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Admissions

Kendra James

A sharp-witted and deeply insightful look into the storied world of elite prep schools from the first African-American legacy student to graduate from The Taft School.



Early on in Kendra James' professional life, she began to feel like she was selling a lie. As an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for independent prep schools, she persuaded students and families to embark on the same perilous journey she herself had made--to attend cutthroat and largely white schools similar to The Taft School, where she had been the first African-American legacy student only a few years earlier. Her new job forced her to reflect on her own elite education experience, and to realize how disillusioned she had become with America's inequitable system.



In ADMISSIONS, Kendra looks back at the three years she spent at Taft, chronicling clashes with her lily-white roommate, how she had to unlearn the respectability politics she'd been raised with, and the fall-out from a horrifying article in the student newspaper that accused Black and Latinx students of being responsible for segregation of campus. Through these stories, some troubling, others hilarious, she deconstructs the lies and half-truths she herself would later tell as an admissions professional, in addition to the myths about boarding schools perpetuated by popular culture.



With its combination of incisive social critique and uproarious depictions of elite nonsense, ADMISSIONS will resonate with anyone who has ever been The Only One in a room, dealt with racial microaggressions, or even just suffered from an extreme case of homesickness.

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New York's Finest

Michael Daly

The gritty, true blue story of two remarkable cops and an equally extraordinary nurse who provided the spirit and smarts that transformed Fear City into the safest big city in America.

NEW YORK'S FINEST is the story of a city's transformation through the tireless efforts of Detective Steven McDonald, Nurse Justiniano, Jack Maple, and a host of hero cops--including the great niece of Jazz Age great Josephine Baker--the finest of The Finest. The son and grandson of cops, Officer McDonald was shot and paralyzed from the neck down while on patrol in 1986. The doctors said that if he did survive, he would be better off dead. It was then he came under the care of one Nurse Nina Justiniano. Where the teenage gunman was produced by the worst of Harlem's social ills, she personified its many graces, rescuing Steven from despair and urging him to transcend hate and bitterness.

McDonald was then promoted to detective at the urging of NYPD Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple, a postal worker's son who sported a bow tie, Homburg hat, and two-tone shoes as he implemented transformative crime-fighting strategies to deter violent subway robberies. Coming up in the force, Maple had been routinely mocked for imagining the impossible: that Times Square would one day be a destination for families and tourists.

Now, resentments and tensions are mounting in the same neighborhoods that most benefited from the careful consideration of officers like McDonald and Maple. But as NEW YORK'S FINEST illustrates, their legacies, and those of people like Nurse Justiniano, may well rescue New York City from its present state of unrest and struggle in the wake of protests and the pandemic.

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A Killer by Design

Ann Wolbert Burgess

**ONE OF AMAZON'S "BEST TRUE CRIME" BOOKS**
**A "BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH" PICK FOR AMAZON (DECEMBER 2021)**
**AN APPLE AUDIO "MUST-LISTEN" (DECEMBER 2021)**


A vivid behind-the-scenes look into the creation of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit and the evolution of criminal profiling, written by the pioneering forensic nurse who transformed the way the FBI studies, profiles, and catches serial killers.
 

Lurking beneath the progressive activism and sex positivity in the 1970-80s, a dark undercurrent of violence rippled across the American landscape. With reported cases of sexual assault and homicide on the rise, the FBI created a specialized team—the “Mindhunters” better known as the Behavioral Science Unit—to track down the country's most dangerous criminals. And yet narrowing down a seemingly infinite list of potential suspects seemed daunting at best and impossible at worst—until Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess stepped on the scene.

In A Killer By Design, Burgess reveals how her pioneering research on sexual assault and trauma caught the attention of the FBI, and steered her right into the middle of a chilling serial murder investigation in Nebraska. Over the course of the next two decades, she helped the budding unit identify, interview, and track down dozens of notoriously violent offenders, including Ed Kemper ("The Co-Ed Killer"), Dennis Rader ("("BTK"), Henry Wallace ("The Taco Bell Strangler"), Jon Barry Simonis ("The Ski-Mask Rapist"), and many others. As one of the first women trailblazers within the FBI’s hallowed halls, Burgess knew many were expecting her to crack under pressure and recoil in horror—but she was determined to protect future victims at any cost. This book pulls us directly into the investigations as she experienced them, interweaving never-before-seen interview transcripts and crime scene drawings alongside her own vivid recollections to provide unprecedented insight into the minds of deranged criminals and the victims they left behind. Along the way, Burgess also paints a revealing portrait of a formidable institution on the brink of a seismic scientific and cultural reckoning—and the men forced to reconsider everything they thought they knew about crime.

Haunting, heartfelt, and deeply human, A Killer By Design forces us to confront the age-old question that has long plagued our criminal justice system: “What drives someone to kill, and how can we stop them?”

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Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

Diana Gabaldon

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Diana Gabaldon returns with the newest novel in the epic Outlander series.

The past may seem the safest place to be . . . but it is the most dangerous time to be alive. . . .

Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same.

It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser's Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible.

Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell's teakettle. Jamie knows loyalties among his tenants are split and it won't be long until the war is on his doorstep.

Brianna and Roger have their own worry: that the dangers that provoked their escape from the twentieth century might catch up to them. Sometimes they question whether risking the perils of the 1700s--among them disease, starvation, and an impending war--was indeed the safer choice for their family.

Not so far away, young William Ransom is still coming to terms with the discovery of his true father's identity--and thus his own--and Lord John Grey has reconciliations to make, and dangers to meet . . . on his son's behalf, and his own.

Meanwhile, the Revolutionary War creeps ever closer to Fraser's Ridge. And with the family finally together, Jamie and Claire have more at stake than ever before.

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The Every

Dave Eggers

From the award-winning, bestselling author of The Circle comes an exciting new follow-up. When the world’s largest search engine/social media company, the Circle, merges with the planet’s dominant ecommerce site, it creates the richest and most dangerous—and, oddly enough, most beloved—monopoly ever known: the Every.

Delaney Wells is an unlikely new hire at the Every. A former forest ranger and unwavering tech skeptic, she charms her way into an entry-level job with one goal in mind: to take down the company from within. With her compatriot, the not-at-all-ambitious Wes Makazian, they look for the Every's weaknesses, hoping to free humanity from all-encompassing surveillance and the emoji-driven infantilization of the species. But does anyone want what Delaney is fighting to save? Does humanity truly want to be free?
 
Studded with unforgettable characters, outrageous outfits, and lacerating set-pieces, this companion to The Circle blends absurdity and terror, satire and suspense, while keeping the reader in apprehensive excitement about the fate of the company—and the human animal.

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The Trees

Percival Everett

The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till, a young black boy lynched in the same town 65 years before. The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that similar murders are taking place all over the country. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can't look away.

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Bibliolepsy

Gina Apostol

Moving, sexy, and archly funny, Gina Apostol's Philippine National Book Award-winning Bibliolepsy is a love letter to the written word and a brilliantly unorthodox look at the rebellion that brought down a dictatorship

Gina Apostol's debut novel, available for the first time in the US, tells of a young woman caught between a lifelong desire to escape into books and a real-world revolution.

It is the mid-eighties, two decades into the kleptocratic, brutal rule of Ferdinand Marcos. The Philippine economy is in deep recession, and civil unrest is growing by the day. But Primi Peregrino has her own priorities: tracking down books and pursuing romantic connections with their authors.

For Primi, the nascent revolution means that writers are gathering more often, and with greater urgency, so that every poetry reading she attends presents a veritable "Justice League" of authors for her to choose among. As the Marcos dictatorship stands poised to topple, Primi remains true to her fantasy: that she, "a vagabond from history, a runaway from time," can be saved by sex, love, and books.

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The Family You Make

Jill Shalvis

USA Today Bestseller

“Fall in love with Jill Shalvis! She’s my go-to read for humor and heart.”— Susan Mallery, New York Times bestselling author

Beloved New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis begins a new series—Sunrise Cove—set near beautiful Lake Tahoe, with a heartwarming story of found family and love.

During the snowstorm of the century Levi Cutler is stranded on a ski lift with a beautiful stranger named Jane. After strong winds hurl the gondola in front of them into the ground, Levi calls his parents to prepare them for the worst…but can’t bring himself to say goodbye. Instead, wanting to fulfill his mother’s lifelong wish, he impulsively tells her he’s happily settled and Jane is his girlfriend—right before his phone dies.

But Levi and Jane do not.

Now Levi’s family is desperate to meet “The One.” Though Jane agrees to be his pretend girlfriend for just one dinner, she’s nervous. After a traumatic childhood, Jane isn’t sure she knows how to be around a tight-knit family that cherishes one another. She’s terrified, and a little jealous. But an unexpected series of events and a host of new friends soon show Jane that perhaps this is the life she was always meant to have.

As Jane and Levi spend more time together, pretend feelings quickly turn into real ones. Now all Jane has to do is admit to herself she can’t live without the man she’s fallen in love with and the family she has always dreamed of.

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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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Mermaid Confidential

Tim Dorsey

Serge A. Storms gives condo living a try in this latest acid-splashed Florida crime caper from the “insanely funny” (New York Times Book Review) Tim Dorsey.

Serge A. Storms and his permanently baked sidekick, Coleman, have decided to pump the brakes and live on island time. After years of manic road tripping across their beloved Sunshine State, the irrepressible anti-heroes drop anchor in the Florida Keys. They settle down in Pelican Bay, a thriving condo complex with scenic views and friendly neighbors. But the community is at war with investors who are buying up units and leasing them to young vacationers who party at all hours. With their little slice of heaven on the line, Serge takes it upon himself to convince the tourists to move on and quickly becomes a local favorite.

Meanwhile, the island chain’s long and rich smuggling heritage is causing mayhem—a gang war erupts when a local drug lord passes the family business to his young, enterprising son, and the sun-loving residents are suddenly dodging bullets.

Luckily, Florida’s most lovable serial killer is there to help!

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Anatomy: A Love Story

Dana Schwartz

*INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
*INSTANT #1 INDIE BESTSELLER*

*INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER*
*A REESE'S YA BOOK CLUB PICK*

"Schwartz's magical novel is at once gripping and tender, and the intricate plot is engrossing as the reader tries to solve the mystery. She doesn't miss a beat in either the characterization or action, scattering clues with a delicate, precise hand. This is, in the end, the story of the anatomy of the human heart." - Booklist (starred review)

Dana Schwartz’s Anatomy: A Love Story is a gothic tale full of mystery and romance.

Hazel Sinnett is a lady who wants to be a surgeon more than she wants to marry.

Jack Currer is a resurrection man who’s just trying to survive in a city where it’s too easy to die.

When the two of them have a chance encounter outside the Edinburgh Anatomist’s Society, Hazel thinks nothing of it at first. But after she gets kicked out of renowned surgeon Dr. Beecham’s lectures for being the wrong gender, she realizes that her new acquaintance might be more helpful than she first thought. Because Hazel has made a deal with Dr. Beecham: if she can pass the medical examination on her own, Beecham will allow her to continue her medical career. Without official lessons, though, Hazel will need more than just her books—she’ll need corpses to study.

Lucky that she’s made the acquaintance of someone who digs them up for a living.

But Jack has his own problems: strange men have been seen skulking around cemeteries, his friends are disappearing off the streets, and the dreaded Roman Fever, which wiped out thousands a few years ago, is back with a vengeance. Nobody important cares—until Hazel.

Now, Hazel and Jack must work together to uncover the secrets buried not just in unmarked graves, but in the very heart of Edinburgh society.

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Reminders of Him

Colleen Hoover

A troubled young mother yearns for a shot at redemption in this heartbreaking yet hopeful story from #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover.

After serving five years in prison for a tragic mistake, Kenna Rowan returns to the town where it all went wrong, hoping to reunite with her four-year-old daughter. But the bridges Kenna burned are proving impossible to rebuild. Everyone in her daughter's life is determined to shut Kenna out, no matter how hard she works to prove herself.

The only person who hasn't closed the door on her completely is Ledger Ward, a local bar owner and one of the few remaining links to Kenna's daughter. But if anyone were to discover how Ledger is slowly becoming an important part of Kenna's life, both would risk losing the trust of everyone important to them.

The two form a connection despite the pressure surrounding them, but as their romance grows, so does the risk. Kenna must find a way to absolve the mistakes of her past in order to build a future out of hope and healing.

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Weather Girl

Rachel Lynn Solomon

One of...
Amazon's Best Romances of January
Apple Books' Best Books of January

Goodreads' Hottest Romances of January
Buzzfeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2022
Popsugar, Parade.com, The Nerd Daily, and Fangirlish's Most Anticipated Books of 2022

A TV meteorologist and a sports reporter scheme to reunite their divorced bosses with unforecasted results in this electrifying romance from the author of The Ex Talk.


Ari Abrams has always been fascinated by the weather, and she loves almost everything about her job as a TV meteorologist. Her boss, legendary Seattle weatherwoman Torrance Hale, is too distracted by her tempestuous relationship with her ex-husband, the station’s news director, to give Ari the mentorship she wants. Ari, who runs on sunshine and optimism, is at her wits’ end. The only person who seems to understand how she feels is sweet but reserved sports reporter Russell Barringer.

In the aftermath of a disastrous holiday party, Ari and Russell decide to team up to solve their bosses’ relationship issues. Between secret gifts and double dates, they start nudging their bosses back together. But their well-meaning meddling backfires when the real chemistry builds between Ari and Russell.

Working closely with Russell means allowing him to get to know parts of herself that Ari keeps hidden from everyone. Will he be able to embrace her dark clouds as well as her clear skies?

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Real Easy

Marie Rutkoski

'Very possibly the best crime fiction book since Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects' Neel MukherjeeThree Women meets Tana French in a compulsive, unflinching and unexpectedly hopeful thriller set in a midwestern strip club.'Gritty, glittery and pulsing with life' Sara Sligar'Bold, compelling, brutal and brilliant' Chris WhitakerIt's 1999, and Samantha has danced for years at the Lovely Lady strip club.She's not used to taking anyone under her wing - after all, between her disapproving boyfriend and his daughter, who may as well be her own child, she has enough to worry about. But when Samantha overrides her better judgment to drive a new dancer home, they are run off the road. The police arrive at the scene of the accident - but find only one body.Georgia, another dancer, is drawn into the investigation as she tries to assist Holly, a detective with a complicated story of her own. As the point of view shifts from police officers and detectives to club patrons, the women circle around a list of suspects, all the while grappling with their own understanding of loss and love.As they get closer to the truth they must each confront a fundamental question:How do women live their lives knowing that men can hurt them?

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The Christie Affair

Nina de Gramont

A Reese's Book Club Pick

Why would the world's most famous mystery writer disappear for eleven days? What makes a woman desperate enough to destroy another woman's marriage? How deeply can a person crave revenge?

In 1925, Miss Nan O’Dea infiltrated the wealthy, rarefied world of author Agatha Christie and her husband, Archie. In every way, she became a part of their life––first, both Christies. Then, just Archie. Soon, Nan became Archie’s mistress, luring him away from his devoted wife, desperate to marry him. Nan’s plot didn’t begin the day she met Archie and Agatha.

It began decades before, in Ireland, when Nan was a young girl. She and the man she loved were a star-crossed couple who were destined to be together––until the Great War, a pandemic, and shameful secrets tore them apart. Then acts of unspeakable cruelty kept them separated.

What drives someone to murder? What will someone do in the name of love? What kind of crime can someone never forgive? Nina de Gramont’s brilliant, unforgettable novel explores these questions and more.

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The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections

Eva Jurczyk

International Bestseller

"With its countless revelations about the dusty realms of rare books, a likable librarian sleuth who has just the right balance of compassion and wit, and a library setting that is teeming with secrets, The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections is a rare treat for readers. I loved this book!"—Matthew Sullivan, author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

Anxious People meets the delights of bookish fiction in a stunning debut following a librarian whose quiet life is turned upside down when a priceless manuscript goes missing. Soon she has to ask: what holds more secrets in the library—the ancient books shelved in the stacks, or the people who preserve them?

Liesl Weiss long ago learned to be content working behind the scenes in the distinguished rare books department of a large university, managing details and working behind the scenes to make the head of the department look good. But when her boss has a stroke and she's left to run things, she discovers that the library's most prized manuscript is missing.

Liesl tries to sound the alarm and inform the police about the missing priceless book, but is told repeatedly to keep quiet, to keep the doors open and the donors happy. But then a librarian unexpectedly stops showing up to work. Liesl must investigate both disappearances, unspooling her colleagues' pasts like the threads of a rare book binding as it becomes clear that someone in the department must be responsible for the theft. What Liesl discovers about the dusty manuscripts she has worked among for so long—and about the people who care for and revere them—shakes the very foundation on which she has built her life.

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections is a sparkling book-club read about a woman struggling to step out from behind the shadows of powerful and unreliable men, and reveals the dark edge of obsession running through the most devoted bookworms.

February 2022 INDIE NEXT Selection

January 2022 LIBRARY READS Selection

January 2022 Loan Star Selection

Pop Sugar 35 Must-Read Thrillers and Mystery Books

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National Geographic Readers: Mythical Beasts (L3)

Stephanie Warren Drimmer

Calling all fans of unicorns, dragons, sea monsters, and other mythical creatures! Discover 100 marvelous facts that add to the magic in this new reader for fluent readers. Key features include: Expert-vetted text appropriate for ages 7 to 9 Brilliant and eye-catching National Geographic images 100 fun facts spread throughout the book A fact roundup at the end of each book for kids to review what they've learned Packed with weird-but-true facts and tons of info, this Level 3 reader explores animals that are mistaken for mythical creatures, critters that are almost too weird for reality, and other creatures with incredible abilities. Learn all about these amazing, unbelievable, and downright fantastical beasts! About the series: This high-interest, educationally-vetted readers series features magnificent National Geographic images accompanied by text written by experienced, skilled children's book authors. Each reader includes a glossary and interactive features in which kids get to use what they've learned in the book. Level 1 readers reinforce the content of the book with a kinesthetic learning activity. Level 2 readers feature slightly higher-level text and additional vocabulary words. Level 3 readers have more layers of information to challenge more proficient readers. For emerging readers, the Pre-reader level introduces vocabulary and concepts, and the Co-reader level provides a collaborative reading experience. Praise for National Geographic Readers: "Reliable in format and solid in execution, this series works well to introduce children of varying levels of reading comfort to nonfiction and research formats." —Maggie Reagan, Booklist Complete your collection with these popular National Geographic Fact Readers: National Geographic Readers: Bling! 100 Fun Facts About Rocks and Gems National Geographic Readers: Squeak! 100 Fun Facts about Hamsters, Mice, Guinea Pigs, and More National Geographic Readers: Ink! 100 Fun Facts About Octopuses, Squid, and More Nation

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Hardcourt

Fred Bowen

Celebrate seventy-five years of the NBA in this exciting and beautifully illustrated middle grade account of the legendary athletes, coaches, and teams that changed basketball forever and created a national phenomenon enjoyed by millions today.

The National Basketball Association is the biggest league for one of the nation’s most beloved sports. Played in massive stadiums by athletes who are now household names, with millions of fans around the world, basketball has truly become a global phenomenon. But it didn’t always exist the way we know it now.

Follow basketball from its humble beginnings as a casual indoor pastime played in gyms and colleges through its evolution for seventy-five years of hardcourt history. The NBA gained legions of fans thanks to the introduction of rules like the three-point line and the twenty-four second clock, and teams such as the Harlem Globetrotters, who paved the way for desegregated teams. Discover the story of the legendary Olympic Dream Team of 1992 and beloved players like Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and LeBron James, along with the early game-changers who made basketball what it is today.

With the expert storytelling of veteran sportswriter Fred Bowen and stunning full-page illustrations from award-winning artist James E. Ransome, experience the biggest and best basketball league in the world, the NBA.

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The ABCs of Black History

Rio Cortez

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

B is for Beautiful, Brave, and Bright! And for a Book that takes a Bold journey through the alphabet of Black history and culture.

 
Letter by letter, The ABCs of Black History celebrates a story that spans continents and centuries, triumph and heartbreak, creativity and joy.
 
It’s a story of big ideas––P is for Power, S is for Science and Soul. Of significant moments––G is for Great Migration. Of iconic figures––H is for Zora Neale Hurston, X is for Malcom X. It’s an ABC book like no other, and a story of hope and love.

In addition to rhyming text, the book includes back matter with information on the events, places, and people mentioned in the poem, from Mae Jemison to W. E. B. Du Bois, Fannie Lou Hamer to Sam Cooke, and the Little Rock Nine to DJ Kool Herc.

 

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Ducks Overboard!: A True Story of Plastic in Our Oceans

Markus Motum

Eco facts come to light as a plastic duck narrates this beautifully illustrated true story of thousands of bath toys that were lost at sea and swept to the four corners of the Pacific.

If a shipping container filled with 28,000 plastic ducks spilled into the Pacific Ocean, where would all those ducks go? Inspired by a real incident, this captivating and innovative look at the pollution crisis in our oceans follows one of the ducks as it is washed away on ocean currents, encountering plastic-endangered whales and sea turtles and passing through the giant floating island of marine debris known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. From the author-illustrator of the acclaimed Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover comes a highly accessible and graphically stylish picture book with an ultimately hopeful message about environmental issues and the state of our oceans. An end map documents the widely scattered journey of the real-life plastic ducks, showing where they have been found, as well as facts about the ways plastic is affecting various parts of the world.

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Pando

Kate Allen Fox

Pando is an inspiring tribute to a Utah grove of quaking Aspen trees connected by their roots to form one of the world's oldest and largest living things. Author Kate Allen Fox engages readers' senses to help convey the vastness of Pando, the challenges it faces, and how we all can be part of the solution. With lyrical poetry, Fox summarizes the science, action, and compassion needed to save this wonder of nature.

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The Transcendentalists and Their World

Robert A. Gross

One of The Wall Street Journal's 10 best books of 2021
One of Air Mail's 10 best books of 2021

In the year of the nation’s bicentennial, Robert A. Gross published The Minutemen and Their World, a paradigm-shaping study of Concord, Massachusetts, during the American Revolution. It won the prestigious Bancroft Prize and became a perennial bestseller. Forty years later, in this highly anticipated work, Gross returns to Concord and explores the meaning of an equally crucial moment in the American story: the rise of Transcendentalism.

The Transcendentalists and Their World offers a fresh view of the thinkers whose outsize impact on philosophy and literature would spread from tiny Concord to all corners of the earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Alcotts called this New England town home, and Thoreau drew on its life extensively in his classic Walden. But Concord from the 1820s through the 1840s was no pastoral place fit for poets and philosophers.

The Transcendentalists and their neighbors lived through a transformative epoch of American life. A place of two thousand–plus souls in the antebellum era, Concord was a community in ferment, whose small, ordered society founded by Puritans and defended by Minutemen was dramatically unsettled through the expansive forces of capitalism and democracy and tightly integrated into the wider world. These changes challenged a world of inherited institutions and involuntary associations with a new premium on autonomy and choice. They exposed people to cosmopolitan currents of thought and endowed them with unparalleled opportunities. They fostered uncertainties, raised new hopes, stirred dreams of perfection, and created an audience for new ideas of individual freedom and democratic equality deeply resonant today.

The Transcendentalists and Their World is both an intimate journey into the life of a community and a searching cultural study of major American writers as they plumbed the depths of the universe for spiritual truths and surveyed the rapidly changing contours of their own neighborhoods. It shows us familiar figures in American literature alongside their neighbors at every level of the social order, and it reveals how this common life in Concord entered powerfully into their works. No American community of the nineteenth century has been recovered so richly and with so acute an awareness of its place in the larger American story.

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The Eye Test

Chris Jones

In a world increasingly ruled by numbers and algorithms, award-winning journalist Chris Jones makes a compelling case for a more personal approach to analytical thinking​.

 

THE EYE TEST is a necessary course correction, a call for a more balanced, personal approach to problem-solving. Award-winning journalist Chris Jones makes the case for the human element--for what smart, practiced, devoted people can bring to situations that have proved resistant to analytics. Jones shares what he's learned from an army of extraordinary talents, including some of the best doctors, executives, athletes, meteorologists, magicians, designers, astrophysicists, and detectives in the world. There are lessons in their mastery.

 

Of course, there is a place for numbers in decision-making. No baseball player should be judged by his jawline. But the analytics revolution sparked by Michael Lewis's Moneyball now threatens to replace one kind of absurdity with another. We have developed a blind faith in the machine, the way a driver overly reliant on his GPS might be led off the edge of a cliff. Not all statistical analysis is sound. Algorithms aren't infallible, and spreadsheets aren't testaments. Trust in them too much, and they risk becoming instruments of destruction rather than understanding.

Worse, data's supremacy in our daily lives has led to a dangerous strain of anti-expertise: the belief that every problem is a math problem, and anyone given access to the right information will find the right answer. That taste doesn't matter, experience doesn't matter, creativity doesn't matter. That we can't believe our eyes, no matter how much they've seen.

THE EYE TEST serves as a reminder that if beauty is less of a virtue in the age of analytics, a good eye still is. This book is a celebration of our greatest beholders--and an absorbing, inspiring guide for how you might become one, too.

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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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How to Break Up with Your Friends

Erin Falconer

Create space for meaningful connections and set healthy boundaries with this much-needed guide to modern-day friendship.
 
Friends hold an especially valuable role for women—few relationships have such power to fuel us and inspire our joy. Yet even though we pride ourselves on our large networks, we tend to be afraid of rocking the boat and asking for what we really need. As a result, we end up accepting mediocrity in ourselves and our friendships far too often. 
 
But does it really have to be this way?
 
In How to Break Up with Your Friends, celebrated life mentor Erin Falconer provides a refreshing guide to modern-day friendships—along with deeper principles, assessments, and practices for nurturing them.
 
“This book is about so much more than going through your contact list with a machete,” writes Erin. “Yes, you’ll learn how to detox yourself from friendships that no longer nourish you, but you’ll also explore the astounding importance of modern friendships and how to be a truly great friend yourself.”
 
With clear-eyed guidance and a good dose of humor, Erin will help you:

  • Take stock of those currently in your life so you can see exactly how you and your friends are serving each other
  • Understand how your earliest friendships impact your current relationships
  • Explore the importance of having healthy friendships—including the many ways we’re influenced by our friend groups
  • Know the main types of friendships we form, the roles they play in our lives, and how to deepen the most essential ones
  • Recognize the signs you’re in a toxic friendship and stop fearing constructive confrontation
  • Rupture and repair—be ready when a valuable friendship hits the rocks
  • Learn how to make new friends as an adult
  • Have the courageous conversations needed when it’s time to “break up” with others

With a wealth of revelations and tools—including the Six Pillars of Friendship, the Friendship Diagnosis, and sample scripts to help facilitate the hard conversations—How to Break Up with Your Friends is the relationship book you didn’t know you needed.

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1% Better

Chris Nikic

What would life look like if you measured your success by improvements instead of victories? Nik Nikic shares the incredible story of his son Chris’s journey to become the first person with Down syndrome to ever complete an IRONMAN® triathlon, inspiring others to achieve their goals by getting 1 percent better every day.

From the moment Chris Nikic was born, his parents knew he could achieve anything he set his mind to do. So when he became involved in triathlons with the Special Olympics, his dad, Nik, took on the role of coach and encouraged Chris to aim even higher. Together, they set their sights on making history—Chris becoming the first person with Down syndrome to complete an IRONMAN® triathlon.

Written from Chris’s father’s perspective, Nik shares the 1% Better mindset that has helped Chris achieve many of his goals—and the underlying principles of the 1% Better system can help you pursue and achieve your dreams too! Through Chris and Nik’s story, learn the benefits of applying the model to your own life and discover how to:

  • Overcome the mental hurdles of pain
  • Stay motivated using three irrefutable laws of motivation
  • See failures as opportunities for improvement
  • Form a lifelong habit of success

You may never be the best. But you can be better than your best when you stop imposing self-limitations and begin the journey to reach your goals—one confident step at a time.

Publisher’s Note: 1% Better is written in Nik Nikic’s voice. Chris and his accomplishments are the focus of 1% Better, and Chris is a coauthor of the book as he was interviewed by his father and the writer.

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Price Wars

Rupert Russell

A fascinating, groundbreaking exposé of how commodity traders in New York and London have destabilized societies all over the world, leaving the most vulnerable at the mercy of hunger, chaos, and war.

For Rupert Russell, the Brexit vote was only the latest shock in a decade full of them: the unstoppable war in Syria, huge migrant flows into Europe, beheadings in Iraq, children placed in cages on the U.S. border. In Price Wars, he sets out on a worldwide journey to investigate what caused the wave of chaos that consumed the world in the 2010s.

Russell travels to Tunisia, Iraq, Venezuela, Ukraine, East Africa, and Central America and discovers that unrest in all these places was triggered by dramatic and mysterious swings in the price of essential commodities. Deregulation of the commodities markets means that food prices can shoot up even in years of abundant harvests, causing hunger and protest. Oil prices and real-estate values can surge even when supplies are normal, enriching and emboldening dictators. It is this instability--fueled by banks and hedge funds in faraway New York and London--that has toppled regimes and unsettled the West.

Price Wars is a fascinating, original, and groundbreaking exposé of the power of the commodities markets to disrupt the world.

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The Revolution That Wasn't

Spencer Jakab

"The saga of GameStop and other meme stocks is revealed with the skill of a thrilling whodunit. Jakab writes with an anti-Midas touch. If he touched gold, he would bring it to life." --Burton G. Malkiel, author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street

From Wall Street Journal columnist Spencer Jakab, the real story of the GameStop squeeze—and the surprising winners of a rigged game.


During one crazy week in January 2021, a motley crew of retail traders on Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets forum had seemingly done the impossible—they had brought some of the biggest, richest players on Wall Street to their knees. Their weapon was GameStop, a failing retailer whose shares briefly became 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, placing power back in the hands of everyday investors—only tilted the odds further in the house’s favor.

Online brokerages love to talk about empowerment and “democratizing finance” while profiting from the mistakes and volatility created by novice investors. 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, there really is a way for ordinary investors to beat the pros: by refusing to play their game.

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The Mind of the Leader

Rasmus Hougaard

Join the global movement that's making corporations more people-centric to achieve great results.

The world is facing a global leadership crisis. Seventy-seven percent of leaders think they do a good job of engaging their people, yet 88 percent of employees say their leaders don't engage enough. There is also a high level of suffering in the workplace: 35 percent of employees would forgo a pay raise to see their leaders fired.

This is an enormous waste of human talent--despite the fact that $46 billion is spent each year on leadership development.

Based on extensive research, including assessments of more than 35,000 leaders and interviews with 250 C-level executives, The Mind of the Leader concludes that organizations and leaders aren't meeting employees' basic human needs of finding meaning, purpose, connection, and genuine happiness in their work.

But more than a description of the problem, The Mind of the Leader offers a radical, yet practical, solution. To solve the leadership crisis, organizations need to put people at the center of their strategy. They need to develop managers and executives who lead with three core mental qualities: mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion.

Using real-world inspirational examples from Marriott, Accenture, McKinsey & Company, LinkedIn, and many more, The Mind of the Leader shows how this new kind of leadership turns conventional leadership thinking upside down. It represents a radical redefinition of what it takes to be an effective leader--and a practical, hard-nosed solution to every organization's engagement and execution problems.

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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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How to Win The Bachelor

Chad Kultgen

Perfect for fans of Bachelor Nation and Seinfeldia, an illuminating deep dive into the most successful reality TV franchise of all time—The Bachelor.

Since its premiere in 2002, ABC’s The Bachelor has become a staple of American television. Now, discover the fascinating history of the show, uncover the ins and outs of the phenomenon that has become Bachelor Nation, and take a deeper look at what separates the winners from the losers.

From how best to exit the limo on Night One, to strategies for making a run for the all-important First Impression Rose, to how to avoid being labeled a villain, this clear-eyed guide illustrates the rules and strategies any would-be contestant should know.

The ultimate must-read for every fan, How to Win the Bachelor gives you an inside look at the franchise where The Rose holds all the power.

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Soled Out

Sneaker Freaker

A riotous, 720-page celebration of sneakers and sporting legends, as told through the medium of vintage print advertising

More than a decade in the making, Soled Out is the definitive - and only - collection of sneaker advertisements from the footwear industry's golden age. Lovingly written and compiled by Simon 'Woody' Wood, founder of the legendary Sneaker Freaker magazine, this colossal volume combines nearly 900 vintage images with a punchy narrative full of insider stories and historical revelations.

Featuring superstar athletes and cultural icons such as Andre Agassi, Paula Abdul, Bo Jackson, Bugs Bunny, Michael Jordan, MC Hammer, and Shaquille O'Neal, every page is laced with classic sneaker models, unforgettable graphics, and outrageous trash talk. Sit back and enjoy the spectacular scenery ahead as Soled Out powers through a 720-page marathon celebration of the rubber, leather, and mesh we wear on our feet.

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American Comics: A History

Jeremy Dauber

The sweeping story of cartoons, comic strips, and graphic novels and their hold on the American imagination. 

Comics have conquered America. From our multiplexes, where Marvel and DC movies reign supreme, to our television screens, where comics-based shows like The Walking Dead have become among the most popular in cable history, to convention halls, best-seller lists, Pulitzer Prize–winning titles, and MacArthur Fellowship recipients, comics shape American culture, in ways high and low, superficial, and deeply profound.

In American Comics, Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes readers through their incredible but little-known history, starting with the Civil War and cartoonist Thomas Nast, creator of the lasting and iconic images of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus; the golden age of newspaper comic strips and the first great superhero boom; the moral panic of the Eisenhower era, the Marvel Comics revolution, and the underground comix movement of the 1960s and ’70s; and finally into the twenty-first century, taking in the grim and gritty Dark Knights and Watchmen alongside the brilliant rise of the graphic novel by acclaimed practitioners like Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel.

Dauber’s story shows not only how comics have changed over the decades but how American politics and culture have changed them. Throughout, he describes the origins of beloved comics, champions neglected masterpieces, and argues that we can understand how America sees itself through whose stories comics tell. Striking and revelatory, American Comics is a rich chronicle of the last 150 years of American history through the lens of its comic strips, political cartoons, superheroes, graphic novels, and more.

FEATURING…
• American Splendor  • Archie  • The Avengers  • Kyle Baker  • Batman  • C. C. Beck  • Black Panther  • Captain America  • Roz Chast  • Walt Disney  • Will Eisner  • Neil Gaiman  • Bill Gaines  • Bill Griffith  • Harley Quinn  • Jack Kirby   • Denis Kitchen  • Krazy Kat  • Harvey Kurtzman  • Stan Lee  • Little Orphan Annie  • Maus  • Frank Miller  • Alan Moore  • Mutt and Jeff  • Gary Panter  • Peanuts  • Dav Pilkey  • Gail Simone  • Spider-Man  • Superman  • Dick Tracy  • Wonder Wart-Hog  • Wonder Woman  • The Yellow Kid  • Zap Comix
… AND MANY MORE OF YOUR FAVORITES! 

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Trail Running Illustrated

Doug Mayer

  • Everything a trail runner needs to know, from training to racing
  • Passionate authors and experienced trail runners
  • Introduction by Brendan Leonard, creator of Semi-Rad.com

Running through pastures and forests, hopping over rocks, and splashing through streams: trail running is humanity'soriginal form of play--an activity we've been doing for millions of years. Adventurous runners of all ages, shapes, and sizes are leaving the pavement behind and seeking new challenges. More popular than ever, trail running is growing rapidly around the world.

Trail Running Illustrated offers clear, concise advice on how to get started. Created by two longtime trail runners with a passion for the sport, this book is your key to unlocking a lifetime of exploration and challenges, whether you're running in your local park or through some of the world's most remote regions.

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It's Better to Be Feared

Seth Wickersham

Over two unbelievable decades, the New England Patriots were not only the NFL's most dominant team, but also--and by far--the most secretive. How did they achieve and sustain greatness--and what were the costs?

In It's Better to Be Feared, Seth Wickersham, one of the country's finest long form and investigative sportswriters, tells the full, behind-the-scenes story of the Patriots, capturing the brilliance, ambition, and vanity that powered and ultimately unraveled them. Based on hundreds of interviews conducted since 2001, Wickersham's chronicle is packed with revelations, taking us deep into Bill Belichick's tactical ingenuity and Tom Brady's unique mentality while also reporting on their divergent paths in 2020, including Brady's run to the Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Raucous, unvarnished, and definitive, It's Better to Be Feared is an instant classic of American sportswriting in the tradition of Michael Lewis, David Maraniss, and David Halberstam.

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Battle of the Linguist Mages

Scotto Moore

“This is a stand-alone novel with material enough for six... By the halfway point, it had blown my mind twice... an audacious, genre-bending whirlwind.” —New York Times

“It reads like Snow Crash had a dance-off with Gideon the Ninth, in a world where language isn't a virus from outer space, it's a goddamn alien invasion.” —Charles Stross


In modern day Los Angeles, a shadowy faction led by the Governor of California develops the arcane art of combat linguistics, planting the seeds of a future totalitarian empire.

Isobel is the Queen of the medieval rave-themed VR game Sparkle Dungeon. Her prowess in the game makes her an ideal candidate to learn the secrets of "power morphemes"—unnaturally dense units of meaning that warp perception when skilfully pronounced.

But Isobel’s reputation makes her the target of a strange resistance movement led by spellcasting anarchists, who may be the only thing stopping the cabal from toppling California over the edge of a terrible transformation, with forty million lives at stake.

Time is short for Isobel to level up and choose a side—because the cabal has attracted much bigger and weirder enemies than the anarchist resistance, emerging from dark and vicious dimensions of reality and heading straight for planet Earth!

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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Isolate

L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr., bestselling author of The Mongrel Mage, has a brand new gaslamp political fantasy Isolate.

Book Bub—The 24 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of Fall 2021

Industrialization. Social unrest. Underground movements. Government corruption and surveillance.

Something is about to give.

Steffan Dekkard is an isolate, one of the small percentage of people who are immune to the projections of empaths. As an isolate, he has been trained as a security specialist and he and his security partner Avraal Ysella, a highly trained empath are employed by Axel Obreduur, a senior Craft Minister and the de facto political strategist of his party.

When a respected Landor Councilor dies of “heart failure” at a social event, because of his political friendship with Obreduur, Dekkard and Ysella find that not only is their employer a target, but so are they, in a covert and deadly struggle for control of the government and economy.

Steffan is about to understand that everything he believed is an illusion.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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The Unfamiliar Garden

Benjamin Percy

The night the sky fell, Jack and Nora Abernathy’s daughter vanished in the woods. And Mia’s disappearance broke her parents’ already fragile marriage. Unable to solve her own daughter’s case, Nora lost herself in her work as a homicide detective. Jack became a shell of a man; his promising career as a biologist crumbling alongside the meteor strikes that altered weather patterns and caused a massive drought.

It isn’t until five years later that the rains finally return to nourish Seattle. In this period of sudden growth, Jack uncovers evidence of a new parasitic fungus, while Nora investigates several brutal, ritualistic murders. Soon they will be drawn together by a horrifying connection between their discoveries—partnering to fight a deadly contagion as well as the government forces that know the truth about the fate of their daughter.

Award-winning author Benjamin Percy delivers both a gripping science fiction thriller and a dazzling examination of a planet—and a marriage—that have broken.

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Daughter of the Moon Goddess

Sue Lynn Tan

A captivating debut fantasy inspired by the legend of the Chinese moon goddess, Chang’e , in which a young woman’s quest to free her mother pits her against the most powerful immortal in the realm and sets her on a dangerous path—where choices come with deadly consequences, and she risks losing more than her heart.

Growing up on the moon, Xingyin is accustomed to solitude, unaware that she is being hidden from the powerful Celestial Emperor who exiled her mother for stealing his elixir of immortality. But when Xingyin’s magic flares and her existence is discovered, she is forced to flee her home, leaving her mother behind.

Alone, untrained, and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom, a land of wonder and secrets. Disguising her identity, she seizes an opportunity to learn alongside the Crown Prince, mastering archery and magic, even as passion flames between her and the emperor’s son.

To save her mother, Xingyin embarks on a perilous quest, confronting legendary creatures and vicious enemies across the earth and skies. When treachery looms and forbidden magic threatens the kingdom, however, she must challenge the ruthless Celestial Emperor for her dream—striking a dangerous bargain in which she is torn between losing all she loves or plunging the realm into chaos.

Daughter of the Moon Goddess begins an enchanting, romantic duology which weaves ancient Chinese mythology into a sweeping adventure of immortals and magic, of loss and sacrifice—where love vies with honor, dreams are fraught with betrayal, and hope emerges triumphant.

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The Bone Shard Daughter

Andrea Stewart

The Bone Shard Daughter is an unmissable debut from a major new voice in epic fantasy — a stunning tale of magic, mystery, and revolution in which the former heir to the emperor will fight to reclaim her power and her place on the throne.

"One of the best debut fantasy novels of the year." — BuzzFeed News
"An amazing start to a new trilogy." — Culturess
"It grabs you by the heart and the throat from the first pages and doesn't let go." — Sarah J. Maas


The emperor's reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire's many islands.

Lin is the emperor's daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.

Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright - and save her people.

"One of the best debut fantasy novels of the year." —BuzzFeed News

"An amazing start to a new trilogy." —Culturess

"It grabs you by the heart and the throat from the first pages and doesn't let go." —Sarah J. Maas

"Epic fantasy at its most human and heartfelt . . . inventive, adventurous and wonderfully written."  —Alix E. Harrow

"Utterly absorbing. I adored it." —Emily Duncan

"A thoroughly fantastic read." —Kevin Hearne

"Stewart's debut is sharp and compelling. It will hook readers in and make them fiercely anticipate the rest of the series." —Booklist

"Groundbreaking epic fantasy for a new age." —Tasha Suri

"Begins with a spark of intrigue that ignites into a thrilling adventure." —Hafsah Faizal

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Manifesto

Bernardine Evaristo

From the bestselling and Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo's memoir of her own life and writing, and her manifesto on unstoppability, creativity, and activism

Bernardine Evaristo's 2019 Booker Prize win was a historic and revolutionary occasion, with Evaristo being the first Black woman and first Black British person ever to win the prize in its fifty-year history. Girl, Woman, Other was named a favorite book of the year by President Obama and Roxane Gay, was translated into thirty-five languages, and has now reached more than a million readers.

Evaristo's astonishing nonfiction debut, Manifesto, is a vibrant and inspirational account of Evaristo's life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought over several decades to bring her creative work into the world. With her characteristic humor, Evaristo describes her childhood as one of eight siblings, with a Nigerian father and white Catholic mother, tells the story of how she helped set up Britain's first Black women's theatre company, remembers the queer relationships of her twenties, and recounts her determination to write books that were absent in the literary world around her. She provides a hugely powerful perspective to contemporary conversations around race, class, feminism, sexuality, and aging. She reminds us of how far we have come, and how far we still have to go. In Manifesto, Evaristo charts her theory of unstoppability, showing creative people how they too can visualize and find success in their work, ignoring the naysayers.

Both unconventional memoir and inspirational text, Manifesto is a unique reminder to us all to persist in doing work we believe in, even when we might feel overlooked or discounted. Evaristo shows us how we too can follow in her footsteps, from first vision, to insistent perseverance, to eventual triumph.

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Bright Lights, Prairie Dust

Karen Grassle

Karen Grassle, the beloved actress who played Ma on Little House on the Prairie, grew up at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in a family where love was plentiful but alcohol wreaked havoc. In this candid memoir, Grassle reveals her journey to succeed as an actress even as she struggles to overcome depression, combat her own dependence on alcohol, and find true love. With humor and hard-won wisdom, Grassle takes readers on an inspiring journey through the political turmoil on ’60s campuses, on to studies with some of the most celebrated artists at the famed London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, and ultimately behind the curtains of Broadway stages and storied Hollywood sets. In these pages, readers meet actors and directors who have captivated us on screen and stage as they fall in love, betray and befriend, and don costumes only to reveal themselves. We know Karen Grassle best as the proud prairie woman Caroline Ingalls, with her quiet strength and devotion to family, but this memoir introduces readers to the complex, funny, rebellious, and soulful woman who, in addition to being the force behind those many strong women she played, fought passionately—as a writer, producer, and activist—on behalf of equal rights for women. Raw, emotional, and tender, Bright Lights celebrates and honors womanhood, in all its complexity.

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Apparently There Were Complaints

Sharon Gless

Emmy Award–winning actress Sharon Gless tells all in this laugh-out-loud, juicy, “unforgettably memorable” (Lily Tomlin) memoir about her five decades in Hollywood, where she took on some of the most groundbreaking roles of her time.

Anyone who has seen Sharon Gless act in Cagney & Lacey, Queer as Folk, Burn Notice, and countless other shows and movies, knows that she’s someone who gives every role her all. She holds nothing back in Apparently There Were Complaints, a hilarious, deeply personal memoir that spills all about Gless’s five decades in Hollywood.

A fifth-generation Californian, Sharon Gless knew from a young age that she wanted to be an actress. After some rocky teenage years that included Sharon’s parents’ divorce and some minor (and not-so-minor) rebellion, Gless landed a coveted spot as an exclusive contract player or Universal Studios. In 1982, she stepped into the role of New York Police Detective Christine Cagney for the series Cagney & Lacey, which eventually reached an audience of 30 million weekly viewers and garnered Gless with two Emmy Awards. The show made history as the first hour-long drama to feature two women in the leading roles.

Gless continued to make history long after Cagney & Lacey was over. In 2000, she took on the role of outrageous Debbie Novotny in Queer as Folk. Her portrayal of a devoted mother to a gay son and confidant to his gay friends touched countless hearts and changed the definition of family for millions of viewers.

Apparently There Were Complaints delves into Gless’s remarkable career and explores Gless’s complicated family, her struggles with alcoholism, and her fear of romantic commitment as well as her encounters with some of Hollywood’s biggest names. Brutally honest and incredibly relatable, Gless puts it all out on the page in the same way she has lived—never with moderation.

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George V

Jane Ridley

From one of the most beloved and distinguished historians of the British monarchy, here is a lively, intimately detailed biography of a long-overlooked king who reimagined the Crown in the aftermath of World War I and whose marriage to the regal Queen Mary was an epic partnership

The grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, King George V reigned over the British Empire from 1910 to 1936, a period of unprecedented international turbulence. Yet no one could deny that as a young man, George seemed uninspired. As his biographer Harold Nicolson famously put it, "he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps." The contrast between him and his flamboyant, hedonistic, playboy father Edward VII could hardly have been greater.

However, though it lasted only a quarter-century, George's reign was immensely consequential. He faced a constitutional crisis, the First World War, the fall of thirteen European monarchies and the rise of Bolshevism. The suffragette Emily Davison threw herself under his horse at the Derby, he refused asylum to his cousin the Tsar Nicholas II during the Russian Revolution, and he facilitated the first Labour government. And, as Jane Ridley shows, the modern British monarchy would not exist without George; he reinvented the institution, allowing it to survive and thrive when its very existence seemed doomed. The status of the British monarchy today, she argues, is due in large part to him.

How this supposedly limited man managed to steer the crown through so many perils and adapt an essentially Victorian institution to the twentieth century is a great story in itself. But this book is also a riveting portrait of a royal marriage and family life. Queen Mary played a pivotal role in the reign as well as being an important figure in her own right. Under the couple's stewardship, the crown emerged stronger than ever. George V founded the modern monarchy, and yet his disastrous quarrel with his eldest son, the Duke of Windsor, culminated in the existential crisis of the Abdication only months after his death.

Jane Ridley has had unprecedented access to the archives, and for the first time is able to reassess in full the many myths associated with this crucial and dramatic time. She brings us a royal family and world not long vanished, and not so far from our own.

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Free

Lea Ypi

CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, TLS, NEW STATESMAN AND SPECTATOR

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD*

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION*

'Wonderfully funny and poignant. . . a tale of family secrets and political awakening amid a crumbling regime. One of the nonfiction titles of the year' Luke Harding, Observer

'Astonishing and deeply resonant . . . Ypi weaves magic in this book: I was entranced from beginning to end' Laura Hackett, Sunday Times

'I never asked myself about the meaning of freedom until the day I hugged Stalin. From close up, he was much taller than I expected.'

Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, was almost impossible to visit, almost impossible to leave. It was a place of queuing and scarcity, of political executions and secret police. To Lea, it was home. People were equal, neighbours helped each other, and children were expected to build a better world. There was community and hope.

Then, in December 1990, a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, everything changed. The statues of Stalin and Hoxha were toppled. Almost overnight, people could vote freely, wear what they liked and worship as they wished. There was no longer anything to fear from prying ears. But factories shut, jobs disappeared and thousands fled to Italy on crowded ships, only to be sent back. Predatory pyramid schemes eventually bankrupted the country, leading to violent conflict. As one generation's aspirations became another's disillusionment, and as her own family's secrets were revealed, Lea found herself questioning what freedom really meant.

Free is an engrossing memoir of coming of age amid political upheaval. With acute insight and wit, Lea Ypi traces the limits of progress and the burden of the past, illuminating the spaces between ideals and reality, and the hopes and fears of people pulled up by the sweep of history.

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Bravelands: Curse of the Sandtongue #2: The Venom Spreads

Erin Hunter

The brand-new arc of Erin Hunter’s bestselling Bravelands series continues in the latest thrilling adventure!

Friends and family are split as longtime allies turn on each other, and born foes form unlikely bonds. The very threat that led Bramble to leave the place he called home has ensnared the creatures who live on the mountain.

As the mysterious poison begins to affect more and more animals, Chase struggles to determine where her loyalties should lie. And down on the plains, Prance prays that the Great Spirit will send Thorn a solution to the shadowy menace.

But even the Great Father may not be able to save them this time. 

Full of epic adventure and thrilling intrigue, this new Bravelands adventure will thrill readers who love the Spirit Animals and Wings of Fire series, as well as the legion of dedicated fans who’ve made Erin Hunter a bestselling phenomenon.

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Maizy Chen's Last Chance

Lisa Yee

Packed with surprises, heart, and stories within stories, this irresistible novel from an award-winning author celebrates food, fortune, and family.

Welcome to The Golden Palace!

Maizy has never been to Last Chance, Minnesota . . . until now. Her mom's plan is just to stay for a couple weeks, until her grandfather gets better. But plans change, and as Maizy spends more time in Last Chance (where she and her family are the only Asian Americans) and at the Golden Palace-the restaurant that's been in her family for generations-she makes some discoveries. For instance-
. You can tell a LOT about someone by the way they order food.
. And people can surprise you. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in disappointing ways.
. And the Golden Palace has secrets.

But the more Maizy discovers, the more questions she has. Like, why are her mom and her grandmother always fighting? Who are the people in the photographs on the office wall? And when she discovers that a beloved family treasure has gone missing-and someone has left a racist note-Maizy decides it's time to find the answers.

"I love this book. This is a big story and brings up much-needed discussion about the importance of community, history, and truth." -Rita Williams-Garcia, Newbery Honor-winning author of One Crazy Summer

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When the World Turned Upside Down

K. Ibura

A heartwarming, feel-good story of friendship and overcoming adversity in a time of COVID, this is a book about community, giving back, and understanding the world around us through the power of generosity from debut author K. Ibura.

 

With one little announcement from their fourth-grade teacher, Shayla, Liam, Ben, and Ai's world turned upside down. Now, with school on hold due to a strange virus that they don't quite understand, the only semblance of safety they feel is knowing that they have one another in their apartment complex.

 

But as each of them head home and experience their own version of confinement, it becomes very real. And as their individual struggles grow, they need each other now more than ever. Very soon, they discover that they're not the only ones who need a little help.

 

Banded together, the friends find ways to help others struggling in their building. And one by one, they do their part in making their neighbors feel just a little bit safer. As the world becomes more complex, as protests take the streets, Shayla, Liam, Ben, and Ai do everything they can to better understand the world around them and the people around them in order to discover the power and comfort that understanding and generosity can bring.

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Freewater

Amina Luqman-Dawson

Debut author Amina Luqman-Dawson pens a lyrical, accessible historical middle-grade novel about two enslaved children's escape from a plantation and the many ways they find freedom.

Under the cover of night, twelve-year-old Homer flees Southerland Plantation with his little sister Ada, unwillingly leaving their beloved mother behind. Much as he adores her and fears for her life, Homer knows there's no turning back, not with the overseer on their trail. Through tangled vines, secret doorways, and over a sky bridge, the two find a secret community called Freewater, deep in the swamp.

In this society created by formerly enslaved people and some freeborn children, Homer finds new friends, almost forgetting where he came from. But when he learns of a threat that could destroy Freewater, he crafts a plan to find his mother and help his new home.

Deeply inspiring and loosely based on the history of maroon communities in the South, this is a striking tale of survival, adventure, friendship, and courage.

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The Righteous

Renée Ahdieh

In this latest installment of The New York Times bestselling quartet that began with The Beautiful, Pippa journeys to the treacherous and beguiling world of the fey in search of answers but instead falls in love.

Following the explosive events of The Damned, Odette faces a vampire's final death. The Court of the Lions have done everything they can to save her but have failed. A healer from the Sylvan Vale could help her, but only Arjun Desai, as a half fey, can cross the boundary between realms. The Sylvan Vale is a world Arjun despises, and in return, it despises him. But knowing it could save Odette, he returns to the Vale with all haste, leaving the mirrored tare between the two worlds open and unwittingly setting the stage for both love and war.

It's mere days until Pippa Montrose is to wed Phoebus Devereux and become a member of his well-heeled family, offering salvation to her own. But Celine is missing. Pippa has no idea where her best friend has gone, but she's certain it's in the company of vampire Sébastien Saint Germain and that Arjun can lead her to them. Pippa enjoins the help of Eloise, the daughter of a powerful sorceress, to discover the gateway Arjun uses to travel between worlds. Pippa, tired of hesitating in life, marches right through in search of her friend. But what she discovers on the other side is a dangerous, duplicitous world full of mischief and magic she doesn't understand, and most unexpectedly, she finds love.

Author of the New York Times bestselling duology The Wrath & The Dawn, Renée Ahdieh is back. The Righteous is the can't-miss lead in to what will be a much-anticipated finale of a can't miss quartet.

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Here's to Us

Becky Albertalli

#1 New York Times bestseller! Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera reunite to continue the story of Arthur and Ben, the boys readers first fell for in the bestselling rom-com What If It’s Us.

Ben survived freshman year of college, but he’s feeling more stuck than ever. His classes are a slog, his part-time job working with his father is even worse, and his best friend Dylan’s been acting weird for weeks. Ben’s only real bright spot is his writing partner Mario, who’s been giving him a lot of Spanish lessons and even more kisses. Mario’s big Hollywood dreams make Ben start to dream bigger—and the choices he makes now could be the key to reshaping his future. So why can’t he stop thinking about a certain boy from his past?

Arthur is back in New York City for the first time in two years, ready to take the theater world by a storm as the world’s best . . . intern to the assistant of an off-off-Broadway director. Of course, it sucks to be spending the summer apart from his sweet, reliable boyfriend, Mikey, but he knows their relationship is strong enough to weather the distance. Which is why it’s no big deal when his ex-boyfriend Ben stumbles back into the picture. And it’s definitely fine that Ben’s blissfully happy with some mystery boy. First loves are special, but it’s way too late for what-ifs. Right?

Even as the boys try to shake off the past, they keep running into each other in the present. Is this the universe trying to tell them there’s a do-over in their future?

Here's to Us is sure to be welcomed by fans old and new of these authors and their previous collaboration, What If It's Us. Critically acclaimed and bestselling authors Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera combine their talents in these smart, funny, heartfelt novels about two very different boys who can’t decide if the universe is pushing them together—or pulling them apart.

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When You Get the Chance

Emma Lord

Most Anticipated Books of 2022 by: Goodreads * Buzzfeed * Bustle * PopSugar * USA Today * Publishers Weekly * Frolic * The Nerd Daily * Epic Reads * The Young Folks * Book Riot * Young Entertainment * E! News

A bighearted novel about falling in love, making a mess, and learning to let go, from Emma Lord, the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese Witherspoon YA Book Club pick You Have a Match.



**An Indie Next Pick**

Nothing will get in the way of Millie Price’s dream of becoming a Broadway star. Not her lovable but super introverted dad, who raised Millie alone since she was a baby. Not her drama club rival, Oliver, who is the very definition of Simmering Romantic Tension. And not her “Millie Moods,” the feelings of intense emotion that threaten to overwhelm. Millie needs an ally. And when an accidentally left-open browser brings Millie to her dad’s embarrassingly moody LiveJournal from 2003, Millie knows just what to do—find her mom.

But how can you find a new part of your life and expect it to fit into your old one without leaving any marks? And why is it that when you go looking for the past, it somehow keeps bringing you back to what you’ve had all along?

PRAISE FOR EMMA LORD:

"Brimming with energy, rapid-fire banter, and affectionate theater references, this memorable Mamma Mia! retelling...thoughtfully pays homage while skillfully modernizing it for today’s readers." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Chock-full of musical theater references and humor, the novel includes high-stakes emotional drama that is balanced by supportive friendships and strong, deep family connections...An entertaining personal journey with plot twists galore." - Kirkus Reviews

"Lord’s latest expertly and thoughtfully touches on what it means to be family, mental health, love and friendships, and, of course, musical theater. Trust me when I tell you that you’re going to want to rewatch Mamma Mia when you finish." - Buzzfeed

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The Red Palace

June Hur

June Hur, critically acclaimed author of The Silence of Bones and The Forest of Stolen Girls, returns with The Red Palace—a third evocative, atmospheric historical mystery perfect for fans of Courtney Summers and Kerri Maniscalco.

To enter the palace means to walk a path stained in blood...

Joseon (Korea), 1758. There are few options available to illegitimate daughters in the capital city, but through hard work and study, eighteen-year-old Hyeon has earned a position as a palace nurse. All she wants is to keep her head down, do a good job, and perhaps finally win her estranged father's approval.

But Hyeon is suddenly thrust into the dark and dangerous world of court politics when someone murders four women in a single night, and the prime suspect is Hyeon's closest friend and mentor. Determined to prove her beloved teacher's innocence, Hyeon launches her own secret investigation.

In her hunt for the truth, she encounters Eojin, a young police inspector also searching for the killer. When evidence begins to point to the Crown Prince himself as the murderer, Hyeon and Eojin must work together to search the darkest corners of the palace to uncover the deadly secrets behind the bloodshed.

Praise for The Red Palace:

An ABA Indie Bestseller
A Junior Library Guild Selection
Forbes Most Anticipated Book of 2022 Selection

"A tense political thriller, a beautiful romance, and a coming of age all in one unique package." —School Library Journal, starred review

"This atmospheric historical mystery will transport and captivate readers ... A beautifully written story full of historical and cultural details that will leave readers aching for a follow-up." —Booklist, starred review

"An expertly choreographed mystery with a touch of romance and an emotionally satisfying conclusion ... The perfect book to curl up with for a cozy winter afternoon of murder and intrigue." —NPR

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I Must Betray You

Ruta Sepetys

A #1 New York Times and National Bestseller!

A gut-wrenching, startling historical thriller about communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation, from the #1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Gray.


Romania, 1989. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force.

Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.

Cristian risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. But what is the cost of freedom?

Master storyteller Ruta Sepetys is back with a historical thriller that examines the little-known history of a nation defined by silence, pain, and the unwavering conviction of the human spirit.

Praise for I Must Betray You:

“As educational as it is thrilling...[T]he power of I Must Betray You [is] it doesn’t just describe the destabilizing effects of being spied on; it will make you experience them too.” New York Times Book Review

“A historical heart-pounder…Ms. Sepetys, across her body of work, has become a tribune of the unsung historical moment and a humane voice of moral clarity.”The Wall Street Journal

* "Sepetys brilliantly blends a staggering amount of research with heart, craft, and insight in a way very few writers can. Compulsively readable and brilliant." Kirkus Reviews, starred review

* "Sepetys once again masterfully portrays a dark, forgotten corner of history." Booklist, starred review

* "Sepetys’s latest book maintains the caliber readers have come to expect from an author whose focus on hidden histories has made her a YA powerhouse of historical ­fiction…Sepetys is a formidable writer, and her stories declare the need to write about global issues of social injustice. For that reason and her attention to detail, this is a must-read." School Library Journal, starred review

* "Cristian’s tense first-person narrative foregrounds stark historical realities, unflinchingly confronting deprivations and cruelty while balancing them with perseverance and hope as Romania hurtles toward political change." Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Sepetys keeps readers riveted to this vivid, heartbreaking and compelling novel, locked into every meticulously researched detail. I Must Betray You demands a full investment from its audience--through poetic writing, sympathetic characters, revolutionary plot and pacing, it grips the heart and soul and leaves one breathless.”Shelf Awareness, starred review

"A master class in pacing and atmosphere." BookPage
 

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eBay business all-in-one for dummies

Everything you need to know to start and run a successful eBay business. eBay now has 100 million active users and just keeps growing. And they have turned to --For Dummies books and bestselling eBay author Marsha Collier to help guide them through buying and selling on eBay for over a decade. This nine-books-in-one guide has now been updated to cover all the newest eBay seller tools, new techniques to drive sales, new ways to enhance an eBay business using social media, and more.

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Made in China

Anna Qu

A young girl forced to work in a Queens sweatshop calls child services on her mother in this powerful debut memoir about labor and self-worth that traces a Chinese immigrant's journey to an American future.

As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family's garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American, and such is their tough path in their new country. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life.

Nearly twenty years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, and on the brink of losing her job as the once-shiny start-up collapses, Qu looks once more at her life's truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work.

Traveling from Wenzhou to Xi'an to New York, Made in China is a fierce memoir unafraid to ask thorny questions about trauma and survival in immigrant families, the meaning of work, and the costs of immigration.

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Made in China

Amelia Pang

A Most-Anticipated Book of the Year: Newsweek * Refinery29

“Timely and urgent . . . Pang is a dogged investigator.” —The New York Times


“Moving and powerful.” —Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author 

Discover the truth behind the discounts
 
In 2012, an Oregon mother named Julie Keith opened up a package of Halloween decorations. The cheap foam headstones had been five dollars at Kmart, too good a deal to pass up. But when she opened the box, something shocking fell out: an SOS letter, handwritten in broken English.
  “Sir: If you occassionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persicuton of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever.”
The note’s author, Sun Yi, was a mild-mannered Chinese engineer turned political prisoner, forced into grueling labor for campaigning for the freedom to join a forbidden meditation movement. He was imprisoned alongside petty criminals, civil rights activists, and tens of thousands of others the Chinese government had decided to “reeducate,” carving foam gravestones and stitching clothing for more than fifteen hours a day.

In Made in China, investigative journalist Amelia Pang pulls back the curtain on Sun’s story and the stories of others like him, including the persecuted Uyghur minority group whose abuse and exploitation is rapidly gathering steam. What she reveals is a closely guarded network of laogai—forced labor camps—that power the rapid pace of American consumerism. Through extensive interviews and firsthand reportage, Pang shows us the true cost of America’s cheap goods and shares what is ultimately a call to action—urging us to ask more questions and demand more answers from the companies we patronize.
 

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Fashionopolis

Dana Thomas

An investigation into the damage wrought by the colossal clothing industry and the grassroots, high-tech, international movement fighting to reform it

What should I wear? It's one of the fundamental questions we ask ourselves every day. More than ever, we are told it should be something new. Today, the clothing industry churns out 80 billion garments a year and employs every sixth person on Earth. Historically, the apparel trade has exploited labor, the environment, and intellectual property--and in the last three decades, with the simultaneous unfurling of fast fashion, globalization, and the tech revolution, those abuses have multiplied exponentially, primarily out of view. We are in dire need of an entirely new human-scale model. Bestselling journalist Dana Thomas has traveled the globe to discover the visionary designers and companies who are propelling the industry toward that more positive future by reclaiming traditional craft and launching cutting-edge sustainable technologies to produce better fashion.

In Fashionopolis, Thomas sees renewal in a host of developments, including printing 3-D clothes, clean denim processing, smart manufacturing, hyperlocalism, fabric recycling--even lab-grown materials. From small-town makers and Silicon Valley whizzes to such household names as Stella McCartney, Levi's, and Rent the Runway, Thomas highlights the companies big and small that are leading the crusade.

We all have been casual about our clothes. It's time to get dressed with intention. Fashionopolis is the first comprehensive look at how to start.

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The Conscious Closet

Elizabeth L. Cline

From journalist, fashionista, and clothing resale expert Elizabeth L. Cline, “the Michael Pollan of fashion,”* comes the definitive guide to building an ethical, sustainable wardrobe you'll love.

Clothing is one of the most personal expressions of who we are. In her landmark investigation Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, Elizabeth L. Cline first revealed fast fashion’s hidden toll on the environment, garment workers, and even our own satisfaction with our clothes. The Conscious Closet shows exactly what we can do about it.

Whether your goal is to build an effortless capsule wardrobe, keep up with trends without harming the environment, buy better quality, seek out ethical brands, or all of the above, The Conscious Closet is packed with the vital tools you need. Elizabeth delves into fresh research on fashion’s impacts and shows how we can leverage our everyday fashion choices to change the world through style. Inspired by her own revelatory journey getting off the fast-fashion treadmill, Elizabeth shares exactly how to build a more ethical wardrobe, starting with a mindful closet clean-out and donating, swapping, or selling the clothes you don't love to make way for the closet of your dreams.

The Conscious Closet is not just a style guide. It is a call to action to transform one of the most polluting industries on earth—fashion—into a force for good. Readers will learn where our clothes are made and how they’re made, before connecting to a global and impassioned community of stylish fashion revolutionaries. In The Conscious Closet, Elizabeth shows us how we can start to truly love and understand our clothes again—without sacrificing the environment, our morals, or our style in the process.

*Michelle Goldberg, Newsweek/The Daily Beast

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Dress Codes

Richard Thompson Ford

A “sharp and entertaining” (The Wall Street Journal) exploration of fashion through the ages that asks what our clothing reveals about ourselves and our society.

Dress codes are as old as clothing itself. For centuries, clothing has been a wearable status symbol; fashion, a weapon in struggles for social change; and dress codes, a way to maintain political control. Merchants dressing like princes and butchers’ wives wearing gem-encrusted crowns were public enemies in medieval societies structured by social hierarchy and defined by spectacle. In Tudor England, silk, velvet, and fur were reserved for the nobility, and ballooning pants called “trunk hose” could be considered a menace to good order. The Renaissance-era Florentine patriarch Cosimo de Medici captured the power of fashion and dress codes when he remarked, “One can make a gentleman from two yards of red cloth.” Dress codes evolved along with the social and political ideals of the day, but they always reflected struggles for power and status. In the 1700s, South Carolina’s “Negro Act” made it illegal for Black people to dress “above their condition.” In the 1920s, the bobbed hair and form-fitting dresses worn by free-spirited flappers were banned in workplaces throughout the United States, and in the 1940s, the baggy zoot suits favored by Black and Latino men caused riots in cities from coast to coast.

Even in today’s more informal world, dress codes still determine what we wear, when we wear it—and what our clothing means. People lose their jobs for wearing braided hair, long fingernails, large earrings, beards, and tattoos or refusing to wear a suit and tie or make-up and high heels. In some cities, wearing sagging pants is a crime. And even when there are no written rules, implicit dress codes still influence opportunities and social mobility. Silicon Valley CEOs wear t-shirts and flip-flops, setting the tone for an entire industry: women wearing fashionable dresses or high heels face ridicule in the tech world, and some venture capitalists refuse to invest in any company run by someone wearing a suit.

In Dress Codes, law professor and cultural critic Richard Thompson Ford presents a “deeply informative and entertaining” (The New York Times Book Review) history of the laws of fashion from the middle ages to the present day, a walk down history’s red carpet to uncover and examine the canons, mores, and customs of clothing—rules that we often take for granted. After reading Dress Codes, you’ll never think of fashion as superficial again—and getting dressed will never be the same.

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Inconspicuous Consumption

Tatiana Schlossberg

 

 

"A compelling-and illuminating-look at how our daily habits impact the environment."--Vanity Fair

"If you're looking for something to cling to in what often feels like a hopeless conversation, Schlossberg's darkly humorous, knowledge-is-power, eyes-wide-open approach may be just the thing."--Vogue

"Shows how even the smallest decisions can have profound environmental consequences."--The New York Times
From a former New York Times science writer, this urgent call to action will empower you to stand up to climate change and environmental pollution by making simple but impactful everyday choices.

With urgency and wit, Tatiana Schlossberg explains that far from being only a distant problem of the natural world created by the fossil fuel industry, climate change is all around us, all the time, lurking everywhere in our convenience-driven society, all without our realizing it.

By examining the unseen and unconscious environmental impacts in four areas-the Internet and technology, food, fashion, and fuel - Schlossberg helps readers better understand why climate change is such a complicated issue, and how it connects all of us: How streaming a movie on Netflix in New York burns coal in Virginia; how eating a hamburger in California might contribute to pollution in the Gulf of Mexico; how buying an inexpensive cashmere sweater in Chicago expands the Mongolian desert; how destroying forests from North Carolina is necessary to generate electricity in England.

Cataloging the complexities and frustrations of our carbon-intensive society with a dry sense of humor, Schlossberg makes the climate crisis and its solutions interesting and relevant to everyone who cares, even a little, about the planet. She empowers readers to think about their stuff and the environment in a new way, helping them make more informed choices when it comes to the future of our world.

Most importantly, this is a book about the power we have as voters and consumers to make sure that the fight against climate change includes all of us and all of our stuff, not just industry groups and politicians. If we have any hope of solving the problem, we all have to do it together.

 

 

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The Day the World Stops Shopping

J.B. MacKinnon

Consuming less is our best strategy for saving the planet—but can we do it? In this thoughtful and surprisingly optimistic book, journalist J. B. MacKinnon investigates how we may achieve a world without shopping.

We can’t stop shopping. And yet we must. This is the consumer dilemma.

The economy says we must always consume more: even the slightest drop in spending leads to widespread unemployment, bankruptcy, and home foreclosure.

The planet says we consume too much: in America, we burn the earth’s resources at a rate five times faster than it can regenerate. And despite efforts to “green” our consumption—by recycling, increasing energy efficiency, or using solar power—we have yet to see a decline in global carbon emissions.

Addressing this paradox head-on, acclaimed journalist J. B. MacKinnon asks, What would really happen if we simply stopped shopping? Is there a way to reduce our consumption to earth-saving levels without triggering economic collapse? At first this question took him around the world, seeking answers from America’s big-box stores to the hunter-gatherer cultures of Namibia to communities in Ecuador that consume at an exactly sustainable rate. Then the thought experiment came shockingly true: the coronavirus brought shopping to a halt, and MacKinnon’s ideas were tested in real time.

Drawing from experts in fields ranging from climate change to economics, MacKinnon investigates how living with less would change our planet, our society, and ourselves. Along the way, he reveals just how much we stand to gain: An investment in our physical and emotional wellness. The pleasure of caring for our possessions. Closer relationships with our natural world and one another. Imaginative and inspiring, The Day the World Stops Shopping will embolden you to envision another way.

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Project 333

Courtney Carver

Wear just 33 items for 3 months and get back all the JOY you were missing while you were worrying what to wear.

In Project 333, minimalist expert and author of Soulful Simplicity Courtney Carver takes a new approach to living simply--starting with your wardrobe. Project 333 promises that not only can you survive with just 33 items in your closet for 3 months, but you'll thrive just like the thousands of woman who have taken on the challenge and never looked back. Let the de-cluttering begin!

Ever ask yourself how many of the items in your closet you actually wear? In search of a way to pare down on her expensive shopping habit, consistent lack of satisfaction with her purchases, and ever-growing closet, Carver created Project 333. In this book, she guides readers through their closets item-by-item, sifting through all the emotional baggage associated with those oh-so strappy high-heel sandals that cost a fortune but destroy your feet every time you walk more than a few steps to that extensive collection of never-worn little black dresses, to locate the items that actually look and feel like you. As Carver reveals in this book, once we finally release ourselves from the cyclical nature of consumerism and focus less on our shoes and more on our self-care, we not only look great we feel great-- and we can see a clear path to make other important changes in our lives that reach far beyond our closets. With tips, solutions, and a closet-full of inspiration, this life-changing minimalist manual shows readers that we are so much more than what we wear, and that who we are and what we have is so much more than enough.

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Fulfillment

Alec MacGillis

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

"A grounded and expansive examination of the American economic divide . . . It takes a skillful journalist to weave data and anecdotes together so effectively." —Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times

An award-winning journalist investigates Amazon’s impact on the wealth and poverty of towns and cities across the United States.

In 1937, the famed writer and activist Upton Sinclair published a novel bearing the subtitle A Story of Ford-America. He blasted the callousness of a company worth “a billion dollars” that underpaid its workers while forcing them to engage in repetitive and sometimes dangerous assembly line labor. Eighty-three years later, the market capitalization of Amazon.com has exceeded one trillion dollars, while the value of the Ford Motor Company hovers around thirty billion. We have, it seems, entered the age of one-click America—and as the coronavirus makes Americans more dependent on online shopping, its sway will only intensify.

Alec MacGillis’s Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.

Ranging across the country, MacGillis tells the stories of those who’ve thrived and struggled to thrive in this rapidly changing environment. In Seattle, high-paid workers in new office towers displace a historic black neighborhood. In suburban Virginia, homeowners try to protect their neighborhood from the environmental impact of a new data center. Meanwhile, in El Paso, small office supply firms seek to weather Amazon’s takeover of government procurement, and in Baltimore a warehouse supplants a fabled steel plant. Fulfillment also shows how Amazon has become a force in Washington, D.C., ushering readers through a revolving door for lobbyists and government contractors and into CEO Jeff Bezos’s lavish Kalorama mansion.

With empathy and breadth, MacGillis demonstrates the hidden human costs of the other inequality—not the growing gap between rich and poor, but the gap between the country’s winning and losing regions. The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, its remaking of America with every click.

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The Chanel Sisters

Judithe Little

A USA Today and Globe and Mail bestseller!



A novel of survival, love, loss, triumph--and the sisters who changed fashion forever



Antoinette and Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel know they're destined for something better. Abandoned by their family at a young age, they've grown up under the guidance of nuns preparing them for simple lives as the wives of tradesmen or shopkeepers. At night, their secret stash of romantic novels and magazine cutouts beneath the floorboards are all they have to keep their dreams of the future alive.



The walls of the convent can't shield them forever, and when they're finally of age, the Chanel sisters set out together with a fierce determination to prove themselves worthy to a society that has never accepted them. Their journey propels them out of poverty and to the stylish cafés of Moulins, the dazzling performance halls of Vichy--and to a small hat shop on the rue Cambon in Paris, where a boutique business takes hold and expands to the glamorous French resort towns.



But the sisters' lives are again thrown into turmoil when World War I breaks out, forcing them to make irrevocable choices, and they'll have to gather the courage to fashion their own places in the world, even if apart from each other.



"The Chanel Sisters explores with care the timeless need for belonging, purpose, and love, and the heart's relentless pursuit of these despite daunting odds. Beautifully told to the last page." --Susan Meissner, bestselling author of The Last Year of the War

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The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton

Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Lilly Bart is twenty-nine, beautiful and charming. She has expensive tastes, loves to gamble and socialises with the immensely wealthy upper-class families of New York. But her meagre finances are dwindling.
Given the restrictions imposed by society, her only hope of financial security is to find a suitable husband. However, Lilly has an independence of spirit which stands in the way of her committing to the suitors available to her. As her options diminish, her friends become her enemies and her situation grows increasing perilous.

Through the prism of Lilly’s life, Edith Wharton has written a witty and piercingly insightful dark satire about the over privileged and morally dubious society of early twentieth-century New York.

This Macmillan Collector's Library edition has a new introduction by author Danuta Reah.

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The Book of Unknown Americans

Cristina Henríquez

"Illuminate[s] the lives behind the current debates about Latino immigration." —The New York Times Book Review

When fifteen-year-old Maribel Rivera sustains a terrible injury, the Riveras leave behind a comfortable life in Mexico and risk everything to come to the United States so that Maribel can have the care she needs. Once they arrive, it’s not long before Maribel attracts the attention of Mayor Toro, the son of one of their new neighbors, who sees a kindred spirit in this beautiful, damaged outsider. Their love story sets in motion events that will have profound repercussions for everyone involved. Here Henríquez seamlessly interweaves the story of these star-crossed lovers, and of the Rivera and Toro families, with the testimonials of men and women who have come to the United States from all over Latin America. The Book of Unknown Americans is a stunning novel of hopes and dreams, guilt and love—a book that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be American. 

Named a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, an NPR Great Read, The Daily Beast's Novel of the Year, and a Mother Jones, Oprah.com, School Library Journal, and BookPage Best Book of the Year

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The Heroine with 1001 Faces

Maria Tatar

World-renowned folklorist Maria Tatar reveals an astonishing but long-buried history of heroines, taking us from Cassandra and Scheherazade to Nancy Drew and Wonder Woman.

The Heroine with 1,001 Faces dismantles the cult of warrior heroes, revealing a secret history of heroinism at the very heart of our collective cultural imagination. Maria Tatar, a leading authority on fairy tales and folklore, explores how heroines, rarely wielding a sword and often deprived of a pen, have flown beneath the radar even as they have been bent on redemptive missions. Deploying the domestic crafts and using words as weapons, they have found ways to survive assaults and rescue others from harm, all while repairing the fraying edges in the fabric of their social worlds. Like the tongueless Philomela, who spins the tale of her rape into a tapestry, or Arachne, who portrays the misdeeds of the gods, they have discovered instruments for securing fairness in the storytelling circles where so-called women’s work—spinning, mending, and weaving—is carried out.

Tatar challenges the canonical models of heroism in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, with their male-centric emphases on achieving glory and immortality. Finding the women missing from his account and defining their own heroic trajectories is no easy task, for Campbell created the playbook for Hollywood directors. Audiences around the world have willingly surrendered to the lure of quest narratives and charismatic heroes. Whether in the form of Frodo, Luke Skywalker, or Harry Potter, Campbell’s archetypical hero has dominated more than the box office.

In a broad-ranging volume that moves with ease from the local to the global, Tatar demonstrates how our new heroines wear their curiosity as a badge of honor rather than a mark of shame, and how their “mischief making” evidences compassion and concern. From Bluebeard’s wife to Nancy Drew, and from Jane Eyre to Janie Crawford, women have long crafted stories to broadcast offenses in the pursuit of social justice. Girls, too, have now precociously stepped up to the plate, with Hermione Granger, Katniss Everdeen, and Starr Carter as trickster figures enacting their own forms of extrajudicial justice. Their quests may not take the traditional form of a “hero’s journey,” but they reveal the value of courage, defiance, and, above all, care.

“By turns dazzling and chilling” (Ruth Franklin), The Heroine with 1,001 Faces creates a luminous arc that takes us from ancient times to the present day. It casts an unusually wide net, expanding the canon and thinking capaciously in global terms, breaking down the boundaries of genre, and displaying a sovereign command of cultural context. This, then, is a historic volume that informs our present and its newfound investment in empathy and social justice like no other work of recent cultural history.

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If God Is Love, Don't Be a Jerk

John Pavlovitz

Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible.

Imagine for a moment what the world might look like if we as people of faith, morality, and conscience actually aspired to this mantra.

What if we were fully burdened to create a world that was more loving and equitable than when we arrived?

What if we invited one another to share in wide-open, fearless, spiritual communities truly marked by compassion and interdependence?

What if we daily challenged ourselves to live a faith that simply made us better humans?

John Pavlovitz explores how we can embody this kinder kind of spirituality where we humbly examine our belief system to understand how it might compel us to act in less-than-loving ways toward others.

This simple phrase, "Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible," could help us practice what we preach by creating a world where:

  • spiritual community provides a sense of belonging where all people are received as we are;
  • the most important question we ask of a religious belief is not Is it true? but rather, is it helpful?
  • it is morally impossible to pledge complete allegiance to both Jesus and America simultaneously;
  • the way we treat others is the most tangible and meaningful expression of our belief system.

In If God Is Love, Don't Be a Jerk, John Pavlovitz examines the bedrock ideas of our religion: the existence of hell, the utility of prayer, the way we treat LGBTQ people, the value of anger, and other doctrines to help all of us take a good, honest look at how the beliefs we hold can shape our relationships with God and our fellow humansand to make sure that love has the last, loudest word.

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PS5: The Forgotten City

"Travel 2,000 years into the past and relive the final days of a cursed Roman city, where if one person sins, everyone dies. Combat is an option, but violence will only get you so far. Only by questioning an intertwined community of colorful characters, cleverly exploiting the time loop, and making difficult moral choices can you hope to solve this epic mystery. Here, your decisions matter. The fate of the city is in your hands." -- forgottencitygame.com

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PS5: Deathloop

Players are trapped in a time loop on the enigmatic island of Blackreef, doomed to repeat the same day for eternity. The only chance for escape is to break the loop by unearthing information and assassinating eight key targets before the day resets.

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Xbox One: Battlefield 2042

"Battlefield 2042 is a first-person shooter that marks the return to the iconic all-out warfare of the franchise. In a near-future world transformed by disorder, adapt and overcome dynamically-changing battlegrounds with the help of your squad and a cutting-edge arsenal. Battlefield 2042 brings unprecedented scale on vast battlegrounds across the globe. Players will take on several massive experiences, from updated multiplayer modes like Conquest and Breakthrough to the all-new Hazard Zone"--Amazon.com.

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Nintendo Switch: Ever Forward

"Ever Forward is an adventure puzzle game. It is the story of Maya. Maya is lost in a strange world somewhere between reality and imagination. She is alone to confront her despair on her journey of discovery, where she must unlock her memories and confront her fears to unravel the secrets of the world. Players will need to use their observational skills and intelligence to solve multiple puzzles to piece together the mystery of Maya's past and what dark secrets she has buried."--Moby Games.

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The Kingdom of Back

Marie Lu

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu comes a historical YA fantasy about a musical prodigy and the dangerous lengths she'll go to make history remember her. Now in paperback.

Two siblings. Two brilliant talents. But only one Mozart.

Born with a gift for music, Nannerl Mozart has just one wish--to be remembered forever. But even as she delights audiences with her masterful playing, she has little hope she'll ever become the acclaimed composer she longs to be. She is a young woman in 18th century Europe, and that means composing is forbidden to her. She will perform only until she reaches a marriageable age--her tyrannical father has made that much clear.

And as Nannerl's hope grows dimmer with each passing year, the talents of her beloved younger brother, Wolfgang, only seem to shine brighter. His brilliance begins to eclipse her own, until one day a mysterious stranger from a magical land appears with an irresistible offer. He has the power to make her wish come true--but his help may cost her everything.

In her first work of historical fiction, #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu spins a lush, lyrically-told story of music, magic, and the unbreakable bond between a brother and sister.

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The Companion

Katie Alender

 

Winner of the Edgar Award for Young Adult Fiction!
The other orphans say Margot is lucky.
 
Lucky to survive the horrible accident that killed her family.
 
Lucky to have her own room because she wakes up screaming every night.
 
And finally, lucky to be chosen by a prestigious family to live at their remote country estate.
 
But it wasn't luck that made the Suttons rescue Margot from her bleak existence at the group home.  Margot was handpicked to be a companion to their silent, mysterious daughter, Agatha. At first, helping with Agatha--and getting to know her handsome younger brother--seems much better than the group home. But soon, the isolated house begins playing tricks on Margot’s mind, making her question everything she believes about the Suttons . . . and herself.  
 
Margot’s bad dreams may have stopped when she came to live with Agatha – but the real nightmare has just begun.

 

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Salt to the Sea

Ruta Sepetys

 

#1 New York Times bestseller and winner of the Carnegie Medal!

"A superlative novel . . . masterfully crafted."--The Wall Street Journal

Based on "the forgotten tragedy that was six times deadlier than the Titanic."--Time

Winter 1945. WWII. Four refugees. Four stories.

Each one born of a different homel∧ each one hunted, and haunted, by tragedy, lies, war. As thousands desperately flock to the coast in the midst of a Soviet advance, four paths converge, vying for passage aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship that promises safety and freedom. But not all promises can be kept . . .

This paperback edition includes book club questions and exclusive interviews with Wilhelm Gustloff survivors and experts.

 

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Aurora Rising

Amie Kaufman

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING SERIES • From the internationally bestselling authors of the Illuminae Files comes a new science fiction epic . . .

The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the academy would touch . . .

A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm
A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates
A smart-ass tech whiz with the galaxy's biggest chip on his shoulder
An alien warrior with anger-management issues
A tomboy pilot who's totally not into him, in case you were wondering

And Ty's squad isn't even his biggest problem--that'd be Aurora Jie-Lin O'Malley, the girl he's just rescued from interdimensional space. Trapped in cryo-sleep for two centuries, Auri is a girl out of time and out of her depth. But she could be the catalyst that starts a war millions of years in the making, and Tyler's squad of losers, discipline cases, and misfits might just be the last hope for the entire galaxy.

NOBODY PANIC.

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Names for Light

Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint

Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, a lyrical meditation on family, place, and inheritance

Names for Light traverses time and memory to weigh three generations of a family’s history against a painful inheritance of postcolonial violence and racism. In spare, lyric paragraphs framed by white space, Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint explores home, belonging, and identity by revisiting the cities in which her parents and grandparents lived. As she makes inquiries into their stories, she intertwines oral narratives with the official and mythic histories of Myanmar. But while her family’s stories move into the present, her own story—that of a writer seeking to understand who she is—moves into the past, until both converge at the end of the book.

Born in Myanmar and raised in Bangkok and San Jose, Myint finds that she does not have typical memories of arriving in the United States; instead, she is haunted by what she cannot remember. By the silences lingering around what is spoken. By a chain of deaths in her family line, especially that of her older brother as a child. For Myint, absence is felt as strongly as presence. And, as she comes to understand, naming those absences, finding words for the unsaid, means discovering how those who have come before have shaped her life. Names for Light is a moving chronicle of the passage of time, of the long shadow of colonialism, and of a writer coming into her own as she reckons with her family’s legacy.

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Yours Cruelly, Elvira

Cassandra Peterson

**Instant New York Times Bestseller, Los Angeles Times Bestseller, USA Today Bestseller, Publishers Weekly Bestseller**

**A New York Times Best Books to Give This Season selection​**

The woman behind the icon known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the undisputed Queen of Halloween, reveals her full story, filled with intimate bombshells, told by the bombshell herself. 

 
On Good Friday in 1953, at only 18 months old, 25 miles from the nearest hospital in Manhattan, Kansas, Cassandra Peterson reached for a pot on the stove and doused herself in boiling water. Third-degree burns covered 35% of her body, and the prognosis wasn't good. But she survived. Burned and scarred, the impact stayed with her and became an obstacle she was determined to overcome. Feeling like a misfit led to her love of horror. While her sisters played with Barbie dolls, Cassandra built model kits of Frankenstein and Dracula, and idolized Vincent Price.

Due to a complicated relationship with her mother, Cassandra left home at 14, and by age 17 she was performing at the famed Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas. Run-ins with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Tom Jones helped her grow up fast. Then a chance encounter with her idol Elvis Presley, changed the course of her life forever, and led her to Europe where she worked in film and traveled Italy as lead singer of an Italian pop band. She eventually made her way to Los Angeles, where she joined the famed comedy improv group, The Groundlings, and worked alongside Phil Hartman and Paul "Pee-wee" Reubens, honing her comedic skills.

Nearing age 30, a struggling actress considered past her prime, she auditioned at local LA channel KHJ as hostess for the late night vintage horror movies. Cassandra improvised, made the role her own, and got the job on the spot. Yours Cruelly, Elvira is an unforgettably wild memoir. Cassandra doesn't shy away from revealing exactly who she is and how she overcame seemingly insurmountable odds. Always original and sometimes outrageous, her story is loaded with twists, travails, revelry, and downright shocking experiences. It is the candid, often funny, and sometimes heart-breaking tale of a Midwest farm girl's long strange trip to become the world's sexiest, sassiest Halloween icon.

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Tiger King

Joe Exotic

Joe Exotic, star of the Netflix original documentary that “consumed the pop-cultural imagination” (The Atlantic) and transfixed a nation in the midst of a global crisis, opens up about his outlandish journey from Midwestern farmer to infamous Tiger King, and finally, to federal inmate.

Shortly after his arrest (for charges including hiring a hitman to murder his rival, Carole Baskin), Joe Exotic began keeping a daily journal of his life behind prison walls. In support of his defense, Joe began writing everything he wished he could tell a jury of his peers. Little did Joe know that mere months later, the self-proclaimed “gun-toting, gay redneck with a mullet” would become one of the most famous men in the world.

Written entirely while incarcerated, this no-holds-barred memoir is Joe Exotic’s first, and maybe only, chance to tell his side of the story—the full story. Despite never having seen Tiger King, Joe is aware of what’s been said about him, and he’s eager to answer all the questions the world is dying to know. Such as:

-The origin of the mullet.
-How Joe became the Tiger King.
-Joe’s favorite animals.
-Joe’s relationships.
-Joe’s explanation of all charges against him.
-What happened with Trump’s pardon.
-What he thinks about caging animals now that he lives in a cage.
-What Joe has to say now about Carole Baskin.

From his tragic childhood riddled with abuse to his dangerous feuds with big cat rivals and beyond, nothing is off the table. This is the exclusive and definitive read for anyone who binged the “riveting” (Vanity Fair) documentary and finished it hungry for more. A memoir unlike any other, it proves that they can cage the Tiger King, but they can’t silence his roar.

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Sea State

Tabitha Lasley

A Recommended Read from: Vogue * USA Today * The Los Angeles Times * Publishers Weekly * The Week * Alma * Lit Hub

A stunning and brutally honest memoir that shines a light on what happens when female desire conflicts with a culture of masculinity in crisis

In her midthirties and newly free from a terrible relationship, Tabitha Lasley quit her job at a London magazine, packed her bags, and poured her savings into a six-month lease on an apartment in Aberdeen, Scotland. She decided to make good on a long-deferred idea for a book about oil rigs and the men who work on them. Why oil rigs? She wanted to see what men were like with no women around.

In Aberdeen, Tabitha became deeply entrenched in the world of roughnecks, a teeming subculture rich with brawls, hard labor, and competition. The longer she stayed, the more she found her presence had a destabilizing effect on the men—and her.

Sea State is on the one hand a portrait of an overlooked industry: “offshore” is a way of life for generations of primarily working-class men and also a potent metaphor for those parts of life we keep at bay—class, masculinity, the transactions of desire, and the awful slipperiness of a ladder that could, if we tried hard enough, lead us to security.

Sea State is on the other hand the story of a journalist whose professional distance from her subject becomes perilously thin. In Aberdeen, Tabitha gets high and dances with abandon, reliving her youth, when the music was good and the boys were bad. Twenty years on, there is Caden: a married rig worker who spends three weeks on and three weeks off. Alone and in an increasingly precarious state, Tabitha dives into their growing attraction. The relationship, reckless and explosive, will lay them both bare.

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Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy (Book II: Greater Good)

Timothy Zahn

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Thrawn and his allies race to save the Chiss Ascendancy from an unseen enemy in the second book in the epic Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy trilogy from bestselling author Timothy Zahn.

Thrawn’s latest triumph still rests newly on his shoulders. He has led the Chiss to victory and brought glory to the House of Mitth, but the true threat to the Ascendancy has not yet been extinguished. Their foes do not send threats or ultimatums, do not mass ships on the edge of the Chaos. Their weapons come cloaked in smiles and generosity: Gifts offered freely. Services granted unconditionally.

Across the Ascendancy, seemingly inconsequential events could herald the doom of the Chiss. As Thrawn and the Expansionary Defense Fleet rally to uncover the plot, they discover a chilling truth: Rather than invade Chiss capitals or pillage resources, their enemy strikes at the very foundation of the Ascendancy, seeking to widen the rifts between the Nine Ruling Families and the Forty Great Houses below. As rivalry and suspicion sow discord among allies, each warrior must decide what matters most to them: the security of their family or the survival of the Ascendancy itself.

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Far from the Light of Heaven

Tade Thompson

"Simultaneously brutally grounded and wildly imaginative." --Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke Award winner



A tense and thrilling vision of humanity's future in the chilling emptiness of space from rising giant in science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke Award winner Tade Thompson



The colony ship Ragtime docks in the Lagos system, having traveled light-years to bring one thousand sleeping souls to a new home among the stars. But when first mate Michelle Campion rouses, she discovers some of the sleepers will never wake.



Answering Campion's distress call, investigator Rasheed Fin is tasked with finding out who is responsible for these deaths. Soon a sinister mystery unfolds aboard the gigantic vessel, one that will have repercussions for the entire system--from the scheming politicians of Lagos station, to the colony planet Bloodroot, to other far-flung systems, and indeed to Earth itself.



Praise for Far from the Light of Heaven



"Gripping and skillfully told, with an economy and freshness of approach that is all Tade Thompson''s own. The setting is interstellar, but it feels as real, immediate, and lethal as today's headlines." --Alastair Reynolds



"[I]nventive, exciting and compulsively readable...This book is like the Tardis, larger inside than out, with a range of ideas, characters, and fascinating future settings making it probably the best science fiction novel of the year." --The Guardian



For more from Tade Thompson, check out:



The Wormwood Trilogy

Rosewater

Rosewater: Insurrection

Rosewater: Redemption

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Activation Degradation

Marina J. Lostetter

The Murderbot Diaries makes first contact in this new, futuristic, standalone novel exploring sentience and artificial intelligence through the lenses of conflicted robot hero Unit Four, from Marina Lostetter, critically acclaimed author of Noumenon, Noumenon Infinity, and Noumenon Ultra.


When Unit Four—a biological soft robot built and stored high above the Jovian atmosphere—is activated for the first time, it’s in crisis mode. Aliens are attacking the Helium-3 mine it was created to oversee, and now its sole purpose is to defend Earth’s largest energy resource from the invaders in ship-to-ship combat.

But something’s wrong. Unit Four doesn’t feel quite right.

There are files in its databanks it can’t account for, unusual chemical combinations roaring through its pipes, and the primers it possesses on the aliens are suspiciously sparse. The robot is under orders to seek and destroy. That’s all it knows.

According to its handler, that’s all it needs to know.

Determined to fulfill its directives, Unit Four launches its ship and goes on the attack, but it has no idea it’s about to get caught in a downward spiral of misinformation, reprograming, and interstellar conflict.

Most robots are simple tools. Unit Four is well on its way to becoming something more....

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Crown of Cinders

Emily R. King

Going to battle against a Titan in the war of all wars, one woman is making history in an epic novel of ancient Greece by Emily R. King, author of the Hundredth Queen series.

May Gaea be with you...

Althea Lambros is growing into her power, wrestling with a burdensome heritage, and unwilling to concede to Cronus, the redoubtable God of Gods. For that, Cronus is making good on his promise. Calling upon the elder Titans, he's bringing down his wrath on the world. Suffering quakes, tempests, fire, and hail, mortals are paying in blood for the war of the gods.

With the help of her friend Theo, Althea takes cover with her sisters, Bronte and Cleora. But they can't hide forever. To mastermind the downfall of the evil king, Althea must recruit allies of her own before the aggrieved mortals surrender the sisters to Cronus in exchange for peace.

Is Althea formidable enough to win? It'll take the help of her sisters and those willing to fight for the cause of the just. As the gods pick sides, Althea must divide heaven and earth to defeat the enemy and write the true history of the war to end all wars.

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David Copperfield's History of Magic

David Copperfield

An illustrated, illuminating insight into the world of illusion from the world’s greatest and most successful magician, capturing its audacious and inventive practitioners, and showcasing the art form’s most famous artifacts housed at David Copperfield’s secret museum.

In this personal journey through a unique and remarkable performing art, David Copperfield profiles twenty-eight of the world’s most groundbreaking magicians. From the 16th-century magistrate who wrote the first book on conjuring to the roaring twenties and the man who fooled Houdini, to the woman who levitated, vanished, and caught bullets in her teeth, David Copperfield’s History of Magic takes you on a wild journey through the remarkable feats of the greatest magicians in history.

These magicians were all outsiders in their own way, many of them determined to use magic to escape the strictures of class and convention. But they all transformed popular culture, adapted to social change, discovered the inner workings of the human mind, embraced the latest technological and scientific discoveries, and took the art of magic to unprecedented heights.

The incredible stories are complimented by over 100 never-before-seen photographs of artifacts from Copperfield’s exclusive Museum of Magic, including a 16th-century manual on sleight of hand, Houdini’s straightjackets, handcuffs, and water torture chamber, Dante’s famous sawing-in-half apparatus, Alexander’s high-tech turban that allowed him to read people’s minds, and even some coins that may have magically passed through the hands of Abraham Lincoln.

By the end of the book, you’ll be sure to share Copperfield’s passion for the power of magic.

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American Comics: A History

Jeremy Dauber

The sweeping story of cartoons, comic strips, and graphic novels and their hold on the American imagination. 

Comics have conquered America. From our multiplexes, where Marvel and DC movies reign supreme, to our television screens, where comics-based shows like The Walking Dead have become among the most popular in cable history, to convention halls, best-seller lists, Pulitzer Prize–winning titles, and MacArthur Fellowship recipients, comics shape American culture, in ways high and low, superficial, and deeply profound.

In American Comics, Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes readers through their incredible but little-known history, starting with the Civil War and cartoonist Thomas Nast, creator of the lasting and iconic images of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus; the golden age of newspaper comic strips and the first great superhero boom; the moral panic of the Eisenhower era, the Marvel Comics revolution, and the underground comix movement of the 1960s and ’70s; and finally into the twenty-first century, taking in the grim and gritty Dark Knights and Watchmen alongside the brilliant rise of the graphic novel by acclaimed practitioners like Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel.

Dauber’s story shows not only how comics have changed over the decades but how American politics and culture have changed them. Throughout, he describes the origins of beloved comics, champions neglected masterpieces, and argues that we can understand how America sees itself through whose stories comics tell. Striking and revelatory, American Comics is a rich chronicle of the last 150 years of American history through the lens of its comic strips, political cartoons, superheroes, graphic novels, and more.

FEATURING…
• American Splendor  • Archie  • The Avengers  • Kyle Baker  • Batman  • C. C. Beck  • Black Panther  • Captain America  • Roz Chast  • Walt Disney  • Will Eisner  • Neil Gaiman  • Bill Gaines  • Bill Griffith  • Harley Quinn  • Jack Kirby   • Denis Kitchen  • Krazy Kat  • Harvey Kurtzman  • Stan Lee  • Little Orphan Annie  • Maus  • Frank Miller  • Alan Moore  • Mutt and Jeff  • Gary Panter  • Peanuts  • Dav Pilkey  • Gail Simone  • Spider-Man  • Superman  • Dick Tracy  • Wonder Wart-Hog  • Wonder Woman  • The Yellow Kid  • Zap Comix
… AND MANY MORE OF YOUR FAVORITES! 

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1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

Ai Weiwei

In his widely anticipated memoir, Ai Weiwei--one of the world's most famous artists and activists--tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet.

Hailed as "the most important artist working today" by the Financial Times and as "an eloquent and unsilenceable voice of freedom" by The New York Times, Ai Weiwei has written a sweeping memoir that presents a remarkable history of China over the last 100 years while illuminating his artistic process.
 
Once an intimate of Mao Zedong, Ai Weiwei's father was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as "Little Siberia," where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol. With candor and wit, he details his return to China and his rise from artistic unknown to art world superstar and international human rights activist--and how his work has been shaped by living under a totalitarian regime.
 
Ai Weiwei's sculptures and installations have been viewed by millions around the globe, and his architectural achievements include helping to design the iconic Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing. His political activism has long made him a target of the Chinese authorities, which culminated in months of secret detention without charge in 2011. Here, for the first time, Ai Weiwei explores the origins of his exceptional creativity and passionate political beliefs through his own life story and that of his father, whose own creativity was stifled.
 
At once ambitious and intimate, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows offers a deep understanding of the myriad forces that have shaped modern China, and serves as a timely reminder of the urgent need to protect freedom of expression.

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The First 21

Nikki Sixx

Rock-and-roll icon and three-time bestselling author Nikki Sixx tells his origin story: how Frank Feranna became Nikki Sixx, chronicling his fascinating journey from irrepressible Idaho farmboy to the man who formed the revolutionary rock group Mötley Crüe.



Nikki Sixx is one of the most respected, recognizable, and entrepreneurial icons in the music industry. As the founder of Mötley Crüe, who is now in his twenty-first year of sobriety, Sixx is incredibly passionate about his craft and wonderfully open about his life in rock and roll, and as a person of the world. Born Franklin Carlton Feranna on December 11, 1958, young Frankie was abandoned by his father and partly raised by his mother, a woman who was ahead of her time but deeply troubled. Frankie ended up living with his grandparents, bouncing from farm to farm and state to state. He was an all-American kid--hunting, fishing, chasing girls, and playing football--but underneath it all, there was a burning desire for more, and that more was music. He eventually took a Greyhound bound for Hollywood.



In Los Angeles, Frank lived with his aunt and his uncle--the president of Capitol Records--for a short time. But there was no easy path to the top. He was soon on his own. There were dead-end jobs: dipping circuit boards, clerking at liquor and record stores, selling used light bulbs, and hustling to survive. But at night, Frank honed his craft, joining Sister, a band formed by fellow hard-rock veteran Blackie Lawless, and formed a group of his own: London, the precursor of Mötley Crüe. Turning down an offer to join Randy Rhoads's band, Frank changed his name to Nikki London, Nikki Nine, and, finally, Nikki Sixx. Like Huck Finn with a stolen guitar, he had a vision: a group that combined punk, glam, and hard rock into the biggest, most theatrical and irresistible package the world had ever seen. With hard work, passion, and some luck, the vision manifested in reality--and this is a profound true story finding identity, of how Frank Feranna became Nikki Sixx. It's also a road map to the ways you can overcome anything, and achieve all of your goals, if only you put your mind to it.

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