We remain closed until further notice.

While our building is closed, please join us for virtual and off site events.

List

Category
Audience
Tags

I'm Glad My Mom Died

Jennette McCurdy

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.

View Details >>

Dinners with Ruth : A Memoir on the Power of Friendships

Nina Totenberg

Celebrated NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg delivers an extraordinary memoir of her personal successes, struggles, and life-affirming relationships, including her beautiful friendship of nearly fifty years with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prizewinning reporter, and nearly twenty-two years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. A reporter for The National Observer, Nina was curious about Ruth's legal brief, asking the Supreme Court to do something revolutionary: declare a law that discriminated "on the basis of sex" to be unconstitutional. In a time when women were fired for becoming pregnant, often could not apply for credit cards or get a mortgage in their own names, Ruth patiently explained her argument. That call launched a remarkable, nearly fifty-year friendship. Dinners with Ruth is an extraordinary account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers. It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the workplace. At the story's heart is one, special relationship: Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood. During the devastating illness and eventual death of Nina's first husband, Ruth drew her out of grief; twelve years later, Nina would reciprocate when Ruth's beloved husband died. They shared not only a love of opera, but also of shopping, as they instinctively understood that clothes were armor for women who wanted to be taken seriously in a workplace dominated by men. During Ruth's last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were "reserved for Ruth" in Nina's house. Dinners with Ruth also weaves together compelling, personal portraits of other fascinating women and men from Nina's life, including her cherished NPR colleagues Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer; her beloved husbands; her friendships with multiple Supreme Court Justices, including Lewis Powell, William Brennan, and Antonin Scalia, and Nina's own family--her father, the legendary violinist Roman Totenberg, and her "best friends," her sisters. Inspiring and revelatory, Dinners with Ruth is a moving story of the joy and true meaning of friendship.

View Details >>

Hope and Glory

Jendella Benson

One of the year’s most anticipated by Marie Claire, Essence, Debutiful, & Goodreads

A brilliant debut by a British-Nigerian author—a heartfelt family drama that will delight book club readers and fans of books like The Girl with the Louding Voice and Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows.

“Jendella Benson has drawn such a compelling world. The book and the characters stayed with me long after I'd turned the final pages!” —Candice Carty-Williams, bestselling author of Queenie

Glory Akindele returns to London from her seemingly glamorous life in LA to mourn the sudden death of her father, only to find her previously close family has fallen apart in her absence. Her brother, Victor, is in jail and won’t speak to her because she didn’t come home for his trial. Her older sister, Faith, once a busy career woman, appears to have lost her independence and ambition, and is instead channeling her energies into holding together a perfect suburban family. Worst of all, their mother, Celeste, is headed toward a breakdown after the death of her husband and the shame of her son’s incarceration.

Rather than returning to America, Glory decides to stay and try to bring them all together again. It’s a tall order given that Glory’s life isn’t exactly working out according to plan either, and she’s acutely aware that she’s not so sure who she is and what she wants.

A chance reunion with a man she’d known in her teens—the perceptive but elusive Julian—gives her the courage to start questioning why her respectable but obsessively private Nigerian immigrant family is the way it is. But then Glory’s questioning unearths a massive secret that shatters the family’s fragile peace—and she risks losing everyone she deeply cares about in her pursuit of the truth and a reunited family.

"Filled with unexpected, but earned, twists, Hope and Glory balances moments of rich humor and devastating profundity...deeply authentic." —Kirkus Reviews

"A sumptuous and satisfying meditation on family and the meaning of home.” —Publishers Weekly

View Details >>

Yesterday's Spy

Tom Bradby

From the ITV News at Ten Anchor
'Atmospheric, informative and flawlessly plotted' The Sunday Times
'Riveting...with style and energy, evocative scene-setting and strong characterisation' Financial Times
What readers are saying:
'His telling of fiction is as good as his telling of the news on TV!' *****
'A very enjoyable book and a real page turner' *****
'Writing that seems not just plausible but frighteningly real' *****
_____________________________

A man in search of his son.
An agent on the run from his past.
A country on the verge of revolution...

Nothing good ever comes from a midnight phone call, especially from Downing Street. For washed-up spy Harry Tower, it is the worst news at the worst possible time. His son, Sean, has gone missing in troubled Iran after writing an exposé about government corruption.

Their relationship has never recovered since Harry's wife's suicide, for which Sean holds his father responsible. And Harry, with his career on the verge of disintegration, needs to find him and put things right.

When Harry arrives in Tehran, he finds a city on the cusp of revolution. Foreign powers are jockeying for influence, money and, most importantly, oil. The CIA are conspiring to undermine the government with an impending coup, and there are dark mutterings about opium smuggling. But the reasons for Sean's disappearance may be even more sinister than Harry first suspected.

Before long, he is on the run - not only from a faceless enemy, but from his own past. Which will catch up with him first?

Yesterday's Spy is Tom Bradby at his very best, delivering a cunning espionage novel rich in intrigue and history that will keep you guessing until the final pages.
_______________
Praise for Tom Bradby:
'A gripping thriller' Sunday Times
'Enthralling and fast-moving' Daily Mail
'Teems with twists...imaginative and unexpected' The Times
'Cracking' Financial Times
'An all-too-plausible premise' Observer

View Details >>

The New Neighbor

Leah Stewart

In the tradition of Zoe Heller’s What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal, The New Neighbor is “a chilling page-turner” (People) with “simple, elegant language” (The New York Times Book Review) about an old woman’s curiosity turned into a dangerous obsession as she becomes involved in her mysterious new neighbor’s complicated life.

How much can you really know about the woman next door?

Ninety-year-old Margaret Riley is content hiding from the world. Stoic and independent, she rarely leaves the Tennessee mountaintop where she lives, finding comfort in the mystery novels that keep her company—until she spots a woman who’s moved into the long-empty house across the pond.

Her neighbor, Jennifer Young, is also looking to hide. On the run from her old life, she and her four-year-old son, Milo, have moved to a quiet town where no one from her past can find her.

In Jennifer, Margaret sees both a potential companion for her loneliness and a mystery to be solved. She thinks if she says the right thing, tells the right story, Jennifer will open up, but Jennifer refuses to talk about herself, her son, his missing father, or her past. Frustrated, Margaret crosses more and more boundaries in pursuit of the truth, threatening to unravel the new life Jennifer has so painstakingly created—and reveal some secrets of her own…

From the critically acclaimed author of The History of Us and The Myth of You and Me, The New Neighbor is “a promising exploration of the secrets we all carry and our refusal to forgive ourselves” (Publishers Weekly).

View Details >>

The Thread Collectors

Shaunna J. Edwards

“An unforgettable story of female strength, hope and friendship. This collaborative work is magnificent—a true revelation!” —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman with the Blue Star

“A brilliant story brimming with unexpected friendships and family ties. Historically sound and beautifully stitched, The Thread Collectors will stay with you long after the last page is turned.” —Sadeqa Johnson, international bestselling author of Yellow Wife

1863: In a small Creole cottage in New Orleans, an ingenious young Black woman named Stella embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he knew of her clandestine activities, Stella has to hide not only her efforts but her love for William, a Black soldier and a brilliant musician.

Meanwhile, in New York City, a Jewish woman stitches a quilt for her husband, who is stationed in Louisiana with the Union Army. Between abolitionist meetings, Lily rolls bandages and crafts quilts with her sewing circle for other soldiers, too, hoping for their safe return home. But when months go by without word from her husband, Lily resolves to make the perilous journey South to search for him.

As these two women risk everything for love and freedom during the brutal Civil War, their paths converge in New Orleans, where an unexpected encounter leads them to discover that even the most delicate threads have the capacity to save us. Loosely inspired by the authors' family histories, this stunning novel will stay with readers for a long time.

View Details >>

Hokuloa Road

Elizabeth Hand

A young man is drawn into the dark side of paradise in this "brilliantly atmospheric" (New York Times Book Review) and "refreshingly creepy" (Washington Post) mystery, about the eerie secrets of one Hawai'ian island--a place where people have long vanished without a trace . . .

On a whim, Grady Kendall applies to work as a live-in caretaker for a luxury property in Hawaiʻi, as far from his small-town Maine life as he can imagine. Within days he's flying out to an estate on remote Hokuloa Road, where he quickly uncovers a dark side to the island's idyllic reputation: it has long been a place where people vanish without a trace.

When a young woman from his flight becomes the next to disappear, Grady is determined--and soon desperate--to figure out what's happened to Jessie, and to all those staring out of the island's "missing" posters. But working with Raina, Jessie's fiercely protective best friend, to uncover the truth is anything but easy, and with an inexplicable and sinister presence stalking his every step, Grady can only hope he'll find the answer before it's too late.

Perfect for fans of Peter Heller and The White Lotus, and from award-winning writer Elizabeth Hand, a master of crime fiction known for her magnetic characters, seductive prose, and fearless excavations into the darkest corners of our world, comes a chilling and illuminating new novel about a place unlike any other--and the deadly cost of keeping it so.

"Set in a Hawaii so vividly imagined I'm still shaking sand out of my shoes."--Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of The Final Girl Support Group

"Twisty and dark . . . easily one of the best thrillers I've read." --Rachel Hawkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Wife Upstairs

"This is the perfect book for your summer beach bag--an evocative mystery set in a tropical island paradise." --Jason Rekulak, author of Hidden Pictures

 

View Details >>

The Kingdom of Sand

Andrew Holleran

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE PICK

"[Holleran's] new novel is all the more affecting and engaging because the images of isolation and old age here are haunted . . . in 1978 Holleran wrote the quintessential novel about gay abandon, the sheer, careless pleasure of it: Dancer From the Dance. Now, at almost 80 years of age, he has produced a novel remarkable for its integrity, for its readiness to embrace difficult truths and for its complex way of paying homage to the passing of time." —Colm Toibin, The New York Times Book Review

"It’s rare to find fiction that takes this kind of dying of the light as its subject and doesn’t make its heroes feel either pathetic or polished with a gleam of false dignity . . . This sad, beautiful book captures the sensations Holleran’s characters are chasing — as well as the darkness that inevitably comes for them, and us." —Mark Athitakis, The Los Angeles Times

One of the great appeals of Florida has always been the sense that the minute you get here you have permission to collapse.

The Kingdom of Sand is a poignant tale of desire and dread—Andrew Holleran’s first new book in sixteen years. The nameless narrator is a gay man who moved to Florida to look after his aging parents—during the height of the AIDS epidemic—and has found himself unable to leave after their deaths. With gallows humor, he chronicles the indignities of growing old in a small town.

At the heart of the novel is the story of his friendship with Earl, whom he met cruising at the local boat ramp. For the last twenty years, he has been visiting Earl to watch classic films together and critique the neighbors. Earl is the only person in town with whom he can truly be himself. Now Earl’s health is failing, and our increasingly misanthropic narrator must contend with the fact that once Earl dies, he will be completely alone. He distracts himself with sexual encounters at the video porn store and visits to Walgreens. All the while, he shares reflections on illness and death that are at once funny and heartbreaking.

Holleran’s first novel, Dancer from the Dance, is widely regarded as a classic work of gay literature. Reviewers have described his subsequent books as beautiful, exhilarating, seductive, haunting, and bold. The Kingdom of Sand displays all of Holleran’s considerable gifts; it’s an elegy to sex and a stunningly honest exploration of loneliness and the endless need for human connection, especially as we count down our days.

View Details >>

Dead Sea Conspiracy

Jerry B. Jenkins

In this thrilling adventure, archaeologist Nicole Berman is about to discover the key to unifying three major religions—if a dangerous enemy doesn't stop her first.

Archaeologist Nicole Berman is the first woman to be awarded a permit to lead a dig in Saudi Arabia. Nicole believes what she hopes to discover has the power to to rewrite world history. She assembles a team that will ultimately surprise - and in some cases - betray her. 

In a parallel storyline, readers are launched back to ancient Ur where young Abram is sent to learn from his forebears, who tell him firsthand stories of being on the ark during the Great Flood. 

View Details >>

Cyclorama

Adam Langer

"TRUST EXERCISE meets THE INTERESTINGS in this story of ten teenagers brought together by a high school production of THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK-which will influence the rest of their lives. In an Evanston, Illinois magnet high school in 1982, a group of high schoolers meet to audition for the spring play, excited for the chance to escape the difficulties of their everyday lives. Declan, a senior and an experienced actor, is confident he'll get his first-choice role, but when the capricious, charismatic drama director instead casts Franklin, an unknown underclassman-and the two are seen alone at the director's house-the traumatic series of events that will haunt the cast for years begins to unfold. Thirty-four years later, the actors have moved on with their lives. Some are wildly successful, some never left their hometown, and some just want to be left alone. Everything will change, however, when one former member of their cast comes forward with an allegation dating back to the time of the play. The consequences of this public revelation will be far-reaching and complex, reverberating through all of their lives in unexpected ways. CYCLORAMA is a deeply insightful and compelling story of ordinary people, and Adam Langer's down-to-earth style brilliantly cuts to the core of what makes us who we are and how our pasts-both personal and global-resonate into our present and future. With remarkable tenderness and humanity, Langer reveals how the traumas of our youth continue to echo throughout our lives, in our politics, in our careers, and in our selves"-- Provided by publisher.

View Details >>

How to Kill Your Family

Bella Mackie

A darkly humorous debut novel that follows a cunning antihero as she gets her revenge

 

When I think about what I actually did, I feel somewhat sad that nobody will ever know about the complex operation that I undertook. Getting away with it is highly preferable, of course, but perhaps when I’m long gone, someone will open an old safe and find this confession. The public would reel. After all, almost nobody else in the world can possibly understand how someone, by the tender age of 28, can have calmly killed six members of her family. And then happily got on with the rest of her life, never to regret a thing.
     
When Grace Bernard discovers her absentee millionaire father has rejected her dying mother’s pleas for help, she vows revenge and coldly sets out to get her retribution—by killing them all, one by one. Compulsively readable, Bella Mackie’s debut novel is driven by a captivating first-person narrator who talks of “self-care” and social media while calmly walking the reader through her increasingly baroque acts of murder. But then, Grace is imprisoned for a murder she didn’t commit.
     
Outrageously funny, compulsive, and subversive, How to Kill Your Family is a wickedly dark romp about class, family, love . . . and murder.

         

 

View Details >>

The Girl from Guernica

Karen Robards

Inspired by Picasso's great masterpiece Guernica, New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards returns with a riveting story of love, intrigue, deception and bravery in the face of war...

On an April day in 1937, the sky opens and fire rains down upon the small Spanish town of Guernica. Seventeen-year-old Sibi and her family are caught up in the horror. Griff, an American military attaché, pulls Sibi from the wreckage, and it's only the first time he saves her life in a span of hours. When Germany claims no involvement in the attack, insisting the Spanish Republic was responsible, Griff guides Sibi to lie to Nazi officials. If she or her sisters reveal that they saw planes bearing swastikas, the gestapo will silence them--by any means necessary.

As war begins to rage across Europe, Sibi joins the underground resistance, secretly exchanging information with Griff. But as the scope of Germany's ambitions becomes clear, maintaining the facade of a Nazi sympathizer becomes ever more difficult. And as Sibi is drawn deeper into a web of secrets, she must find a way to outwit an enemy that threatens to decimate her family once and for all.

Masterfully rendered and vividly capturing one of the most notorious episodes in history, The Girl from Guernica is an unforgettable testament to the bonds of family and the courage of women in wartime.

View Details >>

On the Rooftop

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

A Reese's Book Club Pick

"An utterly original and brilliant story." -Reese Witherspoon

A stunning novel about a mother whose dream of musical stardom for her three daughters collides with the daughters' ambitions for their own lives--set against the backdrop of gentrifying 1950s San Francisco

At home they are just sisters, but on stage, they are The Salvations. Ruth, Esther, and Chloe have been singing and dancing in harmony since they could speak. Thanks to the rigorous direction of their mother, Vivian, they've become a bona fide girl group whose shows are the talk of the Jazz-era Fillmore.

Now Vivian has scored a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a talent manager, who promises to catapult The Salvations into the national spotlight. Vivian knows this is the big break she's been praying for. But sometime between the hours of rehearsal on their rooftop and the weekly gigs at the Champagne Supper Club, the girls have become women, women with dreams that their mother cannot imagine.

The neighborhood is changing, too: all around the Fillmore, white men in suits are approaching Black property owners with offers. One sister finds herself called to fight back, one falls into the comfort of an old relationship, another yearns to make her own voice heard. And Vivian, who has always maintained control, will have to confront the parts of her life that threaten to splinter: the community, The Salvations, and even her family.

Warm, gripping, and wise, with echoes of Fiddler on the Roof, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's latest novel is a moving family portrait from "a writer of uncommon nerve and talent" (New York Times Book Review).

View Details >>

I Was the President's Mistress!!

Miguel Syjuco

“A super-typhoon of a novel. A Babel of rogues, survivors, and shape-shifters. A polemic against corruption and greed. A sassy, swerving mini-series, touched by grace and beauty. A Filipino Bonfire of the Vanities for our beleaguered times. An uncompromising work of art.” —David Mitchell, author of Utopia Avenue

“It’s a rare novel that leaves you reeling simultaneously with admiration, exhaustion, amazement at its author’s reach and skill, and desolation at the world it spreads out before you . . . [A] raging protest of a book.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the author of the Man Asian Award-winning Ilustrado, an unflinching satire about power, corruption, sex, and all the other topics you were told never to discuss in polite company.

First came the Sexy-Sexygate scandal. Then an impeachment trial. Finally, a battle royale for the presidency. At the center of this political typhoon is Vita Nova, the Philippines’ most famous movie star and former paramour of the country’s most powerful man. Now, for the first time ever, she bares herself completely in a tell-all memoir that puts the sensational in sensationalistic.

The setting: a sweating, heaving country. The time: right now. The plot: a drug war rages; an assassin brandishes a pistol; a damsel rises from ashes to power; and a government teeters on the brink. Among the players are a dreamer who boxed and acted his way to the presidency; his Koran-toting nemesis in the Senate; a horny bishop; a cowboy turned warlord; a poor little rich boy dying with his dynasty; a washed-up reporter redeemed by one last scoop; a high school sweetheart driven mad by decades of disappointment; and an American naval officer tempting our heroine with a way out. As Vita warns, viewer discretion is advised.

In this masterful and audacious novel, Miguel Syjuco’s signature style—hilarious, insightful, playful, and provocative—animates thirteen indelible voices whose stories present a cross-section of a complicated society. I Was the President’s Mistress!! hurtles headlong into love, politics, faith, history, memory, and the ongoing war over who will tell the stories the world shall know as truth.

View Details >>

Walk the Vanished Earth

Erin Swan

"This rich, endlessly engaging novel is, one hopes, the first in a long career for an author who has the talent and imagination to write whatever she wants." --The New York Times

In the tradition of Station Eleven, Severance and The Dog Stars, a beautifully written and emotionally stirring dystopian novel about how our dreams of the future may shift as our environment changes rapidly, even as the earth continues to spin.


The year is 1873, and a bison hunter named Samson travels the Kansas plains, full of hope for his new country. The year is 1975, and an adolescent girl named Bea walks those very same plains; pregnant, mute, and raised in extreme seclusion, she lands in an institution, where a well-meaning psychiatrist struggles to decipher the pictures she draws of her past. The year is 2027 and, after a series of devastating storms, a tenacious engineer named Paul has left behind his banal suburban existence to build a floating city above the drowned streets that were once New Orleans. There with his poet daughter he rules over a society of dreamers and vagabonds who salvage vintage dresses, ferment rotgut wine out of fruit, paint murals on the ceiling of the Superdome, and try to write the story of their existence. The year is 2073, and Moon has heard only stories of the blue planet—Earth, as they once called it, now succumbed entirely to water. Now that Moon has come of age, she could become a mother if she wanted to–if only she understood what a mother is. Alone on Mars with her two alien uncles, she must decide whether to continue her family line and repopulate humanity on a new planet.
A sweeping family epic, told over seven generations, as America changes and so does its dream, Walk the Vanished Earth explores ancestry, legacy, motherhood, the trauma we inherit, and the power of connection in the face of our planet’s imminent collapse.
This is a story about the end of the world—but it is also about the beginning of something entirely new. Thoughtful, warm, and wildly prescient, this work of bright imagination promises that, no matter what the future looks like, there is always room for hope.

View Details >>

Kaleidoscope

Cecily Wong

 

A dazzling and heartfelt novel about two sisters caught in their parents’ ambition, the accident that brings it all crashing down, and the journey that follows.
Everybody’s heard of The Brightons.

From rags to riches, sleepy Oregon to haute New York, they are the biracial Chinese American family that built Kaleidoscope, a glittering, ‘global bohemian’ shopping empire sourcing luxury goods from around the world. Statuesque, design savant, and family pet—eldest daughter Morgan Brighton is most celebrated of all. Yet despite her favored status, both within the family and in the press, nobody loves her more than Riley. Smart and nervy Riley Brighton — whose existence is forever eclipsed by her older sister’s presence. When a catastrophic event dismantles the Brightons’ world, it is Riley who’s left with questions about her family that challenge her memory, identity, and loyalty. She sets off across the globe with an unlikely companion to seek truths about the people she thought she knew best —herself included.

Using the brightly colored, shifting mosaic patterns of a kaleidoscope as its guide, and told in arresting, addictive fragments, Kaleidoscope is at once a reckoning with one family’s flawed American Dream, and an examination of the precious bond between sisters. It reveals, too, the different kinds of love left to grow when tightly held stories are finally let go. At turns devastating and funny, warm and wise, sexy and transportive, Riley’s journey confronts the meaning of freedom and travel, youth and innocence, and what it looks like to belong, grieve, and love on one’s own terms.

 

View Details >>

The Bridesmaids Union

Jonathan Vatner

From the author of Carnegie Hill, comes Jonathan Vatner's The Bridesmaids Union, a captivating novel of family, Facebook groups, and bridesmaids gone rogue.

Iris Hagarty has just about had it with weddings. After witnessing one too many meltdowns over flower arrangements, she takes to the internet to vent about the trials and tribulations of being a bridesmaid to demanding and ungrateful brides. She finds she is not alone, and soon becomes the moderator of a Facebook group full of other bridesmaids, eager to share their own horror stories.

Enter Iris’s sister Jasmine, the golden child and their parents’ obvious favorite, newly engaged and wanting none other than Iris to be her maid of honor. Knowing full well that Jasmine doesn’t need a wedding to bring out her spoiled side, Iris buckles in for a bumpy ride. At least now she has an outlet—one full of new online friends hungry for juicy details.

But as the Bridesmaids Union grows, Iris finds it harder to keep under control. And she even has some doubts about whether there will be a wedding after all. While Jasmine’s fiancé, David, seems smitten with his bride-to-be, Iris is less sure about her social-climber sister’s intentions. Though that could just be because Iris is having trouble keeping her own eyes off of the groom.

Brimming with family drama, and set in the ever-encroaching world of Instagram DM's and Facebook flame wars, The Bridesmaids Union shows the power and limits of alliances we form on social media, and how to make the most of the ones we’re born into.

View Details >>

The Girl in the Yellow Dress

Jane A. Adams

Was the wrong man hanged for a young woman's murder, or is a copycat killer on the loose? DCI Henry Johnstone and DS Mickey Hitchens must crack a darkly complex case when the community close ranks.

1930, Leicestershire. Everyone in the quiet market town of East Harborough is convinced that local miscreant Brady Brewer is responsible for the brutal murder of Sarah Downham. Despite Brewer's protestations of innocence, and his sister's pleas for help from DCI Henry Johnstone and DS Mickey Hitchens, Brewer is convicted and hanged.

Two weeks after the hanging, a farmworker finds the body of another young woman less than a mile from where Sarah was found - and there are other disturbing similarities between the two murders. Is a copycat killer on the loose, or was Brewer innocent after all? Where is the missing yellow dress that Sarah wore the night she was murdered? As the locals close ranks, Henry and Mickey soon discover that reputations - and the truth - are all on the line . . .

View Details >>

Death and the Conjuror

Tom Mead

In this "sharply-drawn period piece" (New York Times), a magician-turned-sleuth in pre-war London solves three impossible crimes

 

In 1930s London, celebrity psychiatrist Anselm Rees is discovered dead in his locked study, and there seems to be no way that a killer could have escaped unseen. There are no clues, no witnesses, and no evidence of the murder weapon. Stumped by the confounding scene, the Scotland Yard detective on the case calls on retired stage magician-turned-part-time sleuth Joseph Spector. For who better to make sense of the impossible than one who traffics in illusions?

 

Spector has a knack for explaining the inexplicable, but even he finds that there is more to this mystery than meets the eye. As he and the Inspector interview the colorful cast of suspects among the psychiatrist’s patients and household, they uncover no shortage of dark secrets—or motives for murder. When the investigation dovetails into that of an apparently-impossible theft, the detectives consider the possibility that the two transgressions are related. And when a second murder occurs, this time in an impenetrable elevator, they realize that the crime wave will become even more deadly unless they can catch the culprit soon. 

A tribute to the classic golden-age whodunnit, when crime fiction was a battle of wits between writer and reader, Death and the Conjuror joins its macabre atmosphere, period detail, and vividly-drawn characters with a meticulously-constructed fair play puzzle. Its baffling plot will enthrall readers of mystery icons such as Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, modern masters like Anthony Horowitz and Elly Griffiths, or anyone who appreciates a good mystery.

View Details >>

Don't Worry

Shunmyo Masuno

Discover why 90% of your worries won’t come true in this highly practical, internationally bestselling guide by the renowned Zen Buddhist author of The Art of Simple Living.

Think of a time when you were worried about something, but then you suddenly realized how insignificant it was. Isn’t it amazing how much lighter you felt? The key is to focus only on the here and now. By doing so, you free yourself from unnecessary anxiety, and your mind will be at peace. In Don’t Worry, you will learn to:

 

 

 

  • Lesson #1: stop comparing yourself to others—90% of your obsessions will disappear;
  • Lesson #4: remove unnecessary things from your life and make your life absolutely simple;
  • Lesson #10: stop seeking, stop rushing, stop obsessing;
  • Lesson #11: interpret things positively—you are the one to decide whether you are happy or not;
  • Lesson #14: stop taking in too much information;
  • Lesson #19: take a break from competition—it’s the Zen way of avoiding anxiety;
  • Lesson #24: act instead of worrying—things will definitely work out better.

  • By following this book’s 48 simple lessons—and taking to heart the nearly 30 zengo, or Zen sayings, quoted throughout—you’ll enjoy a calmer, more relaxed, more positive version of yourself.

    A PENGUIN LIFE TITLE

 

 

 

View Details >>

It's All Chinese to Me

Pierre Ostrowski

It's All Chinese to Me is a fun and authentic introduction to Chinese culture that allows readers, tourists, and business travelers to experience what ultimately makes China so unique--its people.

Learn about Chinese customs, proper etiquette for all types of situations, and how to interact effectively while traveling China. Firsthand tips and illustrations offer an authentic view of China and the many cultural differences that foreigners encounter there. This new edition of It's All Chinese to Me is revised and expanded with 25 percent new content, offering international visitors a set of essential insights to help demystify this highly complex and compelling culture.

Readers will learn about:

  • Major influences and historical events that guide behavior in modern China
  • Fundamental concepts crucial to interacting with Chinese people
  • Social idiosyncrasies that may surprise most Westerners
  • Dealing with culture shock in China
  • Peculiarities of Chinese business culture
View Details >>

Rest Rituals

Valerie Oula

Rest easy with this collection of over 50 powerful restorative techniques.



Good sleep--the kind that leaves you with increased mental clarity, steady energy, and excitement for the day ahead--can be elusive. But it's within reach: vibrational energy healer and meditation instructor Valerie Oula has put together over fifty rituals for winding down, drifting off, and improving the quality of your rest. Her practice includes:



* guided meditations and visualizations to help you center yourself

* breathwork for calming an anxious mind

* tapping, or working with meridians, to cleanse your energy centers

* mantras and intention-setting practices for clear focus and an easier wake up routine



Rest Rituals is an easy-to-use guide for anyone who wants to sleep with tranquility and ease.


 

View Details >>

Mayo Clinic on Osteoporosis

Stephen Hodgson

A compendium of information on osteoporosis includes symptoms, risks, prevention, and treatment, and a comprehensive guide combines current medical research with a simple diet and exercise program that promotes bone health.

View Details >>

Managing Your Migraine

Katy Munro

'A fantastic and much needed resource for all those suffering. Dr Katy Munro's experience and knowledge through this book will help all those who read it' Dr Rupy Aujla, The Doctor's Kitchen

'Dr Katy Munro is the single best migraine expert our family have ever met [...] This book brings hope to every migraineur' Miranda Sawyer, Guardian & Observer Journalist

*****

Despite being one of the most common and debilitating conditions in the world, migraine is still widely misunderstood, stigmatised and misdiagnosed. Migraine is much more than 'just a headache', it's a genetic, neurological brain disorder, and it's time patients got the healp they really need.

Managing Your Migraine is the practical go-to guide for understanding and treating migraine. In the book, headache Specialist and GP Dr Katy Munro will give you expert advice on:

· Understanding your migraine phases and triggers
· The impact of food, exercise and sleep on migraine
· Rescue plans for acute attacks
· Migraine preventers
· Migraine in children
· Managing your mental health with migraine

If you're a person with migraine, or know someone struggling, this book will provide helpful strategies for alleviating your symptoms and managing your migraine. Drawing on her medical expertise, her own personal experience with migraine and the stories of her patients, Dr Munro will empower you to get to know your own migraine and build an effective treatment plan that will help you live your life more fully.

Part of the Penguin Life Experts series.

View Details >>

The Unofficial Disney Parks EPCOT Cookbook

Ashley Craft

Bring EPCOT’s beloved global fare right to your kitchen with this next installment to the bestselling Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook series.

The Honey Chocolate Baklava from Morocco all the way to the Tangerine Kakigōri from Japan, EPCOT arguably has the best food at the Disney Parks. And now, you can bring the delicious snacks, meals, and drinks straight to your own kitchen with The Unofficial Disney Parks EPCOT Cookbook. Featuring 100 recipes from each of the EPCOT Pavilions and festivals, you’ll learn how to make:
-Jumbo Pretzels from Sommerfest in the Germany Pavilion
-Fish and Chips from Yorkshire County Fish Shop in the United Kingdom Pavilion
-Avocado Margaritas from La Cava del Tequila in the Mexico Pavilion
-Macaron Ice Cream Sandwiches from L’Artisan des Glaces in the France Pavilion
-And much more!

Perfect for everyone from EPCOT experts who miss those flavors in between trips to Disney fans who have never visited the parks but still want to enjoy the classic worldly flavors, The Unofficial Disney Parks EPCOT Cookbook has all the recipes you’ll need to make treats worthy of the Mouse himself.

View Details >>

Small Loom Weaving : Easy Projects for Beginners

Ichi.co

"Small Loom Weaving is a friendly introduction to the joys of making your own handwoven goods. Illustrated lessons introduce you to the fundamentals of the loom, materials, tools, color changes, introducing texture, finishing, and more. This useful guide also shows you how to make chic, boho items ranging from coasters and placemats to scarves and small wall hangings. In this book, textile designer and expert weaver Ichi.co proves that creating beautiful textures and patterns on a loom is easier than you may think, and weaving your own pieces is an immensely rewarding experience." -- Back cover.

View Details >>

Unofficial Hocus Pocus Cross-Stitch

Ulysses Press

Join the Sanderson sisters in some stitchcraft and brew up some '90s-inspired designs and spooky slogans with this unofficial cross-stitch book for fans of Halloween and Hocus Pocus.

Unofficial Hocus Pocus Cross-Stitch brings your favorite '90s film to life with cute crafts and spooky decor. Perfect for beginners, this book has 25 witchy cross-stitch patterns that pay homage to the Halloween classic.

Patterns include sayings like “Just a Bunch of Hocus Pocus” and “I Put a Spell on You” as well as fun designs like a selection of brooms (and a vacuum), gravestones, and more! Whether you’re making Halloween decor for spooky season or one-of-a-kind handmade gifts for your witchiest friends and family, this cross-stitch book is a must-have for any wannabe Sanderson sister.

View Details >>

Cosplay: A History

Andrew Liptak

A history of the colorful and complex kingdom of cosplay and fandom fashion by Andrew Liptak, journalist, historian, and member of the legendary fan-based Star Wars organization the 501st Legion.

In recent years, cosplay—the practice of dressing up in costume as a character—has exploded, becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon. But what are the circumstances that made its rise possible?

Andrew Liptak—a member of the legendary 501st Legion, an international fan-based organization dedicated to the dark side of Star Wars—delves into the origins and culture of cosplay to answer this question. Cosplay: A History looks at the practice’s ever-growing fandom and conventions, its roots in 15th-century costuming, the relationship between franchises and the cosplayers they inspire, and the technology that brings even the most intricate details in these costumes to life.

Cosplay veterans and newcomers alike will find much to relish in this rich and comprehensive history.

View Details >>

Essential Tennis

Ian Westermann

The essential book from online tennis coaching sensation Ian Westermann, founder of EssentialTennis.com

What’s the number one thing stopping you from playing your best tennis?

Ian Westermann, founder of the world’s #1 online tennis instruction portal, Essentialtennis.com, will confidently say it’s an obstacle you probably never thought of: The ball. You might think this sounds ridiculous. The whole point of tennis is to hit the ball over the net and in, so how can the ball be the thing that’s standing in the way? In fact, this is why the ball is such an impediment: your desire to hit a good shot, with the right mix of power and spin, to a specific spot on the court, prevents you from striking the ball the way you should.

In Essential Tennis, readers – players and coaches, alike – will learn how improving at tennis actually happens and how to easily implement these lessons and integrate them into better play on the court. Players will hit stronger shots, make fewer errors, and beat players who are currently beating them. Coaches will look differently at what it means to provide a student with a holistic learning experience.

Essential Tennis contains technique-based instruction for executing groundstrokes, volleys, and serves, as well as progressions, drills, and mindsets players should incorporate. Westermann illuminates strokes, movement, strategy, and mental toughness – all proven to be successful over 20 years with clients of all ages and skill levels.

View Details >>

The Total Bicycling Manual

Robert F. James

Everything you need for enjoying the sport of cycling, from finding your perfect bike to customizing your ride without spending a fortune, learning to do your own repairs and maintenance, ride with confidence in traffic or on any road or trail, to participating in races, cyclocross, and other biking activities.



You never forget how to ride a bike . . . but do you know how to get a great deal on a used bike (and avoid getting ripped off!), set up your commuter bike for optimal safety (without sacrificing fun), plan the perfect family ride for kids of all ages, and train for your first endurance ride? Bicycle Times magazine reaches hundreds of thousands of “everyday cyclists”—riders who care more about having a great ride than spending a year’s salary on a tricked-out racing bike. Their mission is to make cycling fun and accessible for everyone . . . families, commuters, travelers, and weekend warriors included.

This book is the one practical manual every cyclist should have—right next to the toolbox or stashed in a pannier. A quick but comprehensive intro chapter on finding the right bike for every need (and why so many cyclists are sure they need one of each!), which includes detailed information on what to look for in a new or used bike, when to pay a little more for components, and where you can economize creatively.

Filled with practical, wheels-on-the-ground tips, this book will make you a better rider, take you places you never thought you’d go, and make sure you never get stranded by the roadside without the tools or know-how to fix your ride.

Packaged in a durable, wipe-clean flexicover with metallic corner-guards, this practical manual withstands heavy-duty use indoors and out.

Cycling Basics
Choose the right Bike for You
Customize Your Ride
Your Helmet Can Save Your Life
Dress for Any Weather
Clipless Pedals and Cycling Shoes—Yes or No?
Understand the Drive Train
Give Me a Brake
Find a Fixie
Try an E-Bike
Ride the Road
Take to the Trails
Cruisers and Fat Bikes
Bikes for Kids

Riding Skills and Adventures
Fit Your Bike to Your Body
Make Simple Adjustments
Brake Confidently
Use Your Gears for Maximum Efficiency
Know the Rules of the Road
Use GPS and Fitness Apps
Bike for Fitness
Commute in Comfort
Ride a Bike in a Dress
Pedal in Any Shoes (Including Stilettos!)
Dominate Trail Rides
Get Off Road
Try Cyclocross
Get Around Town
Lock It Up
Seek Out a Velodrome
Try a Road Race
Train for Endurance Rides
Ride with the Family
Take a Bike Vacation
Ride in the Rain
Ride in Snow

Repair and Maintenance
Buy the Tools You Need
Do a Basic Tune-Up
Fix a Flat
Fix a Blowout
True a Wheel
Change a Bottom Bracket
Replace Brake Cables
Switch Out Your Brakes
Shim a Seat
Pimp Your Ride
Cut Down a Basket
Troubleshoot a Headset
Install Racks
Keep Everything Greased Up
Do Emergency Repairs
Pack a Touring Toolkit
Winterize Your Bike

View Details >>

My Brother, Muhammad Ali

Rahaman Ali

“Rahaman has, at last, written the definitive biography on his late brother, which tells the real Ali story.” —Mike Tyson

More words have been written about Muhammad Ali than almost anyone else. He was, without doubt, the world’s most-loved sportsman. At the height of his celebrity he was the most famous person in the world. And yet, until now, the one voice missing belonged to the man who knew him best—his only sibling, and best friend, Rahaman Ali.

No one was closer to Ali than Rahaman. Born Cassius and Rudolph Arnett Clay, the two brothers grew up together, lived together, trained together, travelled together, and fought together in the street and in the ring. A near-constant fixture in his sibling’s company, Rahaman saw Ali at both his best and his worst: the relentless prankster and the jealous older brother, the outspoken advocate, the husband and father. In My Brother, Muhammad Ali, Rahaman offers an insider's perspective on the well-known stories as well as never-before-told tales, painting a rich and intimate portrait of a proud, relentlessly polarizing, yet often vulnerable man.

In this extraordinary, poignant memoir, Rahaman tells a much bigger and more personal story than in any other book on Muhammad Ali—that of two brothers, almost inseparable from birth to death. It is the final and most important perspective on an iconic figure.

View Details >>

Twitch For Dummies

Tee Morris

Find your own streaming success with Dummies

Twitch For Dummies will get you up to date with Twitch, the breakthrough streaming platform where you can set up a channel, increase your viewership, and find your people. Step-by-step guides and helpful, real-life examples get you ready to go live and, who knows, maybe even earn a little money while having fun online. Check out this new edition for all the details on the new Creator Dashboard interface, streaming in the metaverse, and details you need to know to get the world watching. This handy reference even covers the latest Twitch integrations for streaming from your mobile devices. Community-based entertainment has never been hotter, and Dummies shows you how to get on board.

  • Discover why the streaming platform Twitch is taking the world by storm
  • Set up your first channel, stream gameplay, create highlight reels, and find viewers
  • Understand the ad revenue structure so you can earn cash from your stream
  • Get current on going live from the latest console models to Virtual Reality

This is the perfect Dummies guide for new and established Twitch streamers who want to improve their audience and skills.

View Details >>

Everything, Beautiful

Ella Frances Sanders

From the New York Times bestselling author of Eating the Sun and Lost in Translation, a gorgeously illustrated love letter to everything that is beautiful, and a manifesto for those who are struggling to remember or recognize what beauty is

People are increasingly baffled as to what they can call beautiful, what they should call beautiful, and whether or not they are able to apply beautiful to themselves or to the things around them. Our outdated yet hugely pervasive modern notions of beauty provide one of the greatest sadnesses of all—an intensely human emptiness that we are mistakenly trying to fill with objects and hollow promises.
 
To be able to find our way back to beauty is a deceptively urgent task in the world today. Everyone deserves revelations, the kind that are daily, hugely personal, and very often ephemeral. We are surrounded by beauty—beauty that isn’t something we can buy: spiderwebs only seen in the sunlight, the greenish glow of a fox’s eyes watching in the dark, or the comforting screech of the subway that takes you to your many futures.
 
Part meditation, part self-help guide, and part interactive journal, Everything, Beautiful explores what beauty is, why it matters, and how we can find it in our everyday lives. Filled with thoughtful, intimate, and brilliant insights, inspirational quotes, breathtaking illustrations, and space for readers to write, draw, and reflect on their own ideas of beauty, Everything, Beautiful is for anyone who feels they cannot point to beauty any longer, are struggling to see it, or feel that it has left them behind.

View Details >>

Grace Can Lead Us Home

Kevin Nye

On any given night, more than half a million Americans and Canadians find themselves sleeping on the streets, in shelters, cars, and other places not meant for human habitation. Yet as this crisis continues to grow, it remains one of the least talked about—especially in churches. Even where compassion and empathy exist, the complexities around homelessness can make us feel stuck, overwhelmed, or numb to the existence of unhoused people in our cities and neighborhoods.  

Reporting back from his work in homeless services, minister and advocate Kevin Nye introduces readers to the Christ he’s met in tents, shelters, and drop-in centers. He demystifies homelessness by journeying into complex issues like affordable housing, mental illness, addiction, and more, while reimagining our theological approach to these matters and educating us on how they intersect with homelessness.  

This thorough and intimate book shows us that from the margins, Jesus has something to teach us all about grace—something that could change the landscape of homelessness entirely if we’re ready to hear it.  

View Details >>

The Art of Thai Massage

Bob Haddad

• Presents guidelines for effortless and effective practice, including body mechanics, breathing patterns, flowing movements, incremental pressure, and exercises to improve sensing and to strengthen intuition as you work

• Offers ways to refine and improve classic techniques that are often performed incorrectly, explains broad healing concepts behind individual techniques, and discusses the awareness and sensitivity with which they should be performed

• Answers common questions, clarifies misunderstandings, and presents ways to work with focused intention on a deeper level, and with more grace, ease, and efficiency

UNLIKE OTHER BOOKS ABOUT THAI MASSAGE, this guide offers a deep and insightful view of important and often neglected aspects of this work. Many of these concepts and techniques also apply to table massage, physical therapy, yoga, and other healing arts. This book guides the reader through the conceptual, spiritual, and practical approaches behind effective bodywork. An entire section is dedicated to awareness of breath for massage, movement, and everyday activities. Assessment guidelines help the therapist to work with others based on physical appearance, preexisting conditions, and elemental predisposition. Exercises are presented to sharpen sensing abilities and intuition, and to find, coax, and release blockages in the body. Twelve important Thai massage techniques that are often taught and performed incorrectly are described in great detail. Other chapters offer ways to create customized sequences of practice and to move from one technique to another with ease and grace. Finally, the chapter on medicinal herbs discusses the preparation, use, and benefits of herbal compresses, poultices, balms, oils, and baths, and it offers easy recipes for all of these therapies.

This manual contains information that has never been previously available in print. Full of exercises and insights to help therapists hone their bodywork skills, it reveals key principles that give way to effective treatment and explores traditional Thai massage with a special focus on intention, awareness, sensitivity, and spirituality.

View Details >>

The Complete Guide to Food Allergies in Adults and Children

Scott H. Sicherer

The most complete guide to preventing, testing, living with, and treating food allergies in children and adults.

In this comprehensive, evidence-based guide for adults and children with food allergies and those who care for them, Dr. Scott H. Sicherer provides all the critical information you need on preventing, testing, living with, and treating food allergies.

Organized in an accessible Q&A format and illustrated with case studies, the book thoroughly explains how to prevent exposure to a known allergen at home, at work, at school, in restaurants, and elsewhere. Emphasizing the most recent advances, Sicherer touches on everything from handling an anaphylactic emergency to diagnosing allergies and intolerances, all while detailing chronic health problems caused by food, such as eczema, hives, and gastrointestinal symptoms.

He also shares:

• the benefits and risks of new therapies
• new prevention guidelines
• new approaches to improve quality of life and reduce anxiety
• the latest insights on adult-onset food allergies
• new diagnostic tests now commercially available
• approaches shown to increase safety in school
• the latest thinking on treating eczema through the diet
• new doses and self-injection devices for treating food anaphylaxis
• new information about food allergies that affect the gut

Dr. Sicherer also reviews food reactions that are not allergic, such as lactose intolerance, irritable bowel syndrome, and celiac disease. He explains how to get adequate nutrition when you must avoid dietary staples and discusses whether allergies ever go away (they do—and sometimes they return). Finally, he includes an allergy and anaphylaxis emergency plan and checklists to reduce cross-contamination. This is the most authoritative and accessible allergy book on the market.

View Details >>

The Garden Refresh

Kier Holmes

Grow more, spend less

So you want a stylish, healthy, and productive garden that is budget and Earth-friendly? Of course you do. Garden designer Kier Holmes shows you how, in this accessible and spunky guide. She shares everything you need to create a productive and lush garden that can truly be used and enjoyed. Packed with hundreds of tips on design, plant selection, and how to address problematic situations, it also has information on which hardscape elements are worth the splurge, how to decide where to start, and how to reduce maintenance through design. Inspirational, practical, and endlessly creative, The Garden Refresh is destined to become the book you turn to again and again for the best insider ideas.

View Details >>

Job Search Secrets

Subir Verma

When it comes to finding a job, qualification, experience and talent are important attributes. However, all these come to a naught if one is not able to locate the right job, find the people who can help, figure out the right time to pitch and identify the most effective approach. This book provides the much needed guidance on how to get your dream job quickly and easily. It is a step-by-step guide and practical manual with exercises and free tools which anybody can use to find their dream job faster.

View Details >>

Get That Job: Interviews

Bloomsbury Publishing

The ultimate guide to preparing for the interview process, maintaining focus, handling difficult questions, and maximizing your chances of landing that dream job.

Whether you're a school leaver, a recent graduate, an established professional on the move, or someone looking to return to the job market, any research and preparation will be critical in improving your performance in an interview setting - from being aware of your own strengths and weaknesses, through to knowing the questions to ask that will ensure you are remembered after the interview is over.

Whether it is in person, on the telephone or via a video conference, Get That Job: Interviews will prepare you for even the toughest interview - including tips on preparation and pre-interview research, strategies for different types of interview, advice on staying calm under pressure, and ways to cope with the questions from hell.

View Details >>

Accounting for Dummies

John A. Tracy

Features the latest information on accounting methods and standards, and explains how to avoid fraud, analyze profits, prepare financial reports, manage budgets, and determine product costs.

View Details >>

Whittling Workbook

James Ray Miller

The ultimate beginner-friendly project guide to whittling flat-plane carvings with a modern twist! Whittling Workbook is perfect for anyone seeking a range of easy wood carvings they can accomplish with just one knife – including roughing out. All you need is a block of wood and one knife to achieve any of the 14 wood carving projects featured within these pages! From a simple strawberry and a whimsical wand to a sailor, Martian, pig, and so much more, each project includes detailed step-by-step instructions to walk you through the entire process from start to finish. Also included are insightful overviews on basic carving cuts, painting and finishing techniques, safety notes, and how to join a carving community. Author James Miller is a recent college graduate and a protégé of decorated Scandinavian-style carver, Harley Refsal. James has been a regular contributor to Woodcarving Illustrated since 2010 and published his first book, Whittling Flat-Plane Animals, in 2020.

View Details >>

The Story of Irish Dance

Helen Brennan

From early accounts of dance customs in medieval Ireland to the present, Helen Brennan offers an authoritative look at the evolution of Irish dance. Every type of dance from social to traditional to clergy is included. Brennan takes care to explain the different styles and traditions that evolved from different parts of Ireland; which results in some lively discussions as people reminisce over old favorites. She also discusses how dance evolved to become such an important part of Ireland's culture and history. An appendix is offered to help explain the various steps involved in each style of dance including the Munster or Southern style, Single Shuffle, Double Shuffle, Treble Shuffle, the Heel Plant, the Cut, the Rock or Puzzle, the Drum, the Sean Nos Dance Style of Connemara, and the Northern Style.

View Details >>

A Trip of One's Own

Kate Wills

A travel story is the best story of them all...

Travel journalist Kate Wills wasn't expecting to be divorced after less than a year of marriage, or to be forced to restart a life that had seemed so stable for so long. Luckily, her job as a writer offered her the perfect opportunity to escape from it all. But this time, with no deadlines to hit or all-expenses-paid trips to absorb in a few days before churning out copy for a travel magazine, her jet-setting felt different. There were no photographers working alongside her or assistants booking her flights. For the first time ever, Kate was traveling alone.

Feeling unexpectedly out of her element, Kate began to scour history for stories of female travelers to inspire her. From a 4th-century nun to a globe-circling cyclist, Kate discovered that there have always been astonishing women who have broken free from society's expectations, clearing the path for many of us to do the same.

Funny, heartfelt, and guaranteed to spark wanderlust, A Trip of One's Own is the perfect armchair travel read to inspire you to jump in the car or hop on a plane to explore the world. This book is the must-have next read for any aspiring solo female traveler!

View Details >>

Traveling Different

Dawn M. Barclay

The travel bible for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder and/or mood and distraction disorders, offering helpful tips to soothe any child's travel anxieties. Traveling with children is always challenging, but for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder and/or mood and attention and distraction disorders it can be especially intimidating. How should parents of children experiencing meltdowns deal with clueless and judgmental onlookers? What are the best methods to alleviate motion sickness when your child might already be on a cocktail of drugs? Traveling Different: Vacation Strategies for Parents of the Anxious, the Inflexible, and the Neurodiverse answers these and many other questions parents may have when traveling with their children. Dawn M. Barclay presents travel strategies and anecdotes from Certified Autism Travel ProfessionalsTM, parents of special needs children, associations and advocates, and mental health professionals, broken down by mode of transportation and type of venue. The heart of the book outlines suggested itineraries for spectrum families as well as venues--such as museums--that cater to the unique special interests that are characteristic of individuals with autism. Less common accommodations such as dude ranches and houseboats are also included, as are vacations involving sports that might not immediately be associated with ASD, such as diving, skiing, and golf. The book culminates with a resource guide of travel agents who specialize in special needs travel--as well as where to find other experts--and lists of organizations that advocate for special needs families. Noted mental health professionals offer advice throughout the book and organizations that support the needs of this community are profiled and included in the resources. Travel brings the world together and now, thanks to a growing focus on the needs of those with special needs, it is more accessible than ever before. This work is an essential part of that effort, a resource designed to make the cultural, educational, and bonding benefits of vacations available to all.

View Details >>

The Storyteller's Death

Ann Dávila Cardinal

"Ann Dávila Cardinal writes with the razored clarity of a surgeon, the spare and evocative beauty of a poet, and the immensely compelling passion of a natural born storyteller." --Andre Dubus III, New York Timesbestselling author of House of Sand and Fog

From International Latino Book Award-winning author Ann Dávila Cardinal comes a gorgeously written family saga about a Puerto Rican teenager who finds herself gifted (or cursed?) with a strange ability.

There was always an old woman dying in the back room of her family's house when Isla was a child...

Isla Larsen Sanchez's life begins to unravel when her father passes away. Instead of being comforted at home in New Jersey, her mother starts leaving her in Puerto Rico with her grandmother and great-aunt each summer like a piece of forgotten luggage.

When Isla turns eighteen, her grandmother, a great storyteller, dies. It is then that Isla discovers she has a gift passed down through her family's cuentistas. The tales of dead family storytellers are brought back to life, replaying themselves over and over in front of her.

At first, Isla is enchanted by this connection to the Sanchez cuentistas. But when Isla has a vision of an old murder mystery, she realizes that if she can't solve it to make the loop end, these seemingly harmless stories could cost Isla her life.

View Details >>

Murder by the Book

Martin Edwards

With Martin Edwards as librarian and guide, delve into an irresistible stack of bibliomysteries, perfect for every booklover and armchair sleuth, featuring much-loved Golden Age detectives Nigel Strangeways, Philip Trent, Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, and others. But readers should be warned that the most riveting tales often conceal the deadliest of secrets...

If much of the action is set in a bookshop or a library, it is a bibliomystery, just as it is if a major character is a bookseller or a librarian.

--Otto Penzler

A bookish puzzle threatens an eagerly awaited inheritance; a submission to a publisher recounts a murder that seems increasingly to be a work of nonfiction; an irate novelist puts a grisly end to the source of his writer's block.

There is no better hiding place for clues--or red herrings--than inside the pages of a book. But in this world of resentful ghost writers, indiscreet playwrights, and unscrupulous book collectors, literary prowess is often a prologue to disaster.

View Details >>

Hear & Beyond

Shari Eberts

Hearing loss doesn’t come with an operating manual—until now.

If you have hearing loss, you already know that the conventional approach to treatment is focused on hearing-aid technology. Without a handbook to help you figure out how to actually live with it, you’ve likely been getting by on information pieced together from various sources—and yet, communication often seems incomplete and unsatisfying.

What’s missing from this hearing care model is the big picture—a real-life illustration of how hearing loss, its emotions, and its barriers affect every corner of your life. Now, hearing-health advocates, consultants, and speakers Shari Eberts and Gael Hannan offer a new skills-based approach to hearing loss that is centered not on hearing better, but on communicating better.

With honesty and humor, they share their own hearing loss journeys, and outline invaluable insights, strategies, and workarounds to help you engage with the world and be heard. You’ll gain tips for navigating all areas impacted by hearing loss, including relationships, work, technology; strategies for adopting a new, empowering mindset towards your hearing loss; and communication behaviors that can make almost any listening situation manageable.

Informed by the lived experiences of thousands of people living with hearing loss, and corroborated by hearing science, technological advances, and modern hearing-care principles, Hear & Beyond offers a new way forward to greater connection and engagement—whether you’re new to hearing loss or have been living with it for a long time.

Hearing loss is just one aspect of who you are, among many others. You may have hearing loss, but it doesn’t have to have you.

View Details >>

How to Keep House While Drowning

KC Davis

USA TODAY Bestseller

This revolutionary approach to cleaning and organizing helps free you from feeling ashamed or overwhelmed by a messy home.

If you’re struggling to stay on top of your to-do list, you probably have a good reason: anxiety, fatigue, depression, ADHD, or lack of support. For therapist KC Davis, the birth of her second child triggered a stress-mess cycle. The more behind she felt, the less motivated she was to start. She didn’t fold a single piece of laundry for seven months. One life-changing realization restored her sanity—and the functionality of her home: You don’t work for your home; your home works for you.

In other words, messiness is not a moral failing. A new sense of calm washed over her as she let go of the shame-based messaging that interpreted a pile of dirty laundry as “I can never keep up” and a chaotic kitchen as “I’m a bad mother.” Instead, she looked at unwashed clothes and thought, “I am alive,” and at stacks of dishes and thought, “I cooked my family dinner three nights in a row.”

Building on this foundation of self-compassion, KC devised the powerful practical approach that has exploded in popularity through her TikTok account, @domesticblisters. The secret is to simplify your to-do list and to find creative workarounds that accommodate your limited time and energy. In this book, you’ll learn exactly how to customize your cleaning strategy and rebuild your relationship with your home, including:

-How to see chores as kindnesses to your future self, not as a reflection of your worth
-How to start by setting priorities
-How to stagger tasks so you won’t procrastinate
-How to clean in quick bursts within your existing daily routine
-How to use creative shortcuts to transform a room from messy to functional

With KC’s help, your home will feel like a sanctuary again. It will become a place to rest, even when things aren’t finished. You will move with ease, and peace and calm will edge out guilt, self-criticism, and endless checklists. They have no place here.

View Details >>

Peg and Rose Solve a Murder

Laurien Berenson

"Rose Donovan looks for the good in everyone. With her sister-in-law, Peg, that sometimes requires a lot of searching. Even a sixty-something former nun like Rose has her limits, and gruff Peg Turnbull sure knows how to push them. But after forty years of bickering, they re attempting to start over, partnering up to join the local bridge club. Peg and Rose barely have a chance to celebrate their first win before one of the club's most accomplished players is killed in his home. As the newest members, the sisters-in-law come under scrutiny and decide to start some digging of their own. Bridge is typically seen as a wholesome pastime, yet this group of senior citizens harbors a wealth of vices, including gambling, cheating, and adultery . . . By comparison, Peg and Rose's fractious relationship is starting to feel almost functional. But as their suspect list narrows, they re unaware that their logic has a dangerous flaw. And they'll have to hope that their teamwork holds steady when they're confronted by a killer who's through with playing games."-- Provided by publisher.

View Details >>

Escape from Amsterdam

Lauralee Bliss

"Helen Smit believed she was called by God to become a teacher. Little does she know that her care for kids will take a drastic turn for survival when the Germans occupy Amsterdam and Jewish children and parents begin to be deported. Now all she can think of is helping all the kids escape before it's too late. Erik Misman's newfound love for Helen is tested when he joins a plot to help move Jewish children to a safe place in the countryside. If danger can foster a closer bond with Helen and save the lives of the little ones, he will do it all. But when a German patrol stumbles upon the farm where they are hiding with three children, and a soldier takes an unexpected interest in Helen, their plans for safety and love could well be destroyed."-- Provided by publisher.

View Details >>

Built with Love : A Second Chances Novel

Melody Carlson

"After the death of her husband, Kestra returns to her hometown of Port Star. With the purchase of her childhood dream house -- a stone mansion along the rocky Oregon coast -- it appears she has found a way to rebuild her life. Kestra begins to transform the old house into an elegant, yet charming, restaurant. But as the renovations begin, a mysterious stranger moves into her caretaker's cottage -- and eventually into her heart. Suddenly life is full of promise and new opportunities, until a contractor's jealousy threatens Kestra's new romance."-- Provided by publisher.

View Details >>

The Couple at Number 9

Claire Douglas

“Tense, twisty, fraught with emotion and packed with secrets, The Couple at Number 9 is Claire’s best thriller yet.”—Gilly MacMillan, bestselling author of What She Knew

The internationally bestselling author of Do Not Disturb and Just Like the Other Girls delivers a heart-pounding psychological thriller about a couple who inherit what seems to be their dream home, until they make a horrifying discovery—and the danger begins.

The Victims . . . 

When pregnant Saffron Cutler moves into 9 Skelton Place with boyfriend Tom and sets about renovations, the last thing she expects is builders uncovering human remains. The remains of two bodies, in fact.

The Investigation . . . 

Forensics indicate the bodies have been buried at least thirty years. Saffy has nothing to worry about—until the police launch a murder inquiry and ask to speak to the cottage’s former owner. Her grandmother, Rose.

The Witness . . . 

Rose is in a nursing home and Alzheimer’s means her memory is increasingly confused. She can’t help the police, but its’ clear she remembers something. 

The Killer . . . 

As Rose’s fragmented memories resurface, and the police dig ever deeper, Saffy fears she and the cottage are being watched.

The Truth . . . 

What happened thirty years ago? Why did no one miss the victims? What part did her grandmother play? And is Saffy now in danger? 

View Details >>

The Teacher of Warsaw

Mario Escobar

"September 1, 1939. Sixty-year-old Janusz Korczak and the students and teachers at his Dom Sierot Jewish orphanage are outside enjoying a beautiful day in Warsaw. Hours later, their lives are altered forever when the Nazis invade. Suddenly treated as an outcast in his own city, Janusz -- a respected leader known for his heroism and teaching -- is determined to do whatever it takes to protect the children from the horrors to come. When over four hundred thousand Jewish people are rounded up and forced to live in the 1.3-square-mile walled compound of the Warsaw ghetto, Janusz and his friends take drastic measures to shield the children from disease and starvation. With dignity and courage, the teachers and students of Dom Sierot create their own tiny army of love and bravely prepare to march toward the future -- whatever it may hold."-- Provided by publisher.

View Details >>

Mail-Order Brides of the West: Evie: A McCutcheon Family Novel

Caroline Fyffe

"The well-educated daughter of a lawyer, Trudy Bauer arrives at the St. Louis based Mail-Order Brides of the West agency full of excitement for the adventure of a lifetime. She befriends the agency's maid, Evie Davenport, and the two form a strong and lasting friendship. Trudy and Evie vow to stay in contact through letters when Evie takes hold of her destiny and arranges a marriage on the sly. Each brave young woman is ready to face whatever an unknown groom and life in Montana can throw her way."-- Provided by publisher.

View Details >>

An Unexpected Amish Courtship

Rachel J. Good

"Jilted by her first love, Sovilla Mast fled her hometown to live in Pennsylvania with an aunt she's never met. Only after she arrives does she realize that the cantankerous woman has left the faith and alienated everyone around her. To take her mind off her sadness, Sovilla turns to baking homemade pet food and treats to sell at the Valley Green Farmer's Market. It's there she meets dog breeder Isaac Lantz . . . Shy and kind-hearted, Isaac breeds Labrador retrievers and works as a puppy raiser for assistance dogs. When he and Sovilla bond at the market, he is immediately drawn to her. And when he tells her he needs a new puppy raiser, Sovilla jumps at the chance. But as their friendship deepens, Isaac can't help but notice that Sovilla keeps herself at a safe distance. Gaining a puppy's trust and affection has been easy for Isaac, yet he has no idea how to win the heart of the woman he's fallen in love with -- until Sovilla needs advice in dealing with her aunt. Soon, Isaac is putting his lessons from man's best friend, and his faith, to work for the good of all involved . . ."-- Provided by publisher.

View Details >>

Harvest Moon

Denise Hunter

"Forever walking the line between passion and conflict, Laurel and Gavin's relationship ended in divorce after years of miscommunication and unmet expectations. Now pursuing their own separate lives and careers, the two are content . . . though not completely happy. When their best friends, Mike and Mallory, are killed in a plane crash, Laurel and Gavin are stunned to learn they ve been named guardians of their friends' young daughter, Emma. Putting their differences aside, the estranged couple search for a suitable guardian as they care for Emma and manage Mike and Mallory's apple orchard. Soon tempers flare -- as does the passion they both remember so well. And Laurel and Gavin find themselves working through their past -- their mistakes, their miscommunications, and ultimately the tragedy that ended their marriage. Will the seeds of love, still growing inside them, thrive and flourish? Or will grief and regret strangle the feelings before they can fully blossom?"--

View Details >>

The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie

Rachel Linden

"Lolly Blanchard's life only seems to give her lemons. Ten years ago, after her mother's tragic death, she broke up with her first love and abandoned her dream of opening a restaurant in order to keep her family's struggling Seattle diner afloat and care for her younger sister and grieving father. Now, a decade later, she dutifully whips up the diner's famous lemon meringue pies each morning while still pining for all she's lost. As Lolly's thirty-third birthday approaches, her quirky great-aunt gives her a mysterious gift -- three lemon drops, each of which allows her to live a single day in a life that might have been hers. What if her mom hadn't passed away? What if she had opened her own restaurant in England? What if she hadn't broken up with the only man she's ever loved? Surprising and empowering, each experience helps Lolly let go of her regrets and realize the key to transforming her life lies not in redoing her past but in having the courage to embrace her present."-- Provided by publisher.

View Details >>

The Wish

Beverly Lewis

 

A Compelling Story of Friendship from the Top Author in Amish Fiction
Leona Speicher got the "sister" she'd always dreamed of the day Gloria Gingerich and her family moved to Lancaster County Amish farmland. The Arkansas newcomers seem to be everything a devout Plain family should be, and Leona can't help comparing Gloria's engaging young parents to her own.

Leona's cousin shows a romantic interest in Gloria around the same time as Gloria's older brother expresses his fondness for Leona--it seems likely the two young women will marry into each other's families, remaining close friends for life. Thus, Leona is shocked when the Gingeriches suddenly pack up and disappear after being expelled from the church for reasons no one will discuss. Despite Leona's pleas, Gloria goes with them, leaving more than one broken heart behind.

When Gloria unexpectedly contacts Leona after a silence of several years, Leona makes up her mind to persuade her friend to return to Lancaster County and the Amish ways. Leona's fiancé, the deacon's son, is alarmed when Leona decides to go after Gloria. Will Leona's dearest wish lead to her own undoing?

 

View Details >>

Act of Oblivion : A Novel

Robert Harris

"1660 England. General Edward Whalley and his son-in law Colonel William Goffe board a ship bound for the New World. They are on the run, wanted for the murder of King Charles I--a brazen execution that marked the culmination of the English Civil War, in which parliamentarians successfully battled royalists for control. But now, ten years after Charles' beheading, the royalists have returned to power. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, the fifty-nine men who signed the king's death warrant and participated in his execution have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. Some of the Roundheads, including Oliver Cromwell, are already dead. Others have been captured, hung, drawn, and quartered. A few are imprisoned for life. But two have escaped to America by boat. In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is charged with bringing the traitors to justice and he will stop at nothing to find them. A substantial bounty hangs over their heads for their capture--dead or alive...." -- Amazon.

View Details >>

Lessons

Ian McEwan

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the best-selling author of Atonement and Saturday comes the epic and intimate story of one man's life across generations and historical upheavals. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic, Roland Baines sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it.

When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.

Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.

Haunted by lost opportunities, Roland seeks solace through every possible means—music, literature, friends, sex, politics, and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without causing damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past?

Epic, mesmerizing, and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times—a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime.

View Details >>

Take No Names

Daniel Nieh

A riveting thriller about a fugitive in search of a quick payday in Mexico City who finds himself in the crosshairs of a dangerous international scheme

Victor Li is a man without a past. To his new employer, Mark, he’s just an anonymous hired hand to help with the dirty work. Together, they break into storage units that contain the possessions of the recently deported, pocketing whatever is worth selling. Only Victor and his sister, Jules, know that he’s a wanted man.

Amid the backpacks and suitcases, Victor makes the find of a lifetime: a gem rare and valuable enough to change his fortunes in an instant. But selling it on the sly? Nearly impossible. Thankfully, its former owner, a woman named Song Fei, also left a book of cryptic notes—including the name of a gemstone dealer in Mexico City.

When Victor and Mark cross the southern border, they quickly realize that this gem is wrapped up in a much larger scheme than they imagined. In Mexico City, shadowy international interests are jockeying for power, and they may need someone with Victor’s talents—the same ones that got him in trouble in the first place.

On the heels of his knockout debut Beijing Payback, Daniel Nieh delivers Take No Names, a white-knuckled and whip-smart thriller that races to an electrifying finish.

View Details >>

The Whalebone Theatre : A Novel

Joanna Quinn

"An utterly enchanting, immersive novel about an irrepressible young heroine who becomes an undercover agent during World War II-a sparkling debut, by turns heartwarming and heartbreaking. One blustery night in 1928, a whale washes up on the shores of the English Channel. By law, all whales belong to the King, but twelve-year-old Cristabel Seagrave has other plans. She and the rest of the household and their guests-her sister, Flossie (known affectionately as "The Veg"); her brother Digby, the long-awaited heir to Chilcombe manor; Maudie Kitkat, maidservant; Taras, a hot-tempered visiting artist-build a theatre within the whale's skeleton. Cristabel is an orphan, mostly ignored by her feckless step-parents and brisk governesses. But within the Whalebone Theatre, she is fully at home and in charge, and her imagination comes to life. As Cristabel grows into a headstrong young woman, chafing against expectations, World War II rears its head. She and Digby become British secret agents working undercover in Nazi-Occupied France on separate missions-a more dangerous kind of play-acting, it turns out, and one that threatens to tear the family apart. The Whalebone Theatre is a sweeping, transporting, completely irresistible novel, full of warmth and charm, humor and poignancy, passion and adventure-a story of love, bravery, lost innocence, and self-transformation"-- Provided by publisher.

View Details >>

The Maze

Nelson DeMille

#1 New York Times bestselling author Nelson DeMille returns with a blistering thriller featuring his most popular series character, former NYPD homicide detective John Corey, called out of retirement to investigate a string of grisly murders much too close to home.

In his dazzling #1 bestseller, Plum Island, Nelson DeMille introduced readers to NYPD Homicide Detective John Corey, who we first meet sitting on the back porch of his uncle’s waterfront estate on Long Island, convalescing from wounds incurred in the line of duty. A visit from the local Chief of Police results in the legendary Detective Corey becoming involved in the investigation of the murders of a married couple who were scientists at the top-secret biological research facility on Plum Island.

Fast forward through six more bestselling John Corey novels and The Maze opens with Corey on the same porch, but now in forced retirement from his last job as a Federal Agent with the Diplomatic Surveillance Group. Corey is restless and looking for action, so when his former lover, Detective Beth Penrose, appears with a job offer, Corey has to once again make some decisions about his career—and about reuniting with Beth Penrose.

Inspired by, and based on the actual and still unsolved Gilgo Beach murders, The Maze takes the reader on a dangerous hunt for an apparent serial killer who has murdered nine—and maybe more—prostitutes and hidden their bodies in the thick undergrowth on a lonely stretch of beach.

As Corey digs deeper into this case, which has made national news, he comes to suspect that the failure of the local police to solve this sensational case may not be a result of their inexperience and incompetence—it may be something else. Something more sinister.

The Maze features John Corey’s politically incorrect humor, matched by his brilliant and unorthodox investigative skills along with the surprising and shocking plot twists that are the trademark of the #1 New York Times bestselling author, Nelson DeMille.

View Details >>

The Matchmaker's Gift

Lynda Cohen Loigman

Named a Best Book of Fall by Parade • Buzzfeed New York Post GMA.com • People

"Loigman's latest is a gem. A scrappy Jewish teenager newly arrived in 1920s New York struggles to follow her calling as a matchmaker––seventy years later, her cynical divorce-attorney granddaughter realizes she has very inconveniently inherited the family gift for matching soulmates. Both funny and moving, The Matchmaker's Gift made me smile from start to finish."
––Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code


Is finding true love a calling or a curse?

Even as a child in 1910, Sara Glikman knows her gift: she is a maker of matches and a seeker of soulmates. But among the pushcart-crowded streets of New York’s Lower East Side, Sara’s vocation is dominated by devout older men—men who see a talented female matchmaker as a dangerous threat to their traditions and livelihood. After making matches in secret for more than a decade, Sara must fight to take her rightful place among her peers, and to demand the recognition she deserves.

Two generations later, Sara’s granddaughter, Abby, is a successful Manhattan divorce attorney, representing the city’s wealthiest clients. When her beloved Grandma Sara dies, Abby inherits her collection of handwritten journals recording the details of Sara’s matches. But among the faded volumes, Abby finds more questions than answers. Why did Abby’s grandmother leave this library to her and what did she hope Abby would discover within its pages? Why does the work Abby once found so compelling suddenly feel inconsequential and flawed? Is Abby willing to sacrifice the career she’s worked so hard for in order to keep her grandmother’s mysterious promise to a stranger? And is there really such a thing as love at first sight?

View Details >>

Dirt Creek

Hayley Scrivenor

Who's lying about what happened at Dirt Creek?

“Blends a taut psychological thriller with a suspenseful police procedural...Fans of Liane Moriarty and Jane Harper won’t want to miss this page-turner.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A novel of sharp-edged tempers, accidents waiting to happen and dark inheritances.” —New York Times Book Review

When twelve-year-old Esther disappears on the way home from school in a small town in rural Australia, the community is thrown into a maelstrom of suspicion and grief. As Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels arrives in town during the hottest spring in decades and begins her investigation, Esther’s tenacious best friend, Ronnie, is determined to find Esther and bring her home.

When schoolfriend Lewis tells Ronnie that he saw Esther with a strange man at the creek the afternoon she went missing, Ronnie feels she is one step closer to finding her. But why is Lewis refusing to speak to the police? And who else is lying about how much they know about what has happened to Esther?

Punctuated by a Greek chorus, which gives voice to the remaining children of the small, dying town, this novel explores the ties that bind, what we try and leave behind us, and what we can never outrun, while never losing sight of the question of what happened to Esther, and what her loss does to a whole town.

In Hayley Scrivenor's Dirt Creek, a small-town debut mystery described as The Dry meets Everything I Never Told You, a girl goes missing and a community falls apart and comes together.

View Details >>

Blackmail and Bibingka

Mia P. Manansala

When her long-lost cousin comes back to town just in time for the holidays, Lila Macapagal knows that big trouble can’t be far behind in this new mystery by Mia P. Manansala, author of Arsenic and Adobo.
 
It’s Christmastime in Shady Palms, but things are far from jolly for Lila Macapagal. Sure, her new business, the Brew-ha Cafe, is looking to turn a profit in its first year. And yes, she’s taken the first step in a new romance with her good friend Jae Park. But her cousin Ronnie is back in town after ghosting the family fifteen years ago, claiming that his recent purchase of a local winery shows that he’s back on his feet and ready to contribute to the Shady Palms community. Tita Rosie is thrilled with the return of her prodigal son, but Lila knows that wherever Ronnie goes, trouble follows.
 
She’s soon proven right when Ronnie is suspected of murder, and secrets surrounding her shady cousin and those involved with the winery start piling up. Now Lila has to put away years of resentment and distrust to prove her cousin’s innocence. He may be a jerk, but he’s still family. And there’s no way her flesh and blood could actually be a murderer . . . right?

View Details >>

Her Perfect Twin

Sarah Bonner

With echoes of Gone Girl and My Lovely Wife, Sarah Bonner's debut novel introduces an exciting new voice in twisty thrillers.
 
HER PERFECT TWIN. YOUR NEW OBSESSION.
 
When Megan discovers photographs of her estranged identical twin sister on her husband’s phone, she wants answers.

Leah already has everything Megan ever wanted. Fame, fortune, freedom to do what she wants. And when Megan confronts Leah, an argument turns to murder.

The only way Megan can get away with killing her twin is to become her.

But then lockdown hits. How can she continue living two lives? And what happens if someone else knows her secret?

View Details >>

Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake

Mazey Eddings

Mazey Eddings, author of the “witty, fast-paced rom-com”* A Brush with Love, mixes passion and humor to create a luscious love story between two people stumbling through life and learning to open their hearts in Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake.

Lizzie has made endless mistakes. Kitchen fires, pyramid schemes, bangs (of the hair and human variety), you name it, she’s done it... and made a mess of it too. One mistake she’s never made is letting anyone get closer to her than a single hook-up. But after losing yet another bakery job due to her uncontrolled ADHD, she breaks her cardinal rule and has a two-night-stand that changes everything.

Once burned, twice shy, Rake has given up on relationships. And feelings. And any form of intimacy for that matter. Yet something about charming, chaotic Lizzie has him lowering his guard. For two nights, that is. Then it’s back home to Australia and far away from the pesky feelings Lizzie pulls from him. But when Lizzie tells him she’s got an unexpected bun in the oven, he’ll do whatever it takes to be a part of his child’s life... except be emotionally vulnerable, obviously. He’s never going to make that mistake again.

Through a series of mishaps, totally “platonic” single bed sharing, and an underground erotic baking scheme, Lizzie and Rake learn that even the biggest mistakes can have the most beautiful consequences.

*USA Today bestselling author Evie Dunmore

View Details >>

Something in the Heir

Suzanne Enoch

One of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Romances of the Fall!

New York Times bestseller, Suzanne Enoch takes a delightful new path in her joyful historical romantic comedy, Something in the Heir.

Smart, capable heiress Emmeline Pershing will do anything to keep her beloved home; and all it takes is an arranged marriage and a teeny white lie to fulfill her family’s silly inheritance rules. But now her little fib means that she and her completely unsuspecting husband are going to inherit big — and very messy! —trouble.


Emmeline and William Pershing have enjoyed a perfectly convenient marriage for eight years. Their relationship is a seamless blend of their talents and goals. They’ve settled into separate, well-ordered lives beneath the same roof, and are content to stay that way—or so Emmeline thinks. And if William has secretly longed for a bit more from the woman he adores, he’s managed to be content with her supreme skills as a hostess and planner, which has helped him advance his career.

Then when Emmeline’s grandfather, the reclusive Duke of Welshire, summons them both for his birthday celebration and demands they bring their two little angelic children, William is stunned to discover that his very proper wife invented not one, but two heirs to fulfill the agreement for living at Winnover. But surely if Emmeline and William team up and borrow two cherubs to call their own, what could go wrong? Enter George, age 8, and Rose, 5—the two most unruly orphans in Britain.

As the insanity unfolds, their careful, professional arrangement takes some surprisingly intimate turns as well. Perhaps it takes a bit of madness to create the perfect happily ever after.

View Details >>

The Make-Up Test

Jenny L. Howe

In this smart, swoony, rom-com debut from Jenny L. Howe, two college exes find themselves battling against each other—and their unresolved feelings—for a spot in a prestigious literature Ph.D. program.

Allison Avery loves to win. After acing every academic challenge she’s come up against, she’s finally been accepted into her dream Ph.D. program at Claymore University, studying medieval literature under a professor she’s admired for years. Sure, grad school isn’t easy—the classes are intense, her best friend is drifting away, and her students would rather pull all-nighters than discuss The Knight's Tale—but she’s got this. Until she discovers her ex-boyfriend has also been accepted. Colin Benjamin might be the only person who loves winning more than Allison does, and when they're both assigned to TA for the same professor, the game is on.

What starts as a personal battle of wits (and lit) turns into all-out war when their professor announces a career-changing research trip opportunity—with one spot to fill. Competing with Colin is as natural as breathing, and after he shattered her heart two years ago, Allison refuses to let him come out on top. But when a family emergency and a late night road trip—plus a very sexy game of Scrabble—throw them together for a weekend, she starts to wonder if they could be stronger on the same team. And if they fall for each other all over again, Allison will have to choose between a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and what could be a twice-in-a-lifetime love.

In this charmingly bookish debut, The Make-Up Test embraces the truth that people can sometimes change and grow, even when you least expect it.

View Details >>

Bad Girl Reputation

Elle Kennedy

Bestselling author Elle Kennedy returns to Avalon Bay in this sexy second chance story about two exes who can't stay away from each other, Bad Girl Reputation.

When former bad girl Genevieve West returns home for her mother’s funeral, she’s prepared to keep her distance from her ex-boyfriend, Evan Hartley. Their history is rife with turbulence. And passion. A heck of a lot of passion...which she’s trying desperately to forget.

But it’s impossible not to run into Evan in the small coastal town where they once ran wild. And the moment she sees her gorgeous ex again, it’s clear to Gen that Evan is still as unruly, sexy, and irresistible as ever. This time around, however, she’s resolved to walk a new path. No more partying. No more foolish mistakes. Her plan is to temporarily remain in town to help her father run his business, but the second he finds somebody else, she’s out of there.

Evan has other ideas. He knows they can be good together, but he just has to convince Genevieve of that, even if it means turning over a new leaf himself. But can a bad reputation ever truly be shed? Do second chances really work? Genevieve and Evan are about to find out.

View Details >>

The Driving Book for Teens: A Complete Guide to Becoming a Safe, Smart, and Skilled Driver

Maureen Stiles

Stay safe and smart on the road—a complete driving guide for teens

Getting a driver’s license is an exciting milestone for teens that comes with an amazing sense of freedom and independence—but it’s also a big responsibility. Learn to be cautious and confident behind the wheel with this ultimate guide to driving for teens.

  • The rules of the road—Make it easy to learn road signs, proper turning and passing etiquette, defensive driving, and more.
  • Acing the test—You will find 100 practice questions and an explanation of what their written and driving tests will look like so you can be as prepared as possible.
  • Cars 101—Get an overview on caring for cars—from filling the tank to getting oil changes and knowing what all those lights on the dashboard mean.
  • Safety first—Ensure you know what to do in an emergency or if you are pulled over, how to handle bad weather, and simple ways to avoid distracted driving.

Pick up this book today and turn into a savvy driver who’s ready for any situation.

View Details >>

I Was Born for This

Alice Oseman

From the bestselling creator of Heartstopper and Loveless, a deeply funny and deeply moving exploration of identity, friendship, and fame.

For Angel Rahimi life is about one thing: The Ark – a pop-rock trio of teenage boys who are taking the world by storm. Being part of The Ark’s fandom has given her everything she loves – her friend Juliet, her dreams, her place in the world.

Jimmy Kaga-Ricci owes everything to The Ark. He’s their frontman – and playing in a band with his mates is all he ever dreamed of doing.

But dreams don’t always turn out the way you think and when Jimmy and Angel are unexpectedly thrust together, they find out how strange and surprising facing up to reality can be.

A funny, wise, and heartbreakingly true coming of age novel. I Was Born for This is a stunning reflection of modern teenage life, and the power of believing in something – especially yourself.

View Details >>

Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions

Wade Roush

In a mind-bending MITeen anthology, ten top YA authors use emerging technologies to explore startling new realities.

What does the future hold? Ten speculative short stories by leading young-adult authors imagine what the world could be through the lens of technologies emerging today.

When the modification industry transforms how humans look, sound, and interact, a nonbinary teen braves the “reinvention room” to accept a gift from the dead.

In an accidental city in space, a young apprentice holds neighborhoods together with braided carbon filaments until distraction and inspiration arrive in the wake of a visitor.

Entitlement-fueled drug use alters the landscape of white privilege, robots remember the Earth, and corporate “walkers” stroll for unknown subscribers—until one hacks the system.

In tales buzzing with possibility, hope, innovation, anger, and tenderness, Tasting Light offers a dazzling challenge to connect with open minds, hearts, and senses in a fast-changing world.

With stories by:

  • William Alexander
  • K. Ancrum
  • Elizabeth Bear
  • A.R. Capetta
  • Charlotte Nicole Davis
  • Nasugraq Rainey Hopson
  • A.S. King
  • E.C. Myers
  • Junauda Petrus-Nasah
  • Wendy Xu
View Details >>

Death in Castle Dark

Veronica Bond

Actor Nora Blake finds her dream job when she is cast in a murder-mystery troupe that performs in an imposing but captivating old castle. When she stumbles upon a real murder, things take a nightmarish turn in this first book in an exciting new series.

Maybe it was too good to be true, but when Nora Blake accepted the job from Derek Corby, proprietor of Castle Dark, she could not see any downsides. She would sink her acting chops into the troupe’s intricately staged murder-mystery shows, earn free room and board in the fairy tale–like castle, and make friends with her new roommates, which include some seriously adorable kittens.

But something sinister lurks behind the walls of Castle Dark. During Nora’s second performance, one of her castmates plays the part of the victim a little too well. So well, in fact, that no one can revive him. He has been murdered. Not ready to give up her dream gig—or to be the next victim—Nora sets out to see which one of her fellow actors has taken the role of a murderous real-life villain.

View Details >>

Jacqueline in Paris : A Novel

Ann Mah

In September 1949 Jacqueline Bouvier arrives in postwar Paris to begin her junior year abroad. She's twenty years old, socially poised but financially precarious, and all too aware of her mother's expectations that she make a brilliant match. Before relenting to family pressure, she has one year to herself far away from sleepy Vassar College and the rigid social circles of New York, a year to explore and absorb the luminous beauty of the City of Light. Jacqueline is immediately catapulted into an intoxicating new world of champagne and châteaux, art and avant-garde theater, cafés and jazz clubs. She strikes up a romance with a talented young writer who shares her love of literature and passion for culture, even though her mother would think him most unsuitable. But beneath the glitter and rush, France is a fragile place still haunted by the Occupation. Jacqueline lives in a rambling apartment with a widowed countess and her daughters, all of whom suffered as part of the French Resistance just a few years before. In the aftermath of World War II, Paris has become a nest of spies, and suspicion, deception, and betrayal lurk around every corner. Jacqueline is stunned to watch the rise of communism, anathema in America, but an active movement in France, never guessing she is witnessing the beginning of the political environment that will shape the rest of her life, and that of her future husband.

View Details >>

The American Adventuress

C. W. Gortner

"No one writes bright, bold, bad, and beautiful women of history like C.W. Gortner, and he outdoes himself with his latest heroine: Jennie Jerome, American heiress, royal mistress, and mother of Winston Churchill. The American Adventuress shines on every page with Jennie's irrepressible thirst for adventure, love, and everything else life has to offer!" -- Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code

The story of Jennie Jerome Churchill, mother of Winston, a New York born heiress who always lived life on her own terms.

Daughter of New York financier Leonard Jerome, Jennie was born into wealth—and scandal. Upon her parents’ separation, her mother took Jennie and her sisters to Paris, where Mrs. Jerome was determined to marry her daughters into the most elite families. The glamorous city became their tumultuous finishing school until it fell to revolt. 

Fleeing to Queen Victoria’s England, Jennie soon caught the eye of aristocrat Randolph Spencer-Churchill, son of the Duke of Marlborough, one of Britain’s loftiest peers. It was love at first sight, their unconventional marriage driven by mutual ambition and the birth of two sons. Undeterred by premature widowhood or society’s rigid expectations, Jennie brashly carried on a lifelong intimate friendship with Edward, Prince of Wales—a notorious bon vivant—and had two later marriages to younger men. When her son Winston launched his brilliant political career, Jennie guided him to success, his most vocal and valuable supporter.

By turns scandalous, tragic, and exciting, Jennie Jerome lived an unconventional life full of defiance—one that enshrined her as an American adventuress.

View Details >>

Voices in the Dead House

Norman Lock

Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott meet the horrors of the Civil War as they minister to its casualties

After the Union Army’s defeat at Fredericksburg in 1862, Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott converge on Washington to nurse the sick, wounded, and dying. Whitman was a man of many contradictions: egocentric yet compassionate, impatient with religiosity yet moved by the spiritual in all humankind, bigoted yet soon to become known as the great poet of democracy. Alcott was an intense, intellectual, independent woman, an abolitionist and suffragist, who was compelled by financial circumstance to publish saccharine magazine stories yet would go on to write the enduring and beloved Little Women. As Lock captures the musicality of their unique voices and their encounters with luminaries ranging from Lincoln to battlefield photographer Mathew Brady to reformer Dorothea Dix, he deftly renders the war’s impact on their personal and artistic development.

Inspired by Whitman’s poem “The Wound-Dresser” and Alcott’s Hospital Sketches, the ninth stand-alone book in The American Novels series is a masterful dual portrait of two iconic authors who took different paths toward chronicling a country beset by prejudice and at war with itself.

View Details >>

Sister Mother Warrior

Vanessa Riley

ONE OF USA TODAY'S "BEST BOOKS OF SUMMER!"

“This book is not only a one-sitting read, it’s a slice of history that needs to be told. Utterly brilliant, powerful, and inspiring.”--Kristan Higgins, New York Times bestselling author of Always the Last to Know

"An impeccably researched, powerfully reimagined tale of sacrifice and success, love and selfishness, and war and independence...Riley’s storytelling skills shine."--Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Acclaimed author of Island Queen Vanessa Riley brings readers a vivid, sweeping novel of the Haitian Revolution based on the true-life stories of two extraordinary women: the first Empress of Haiti, Marie-Claire Bonheur, and Gran Toya, a West African-born warrior who helped lead the rebellion that drove out the French and freed the enslaved people of Haiti. 

Gran Toya: Born in West Africa, Abdaraya Toya was one of the legendary minos—women called “Dahomeyan Amazons” by the Europeans—who were specially chosen female warriors consecrated to the King of Dahomey. Betrayed by an enemy, kidnapped, and sold into slavery, Toya wound up in the French colony of Saint Domingue, where she became a force to be reckoned with on its sugar plantations: a healer and an authority figure among the enslaved. Among the motherless children she helped raise was a man who would become the revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines. When the enslaved people rose up, Toya, ever the warrior, was at the forefront of the rebellion that changed the course of history.

Marie-Claire: A free woman of color, Marie-Claire Bonheur was raised in an air of privilege and security because of her wealthy white grandfather. With a passion for charitable work, she grew up looking for ways to help those oppressed by a society steeped in racial and economic injustices. Falling in love with Jean-Jacques Dessalines, an enslaved man, was never the plan, yet their paths continued to cross and intertwine, and despite a marriage of convenience to a Frenchman, she and Dessalines had several children.

When war breaks out on Saint Domingue, pitting the French, Spanish, and enslaved people against one another in turn, Marie-Claire and Toya finally meet, and despite their deep differences, they both play pivotal roles in the revolution that will eventually lead to full independence for Haiti and its people.

Both an emotionally palpable love story and a detail-rich historical novel, Sister Mother Warrior tells the often-overlooked history of the most successful Black uprising in history. Riley celebrates the tremendous courage and resilience of the revolutionaries, and the formidable strength and intelligence of Toya, Marie-Claire, and the countless other women who fought for freedom. 

“A riveting read! Richly imagined, meticulously researched, and fast-paced…Vanessa Riley encourages us to rethink history through fresh eyes.” — Myriam J. A. Chancy, author of What Storm, What Thunder

View Details >>

Killers of a Certain Age

Deanna Raybourn

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

“This Golden Girls meets James Bond thriller is a journey you want to be part of.” -Buzzfeed

Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that’s their secret weapon.

They’ve spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they're sixty years old, four women friends can’t just retire – it’s kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller by New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author Deanna Raybourn.


Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.

When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they’ve been marked for death.

Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They’re about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman—and a killer—of a certain age.

View Details >>

They Come at Knight

Yasmin Angoe

Yasmin Angoe's They Come at Knight is the heart-pounding second installment in the Nena Knight series about an intrepid female assassin who will stop at nothing to protect her family.

For elite assassin Nena Knight, eliminating dangerous players on the world stage is part of the job. The Tribe, a powerful business syndicate in Africa, ensures that she has those opportunities. But for Nena, the Tribe is more than just her employer; it's an organization that supports the African people--until it turns on itself.

As Nena embarks on a new mission, a violent siege by a paramilitary group throws the Tribe into chaos, and mysterious acts of violence plague the Tribe's territories. As the attacks escalate, Nena suspects a different kind of enemy at play: someone on the inside, determined to undermine the Tribe's leaders.

As this new threat closes in on her own family, Nena enlists a team to root out the danger. But as she gets closer to the truth, she will have to risk everything to protect the future she holds dear--even if it means facing off with an enemy she never expected.

View Details >>

Heat 2

Michael Mann

NOW A NO.1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Michael Mann, Oscar-nominated filmmaker and writer-director of Heat and Miami Vice, teams up with Meg Gardiner to deliver Mann’s first crime novel, an explosive return to the world and characters of his classic film Heat – an all-new story that illuminates what happened before and after the film.

‘Michael Mann’s HEAT is one of my all-time favourite movies. HEAT 2 is now one of my favourite suspense novels’ JAMES PATTERSON

Described by Michael Mann as both a prequel and sequel to the renowned, critically acclaimed film of the same name, HEAT 2 covers the formative years of homicide detective Vincent Hanna (Oscar winner Al Pacino) and elite criminals Neil McCauley (Oscar winner Robert De Niro), Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer), and Nate (Oscar winner Jon Voight), and features the same extraordinary ambition, scope, rich characterizations, and attention to detail as the epic film.

This new story leads up to the events of the film and then moves beyond it, featuring new characters on both sides of the law, new high-line heists, and breathtakingly cinematic action sequences. Ranging from the streets of L.A. to the inner sancta of rival Taiwanese crime syndicates in Paraguay to a massive drug cartel money-laundering operation just over the border in Mexico, HEAT 2 illuminates the dangerous workings of international crime organizations and the agents who pursue them as it provides a full-blooded portrait of the men and women who inhabit both worlds.

Operatic in scope, HEAT 2 is engrossing, moving, and tragic – a masterpiece of crime fiction from one of the most innovative and influential filmmakers in American cinema.

PRAISE FOR HEAT 2:
‘A brilliant and riveting novel with rich and real characters and powerhouse storytelling...’
Don Winslow

‘An exciting, emotionally rich thriller, with just as much style and panache as Michael Mann's original classic heist movie’
Adrian McKinty, #1 International bestselling author

‘Easily one of the finest novels of the year!’
Steve Cavanagh, #1 International bestselling author

‘This audacious, powerhouse of a novel brings to the page everything the classic crime film HEAT brought to the screen’
Eric Rickstad, New York Times bestselling author

View Details >>

Other Birds

Sarah Addison Allen

From the acclaimed author of Garden Spells comes an enchanting tale of lost souls, lonely strangers, secrets that shape us, and how the right flock can guide you home.

Down a narrow alley in the small coastal town of Mallow Island, South Carolina, lies a stunning cobblestone building comprised of five apartments. It’s called The Dellawisp and it is named after the tiny turquoise birds who, alongside its human tenants, inhabit an air of magical secrecy.

When Zoey Hennessey comes to claim her deceased mother’s apartment at The Dellawisp, she meets her quirky, enigmatic neighbors including a girl on the run, a grieving chef whose comfort food does not comfort him, two estranged middle-aged sisters, and three ghosts. Each with their own story. Each with their own longings. Each whose ending isn’t yet written.

When one of her new neighbors dies under odd circumstances the night Zoey arrives, she is thrust into the mystery of The Dellawisp, which involves missing pages from a legendary writer whose work might be hidden there. She soon discovers that many unfinished stories permeate the place, and the people around her are in as much need of healing from wrongs of the past as she is. To find their way they have to learn how to trust each other, confront their deepest fears, and let go of what haunts them.

Delightful and atmospheric, Other Birds is filled with magical realism and moments of pure love that won’t let you go. Sarah Addison Allen shows us that between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways.

View Details >>

Patricia Wants to Cuddle

Samantha Allen

This week on The Catch

The Final Four are headed to a remote, luxurious island, hoping to score some one-on-one time with America's most eligible bachelor.

Tensions are high and emotions are running hot as the contestants compete for the attention of the Catch, and of the cameras. What they don't realise is that they've already been noticed by someone else.

Get ready for the biggest - and bloodiest - Elimination Event of the season.

What readers are saying

'THIS WAS INSANE IN THE BEST WAY I AM OBSESSED'
'A gloriously bonkers book'
'This book sucked me in and I couldn't put it down!'
'One of my favorite books this year!!'
'It's a wild ride.'
'Funny and smart, it's also surprisingly tender.'
'It was a genuine page turner.'

View Details >>

Joan: A Novel of Joan of Arc

Katherine J. Chen

 

“This is not your grandmother’s St. Joan. . . . If every generation gets the Joan it deserves, ours could do worse than an ass-kicking, avenging angel fighting simply for the right to fight.”—The New York Times Book Review

“It is as if Chen has crept inside a statue and breathed a soul into it, re-creating Joan of Arc as a woman for our time.”—Hilary Mantel, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Booker Prize winner Wolf Hall

“A secular reimagining and feminist celebration of the life of Joan of Arc that transforms the legendary saint into a flawed yet undeniable young woman.”—USA Today

1412. France is mired in a losing war against England. Its people are starving. Its king is in hiding. From this chaos emerges a teenage girl who will turn the tide of battle and lead the French to victory, becoming an unlikely hero whose name will echo across the centuries. 

In Katherine J. Chen’s hands, the myth and legend of Joan of Arc is transformed into a flesh-and-blood young woman: reckless, steel-willed, and brilliant. This meticulously researched novel is a sweeping narrative of her life, from a childhood steeped in both joy and violence, to her meteoric rise to fame at the head of the French army, where she navigates the perils of the battlefield and the equally treacherous politics of the royal court. Many are threatened by a woman who leads, and Joan draws wrath and suspicion from all corners, while her first taste of fame and glory leaves her vulnerable to her own powerful ambition. 

With unforgettably vivid characters, transporting settings, and action-packed storytelling, Joan is a thrilling epic, a triumph of historical fiction, as well as a feminist celebration of one remarkable—and remarkably real—woman who left an indelible mark on history.

 

View Details >>

Hawk Mountain: A Novel

Conner Habib

An English teacher is gaslit by his charismatic high school bully in this tense story of deception, manipulation, and murder. 

Single father Todd is relaxing at the beach with his son, Anthony, when he catches sight of a man approaching from the water’s edge. As the man draws closer, Todd recognizes him as Jack, who bullied Todd relentlessly in their teenage years but now seems overjoyed to have “run into” his old friend. Jack suggests a meal to catch up. And can he spend the night?

What follows is a fast-paced story of obsession and cunning. As Jack invades Todd’s life, pain and intimidation from the past unearth knife-edge suspense in the present. Set in a small town on the New England coast, Conner Habib’s debut introduces characters trapped in isolation by the expansive woods and the encroaching ocean, their violence an expression of repressed desire and the damage it can inflict. Both gruesome and tender, Hawk Mountain offers a compelling look at how love and hate are indissoluble, intertwined until the last breath.

View Details >>

The Twilight World

Werner Herzog

A National Bestseller!

The great filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his first novel, tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II


In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and would meet many times, talking for hours and together unraveling the story of Onoda’s long war.
 
At the end of 1944, on Lubang Island in the Philippines, with Japanese troops about to withdraw, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was given orders by his superior officer: Hold the island until the Imperial army’s return. You are to defend its territory by guerrilla tactics, at all costs. . . . There is only one rule. You are forbidden to die by your own hand. In the event of your capture by the enemy, you are to give them all the misleading information you can. So began Onoda’s long campaign, during which he became fluent in the hidden language of the jungle. Soon weeks turned into months, months into years, and years into decades—until eventually time itself seemed to melt away. All the while Onoda continued to fight his fictitious war, at once surreal and tragic, at first with other soldiers, and then, finally, alone, a character in a novel of his own making.
 
In The Twilight World, Herzog immortalizes and imagines Onoda’s years of absurd yet epic struggle in an inimitable, hypnotic style—part documentary, part poem, and part dream—that will be instantly recognizable to fans of his films. The result is a novel completely unto itself, a sort of modern-day Robinson Crusoe tale: a glowing, dancing meditation on the purpose and meaning we give our lives.

View Details >>

An Island

Karen Jennings

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A “beautifully and sparingly constructed” (The New York Times) novel about a lighthouse keeper with a mysterious past, and the stranger who washes up on his shores—An Island is the American debut of a major voice in world literature.

An Island by Karen Jennings is quite simply a revelation—a ferocious, swift chess game of a novel.”—Paul Yoon, author of Run Me to Earth


Samuel has lived alone on an island off the coast of an unnamed African country for more than two decades. He tends to his garden, his lighthouse, and his chickens, content with a solitary life. Routinely, the nameless bodies of refugees wash ashore, but Samuel—who understands that the government only values certain lives, certain deaths—always buries them himself.

One day, though, he finds that one of these bodies is still breathing. As he nurses the stranger back to life, Samuel—feeling strangely threatened—is soon swept up in memories of his former life as a political prisoner on the mainland. This was a life that saw his country exploited under colonial rule, followed by a period of revolution and a brief, hard-won independence—only for the cycle of suffering to continue under a cruel dictator. And he can’t help but recall his own shameful role in that history. In this stranger’s presence, he begins to consider, as he did in his youth: What does it mean to own land, or to belong to it? And what does it cost to have, and lose, a home?

A timeless and gripping portrait of regret, terror, and the extraordinary stakes of companionship, An Island is a story as page-turning as it is profound.

View Details >>

The House of Fortune

Jessie Burton

Alive with the magic of Amsterdam, the enchanting new historical novel from the author of the sensational New York Times bestseller The Miniaturist, which has sold more than two million copies.

In 1705 Amsterdam, Thea Brandt is coming of age, trying to grapple with her family's secrets and her own identity as a young Dutch-African woman. She's drawn to the theater and an artistic life, but with her family in serious financial decline, pressure is on Thea to marry up in society.

As her father and Aunt Nella work desperately to save the family home and catastrophe threatens to engulf them, Thea seeks refuge in the arms of her secret lover, Walter, the chief set-painter at her favorite theater. But the thrill of their romance is shadowed by another secret she keeps close: Her birthday marks the day her mother, Marin, died in labor. Thea's family refuses to share the details of the story, just as they seem terrified to speak of the shadowy artist from their past whose tiny figurines seem to capture the things most carefully hidden away. Aunt Nella believes the solution to Thea's problems is to find her a husband, and an unexpected invitation to Amsterdam's most exclusive ball seems like a golden opportunity. But when a miniature figure of Walter turns up on Thea's doorstep, it becomes clear that someone out there has another fate in mind for the family- and that perhaps the new beginning Thea seeks won't depend on a man.

A feat of sweeping, magical storytelling, The House of Fortune is an unputdownable novel about love and obsession, family and loyalty, and the fantastic power of secrets.

View Details >>

Babysitter

Joyce Carol Oates

From one of America’s most renowned storytellers—the best-selling author of Blonde—comes a novel about love and deceit, and lust and redemption, against a backdrop of shocking murders in the affluent suburbs of Detroit.

"Hannah’s unreliable, elliptical narrative is seductive and compelling, like following someone into a fever dream ... [Oates] is in no hurry to trigger the action, dropping tiny morsels of foreshadowing to keep us on our toes." —The New York Times Book Review


“Unsettling, mysterious, deft, sinister, eerily plausible.” —Margaret Atwood, best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, via Twitter

In the waning days of the turbulent 1970s, in the wake of unsolved child-killings that have shocked Detroit, the lives of several residents are drawn together with tragic consequences.

There is Hannah, wife of a prominent local businessman, who has begun an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger whose identity remains elusive; Mikey, a canny street hustler who finds himself on a chilling mission to rectify injustice; and the serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and terrifying figure at the periphery of elite Detroit. As Babysitter continues his rampage of abductions and killings, these individuals intersect with one another in startling and unexpected ways.

Suspenseful, brilliantly orchestrated, and engrossing, Babysitter is a starkly narrated exploration of the riskiness of pursuing alternate lives, calling into question how far we are willing to go to protect those whom we cherish most. In its scathing indictment of corrupt politics, unexamined racism, and the enabling of sexual predation in America, Babysitter is a thrilling work of contemporary fiction.

View Details >>

Daisy Darker

Alice Feeney

*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
"Alice Feeney is great with TWISTS and TURNS." —Harlan Coben


The NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR of Rock Paper Scissors returns with a locked-room mystery when a family reunion leads to murder in a delightfully twisty and atmospheric thriller, as seen on the TODAY show.

“A dysfunctional family meets Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None with a truly gasp-inducing twist. This is the book you've been looking for.” Catherine Ryan Howard, bestselling author of 56 Days

Daisy Darker was born with a broken heart. Now after years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in her crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. When the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.

But at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows...

Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide goes out and all is revealed. As seen on the TODAY show and picked by Book of the Month, Daisy Darker's family secrets and Alice Feeney's trademark shocking twists will keep readers riveted.

View Details >>

After the Hurricane

Leah Franqui

Named by Etaf Rum as one of the Best Beach Reads of All Time for "Read with Jenna!"

Reminiscent of Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt, Leah Franqui brings us an engrossing, deeply personal novel with a mystery at its heart as a daughter returns to Puerto Rico to search for her troubled father, who has gone missing after Hurricane Maria.

From the outside, Elena Vega's life appears to be an easy one: the only child of two professional parents, private school, NYU. But her twenties are aimless and lacking in connection. Something has always been amiss in her life: her father, the brilliant but deeply troubled Santiago Vega.

Born in rural Puerto Rico, Santiago arrived in New York as a small child. His harsh, mercurial father returned to the island, leaving Santiago to be raised by his mentally ill mother and his formidable grandmother. An outstanding student, he followed scholarships to Stanford, then Yale Law, marrying Elena's mother along the way. Santiago is the shining star of his migrant family--the one who made it out and struck it rich. But he is a haunted man, plagued by trauma, bipolar disorder, and alcoholism. He's lost contact with Elena over the years and returned to San Juan to wrestle his demons alone.

Then Hurricane Maria strikes, and Santiago vanishes. Desperate to know what happened to the father she once adored, Elena returns to Puerto Rico, a place she loved as a child but hasn't seen in years. There she must unravel the truth about who her father is, crisscrossing the storm-swept island and reaching deep into his family tree to find relatives she's never met, each of whom seems to possess a clue about Santiago's fate.

A compelling mystery unfolds, as Elena is reunited with family, and with a place she loved and lost--the island of Puerto Rico, which is itself a character in this book. It's a story of connection, migration, striving, love, and loss, illuminated by humor and affection, written by a novelist at the height of her gifts.

View Details >>

Mika in Real Life

Emiko Jean

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK

In this brilliant new novel from Emiko Jean, the author of the New York Times bestselling young adult novel Tokyo Ever After, comes a whip-smart, laugh-out-loud funny, and utterly heartwarming novel  about motherhood, daughterhood, and love—how we find it, keep it, and how it always returns.

One phone call changes everything. 

At thirty-five, Mika Suzuki’s life is a mess. Her last relationship ended in flames. Her roommate-slash-best friend might be a hoarder. She’s a perpetual disappointment to her traditional Japanese parents. And, most recently, she’s been fired from her latest dead-end job.  

Mika is at her lowest point when she receives a phone call from Penny—the daughter she placed for adoption sixteen years ago. Penny is determined to forge a relationship with her birth mother, and in turn, Mika longs to be someone Penny is proud of. Faced with her own inadequacies, Mika embellishes a fact about her life. What starts as a tiny white lie slowly snowballs into a fully-fledged fake life, one where Mika is mature, put-together, successful in love and her career. 

The details of Mika’s life might be an illusion, but everything she shares with curious, headstrong Penny is real: her hopes, dreams, flaws, and Japanese heritage. The harder-won heart belongs to Thomas Calvin, Penny’s adoptive widower father. What starts as a rocky, contentious relationship slowly blossoms into a friendship and, over time, something more. But can Mika really have it all—love, her daughter, the life she’s always wanted? Or will Mika’s deceptions ultimately catch up to her? In the end, Mika must face the truth—about herself, her family, and her past—and answer the question, just who is Mika in real life? 

Perfect for fans of Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age, Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, and Rebecca Serle’s In Five Years, Mika in Real Life is at once a heart-wrenching and uplifting novel that explores the weight of silence, the secrets we keep, and what it means to be a mother.

View Details >>

Traitor's Dance

Jeff Abbott

From New York Times bestselling author Jeff Abbott, an exciting new thriller in which undercover agent Sam Capra must capture the last American traitor.

Sam Capra and his thirteen-year-old son, Daniel, are living a quiet life in Austin, Texas, where Sam continues to run his collection of bars and nightclubs around the world. He's had no recent contact with his former partner, Mila, and is working for America's most secret espionage agency, known as Section K—all while trying to be a good suburban dad.
 
Suddenly, Sam is approached by a fellow spy with an incredible revelation: Markus Bolt is missing. Bolt is the last American traitor, who had turned over allied agent names and military secrets to the Russians. He fled to Moscow when he was discovered, but now a trusted source inside Russia tells Section K that Markus Bolt has vanished from Moscow—and the Americans need to find him before the Russians do.
 
Sam is charged with making contact with Bolt's abandoned American daughter, Amanda, and determining if she's had any contact with her father. He must discover the reason behind Bolt's unexpected run and protect Amanda from the killers hunting her father.
 
But as Sam's search for Bolt grows more dangerous, Sam faces a rising threat born of long‑ago secrets—one that could change his and his son's lives forever.

View Details >>

Gangland

Chuck Hogan

From the acclaimed author of The Town, an epic thriller about the secret right‑hand man of one of the most infamous unprosecuted mob bosses in American history, and the hidden crime that will bring down an empire.

In the late 1970s, The Outfit has the entire city of Chicago in its hands. Tony Accardo is its fearless leader. Nicky Passero is his loyal soldier, though no one knows he has a direct line in to the boss of bosses. When the Christmas gift Accardo got for his wife, an inscribed bracelet with gold and diamond inlay, is stolen along with other items in a jewelry heist, Nicky is charged with tracking down and returning all of the items—by whatever means necessary.

Forced into an impossible situation, Nicky must find a way to carry out Accardo's increasingly unhinged instructions and survive the battle for control of Chicago. What Accardo doesn't know: Nicky has a secret which has made his life impossible and has put him in the pocket of the FBI.

Based on the true story of Tony Accardo, the longest‑reigning mob capo in history, Gangland is a Shakespearean-esque drama of integrity, lost honor, and revenge. Gritty and action‑packed, it is the ultimate gangster tale and Chuck Hogan's most thrilling novel yet.

View Details >>

The Ways We Hide

Kristina McMorris

From the New York Times bestselling author of Sold On A Monday--over a million copies sold!--comes a sweeping World War II tale of an illusionist whose recruitment by British intelligence sets her on a perilous, heartrending path.

As a little girl raised amid the hardships of Michigan's Copper Country, Fenna Vos learned to focus on her own survival. That ability sustains her even now as the Second World War rages in faraway countries. Though she performs onstage as the assistant to an unruly escape artist, behind the curtain she's the mastermind of their act. Ultimately, controlling her surroundings and eluding traps of every kind helps her keep a lingering trauma at bay.

Yet for all her planning, Fenna doesn't foresee being called upon by British military intelligence. Tasked with designing escape aids to thwart the Germans, MI9 seeks those with specialized skills for a war nearing its breaking point. Fenna reluctantly joins the unconventional team as an inventor. But when a test of her loyalty draws her deep into the fray, she discovers no mission is more treacherous than escaping one's past.

Inspired by stunning true accounts, The Ways We Hide is a gripping story of love and loss, the wars we fight--on the battlefields and within ourselves--and the courage found in unexpected places.

The Queen's Gambit meets The Alice Network in this epic, action-packed novel of family, loss, and one woman's journey to save all she holds dear?including freedom itself. ?Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author of The Forest of Vanishing Stars

View Details >>

The Lost Kings

Tyrell Johnson

Twins Jeanie and Jamie King are inseparable. Stuck in a cabin in rural Washington with their alcoholic father, they cling to one another for safety and companionship. Until one night, when their father comes home covered in blood. The next day, he is gone ... and so is Jamie.

“The plot folds into a brilliant twist.”—The New York Times

“A novel in disguise. You could easily (and happily) mistake it for a stellar psychological thriller, bristling with surprises and packed with secrets; but listen closely and you’ll hear the beat of a dark, full heart, strong and loud. This is deeply moving fiction.” —A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window

Jeanie’s whole world is turned upside down. Not only has she lost her beloved brother, but with no family left in Washington, she is ripped from everything she knows, including Maddox, the boy she could be learning to love.

Twenty years later, Jeanie is in England. She keeps her demons at bay by drinking too much, sleeping with a married man, and speaking to a therapist she doesn’t respect. But her old life catches up to her when Maddox reappears, claiming to have tracked down her dad. Stunned, Jeanie must decide whether to continue running from her past or to confront her father and finally find out what really happened that night, where her brother is, and why she was the one left behind.

At once a propulsive, heart-pounding mystery and an affecting exploration of love and the familial ties that bind us, The Lost Kings will transport, move, and shock you.

View Details >>

An Affair of Spies

Ronald H. Balson

From the winner of the National Jewish Book Award—Ronald H. Balson's An Affair of Spies tells of a spy mission to rescue a defector from Germany and prevent the Nazis from creating an atomic bomb.

Nathan Silverman grew up in Berlin in the 1920s, the son of a homemaker and a theoretical physicist. His idyllic childhood was soon marred by increasing levels of bigotry against his family and the rest of the Jewish community, and after his uncle is arrested on Kristallnacht, he leaves Germany for New York City with only his mother’s wedding ring to sell for survival.

While attending an evening course at Columbia in 1942, Nathan notices a recruitment poster on a university wall and decides to enlist in the military and help fight the Nazi regime. To his surprise, he is quickly selected for a special assignment; he is trained as a spy, and ordered to report to the Manhattan Project. There he learns that the Allies are racing to develop a nuclear weapon before the Nazis, and a German theoretical physicist is hoping to defect. The physicist was a friend of his father's, and Nathan's mission is to return to Berlin via France and smuggle him out of Europe.

Nathan will be accompanied by Dr. Allison Fisher, a brilliant young scientist who can speak French; he travels to her lab at the University of Chicago for a crash course in nuclear physics, then they embark on their adventure. Nathan and Allison soon develop feelings for one another, but as their relationship deepens they move ever closer to their dangerous goal. Will they be able to escape Europe with the defector and start a new life together, or will they fail their mission and become two more casualties of war?

An Affair of Spies is an action-packed tale of heroism and love in the face of unspeakable evil. Author Ronald H. Balson has applied his unmatched talent for evocative and painstakingly authentic storytelling to the high-stakes world of espionage and created his most thrilling novel yet.

View Details >>

Christmas at the Cupcake Cafe

Jenny Colgan

From perennial bestseller Jenny Colgan comes this sugar-fueled Christmas treat of a novel, bursting with recipes and holiday cheer.

Life is sweet for Issy Randall, owner of the Cupcake Cafe. Taught how to bake by her beloved late grandfather, she is proudly carrying on the family tradition with her London eatery. Not only is business thriving, the icing on the cupcake is that she also happens to be head over heels in love. Plus she's surrounded and supported by close friends, even if her cupcake colleagues Pearl and Caroline don't seem quite as upbeat about the upcoming season of snow and merriment.

But when her boyfriend Austin is scouted for a possible move to New York, Issy is forced to contemplate the prospect of a long-distance romance. And when the Christmas rush at the cafe--with its increased demand for her delectable creations--begins to take its toll, Issy has to decide what she holds most dear.

This December, Issy will have to rely on all her reserves of calm, courage, and cinnamon to make sure everyone has a merry Christmas, one way or another. . .

 

 

 

View Details >>

The Fervor

Alma Katsu

The acclaimed author of the celebrated literary horror novels The Hunger and The Deep turns her psychological and supernatural eye on the horrors of the Japanese American internment camps in World War II.

1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko's husband's enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government.

Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world.

Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, The Fervor explores the horrors of the supernatural beyond just the threat of the occult. With a keen and prescient eye, Katsu crafts a terrifying story about the danger of demonization, a mysterious contagion, and the search to stop its spread before it's too late. A sharp account of too-recent history, it's a deep excavation of how we decide who gets to be human when being human matters most.

View Details >>