenko in London, Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. By putting all these events into a timeline, Cunningham aims to show that Putin is opportunistic rather than the master manipulator people make him out to be: 'He's essentially a gangster and not a particularly smart one. We need to demythologise Putin if we are to beat him.'"--Provided by publisher.

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Dear Sophie, Love Sophie

Sophie Lucido Johnson

What would you say to your teenage self if you could? 

Inspired by the journals she kept growing up, Sophie Lucido Johnson began an interactive conversation between her younger self and her current self. When she began the exercise, Sophie envisioned sharing important lessons on what it means to love your body, navigate relationships, and discover what fulfills you, no matter where life takes you. But as these “exchanges” deepened, adult Sophie discovered she had much to learn about life from young Sophie as well. 

Fully illustrated with handwritten text, Dear Sophie, Love Sophie deftly explores topics like queer identity, body image, inherited trauma, belonging, privilege, heartbreak, first love, and much more in a unique and captivating way. Charming, witty, and poignant,  it reminds us that wisdom is not limited by age. 

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My Badly Drawn Life

Gipi

"You've always got to laugh at tragedy. That's why I laugh about my ailment. Ailments. About being a sexual spastic. About my perennial, cowardly, tantalizing desire to die. You can laugh about anything. Almost." Spoken by his self-depiction, these bitter words set the tone for Gipi's pitch-black humor in this unvarnished and uncompromising autobiographical tale. A young adult adrift in the world, Gipi's stand-in grapples with sexuality, insecurity, deception, depression, drug use, fading friendships, and the capricious cruelties of the world as he struggles to determine whether his life is worth living.
Drawn in Gipi's signature elegantly scribbled ink style and punctuated by vivid watercolor splashes, My Badly Drawn Life weaves through the past and present, through narratives both real and imagined, to create an impressionistic account of his complex inner life. In this kaleidoscopic journey into the depths of his psyche, Gipi processes the shadowy traumas of his upbringing; in doing so, he produces a gripping work of utter cartooning mastery.

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Moon 52 Things to Do in Chicago

Rosalind Cummings-Yeates

From that gallery in River North you haven't visited yet to the lakeside weekend you keep meaning to plan, experience something new right here at home with Moon 52 Things to Do in Chicago.

  • Cool things to do in and around the city: Wander over to the zodiac sculptures in Chinatown Square, or soak up some music and history at the Black Ensemble Theater. Try out surfing at Montrose Beach, rent a kayak on the Chicago River, or hike the elevated 606 trail. Browse for your next read at an independent bookstore, explore the street art in Pilsen, or admire the architecture on a stroll through the Beverly neighborhood. Catch a classic live blues show, sample Senegalese comfort food, or savor some Southside barbecue on a Sunday
  • Day trips and weekend getaways: Cycle through the Morton Arboretum, connect with nature in Door County, dive into history in Galena, or unwind for a couple days at the perfect lakeside cabin
  • Experiences broken down by category: Find ideas for each season, activities for kids, outdoor adventures, exploring Black history, getting to know a new neighborhood, and more
  • A local's advice: Whether it's a bucket-list museum or an underrated dive bar, local author Rosalind Cummings-Yeates knows the ins and outs of Chicago
  • Inspirational full-color photos throughout
  • Easy-to-scan planning tips: Addresses, L stops, and nearby spots, plus tips for avoiding the crowds if you're heading to a popular attraction

What are you doing this weekend? Try something new with Moon 52 Things to Do in Chicago.

 

 

About Moon Travel Guides: Moon was founded in 1973 to empower independent, active, and conscious travel. We prioritize local businesses, outdoor recreation, and traveling strategically and sustainably. Moon Travel Guides are written by local, expert authors with great stories to tell--and they can't wait to share their favorite places with you.

 

 

For more inspiration, follow @moonguides on social media.

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Ways and Means

Roger Lowenstein

"Captivating…[Lowenstein] makes what subsequently occurred at Treasury and on Wall Street during the early 1860s seem as enthralling as what transpired on the battlefield or at the White House.” —Harold Holzer, Wall Street Journal

Ways and Means, an account of the Union’s financial policies, examines a subject long overshadowed by military narratives . . .  Lowenstein is a lucid stylist, able to explain financial matters to readers who lack specialized knowledge.” —Eric Foner, New York Times Book Review

From renowned journalist and master storyteller Roger Lowenstein, a revelatory financial investigation into how Lincoln and his administration used the funding of the Civil War as the catalyst to centralize the government and accomplish the most far-reaching reform in the country’s history


Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis. Even before the Confederacy’s secession, the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. But amid unprecedented troubles Lincoln saw opportunity—the chance to legislate in the centralizing spirit of the “more perfect union” that had first drawn him to politics. With Lincoln at the helm, the United States would now govern “for” its people: it would enact laws, establish a currency, raise armies, underwrite transportation and higher education, assist farmers, and impose taxes for them. Lincoln believed this agenda would foster the economic opportunity he had always sought for upwardly striving Americans, and which he would seek in particular for enslaved Black Americans.
 
Salmon Chase, Lincoln’s vanquished rival and his new secretary of the Treasury, waged war on the financial front, levying taxes and marketing bonds while desperately battling to contain wartime inflation. And while the Union and Rebel armies fought increasingly savage battles, the Republican-led Congress enacted a blizzard of legislation that made the government, for the first time, a powerful presence in the lives of ordinary Americans. The impact was revolutionary. The activist 37th Congress legislated for homesteads and a transcontinental railroad and involved the federal government in education, agriculture, and eventually immigration policy. It established a progressive income tax and created the greenback—paper money. While the Union became self-sustaining, the South plunged into financial free fall, having failed to leverage its cotton wealth to finance the war. Founded in a crucible of anticentralism, the Confederacy was trapped in a static (and slave-based) agrarian economy without federal taxing power or other means of government financing, save for its overworked printing presses. This led to an epic collapse. Though Confederate troops continued to hold their own, the North’s financial advantage over the South, where citizens increasingly went hungry, proved decisive; the war was won as much (or more) in the respective treasuries as on the battlefields.
 
Roger Lowenstein reveals the largely untold story of how Lincoln used the urgency of the Civil War to transform a union of states into a nation. Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led by Lincoln, his cabinet, and a Congress studded with towering statesmen, changed the direction of the country and established a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

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Fugitives

Danny Orbach

Shrouded in government secrecy, clouded by myths and propaganda, the enigmatic tale of Nazi fugitives in the early Cold War has never been properly told—until now.

In the aftermath of WWII, the victorious Allies vowed to hunt Nazi war criminals “to the ends of the earth.” Yet many slipped away to the four corners of the world or were shielded by the Western Allies in exchange for cooperation.

Most prominently, Reinhard Gehlen, the founder of West Germany's foreign intelligence service, welcomed SS operatives into the fold. This shortsighted decision nearly brought his cherished service down, as the KGB found his Nazi operatives easy to turn, while judiciously exposing them to threaten the very legitimacy of the Bonn Government. However, Gehlen was hardly alone in the excessive importance he placed on the supposed capabilities of former Nazi agents; his American sponsors did much the same in the early years of the Cold War.

Other Nazi fugitives became freelance arms traffickers, spies, and covert operators, playing a crucial role in the clandestine struggle between the superpowers. From posh German restaurants, smuggler-infested Yugoslav ports, Damascene safehouses, Egyptian country clubs, and fascist holdouts in Franco's Spain, Nazi spies created a chaotic network of influence and information. This network was tapped by both America and the USSR, as well as by the West German, French, and Israeli secret services. Indeed, just as Gehlen and his U.S sponsors attached excessive importance to Nazi agents, so too did almost all other state and non-state actors, adding a combustible ingredient to the Cold War covert struggle.

Shrouded in government secrecy, clouded by myths and propaganda, the tangled and often paradoxical tale of these Nazi fugitives and operatives has never been properly told—until now.

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Hell's Half-Acre

Susan Jonusas

"Rich in historical perspective and graced by novelistic touches, grips the reader from first to last.”—Wall Street Journal

A suspense filled tale of murder on the American frontier—shedding new light on a family of serial killers in Kansas, whose horrifying crimes gripped the attention of a nation still reeling from war.


In 1873 the people of Labette County, Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried by a trailside cabin beneath an orchard of young apple trees were the remains of countless bodies. Below the cabin itself was a cellar stained with blood. The Benders, the family of four who once resided on the property were nowhere to be found. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for decades, sparking an epic manhunt for the Benders.
 
The idea that a family of seemingly respectable homesteaders—one among the thousands relocating farther west in search of land and opportunity after the Civil War—were capable of operating "a human slaughter pen" appalled and fascinated the nation. But who the Benders really were, why they committed such a vicious killing spree and whether justice ever caught up to them is a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Set against the backdrop of postbellum America, Hell’s Half-Acre explores the environment capable of allowing such horrors to take place. Drawing on extensive original archival material, Susan Jonusas introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, many of whom have been previously missing from the story. Among them are the families of the victims, the hapless detectives who lost the trail, and the fugitives that helped the murderers escape.
 
Hell’s Half-Acre is a journey into the turbulent heart of nineteenth century America, a place where modernity stalks across the landscape, violently displacing existing populations and building new ones. It is a world where folklore can quickly become fact and an entire family of criminals can slip through a community’s fingers, only to reappear in the most unexpected of places.

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The Naked Don't Fear the Water

Matthieu Aikins

A NYTBR Editor’s Choice 

“This is a book of radical empathy, crossing many borders – not just borders that separate nations, but also borders of form, borders of meaning, and borders of possibility. It is powerful and humane and deserves to find a wide, wandering readership.” — Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West

In this extraordinary book, an acclaimed young war reporter chronicles a dangerous journey on the smuggler’s road to Europe, accompanying his friend, an Afghan refugee, in search of a better future.

In 2016, a young Afghan driver and translator named Omar makes the heart-wrenching choice to flee his war-torn country, saying goodbye to Laila, the love of his life, without knowing when they might be reunited again. He is one of millions of refugees who leave their homes that year.

Matthieu Aikins, a journalist living in Kabul, decides to follow his friend. In order to do so, he must leave his own passport and identity behind to go underground on the refugee trail with Omar. Their odyssey across land and sea from Afghanistan to Europe brings them face to face with the people at heart of the migration crisis: smugglers, cops, activists, and the men, women and children fleeing war in search of a better life. As setbacks and dangers mount for the two friends, Matthieu is also drawn into the escape plans of Omar’s entire family, including Maryam, the matriarch who has fought ferociously for her children’s survival. 

Harrowing yet hopeful, this exceptional work brings into sharp focus one of the most contentious issues of our times. The Naked Don’t Fear the Water is a tale of love and friendship across borders, and an inquiry into our shared journey in a divided world.

 

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Foreverland

Heather Havrilesky

A Recommended Read from: Good Morning America • Good Housekeeping • Esquire • Shondaland • Atlanta Journal-Constitution • The Week • Lit Hub • Publishers Weekly

An illuminating, poignant, and savagely funny examination of modern marriage from Ask Polly advice columnist Heather Havrilesky

If falling in love is the peak of human experience, then marriage is the slow descent down that mountain, on a trail built from conflict, compromise, and nagging doubts. Considering the limited economic advantages to marriage, the deluge of other mate options a swipe away, and the fact that almost half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce anyway, why do so many of us still chain ourselves to one human being for life?

In Foreverland, Heather Havrilesky illustrates the delights, aggravations, and sublime calamities of her marriage over the span of fifteen years, charting an unpredictable course from meeting her one true love to slowly learning just how much energy is required to keep that love aflame. This refreshingly honest portrait of a marriage reveals that our relationships are not simply “happy” or “unhappy,” but something much murkier—at once unsavory, taxing, and deeply satisfying. With tales of fumbled proposals, harrowing suburban migrations, external temptations, and the bewildering insults of growing older, Foreverland is a work of rare candor and insight. Havrilesky traces a path from daydreaming about forever for the first time to understanding what a tedious, glorious drag forever can be.

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Secrets of the Sprakkar

Eliza Reid

The Canadian first lady of Iceland pens a book about why this tiny nation is leading the charge in gender equality, in the vein of The Moment of Lift.

Iceland is the best place on earth to be a woman—but why?

For the past twelve years, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report has ranked Iceland number one on its list of countries closing the gap in equality between men and women. What is it about Iceland that enables its society to make such meaningful progress in this ongoing battle, from electing the world’s first female president to passing legislation specifically designed to help even the playing field at work and at home?

The answer is found in the country’s sprakkar, an ancient Icelandic word meaning extraordinary or outstanding women.

Eliza Reid—Canadian born and raised, and now first lady of Iceland—examines her adopted homeland’s attitude toward women: the deep-seated cultural sense of fairness, the influence of current and historical role models, and, crucially, the areas where Iceland still has room for improvement. Throughout, she interviews dozens of sprakkar to tell their inspirational stories, and expertly weaves in her own experiences as an immigrant from small-town Canada. The result is an illuminating discussion of what it means to move through the world as a woman and how the rules of society play more of a role in who we view as equal than we may understand.

What makes many women’s experiences there so positive? And what can we learn about fairness to benefit our society?

Like influential and progressive first ladies Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Michelle Obama, Reid uses her platform to bring the best of her nation to the world. Secrets of the Sprakkar is a powerful and atmospheric portrait of a tiny country that could lead the way forward for us all.

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I Am Kind

Suzy Capozzi

I Am Kind follows a little girl who sees kindness all around her. Her mother is kind when she volunteers in the community, and her neighbor is kind when he gives her strawberries from his garden. Even her nature troop is kind when they take care of the earth! The little girl realizes that she, too, has the power to be kind, and that even small actions can have a big impact. In this new installment of the Positive Power early reader series, children will learn the affirmation “I am kind” through an encouraging story of community and everyday kindness. And it includes 2 sheets of stickers!

About the Positive Power Series:
Short on words and long on empowerment, the Positive Power early reader series teaches kids and parents alike the power of positive affirmations and how to incorporate them into their daily lives.

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The Batman (The Batman Movie)

David Lewman

This leveled reader introduces readers to Batman™ as featured in the exciting new movie The Batman, swinging into theaters on March 4, 2022! Includes a full sheet of stickers!

The Batman releases in theaters on March 4, 2022, bringing with it all the adventure and action of one of the most popular Super Heroes of all time. This all-new motion picture event follows the adventures of the Caped Crusader as he races against time to save his beloved Gotham City! Batman's friends and foes, including Catwoman™, The Riddler™, and The Penguin™, star in this leveled reader with stickers!

This Step 3 Step into Reading introduces Batman fans ages 4 to 7 to the iconic DC Super Hero, his tech, and his friends and foes. It includes more than 30 stickers to add to the fun! Step 3 readers feature engaging characters in easy-to-follow plots about popular topics for children who are ready to read on their own.

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Mouse Seasons

Leo Lionni

The first new original Leo Lionni picture book in nearly 30 years, featuring the beloved mouse Frederick as he guides his fellow mice--and young listeners--through a joyous celebration of the seasons.

There is more than one way to prepare for a long winter, as Frederick tells his friends in the classic story. Gathering food and other supplies is important, but gathering the smells, sounds, and sights of a beautiful day to recall later are just as vital. How one little mouse cheers his entire community and prepares them for a full year ahead is a story that young children will love.

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Mermaid Kenzie

Charlotte Watson Sherman

Kenzie turns her fierce love for the ocean into action, resourcefully cleaning up the beach after her mermaid-tail swimsuit tangles in floating plastic bags.

When Kenzie slips on her mermaid tail, she becomes Mermaid Kenzie, protector of the deeps. One day as Kenzie snorkels around a shipwreck, she discovers more plastic bags than fish. Grabbing her spear and mermaid net, she begins to clean up the water and the shore--inspiring other kids to help.

Beautifully written in African American Vernacular English, this poetic picture book includes back matter with information about how plastic winds up in our oceans and examples of people--some of them kids, like Kenzie--who have worked to protect the sea. Mermaid Kenzie celebrates the ways that all of us, no matter how small, can make a difference.

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Out of a Jar

Deborah Marcero

This highly anticipated follow-up to the critically acclaimed and bestselling picture book In a Jar stars one little bunny dealing with some very big feelings.

Llewellyn does not like to feel afraid or sad, angry, lonely, or embarrassed. And so he comes up with a brilliant plan: he tucks each of his feelings into jars and hides them away where they won't bother him anymore. But when he gets in trouble in class, Llewellyn finds he needs to put away excitement too. And when joy is quickly followed by disappointment, he decides to get rid of joy as well. After a while, Llewellyn walks around not feeling much of anything at all. And what happens when his emotions refuse to be bottled up any longer?

In this richly illustrated and universally relatable picture book, Llewellyn soon discovers that life is more colorful when he sets his emotions free. And only then, by facing and embracing each of his feelings, is he finally able to let them go.

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My Little World: My Body

Roger Priddy

My Body is an engaging first novelty book about the human body, publishing into the My Little World series by Priddy Books.

Turn the wheels, slide the tabs, and open the flaps to learn all about the body, the amazing things it can do, and why being different makes us so special. Specially designed to engage preschoolers, the brightly illustrated pages and fun facts make learning about our bodies a fully interactive experience.

Also available in this series: My Little World: Watch Me Grow, My Little World: How Do You Feel?, and My Little World: Let's Poop!

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Little Cat Hide-and-Seek Emotions

Audrey Bouquet

Children will learn to recognize and respond to expressions of emotion through a fun matching technique.

Little Cat Hide-and-Seek Emotions: A Playful Primer to Learn about Your Feelings helps young readers recognize and respond to emotions in themselves and others. The book introduces a range of emotions such as happy, angry, sleepy, anxious, and surprised. Each emotion is featured in a spread in the book, and each spread has a variety of illustrations with cats expressing different emotions. Children will match the emotion to the illustration that most closely represents it.

The book also offers children a chance to engage with their own emotions, asking such questions as “How about you? What makes you happy?” and “Whisper in Little Cat’s ear the name of someone you love.”

Children will enjoy engaging with the character of Little Cat as he experiences a wide range of emotions in this playful, interactive book.

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My First Dino-Soccer

Lisa Wheeler

Goal! Youngsters will cheer along as simple rhyming text from Lisa Wheeler describes how dinosaurs play soccer in this high-energy board book. Bright and appealing illustrations from Barry Gott include lots of fun details to enjoy!

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Respect

Based on the life and times of Aretha Franklin, the woman who would come to be known all over the world as the undisputed Queen of Soul, this story follows her beginnings back to when she'd first come onto the music scene as a singer in the choir at her father's church when she was a young girl growing up in Detroit. Following many difficulties in her adult life, due to bad marriages and other unwise choices, she still managed to keep contributing her natural talent to the music world, becoming one of the art's most recognizable voices, and producing songs that would be known and enjoyed by many generations.

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My Salinger Year

Set in the 1990s, a young woman quits college and moves from California to New York City. An aspiring writer, she hustles her way into a job with an old-school literary agency that represents the American classic writer J.D. Salinger, author of A Catcher in the Rye. Her job is strictly secretarial and involves answering the fan mail of Salinger with a boilerplate form letter. The young woman gets into big legal and ethical trouble when she decides to start skipping the form letter to compose her own answers to Salinger's fans without the author's prior approval.

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Eternals

Immortal beings with superpowers, Eternals are people who have lived on earth for thousands of years. They are strong, age-resistant and have accelerated healing. Called to look after the human race, the Eternals are humanoid aliens from Planet Olympia. This upcoming superhero film has a comic book history stretching back to 1976. First created by Jack Kirby, he holds a reputation as the co-creator of the popular Avengers and Fantastic Four. Distributed by Walt Disney and produced by Marvel Studios, fans will enjoy the 26th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You will see a film packed with interesting characters.

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King Richard

For Richard Williams, life has been a challenging game. He knows just how hard it is to get ahead, but he also has a feeling that his two daughters may become two of the most famous athletes in the world. It's not easy getting Venus and Serena started in tennis. It seems as though the insular and bigoted tennis courts might never accept two Black girls from Compton. But the one thing the sports world can't argue with is the immense talent showcased by these two prodigies.

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Ahead of the Curve

Jenny Rushmore

Ahead of the Curve is the first sewing book to empower curvy and plus size women to feel body confident by sewing a wardrobe that fits.



Don't change your body to fit your clothes - change your clothes to fit your body!



Ahead of the Curve includes 5 basic garments patterns, which includes a pair of trousers, a t-shirt, a vest top and two dress designs. Jenny takes you through a series of "Fit Clinics" - tutorials and case studies demystifying the fitting process - showing you how to adjust these patterns to master the perfect fit for your body shape. Once you have got to grips with this, you can go on to customise your closet and create an unlimited array of fantastic clothes that celebrate your body.



If you're curvy or plus size, trying to find clothes that fit and reflect your personal style can be incredibly difficult and frustrating. Plus size women feel constantly excluded and like they can't express their personality through clothes. This book finally changes that.

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Social Justice Parenting

Traci Baxley

An empowering, timely guide to raising anti-racist, compassionate, and socially conscious children, from a diversity and inclusion educator with more than thirty years of experience.

 

As a global pandemic shuttered schools across the country in 2020, parents found themselves thrust into the role of teacher--in more ways than one. Not only did they take on remote school supervision, but after the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests, many also grappled with the responsibility to teach their kids about social justice--with few resources to guide them.

 

Now, in Social Justice Parenting, Dr. Traci Baxley--a professor of education who has spent 30 years teaching diversity and inclusion--will offer the essential guidance and curriculum parents have been searching for. Dr. Baxley, a mother of five herself, suggests that parenting is a form of activism, and encourages parents to acknowledge their influence in developing compassionate, socially-conscious kids.

Importantly, Dr. Baxley also guides parents to do the work of recognizing and reconciling their own biases. So often, she suggests, parents make choices based on what's best for their children, versus what's best for all children in their community. Dr. Baxley helps readers take inventory of their actions and beliefs, develop self-awareness and accountability, and become role models. Poised to become essential reading for all parents committed to social change, Social Justice Parenting will offer parents everywhere the opportunity to nurture a future generation of humane, compassionate individuals.

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Bread Book

Chad Robertson

Visionary baker Chad Robertson unveils what’s next in bread, drawing on a decade of innovation in grain farming, flour milling, and fermentation with all-new ground-breaking formulas and techniques for making his most nutrient-rich and sublime loaves, rolls, and more—plus recipes for nourishing meals that showcase them.

“The most rewarding thing about making bread is that the process of learning never ends. Every day is a new study . . . the possibilities are infinite.”—from the Introduction

More than a decade ago, Chad Robertson’s country levain recipe taught a generation of bread bakers to replicate the creamy crumb, crackly crust, and unparalleled flavor of his world-famous Tartine bread. His was the recipe that launched hundreds of thousands of sourdough starters and attracted a stream of understudies to Tartine from across the globe.

Now, in Bread Book, Robertson and Tartine’s director of bread, Jennifer Latham, explain how high-quality, sustainable, locally sourced grain and flours respond to hydration and fermentation to make great bread even better. Experienced bakers and novices will find Robertson’s and Latham’s primers on grain, flour, sourdough starter, leaven, discard starter, and factoring dough formulas refreshingly easy to understand and use.

With sixteen brilliant formulas for naturally leavened doughs—including country bread (now reengineered), rustic baguettes, flatbreads, rolls, pizza, and vegan and gluten-free loaves, plus tortillas, crackers, and fermented pasta made with discarded sourdough starter—Bread Book is the wild-yeast baker ’s flight plan for a voyage into the future of exceptional bread.

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The Best of America’s Test Kitchen 2022

America's Test Kitchen

Everyone can enjoy another great new year of the best new recipes, tastings, and testings handpicked by the editors of America's Test Kitchen

This annual best-of-the-best collection of recipes, tastings, and testings has once again been carefully selected from the hundreds of recipes developed throughout the last year by the editors of Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines and from the new cookbooks Foolproof Fish, Cooking for One, The Complete One Pot, The Complete Plant-Based Cookbook, and Toaster Oven Perfection. The 2022 edition offers a wide array of everyday-to-sophisticated and globally inspired recipes such as Horiatiki Salata (Hearty Greek Salad), Mumbai Frankie Wraps, Beef Wellington, and Herbed Lamb Shoulder with Fingerling Potatoes and Asparagus. As is traditional, the book ends with a chapter of impressive desserts including Chocolate-Espresso Tart, Peach Zabaglione Gratin, and Nutella Rugelach. All of the year's top ingredient tastings and equipment testings are also included.

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The Pioneer Woman Cooks--Super Easy!

Ree Drummond

#1 New York Times bestseller

Bring the family together--and take it easy on yourself!

Between my family, my website, my cookbooks, and my TV show, I make a lot of food around here! And as much as I've always loved cooking (and of course, eating!), it seems that more and more these days, I'm looking for ways to simplify my life in the kitchen. I find myself gravitating toward recipes that are delicious but don't require a lot of prep or fuss, because they free me up to have more time (and energy) for other areas of my life. This also makes cooking less of a chore and more of a pleasure--exactly what cooking should be!

The Pioneer Woman Cooks--Super Easy! will free you up and transform your cooking life as well, with 120 recipes that range from effortless breakfasts to breezy skillet meals to speedy soups to ready-in-minutes Tex-Mex delights, so you'll have lots of options for any given meal. Many recipes in this cookbook call for step-saving (and sanity-saving) shortcuts that will revolutionize the time you spend making meals for your family, and all of them are utterly scrumptious! I've absolutely fallen in love with this new generation of recipes, including Butter Pecan French Toast, Buffalo Chicken Totchos, Speedy Dumpling Soup, Broccoli-Cheese Stromboli (so great for kids!), and an entire section of pastas and grains, such as One-Pot Sausage Pasta and colorful and fresh Hawaiian Shrimp Bowls. You'll find yummy meals such as Pepperoni Fried Rice, Chicken-Fried Steak Fingers, and ultra-tasty Chicken Curry in a Hurry . . . as well as assemble-in-the-baking-dish casseroles, throw-together sheet pan suppers, and simply decadent desserts such as Mug Cakes, Coconut Cream Pie, and Brownie S'Mores Bars that you'll dream about.

There's something for everyone in this cookbook, and not a single recipe, ingredient, or step is complicated or difficult. Now that's the kind of cooking we can all get behind!

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Reading with Patrick

Michelle Kuo

“In all of the literature addressing education, race, poverty, and criminal justice, there has been nothing quite like Reading with Patrick.”—The Atlantic

A memoir of the life-changing friendship between an idealistic young teacher and her gifted student, jailed for murder in the Mississippi Delta

FINALIST FOR THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE

Recently graduated from Harvard University, Michelle Kuo arrived in the rural town of Helena, Arkansas, as a Teach for America volunteer, bursting with optimism and drive. But she soon encountered the jarring realities of life in one of the poorest counties in America, still disabled by the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. In this stirring memoir, Kuo, the child of Taiwanese immigrants, shares the story of her complicated but rewarding mentorship of one student, Patrick Browning, and his remarkable literary and personal awakening.

Convinced she can make a difference in the lives of her teenaged students, Michelle Kuo puts her heart into her work, using quiet reading time and guided writing to foster a sense of self in students left behind by a broken school system. Though Michelle loses some students to truancy and even gun violence, she is inspired by some such as Patrick. Fifteen and in the eighth grade, Patrick begins to thrive under Michelle’s exacting attention. However, after two years of teaching, Michelle feels pressure from her parents and the draw of opportunities outside the Delta and leaves Arkansas to attend law school.

Then, on the eve of her law-school graduation, Michelle learns that Patrick has been jailed for murder. Feeling that she left the Delta prematurely and determined to fix her mistake, Michelle returns to Helena and resumes Patrick’s education—even as he sits in a jail cell awaiting trial. Every day for the next seven months they pore over classic novels, poems, and works of history. Little by little, Patrick grows into a confident, expressive writer and a dedicated reader galvanized by the works of Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Walt Whitman, W. S. Merwin, and others. In her time reading with Patrick, Michelle is herself transformed, contending with the legacy of racism and the questions of what constitutes a “good” life and what the privileged owe to those with bleaker prospects.

“A powerful meditation on how one person can affect the life of another . . . One of the great strengths of Reading with Patrick is its portrayal of the risk inherent to teaching.”—The Seattle Times

“[A] tender memoir.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

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Bad Blood

John Carreyrou

The Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year

A New York Times Notable Book
A Washington Post Notable Book

One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Time, Esquire, Fortune, Marie Claire, GQ, Mental Floss, Science Friday, Bloomberg, Popular Mechanics, BookRiot, The Seattle Times, The Oregonian, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings--from journalists to their own employees.

Rigorously reported and fearlessly written, Bad Blood is a gripping story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron--a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.

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The Complete Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi

Persepolis is the story of Marjane Satrapi's childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming -- both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland.

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Searching for Sylvie Lee

Jean Kwok

An Instant New York Times Bestseller!

A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick & Emma Roberts Belletrist Book Club Pick!

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY New York Times • Time • Marie Claire • Elle • Buzzfeed • Huffington Post • Good Housekeeping • The Week • Goodreads • New York Post • and many more!

“Powerful . . . A twisting tale of love, loss, and dark family secrets.”  — Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water

A poignant and suspenseful drama that untangles the complicated ties binding three women—two sisters and their mother—in one Chinese immigrant family and explores what happens when the eldest daughter disappears, and a series of family secrets emerge, from the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Translation

It begins with a mystery. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother—and then vanishes.

Amy, the sheltered baby of the Lee family, is too young to remember a time when her parents were newly immigrated and too poor to keep Sylvie. Seven years older, Sylvie was raised by a distant relative in a faraway, foreign place, and didn’t rejoin her family in America until age nine. Timid and shy, Amy has always looked up to her sister, the fierce and fearless protector who showered her with unconditional love.

But what happened to Sylvie? Amy and her parents are distraught and desperate for answers. Sylvie has always looked out for them. Now, it’s Amy’s turn to help. Terrified yet determined, Amy retraces her sister’s movements, flying to the last place Sylvie was seen. But instead of simple answers, she discovers something much more valuable: the truth. Sylvie, the golden girl, kept painful secrets . . . secrets that will reveal more about Amy’s complicated family—and herself—than she ever could have imagined.

A deeply moving story of family, secrets, identity, and longing, Searching for Sylvie Lee is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive portrait of an immigrant family. It is a profound exploration of the many ways culture and language can divide us and the impossibility of ever truly knowing someone—especially those we love.

“This is a true beach read! You can’t put it down!” – Jenna Bush Hager, Today Show Book Club Pick

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Anxious People

Fredrik Backman

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller

A People Book of the Week, Book of the Month Club selection, and Best of Fall in Good Housekeeping, PopSugar, The Washington Post, New York Post, Shondaland, CNN, and more!

[A] quirky, big-hearted novel…Wry, wise, and often laugh-out-loud funny, it’s a wholly original story that delivers pure pleasure.” —People

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove comes a charming, poignant novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.

Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage. There’s a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom, and you’ve got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

Rich with Fredrik Backman’s “pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature” (Shelf Awareness), Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious times.

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Such a Fun Age

Kiley Reid

A Best Book of the Year:
The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • NPR Vogue • Elle  Real Simple • InStyle • Good Housekeeping • Parade • Slate  Vox  Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal  BookPage

Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

A Reese's Book Club Pick 

"The most provocative page-turner of the year." --Entertainment Weekly

"I urge you to read Such a Fun Age." --NPR

A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.


Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone "family," and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.

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Ask Again, Yes

Mary Beth Keane

The triumphant New York Times Bestseller *The Tonight Show Summer Reads Pick*

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by People, Vogue, Parade, NPR, and Elle

"A gem of a book." —Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

How much can a family forgive?

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie NYPD cops, are neighbors in the suburbs. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come.

In Mary Beth Keane's extraordinary novel, a lifelong friendship and love blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next thirty years. Heartbreaking and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes is a gorgeous and generous portrait of the daily intimacies of marriage and the power of forgiveness.

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The Guest Book

Sarah Blake

Instant New York Times Bestseller
Longlisted for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence
2020 New England Society Book Award Winner for Fiction

The Guest Book is monumental in a way that few novels dare attempt.” —The Washington Post

The thought-provoking new novel by New York Times bestselling author Sarah Blake

An exquisitely written, poignant family saga that illuminates the great divide, the gulf that separates the rich and poor, black and white, Protestant and Jew. Spanning three generations, The Guest Book deftly examines the life and legacy of one unforgettable family as they navigate the evolving social and political landscape from Crockett’s Island, their family retreat off the coast of Maine. Blake masterfully lays bare the memories and mistakes each generation makes while coming to terms with what it means to inherit the past.

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The Vanishing Half

Brit Bennett

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR 

2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST

“Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal 

A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….” – Entertainment Weekly
 

From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.

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Wear, Repair, Repurpose

Lily Fulop

Replacing buttons, darning socks, and other mending skills have largely been lost to the decades. Yet, as the eco-conscious are ditching fast fashion, these techniques are being rediscovered as easy methods to revamp closets with personal flair--hello, visible mending--and sustainability.

In Wear, Repair, Repurpose, Lily Fulop welcomes beginner and experienced makers with projects to refresh their closets, make the most of thrift store finds, and give worn-out cloth new life. Illustrated step-by-step instructions demystify mending techniques, and skill-based projects will inspire readers to embrace their own personal style. Learn to:

  • Darn socks
  • Hem pants
  • Embroider over stains
  • Crochet and braid rugs

For anyone who cares about reducing fashion waste but doesn't want to sacrifice style, this is the immersive guide you need.

 

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Waters of the World

Sarah Dry

The compelling and adventurous stories of seven pioneering scientists who were at the forefront of what we now call climate science.

From the glaciers of the Alps to the towering cumulonimbus clouds of the Caribbean and the unexpectedly chaotic flows of the North Atlantic, Waters of the World is a tour through 150 years of the history of a significant but underappreciated idea: that the Earth has a global climate system made up of interconnected parts, constantly changing on all scales of both time and space. A prerequisite for the discovery of global warming and climate change, this idea was forged by scientists studying water in its myriad forms. This is their story.

Linking the history of the planet with the lives of those who studied it, Sarah Dry follows the remarkable scientists who summited volcanic peaks to peer through an atmosphere’s worth of water vapor, cored mile-thick ice sheets to uncover the Earth’s ancient climate history, and flew inside storm clouds to understand how small changes in energy can produce both massive storms and the general circulation of the Earth’s atmosphere. Each toiled on his or her own corner of the planetary puzzle. Gradually, their cumulative discoveries coalesced into a unified working theory of our planet’s climate.

We now call this field climate science, and in recent years it has provoked great passions, anxieties, and warnings. But no less than the object of its study, the science of water and climate is—and always has been—evolving. By revealing the complexity of this history, Waters of the World delivers a better understanding of our planet’s climate at a time when we need it the most.

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Make Thrift Mend

Katrina Rodabaugh

Slow fashion influencer Katrina Rodabaugh, bestselling author of Mending Matters, teaches readers how to mend, patch, dye, and alter clothing for an environmentally conscious, reimagined wardrobe

Slow fashion influencer Katrina Rodabaugh follows her bestselling book, Mending Matters, with a comprehensive guide to building (and keeping) a wardrobe that matters. Whether you want to repair your go-to jeans, refresh a favorite garment, alter or dye clothing you already have--this book has all the know-how you'll need. Woven throughout are stories, essays, and a slow fashion call-to-action, encouraging readers to get involved or deepen their commitment to changing the destructive habit of overconsumption. Rodabaugh has an engaged community (her kits are in high demand and her classes sell out quickly) and a proven ability to tempt sewists and nonsewists alike to take up needle and thread.

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The Plant Messiah

Carlos Magdalena

"A thrilling and inspirational account of adventures in the botanical world" (Wall Street Journal)

Carlos Magdalena is not your average horticulturist. He's a man on a mission to save the world's most endangered plants. First captivated by the flora of his native Spain, he has travelled to the remotest parts of the globe in search of exotic species. Renowned for his pioneering work, he has committed his life to protecting plants from man-made ecological destruction and thieves hunting for wealthy collectors.

In The Plant Messiah, Magdalena takes readers from the Amazon to the jungles of Mauritius to deep within the Australian Outback in search of the rare and the vulnerable. Back in the lab, we watch as he develops groundbreaking, left-field techniques for rescuing species from extinction, encouraging them to propagate and thrive once again. Along the way, he offers moving, heartfelt stories about the secrets contained within these incredible organisms.

Passionate and absorbing, The Plant Messiah is a tribute to the diversity of life on our planet, and the importance of preserving it.

*Featuring 16 pages of color photos*

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Taming the Sun

Varun Sivaram

How solar could spark a clean-energy transition through transformative innovation—creative financing, revolutionary technologies, and flexible energy systems.

Solar energy, once a niche application for a limited market, has become the cheapest and fastest-growing power source on earth. What's more, its potential is nearly limitless—every hour the sun beams down more energy than the world uses in a year. But in Taming the Sun, energy expert Varun Sivaram warns that the world is not yet equipped to harness erratic sunshine to meet most of its energy needs. And if solar's current surge peters out, prospects for replacing fossil fuels and averting catastrophic climate change will dim.

Innovation can brighten those prospects, Sivaram explains, drawing on firsthand experience and original research spanning science, business, and government. Financial innovation is already enticing deep-pocketed investors to fund solar projects around the world, from the sunniest deserts to the poorest villages. Technological innovation could replace today's solar panels with coatings as cheap as paint and employ artificial photosynthesis to store intermittent sunshine as convenient fuels. And systemic innovation could add flexibility to the world's power grids and other energy systems so they can dependably channel the sun's unreliable energy.

Unleashing all this innovation will require visionary public policy: funding researchers developing next-generation solar technologies, refashioning energy systems and economic markets, and putting together a diverse clean energy portfolio. Although solar can't power the planet by itself, it can be the centerpiece of a global clean energy revolution.

A Council on Foreign Relations Book

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A Question of Power

Robert Bryce

Historically, it was guns, germs, and steel that determined the fates of people and nations. Now, more than ever, it is electricity.
Global demand for power is doubling every two decades, but electricity remains one of the most difficult forms of energy to supply and do so reliably. Today, some three billion people live in places where per-capita electricity use is less than what's used by an average American refrigerator. How we close the colossal gap between the electricity rich and the electricity poor will determine our success in addressing issues like women's rights, inequality, and climate change.
In A Question of Power, veteran journalist Robert Bryce tells the human story of electricity, the world's most important form of energy. Through onsite reporting from India, Iceland, Lebanon, Puerto Rico, New York, and Colorado, he shows how our cities, our money--our very lives--depend on reliable flows of electricity. He highlights the factors needed for successful electrification and explains why so many people are still stuck in the dark.
With vivid writing and incisive analysis, he powerfully debunks the notion that our energy needs can be met solely with renewables and demonstrates why--if we are serious about addressing climate change--nuclear energy must play a much bigger role.
Electricity has fueled a new epoch in the history of civilization. A Question of Power explains how that happened and what it means for our future.

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The Dreamt Land

Mark Arax

A vivid, searching journey into California's capture of water and soil--an epic story of a people's defiance of nature and the wonders, and ruin, it has wrought

"A stunning history of power, arrogance, and greed."--Kirkus Reviews (starred)

Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth.

This is a heartfelt, beautifully written book about the land and the people who have worked it--from gold miners to wheat ranchers to small fruit farmers and today's Big Ag. Since the beginning, Californians have redirected rivers, drilled ever-deeper wells and built higher dams, pushing the water supply past its limit.

The Dreamt Land weaves reportage, history and memoir to confront the "Golden State" myth in riveting fashion. No other chronicler of the West has so deeply delved into the empires of agriculture that drink so much of the water. The nation's biggest farmers--the nut king, grape king and citrus queen--tell their story here for the first time.
This is a tale of politics and hubris in the arid West, of imported workers left behind in the sun and the fatigued earth that is made to give more even while it keeps sinking. But when drought turns to flood once again, all is forgotten as the farmers plant more nuts and the developers build more houses.

Arax, the native son, is persistent and tough as he treks from desert to delta, mountain to valley. What he finds is hard earned, awe-inspiring, tragic and revelatory. In the end, his compassion for the land becomes an elegy to the dream that created California and now threatens to undo it.

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Mending with Love

Noriko Misumi

Extend the life of well-worn, beloved pieces using these creative techniques.

Mending With Love shows you how to apply embroidery, patching, darning, felting, stamping and a little crochet to worn pieces of clothing or household items. Instead of stowing or throwing away damaged pieces that hold happy memories, you can employ these beautiful and sustainable ideas to give them a new life.

With this book, you'll learn how to:

  • Repair knitted and woven fabrics
  • Work with flat and curved surfaces
  • Artfully repair comfy, well-made socks and gloves
  • Make a statement with creative patching
  • Fill in holes with roving using felting techniques
  • Use embroidery to visibly mend frays or damage from the odd cat claw
  • Apply other tips and techniques to torn, worn, or stained favorites


Creative as well as practical, mending is both a source of pleasure and an eco-friendly fashion statement. Instead of buying more stuff with less meaning, this method allows you to hold on to the things that have a special place in your heart. As "fast fashion" has rapidly expanded, mending has re-emerged as a popular, environmentally-friendly movement around the world.

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Pinkalicious and the Robo-Pup

Victoria Kann

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Victoria Kann comes a new Pinkalicious Level One I Can Read story in which Pinkalicious and her brand-new totally pinkamazing robo-pup compete in a pet contest!

Pinkalicious can’t wait to show off her robo-pup to her friends! But when she brings robo-pup to the pet contest, her friends only want to look at Alison’s adorable new puppy instead. When Alison’s puppy gets lost during the Pinkville Pet Contest, can Pinkalicious and robo-pup help?

Pinkalicious and the Robo-Pup is a Guided Reading Level J and a Level One I Can Read, which means it’s perfect for children learning to sound out words and sentences. Whether shared at home or in a classroom, the short sentences, familiar words, and simple concepts of Level One books support success for children eager to start reading on their own.

Readers can watch Pinkalicious and Peter on the funtastic PBS Kids TV series Pinkalicious & Peterrific!

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Space Jam: A New Legacy: Official Activity Book (Space Jam: A New Legacy)

Random House

An all-new, full-color activity book based on Space Jam: A New Legacy, starring LeBron James and the Looney Tunes!

Basketball superstar LeBron James teams up with Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes for Space Jam: A New Legacy, the long-awaited reimagining of the original, beloved film. Boys and girls ages 3 to 7 will love this full-color activity book with more than 50 stickers.

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Can Pup Find the Pups?

Vincent X Kirsch

Pup can’t find the 5 pups. Can you? This Level F reader is perfect for final term kindergarteners, first term first graders, and summer time fun!

The pups are hiding in the museum. There they are--among the dinosaurs, planets and even the butterflies! Children will enjoy practicing their reading skills as they search the pictures for fun details and five mischievous puppies.

This book has been tested by the official Fountas and Pinnel leveling system.

You will also like Can You Find Pup?, another I Like to Read® book by Vincent X. Kirsch.

Level F books, for early first graders, feature longer, more varied sentences than Level E. Level F books encourage kids to decode new multi-syllable words in addition to recognizing sight words. Stories are more complex, and illustrations provide support and additional detail. When Level F is mastered, follow up with Level G.

The award-winning I Like to Read® series focuses on guided reading levels A through G, based upon Fountas and Pinnell standards. Acclaimed author-illustrators--including winners of Caldecott, Theodor Seuss Geisel, and Coretta Scott King honors—create original, high-quality illustrations that support comprehension of simple text and are fun for kids to read again and again with their parents, teachers or on their own!




 

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Roto and Roy: Helicopter Heroes

Sherri Duskey Rinker

Meet Roto and Roy, helicopter heroes!



When a dangerous forest fire burns out of control, helicopter Roto and pilot Roy are ready to fly to the rescue! They're braver than brave, tougher than tough, and nothing will stop this firefighting crew from completing their mission.



From Sherri Duskey Rinker, bestselling author of the Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site series, and award-winning illustrator Don Tate, this action-packed series starter will have kids cheering for two awesome new heroes--and imagining how they might save the day themselves!

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5-Minute Marvel Stories

Marvel Press Book Group

Super heroes unite! Join the most powerful heores in the Marvel Universe as they team up to protect the world from the most dangerous foes imaginable. With special appearances from some of your favorite Marvel characters including Captain Marvel, Captain America, and Guardians of the Galaxy, each action-packed story is ideal for reading aloud in just five minutes!

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The Year We Learned to Fly

Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson and Rafael López's highly anticipated companion to their #1 New York Times bestseller The Day You Begin illuminates the power in each of us to face challenges with confidence.

On a dreary, stuck-inside kind of day, a brother and sister heed their grandmother’s advice: “Use those beautiful and brilliant minds of yours. Lift your arms, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and believe in a thing. Somebody somewhere at some point was just as bored you are now.” And before they know it, their imaginations lift them up and out of their boredom. Then, on a day full of quarrels, it’s time for a trip outside their minds again, and they are able to leave their anger behind. This precious skill, their grandmother tells them, harkens back to the days long before they were born, when their ancestors showed the world the strength and resilience of their beautiful and brilliant minds. Jacqueline Woodson’s lyrical text and Rafael Lopez’s dazzling art celebrate the extraordinary ability to lift ourselves up and imagine a better world.

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Change Starts with Us

Sophie Beer

This vibrant board book by the creator of Love Makes a Family and Kindness Makes Us Strong celebrates small acts of green living that make a big impact on the environment.

Change starts with planting trees. It starts with turning off faucets, and reusing and recycling. Most importantly, change starts with us! This encouraging preschool read-aloud demonstrates simple yet mighty examples of environmental activism and ways in which young readers can take care of the earth. Whether it's biking places with family or picking up litter with friends, Change Starts with Us proves that everyone has the power to build a better world.

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On Baba's Back

Marianne Dubuc

Baby koala Koko takes his first step toward independence in this endearing board book made for reading together.

Koko and Baba are a very close koala family, so close that Koko does everything on Baba's back--eats, plays, you name it! Until one day, when Koko wants to do something different, and he takes his first step off Baba's back to go explore. Families will love snuggling up together to read this sweet tale of togetherness, just like Koko and Baba as they curl up at the end of the night to celebrate Koko's big day.

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10 Little Excavators

Annie Bailey

Fans of cars and trucks books such as Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site can count down from ten to one as they follow busy excavators during their working day.

10 little excavators wake up with the sun. Can't wait to work--Vrooom! Now it's time for fun.

With each page-turn of this sturdy, action-packed board book, young readers can count all the hard-working diggers from ten down to one. Along the way, they'll learn all the things these mighty construction vehicles do--digging, clearing, smoothing, and smashing. With noisy words to read aloud on every page, this is a perfect board book for all little vehicle and construction fans.

Also available: 10 Little Tractors

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Iranian Love Stories

Jane Deuxard

Gila, 26, was at a party when the police showed up. The men were able to get away with bribes, but the women were taken to the station, and anyone who'd been drinking was forced to submit to a virginity test. She never went to another party after that.

Zeinab is 20 and she loves being a woman in Iran. She says that she feels like a queen! And despite all the risks, she confesses that she makes love with her boyfriend because the danger excites her.

Vahid is 26. He was a leader with the Green Movement. Then he watched his friend Neda die right in front of him. Now he keeps his head down, trying to finish his studies.

In a series of vignettes based on clandestine interviews, this award-winning graphic novel explores the politics and love lives of ten young Iranian men and women from diverse backgrounds. The result is an honest portrait of Iranian youth today and a rare glimpse into a society where the sexes are strictly segregated--and Western journalists aren't welcome. Through testimonies from across the country, we learn about traditional marriages, the pressures of living under the regime, and how young people escape the police and defy tradition to live their love stories.

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The All-Nighter

Chip Zdarsky

From Chip Zdarsky and Jason Loo, the Eisner-winning team behind Afterlift, The All-Nighter is a story about found family and a new twist on superheroes!

Welcome to The All-Nighter, the only diner in town where you can get coffee and a meal from sunset to sunrise! The staff are friendly (kind of) and happy to serve you (sometimes), and it would never cross their minds to drink their customers’ blood…

Alex is bored—flipping burgers for strangers all night is no way for a vampire to live. But he and his fellow vampires Joy, Cynthia, and Ian have agreed to blend into human society. Inspired by superhero movies, one of few passions in his un-life, Alex decides to don a cape and start fighting bad guys. But his decision will have bigger consequences than he realizes—for himself and for everyone he wants to protect.

Collects issues #1-5 of The All-Nighter, from the ComiXology original digital series in print for the first time.
 

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Crushing

Sophie Burrows

Life is full of connections – if you know how to make them. Crushing follows two people -- one determined and a bit awkward, the other unsure where to begin -- longing to find out where they belong. Their intersecting and overlapping journeys reveal hidden connections and the unpredictable and unexpected ways we may find each other.   
  
Achingly beautiful, quietly defiant, and full of subtle wit and wisdom, Crushing is a story told in silence; a story without words but bursting with life and color.   
  
This stunning debut graphic novel from Sophie Burrows is a timely look at life in an age of distance and a story of love and understanding -- a perfect book to read and to share.

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Meet Me in Bombay

Jenny Ashcroft

All he needs is to find her. First, he must remember who she is.

Jenny Ashcroft's "Meet Me in Bombay is a powerful, poignant and deeply emotional tale of love, mystery, loss and joy." –Kate Furnivall, New York Times bestselling author

It's New Year's Eve in Bombay, 1913, and Madeline Bright, new to the sweltering heat of colonial India, is yearning for all she has left behind in England. Then, at the stroke of midnight, Maddy meets Luke Devereaux, and as the year changes so do both their lives.

Bold and charismatic, Luke opens her eyes to the wonders of Bombay, while Maddy's beauty and vivacity captures his heart. Only her mother disapproves, preferring the devoted Guy Bowen as a match for her daughter.

But while Maddy and Luke are falling in love, the world is falling apart. World War I is on the horizon, and Luke will be given no choice but to fight. They will be continents apart, separated by danger and devastating loss, but bound by Luke's promise that they will meet again in Bombay.

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The Fifties

James R. Gaines

A bold and original argument that upends the myth of the Fifties as a decade of conformity to celebrate the solitary, brave, and stubborn individuals who pioneered the radical gay rights, feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements, from historian James R. Gaines.

In a fascinating and beautifully written series of character portraits, The Fifties invokes the accidental radicals—people motivated not by politics but by their own most intimate conflicts—who sparked movements for change in their time and our own. Among many others, we meet the legal pathfinder Pauli Murray, who was tortured by both her mixed-race heritage and her “in between” sexuality. Through years of hard work and self-examination, she turned her demons into historic victories. Ruth Bader Ginsberg credited her for the argument that made sex discrimination illegal, but that was only one of her gifts to 21st-century feminism. We meet Harry Hay, who dreamed of a national gay-rights movement as early as the mid-1940s, a time when the US, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany viewed gay people as subversives and mentally ill. And in perhaps the book’s unlikeliest pairing, we hear the prophetic voices of Silent Spring’s Rachel Carson and MIT’s preeminent mathematician, Norbert Wiener, who from their very different perspectives—she in the living world, he in the theoretical one—converged on the then-heretical idea that our mastery over the natural world carried the potential for disaster. Their legacy is the environmental movement.

The Fifties is a dazzling and provocative work of history that transforms our understanding of a seemingly staid decade and honors the pioneers of gay rights, feminism, civil rights, and environmentalism. The book carries the powerful message that change actually begins not in mass movements and new legislation but in the lives of de-centered, often lonely individuals, who learn to fight for change in a daily struggle with themselves.

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South to America

Imani Perry

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South—and thus of America—by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration.” —Isabel Wilkerson

An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South—and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America

We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.

This is the story of a Black woman and native Alabaman returning to the region she has always called home and considering it with fresh eyes. Her journey is full of detours, deep dives, and surprising encounters with places and people. She renders Southerners from all walks of life with sensitivity and honesty, sharing her thoughts about a troubling history and the ritual humiliations and joys that characterize so much of Southern life.

Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.  

A Recommended Read from: The New York Times • TIME • Oprah Daily • USA Today • Vulture • Essence • Esquire • W Magazine • Atlanta Journal-Constitution • PopSugar • Book Riot • Chicago Review of Books • Electric Literature • Lit Hub 

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Villa Air-Bel

Rosemary Sullivan

“Rosemary Sullivan goes beyond the confines of Air-Bel to tell a fuller story of France during the tense years from 1933 to 1941. . . . A moving tale of great sacrifice in tumultuous times.” — Publishers Weekly

Paris 1940. Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Consuelo de Saint-Exupery, and scores of other cultural elite denounced as enemies of the conquering Third Reich, live in daily fear of arrest, deportation, and death. Their only salvation is the Villa Air-Bel, a chateau outside Marseille where a group of young people, financed by a private American relief organization, will go to extraordinary lengths to keep them alive. In Villa Air-Bel, Rosemary Sullivan sheds light on this suspenseful, dramatic, and intriguing story, introducing the brave men and women who use every means possible to stave off the Nazis and the Vichy officials, and goes inside the chateau’s walls to uncover the private worlds and the web of relationships its remarkable inhabitants developed.

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Mala's Cat

Mala Kacenberg

The incredible true story of a young girl who navigated dangerous forests, outwitted Nazi soldiers, and survived against all odds with the companionship of a stray cat.

Growing up in the Polish village of Tarnogrod on the fringes of a deep pine forest, Mala Szorer had the happiest childhood she could have hoped for. But at the age of twelve, as the German invasion begins, her beloved village becomes a ghetto and her family and friends reduced to starvation. She takes matters into her own hands and bravely removes her yellow star, risking sneaking out to the surrounding villages to barter for food.

It is on her way back that she sees her loved ones rounded up for deportation, and receives a smuggled letter from her sister warning her to stay away. In order to survive, she walks away from everything she holds dear to live by herself in the forest, hiding not just from the Nazis but hostile villagers. She is followed by a stray cat who stays with her—and seems to come to her rescue time and time again.

"Malach" the cat becomes her family and her only respite from painful loneliness, a guide, and areminder to stay hopeful even when faced with unfathomable darkness.

Filled with remarkable spiritual strength that allows readers to see the war through the innocence of a child's eyes, Mala's Cat is a powerful and unique addition to the Holocaust canon.

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Heiresses

Laura Thompson

New York Times bestselling author Laura Thompson returns with Heiresses, a fascinating look at the lives of heiresses throughout history and the often tragic truth beneath the gilded surface.

Heiresses: surely they are among the luckiest women on earth. Are they not to be envied, with their private jets and Chanel wardrobes and endless funds? Yet all too often those gilded lives have been beset with trauma and despair. Before the 20th century a wife’s inheritance was the property of her husband, making her vulnerable to kidnap, forced marriages, even confinement in an asylum. And in modern times, heiresses fell victim to fortune-hunters who squandered their millions.

Heiresses tells the stories of these million dollar babies: Mary Davies, who inherited London’s most valuable real estate, and was bartered from the age of twelve; Consuelo Vanderbilt, the original American “Dollar Heiress”, forced into a loveless marriage; Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress who married seven times and died almost penniless; and Patty Hearst, heiress to a newspaper fortune who was arrested for terrorism. However, there are also stories of independence and achievement: Angela Burdett-Coutts, who became one of the greatest philanthropists of Victorian England; Nancy Cunard, who lived off her mother's fortune and became a pioneer of the civil rights movement; and Daisy Fellowes, elegant linchpin of interwar high society and noted fashion editor.

Heiresses is about the lives of the rich, who—as F. Scott Fitzgerald said—are ‘different’. But it is also a bigger story about how all women fought their way to equality, and sometimes even found autonomy and fulfillment.

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Worn

Sofi Thanhauser

A sweeping and captivatingly told history of clothing and the stuff it is made of—an unparalleled deep-dive into how everyday garments have transformed our lives, our societies, and our planet

“Thanhauser . . . examines the effect of clothes on our environment, politics and even our ethics . . . admirable, meticulously researched . . . [and] makes us pay attention.” —The Wall Street Journal


In this panoramic social history, Sofi Thanhauser brilliantly tells five stories—Linen, Cotton, Silk, Synthetics, Wool—about the clothes we wear and where they come from, illuminating our world in unexpected ways. She takes us from the opulent court of Louis XIV to the labor camps in modern-day Chinese-occupied Xinjiang. We see how textiles were once dyed with lichen, shells, bark, saffron, and beetles, displaying distinctive regional weaves and knits, and how the modern Western garment industry has refashioned our attire into the homogenous and disposable uniforms popularized by fast-fashion brands.

Thanhauser makes clear how the clothing industry has become one of the planet’s worst polluters and how it relies on chronically underpaid and exploited laborers. But she also shows us how micro-communities, textile companies, and clothing makers in every corner of the world are rediscovering ancestral and ethical methods for making what we wear.

Drawn from years of intensive research and reporting from around the world, and brimming with fascinating stories, Worn reveals to us that our clothing comes not just from the countries listed on the tags or ready-made from our factories. It comes, as well, from deep in our histories.

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