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No New Things

Ashlee Piper

Description

From award-winning sustainability expert Ashlee Piper, a witty, no-nonsense guide to regaining control over your time, consumerist impulses, and financial and mental wellness

For nearly two years, Ashlee Piper challenged herself to buy nothing new. And in the process, she got out of debt, cut clutter, crushed her goals, and became healthier and happier than ever—all the things she’d always wanted to do but “never had time to” (because she was mindlessly scrolling, shopping, spending, and stressing). After a decade of fine-tuning, No New Things guides readers through the same revolutionarily simple challenge that has helped thousands of global participants find freedom and fulfillment in just thirty days.

The book follows the rise of what Piper calls “conditioned consumerism” and how it sneakily hijacks our time, money, and mental bandwidth, as well as harms the planet. From there, readers follow customizable daily action items that bring about the ease and richness of a life less bogged down by spending and stuff, without compromising on style, convenience, or fun.

Whether you’re a bona fide shopaholic or someone who just wants to buy less and live more, No New Things is the antidote to modern overwhelm.

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Salsa Daddy: A Cookbook

Rick Martínez

Description

The James Beard Award–winning author of the New York Times bestseller Mi Cocina is back with a guide to the brightest dish in any Mexican meal, snack-filled afternoon, or sun-drenched beach day: salsa. From refreshing classics to rich sauces, this collection of over seventy salsas and twenty-four easy meals is a fun-loving introduction to the joy of Mexican cooking.

Chips, salsa, happiness. We know that essential truth. But after over 500 years of salsa history, there’s so much more to discover about this staple dish, one that cooks today can customize and riff on freely. Salsa can be an irresistible dip, yes, or a flavorful condiment, or it can be the basis for iconic Mexican meals—not to mention a savior for grilled cheese, burgers, rotisserie chicken, or platters of roasted vegetables.

Rick takes us deep into the world of traditional and modern salsas, where a playful pico de gallo with tomatoes, avocados, and chipotles is chopped up in a few minutes or where you might blend roasted peanuts with caramelized onions and toasted chiles for a nutty-savory spicy sauce. You’ll find smashed salsas, like La Tatemada Cremosa (charred tomato, chipotle in adobo, and crema), chopped salsas, such as Xnipec (tomato, habanero, and sour orange), as well as cooked salsas, like Pipián Verde (pepitas, peanuts, and tomatillo) and specials like Salsa Macha (peanuts, guiajillo, and chile de árbol) and Aioli Rojo (morita, guajillo, garlic, and lime). Turn these incredibly delicious salsas into easy meals like Chilaquiles, Enchiladas Gratinadas, Puffy Tacos, or Pozole Verde con Pollo.

With over seventy salsa recipes and twenty-four easy meals that offer endless variation, Salsa Daddy shows you how salsa can catapult joy into your cooking and become the heart of every table. Like Rick, you’ll learn that salsa isn’t a condiment—it’s a lifestyle.

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The Determined Spy

Douglas Waller

Description

From Douglas Waller, New York Times bestselling author of Wild Bill Donovan, an intimate and expertly researched biography of little-known early CIA leader Frank Wisner, whose behind-the-scenes influence on Cold War policy--and hundreds of highly secret anti-Soviet missions--resonates with the international crises we see today.

Frank Wisner was one of the most powerful men in 1950s Washington, though few knew it.  Reporting directly to senior U.S. officials--his work largely hidden from Congress and the public-- Wisner masterminded some of the CIA’s most daring and controversial operations in the early years of the Cold War, commanding thousands of clandestine agents around the world.
 
Following an early career marked by exciting escapades as a key World War II spy under General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Wisner quickly rose through the postwar intelligence ranks to lead a newly created top-secret unit tasked--under little oversight--with overseeing massive propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, subversion, and guerrilla operations all over the world, including such daring initiatives as the CIA-backed coups in Iran and Guatemala.
 
But simultaneously, Wisner faced a demon few at the time understood: bipolar disorder. When this debilitating disease resulted in his breakdown and transfer to a mental hospital, the repercussions were felt throughout Washington’s highest levels of power.
 
Waller’s sensitive and exhaustively researched biography is the riveting story of both Frank Wisner as a national figure who inspired a cadre of future CIA secret warriors, and also an intimate and empathetic portrait of a man whose harrowing struggle with bipolar disorder makes his impressive accomplishments on the world stage even more remarkable.

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The Next Day

Melinda French Gates

Description

In a rare window into some of her life’s pivotal moments, Melinda French Gates draws from previously untold stories to offer a new perspective on encountering transitions.

“You don’t get to be my age without navigating all kinds of transitions. Some you embraced and some you never expected. Some you hoped for and some you fought as hard as you could.” 
– Melinda French Gates

Transitions are moments in which we step out of our familiar surroundings and into a new landscape—a space that, for many people, is shadowed by confusion, fear, and indecision. The Next Day accompanies readers as they cross that space, offering guidance on how to make the most of the time between an ending and a new beginning and how to move forward into the next day when the ground beneath you is shifting. 

In this book, Melinda will reflect, for the first time in print, on some of the most significant transitions in her own life, including becoming a parent, the death of a dear friend, and her departure from the Gates Foundation. The stories she tells illuminate universal lessons about loosening the bonds of perfectionism, helping friends navigate times of crisis, embracing uncertainty, and more.

Each one of us, no matter who we are or where we are in life, is headed toward transitions of our own. With her signature warmth and grace, Melinda candidly shares stories of times when she was in need of wisdom and shines a path through the open space stretching out before us all.

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Secrets of Adulthood

Gretchen Rubin

Description

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project and Better Than Before distills her key insights into simple truths for living with greater satisfaction, clarity, and happiness.

The right idea, invoked at the right time, can change our lives. Drawing from her long studies of happiness, and also from the challenges she’s faced herself, writer Gretchen Rubin has discovered the “Secrets of Adulthood” that can help us manage the complexities of life. To convey her conclusions, she turned to the aphorism—the ancient literary discipline that demands that a writer convey a large truth in a few words.

Perhaps you’re paralyzed by indecision, struggling to navigate a big change, fighting a temptation, or puzzled by the behavior of someone you love; whatever you face, the right aphorism can help. From procrastination to the pursuit of happiness, Secrets of Adulthood is filled with witty and thought-provoking reflections such as: 

 

  • “Recognize that, like sleeping with a big dog in a small bed, things that are uncomfortable can also be comforting”
  • “Accept yourself, and expect more from yourself”
  • “Easy children raise good parents”
  • “What can be done at any time is often done at no time”


For anyone undergoing a major life transition, such as graduation, career switch, marriage, or moving, or for those just encountering everyday dilemmas, these disarming aphorisms will inspire you by articulating truths that you may never have noticed but instantly recognize.

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Shadow of the Solstice

Anne Hillerman

Description



 

"Anne Hillerman deserves recognition as one of the finest mystery authors currently working in the genre."--New York Journal of Books

In this gripping chapter in New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman's Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series, the detectives must sort out a save-the-planet meditation group connected to a mysterious death and a nefarious scheme targeting vulnerable indigenous people living with addiction.

The Navajo Nation police are on high alert when a U.S. Cabinet Secretary schedules an unprecedented trip to the little Navajo town of Shiprock, New Mexico. The visit coincides with a plan to resume uranium mining along the Navajo Nation border. Tensions around the official's arrival escalate when the body of a stranger is found in an area restricted for the disposal of radioactive uranium waste. Is it coincidence that a cult with a propensity for violence arrives at a private camp group outside Shiprock the same week to celebrate the summer solstice When the outsiders' erratic behavior makes their Navajo hosts uneasy, Officer Bernadette Manuelito is assigned to monitor the situation. She finds a young boy at grave risk, abused women, and other shocking discoveries that plunge her and Lt. Jim Chee into a volatile and deadly situation.

Meanwhile, Darleen Manuelito, Bernie's high spirited younger sister, learns one of her home health clients is gone-and the woman's daughter doesn't seem to care. Darleen's curiosity and sense of duty combine to lead her to discover that the client's grandson is also missing and that the two have become ensnared in a wickedly complex scheme exploiting indigenous people. Darleen's information meshes with a case Chee has begun to solve that deals with the evil underside of human nature.

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The World's Fair Quilt

Jennifer Chiaverini

Description



 

A timely celebration of quilting, family, community, and history in this latest novel in the perennially popular Elm Creek Quilts series from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini.

As fall paints the Pennsylvania countryside in flaming colors, Sylvia Bergstrom Compson is contemplating the future of her beloved Elm Creek Quilts. The Elm Creek Quilt Camp remains the most popular quilter's retreat in the country, but unexpected financial difficulties have beset them and the Bergstrom family's stately nineteenth-century manor. Now in her eighth decade, Sylvia is determined to maintain her family's legacy, but she needs new resources--financial and emotional.

Summer Sullivan--a founding Elm Creek Quilter--arrives to discuss an antique quilt that she wants to display at the Waterford Historical Society's quilt exhibit. When Sylvia and her sister Claudia were teenagers, they had entered a quilt in the Sears National Quilt Contest for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair. The Bergstrom sisters' quilt would be perfect for the Historical Society's exhibit, Summer explains.

Sylvia is reluctant to lend out the quilt, which has been stored in the attic for decades, nearly forgotten. In keeping with the contest's "Century of Progress" theme, the girls illustrated progress of values--scenes of the Emancipation Proclamation, woman's suffrage, and labor unions. But although it won ribbons, the quilt also drove a wedge between the sisters.

As Sylvia reluctantly retraces her quilt's story for Summer, she makes an unexpected discovery--one that restores some of her faith in this unique work of art, and helps shine some light on a way forward for the Elm Creek Quilts community.

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Summer Light on Nantucket

Nancy Thayer

Description

A touching novel about parenthood, first love, family bonds, and rekindled relationships from the New York Times bestselling author and beloved Nantucket storyteller Nancy Thayer.

Blythe Benedict is content. Her life didn’t end when her marriage did. In fact, she’s more than happy living in her comfortable house in Boston, working as a middle school teacher, and raising four wonderful children. With three of her kids in the throes of teenagerhood and one not too far behind them, Blythe has plenty of drama to keep her busy every single day.

But no amount of that drama could change the family’s beloved annual summer trip to Nantucket. Blythe has always treasured the months spent at her island home-away-from-home, and has fond memories of her children growing up there. But this summer’s getaway proves to be much more than she bargained for.

Yes, there are sunny days enjoyed at the beach. But Blythe must contend with teenage angst, her ex-mother-in-law’s declining health, and a troubling secret involving her ex-husband. Meanwhile, Blythe reconnects with her first love, her former high school sweetheart Aaden. But their second-time-around romance becomes complicated when another intriguing man enters the picture.

It’s all a bit out of Blythe’s comfort zone. This particular island summer may not be as relaxing as Blythe had hoped, but she’s never felt that life has given her more than she can handle—especially when she has the love and support of her family around her.

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The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits (Standard Edition)

Jennifer Weiner

Description

"Cassie and Zoe Griffin were born just a year apart, but the sisters could not have been more different. Zoe, beautiful and charming, grew up with a burning desire for fame, making up for a lack of natural talent with hard work and determination. Cassie, though, had a gift. She was uncomfortable in her plus-sized body and preferred to be in the shadows, she was a musical prodigy. On the threshold of adulthood, the sisters are discovered by a record label and become the Griffin Sisters, a band that quickly skyrockets to fame, reaching the heights of pop stardom: MTV, VH1, the Billboard charts, and every marker of a dream come true. Cassie's musical gifts make her the voice of a generation and while the spotlight tests her spirit, it also opens her heart to possibilities for connection she has never considered. Zoe gets everything she thought she wanted: international fame and the paparazzi, the couture-and the man-that go with it. But twenty years later, everything has changed. Cassie lives in seclusion in Alaska. Zoe has abandoned her music dreams for suburban motherhood in New Jersey. The Griffin Sisters are long gone, and the devil's bargain of celebrity has exacted a high price that drives the sisters apart and nearly destroys them both. And yet Zoe's teenage daughter Cherry has inherited her family's talent and stage presence, and will stop at nothing to achieve the very dream of pop stardom her mother has warned her against-opening the wounds of their shared history in the process. Both sisters must face the consequences of choices from the past: the ones they made and the ones the music industry made for them. Can the mistakes of the past be redeemed, and can broken bonds be repaired?"--

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The Maid's Secret

Nita Prose

Description

A daring art heist on the eve of Molly’s wedding reveals long-buried secrets in this intriguing and heartwarming novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid and The Mystery Guest.

”A big-hearted examination of wealth and social class.”—Oprah Daily

”A glorious read . . . intrigue, heart, and humanity in spades.”—Lucy Foley

Molly Gray’s life is about to change in ways she could never have imagined. As the esteemed Head Maid and Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel, two good things are just around the corner—a taping of the hit antiquities TV show Hidden Treasures and, even more exciting, her wedding to Juan Manuel. 

When Molly brings in some old trinkets to be appraised on the show, one item is revealed to be a rare and coveted artifact worth millions. Molly becomes a rags-to-riches sensation, and a media frenzy swirls as she prepares to sell her priceless treasure. Then, on auction day, the treasure suddenly vanishes. and Molly and her friends find themselves at the center of the boldest art heist in recent memory. 

But the key to this mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly’s Gran. For the first time ever, Molly learns about her grandmother’s secrets: how she was born into a wealthy family and fell head-over-heels in love with a young man her parents deemed below her. As fate would have it, Gran’s greatest love was someone Molly knows quite well.

A spirited heist caper and an epic love story, The Maid’s Secret is a spell-binding whodunit that will capture your heart.

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Say You'll Remember Me

Abby Jimenez

Description

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just for the Summer comes a playful yet deeply emotional romance where one date is all it takes for two people to know they're perfect for each other . . . until one of them moves 2,000 miles away the next day.

There's no such thing as a perfect guy, but Xavier Rush comes disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes--all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediate yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there's nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong . . . unless, of course, he can admit he made a mistake.

But after one incredible and seemingly endless date, Samantha is forced to admit the truth, that her family is in crisis and any kind of relationship would be impossible. Samantha begs Xavier to forget her. To remember their night together as a perfect moment, as crushing as that may be. Only no amount of distance or time is enough to forget what's between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life--and even a love--worth remembering.

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2 Sisters Murder Investigations

James Patterson

Description

Patterson's greatest crime-solving team since the Women's Murder Club is the Bird Sisters. 



Rhonda and Barbara "Baby" Bird are half-sisters--and full partners in their Los Angeles detective agency. They agree on nothing.



Rhonda, a former attorney, takes a by-the-book approach to solving crimes, while teenage Baby relies on her street smarts. 



But when they take a controversial case of a loner whose popular wife has gone missing, they're accused of being PIs who can't tell a client from a killer. 



The Bird sisters share a late father, but not much else...except their willingness to fight.



Fight the system. Fight for the underdog. Fight for the truth. If they can stop fighting each other long enough to work together.

 

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25 Alive

James Patterson

Description

"Those who haven't read any of the novels in the Women's Murder Club series are cheating themselves" (BookReporter). Sergeant Lindsay Boxer, medical examiner Claire Washburn, Assistant District Attorney Yuki Castellano, and crime reporter Cindy Thomas investigate the shocking murder of a former SFPD chief in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. 

SFPD homicide detective Lindsay Boxer knows her way around a crime scene.

But nothing can prepare her for the shock of recognition: the victim is Warren Jacobi, Lindsay's onetime partner who rose to chief of police.

A top investigator until the end, Jacobi managed to leave Lindsay a clue.

Following a trail of evidence along the west coast, the Women's Murder Club pledges to avenge Jacobi's death before the killer can take another one of their own.

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A Mind of Her Own

Danielle Steel

Description

Rising above the devastation of World War I, a young half-French, half-American woman remains true to her own independent spirit in this powerful historical novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel.

Alexandra Bouvier is born in Paris in 1900, at the dawn of a new century. From an early age, she is encouraged to think for herself by her enlightened family: her father, a French doctor; her mother, an American nurse; and her maternal grandfather a highly regarded newspaperman back in the Midwest.

At age fourteen, Alex’s comfortable life is upended as war erupts across Europe. Her parents follow their sense of duty to the front, performing triage at a field hospital and confronting the horrors of poison gas and trench warfare. The merciless fighting, coupled with the fast-spreading Spanish flu, wreaks havoc on the continent, as well as on Alex’s loved ones. By the time she is eighteen, she has suffered unimaginable losses.

With her grandfather’s support, she attends the University of Chicago and decides to follow his footsteps into journalism. As a newspaper intern she meets reporter Oliver Foster, who is covering the gang wars sparked by Prohibition. He too has known devastating loss, and the two are drawn to each other, though both fear any attachment. As it turns out, Alex has good reason to be cautious.

Danielle Steel’s sweeping historical novel is a story of resilience and the courage to open one’s heart—no matter how many times it’s been broken—and believe in oneself.

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Great Big Beautiful Life

Emily Henry

Description

Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping novel from Emily Henry. 

Named a Most Anticipated book of 2025 by The New York TimesRolling StonePeopleUSA TodayHarper's BazaarMarie Claire ∙ Bustle ∙ Reader's Digest ∙ BBC ∙ PopSugar ∙ SheReads ∙ Paste ∙ and more!

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the twentieth century. 

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game. 

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over. 

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication. 

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad . . . depending on who’s telling it.

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Strangers in Time

David Baldacci

Description

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Calamity of Souls comes a David Baldacci novel, set in London in 1944, about a bereaved book shop owner and two teenagers scarred by the second world war--and the healing and hope they find in one another.

Fourteen-year-old Charlie Matters is up to no good, but for a very good reason. Without parents, peerage, or merit, ducking school but barred from actual work, he steals what he needs, living day-to-day until he's old enough to enlist to fight the Germans. After barely surviving the Blitz, Charlie knows there's no telling when a falling bomb might end his life.

Fifteen-year-old Molly Wakefield has just returned to a nearly unrecognizable London. One of millions of people to have been evacuated to the countryside via "Operation Pied Piper," Molly has been away from her parents--from her home--for nearly five years. Her return, however, is not the homecoming she'd hoped for as she's confronted by a devastating reality: neither of her parents are there, only her old nanny, Mrs. Pride.

Without guardians and stability, Charlie and Molly find an unexpected ally and protector in Ignatius Oliver, and solace at his book shop, The Book Keep, where "a book a day keeps the bombs away". Mourning the recent loss of his wife, Ignatius forms a kinship with both children, and in each other--over the course of the greatest armed conflict the world had ever seen--they rediscover the spirit of family each has lost.

But Charlie's escapades in the city have not gone unnoticed, and someone's been following Molly since she returned to London. And Ignatius is reeling from a secret Imogen long kept from him while she was alive--something so shocking it resulted in her death, and his life being turned upside down.

As bombs continue to bear down on the city, Charlie, Molly, and Ignatius learn that while the perils of war rage on, their coming together and trusting one another may be the only way for them to survive.

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The Ride

Kostya Kennedy

Description

Timed for the 250th anniversary of one of America’s most famous founding events: Paul Revere’s legendary ride, newly told with fresh research into little-known aspects of the story Americans have heard since childhood but hardly understood

On April 18, 1775, a Boston-based silversmith, engraver, and anti-British political operative named Paul Revere set out on a borrowed horse to fulfill a dangerous but crucial mission: to alert American colonists of advancing British troops, which would seek to crush their nascent revolt.

Revere was not the only rider that night, and indeed, he had completed at least 18 previous rides across New England and other colonies, disseminating intelligence about British movements. But this ride was like no other, and its consequences in the months and years to come—as the American Revolution morphed from isolated skirmishes to a full-fledged war—became one of our founding legends.

In The Ride, Kostya Kennedy presents a dramatic new narrative of the events of April 18 and 19, 1775, informed by fresh primary and secondary source research into archives, family letters and diaries, contemporary accounts, and more. Kennedy reveals Revere’s ride to be more complex than it is usually portrayed—a loosely coordinated series of rides by numerous men, near-disaster, capture by British forces, and finally success. While Revere was central to the ride and its plotting, Kennedy reveals the other men (and, perhaps, a woman with information about the movement of British forces) who helped to set in motion the events that would lead to America’s independence.

Thrillingly written in a dramatic, unstoppable narrative, The Ride re-tells an essential American story for a new generation of readers.

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Abundance

Ezra Klein

Description

From bestselling authors and journalistic titans Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life.

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next gener­ation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and pre­serves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.

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The Next Conversation

Jefferson Fisher

Description

From communication expert Jefferson Fisher, the definitive book on making your next conversation the one that changes everything

No matter who you’re talking to, The Next Conversation gives you immediately actionable strategies and phrases that will forever change how you communicate. Jefferson Fisher, trial lawyer and one of the leading voices on real-world communication, offers a tried-and-true framework that will show you how to transform your life and your relationships by improving your next conversation.

Fisher has gained millions of followers through short, simple, practical videos teaching people how to argue less and talk more. Whether it’s handling a heated conversation, dealing with a difficult personality, or standing your ground with confidence, his down-to-earth teachings have helped countless people navigate life’s toughest situations. Now for the first time, Fisher has distilled his three-part communication system (Say it with control, Say it with confidence, Say it to connect) that can easily be applied to any situation.

You will learn:
 

  • Why you should never “win” an argument
  • How to assert yourself and communicate with intention
  • How to set boundaries and frame conversations
  • Why saying less is often more
  • How to overcome conflict with connection


The Next Conversation will give you practical phrases that will lead to powerful results, from breaking down defensiveness in a hard talk with a family member to finding your own assertive voice at the boardroom conference table. Your every word matters, and by controlling how you communicate every day, you will create waves of positive impact that will resonate throughout your relationships to last a lifetime.

Everything you want to say, and how you want to say it, can be found in The Next Conversation.

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Propaganda Girls

Lisa Rogak

Description

The incredible untold story of four women who spun the web of deception that helped win World War II.

Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was of course one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinating in her own right, together contributed to one of the most covert and successful military campaigns in WWII.

As members of the OSS, their task was to create a secret brand of propaganda produced with the sole aim to break the morale of Axis soldiers. Working in the European theater, across enemy lines in occupied China, and in Washington, D.C., Betty, Zuzka, Jane, and Marlene forged letters and “official” military orders, wrote and produced entire newspapers, scripted radio broadcasts and songs, and even developed rumors for undercover spies and double agents to spread to the enemy. And outside of a small group of spies, no one knew they existed. Until now.

In Propaganda Girls, bestselling author Lisa Rogak brings to vivid life the incredible true story of four unsung heroes, whose spellbinding achievements would change the course of history.

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Taking Manhattan

Russell Shorto

Description

In 1664, England decided to invade the Dutch-controlled city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, had dreams of empire, and their archrivals, the Dutch, were in the way. But Richard Nicolls, the military officer who led the English flotilla bent on destruction, changed his strategy once he encountered Peter Stuyvesant, New Netherland's canny director general.

Bristling with vibrant characters, Taking Manhattan reveals the founding of New York to be an invention, the result of creative negotiations that would blend the multiethnic, capitalistic society of New Amsterdam with the power of the rising English empire. But the birth of what might be termed the first modern city is also a story of the brutal dispossession of Native Americans and of the roots of American slavery. The book draws from newly translated materials and illuminates neglected histories--of religious refugees, Indigenous tribes, and free and enslaved Africans.

Taking Manhattan tells the riveting story of the birth of New York City as a center of capitalism and pluralism, a foundation from which America would rise. It also shows how the paradox of New York's origins--boundless opportunity coupled with subjugation and displacement--reflects America's promise and failure to this day. Russell Shorto, whose work has been described as "astonishing" (New York Times) and "literary alchemy" (Chicago Tribune), has once again mined archival sources to offer a vibrant tale and a fresh and trenchant argument about American beginnings.

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Care and Feeding

Laurie Woolever

Description

A candid, funny, and occasionally devastating memoir of a woman making her way through the food world, navigating addiction, a cultural reckoning, and an unexpected tragedy

In this moving, hilarious, and insightful memoir, Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at revered restaurants and food publications, alternately bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business. But there's more to the story than the two bold-faced names on her resume: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain.

Behind the scenes, Laurie's life is frequently chaotic, an often pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it all--from a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli--while balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood.

As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Laurie's mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life's work that she truly values: care and feeding.

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Unmasking for Life

Devon Price, PhD

Description

Live your best, unashamedly unmasked Autistic life with this invaluable resource featuring tools for navigating friendships, family, work, and love, from the author of Unmasking Autism.

Unmasking for Life should be read by not only autistic people but their loved ones, to ensure they facilitate a truly fulfilling life.”—Eric Garcia, author of We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation

Most masked Autistics have spent a lifetime being told how to perform neurotypically: how to behave, how to carry themselves, what to feel, and how to live. With his previous book, Unmasking Autism, Devon Price, PhD, has given them the space and the tools to unmask and embrace their neurodiversity. But no matter where you are in the unmasking process, there is still work to be done. Unmasking is more than just a personal process of self-acceptance, after all—it also requires figuring out how to move comfortably throughout life building friendships, nurturing family, pursuing love, finding a means of survival, and expressing oneself on one’s own terms. In order to live a brilliantly unashamed Autistic life, you need more than internal healing—you need practical tools of assertiveness and interpersonal effectiveness, and solutions to the problems of ableism and inaccessibility. 

Enter Unmasking for Life, which provides the resources to help you advocate for your needs and invent new ways of living, loving, and being that work with your disability rather than against it. You’ll learn how to develop five key skills for living unmasked in all areas of life:

• Acceptance of change, loss, and uncertainty
• Engagement in productive conflict, discussion, and disagreement
• Transgression of unfair rules, demands, and social expectations
• Tolerance of distress, disagreement, or being disliked
• Creation of new accommodations, relationship structures, and new ways of living

Unmasking for Life will help validate and support you so you can move beyond unmasking your Autism and begin unmasking your world.

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Firstborn

Lauren Christensen

Description

A lapidary memoir of losing a child before she can be born, which the author began writing the day she came home from the hospital—an intimate story about our most searing losses and brightest hopes

“Some days I still think this is all just a sad story I’ll tell Simone one day.”

Lauren Christensen is a thirtysomething editor in New York City when she meets her future husband, Gabe, a writer with whom she falls in love right away. Her beloved grandfather is dying, but the young couple is bringing new life into the family: Lauren and Gabe joyfully discover she is pregnant with their daughter, Simone.

As Lauren faces the prospect of becoming a parent, she learns to let go of the fear of abandonment and need for control instilled in her by growing up with a largely absent father and a high-powered mother who was often away on business. Lauren and Gabe are incandescently happy in their exuberant, messy, beautiful shared world. But just weeks after their wedding, they learn that their worst nightmare has come true: Simone is dying in the womb.

In fierce, tender, spellbinding prose, Firstborn brings us to the very heart of the human paradox: How do we live when everyone who makes up our world will someday be gone? And how can we mourn when the cosmic order has been turned upside down—when a child dies before she is born?

As she comes up against the brutal limits of maternal healthcare and the limitlessness of her love for her daughter, Lauren Christensen finds a key, generous and brave, in which to share her loss, a testimony whose diamond-like brilliance refracts a universal light.

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I'm That Girl

Jordan Chiles

Description

With a Foreword by Simone Biles

The sensational two-time Olympian Jordan Chiles's heartfelt, inspiring memoir chronicling her unlikely path to the podium--including the unprecedented challenges, the joy of winning, the crushing pain of defeat, and the love and support of her devoted family and teammates that helps her stay strong.

It was a rare and stunning reversal: after the judges at the 2024 Paris Olympics determined that Jordan had rightfully scored third place for her performance--following a successful challenge by her coach--she earned the bronze medal. Later, Jordan's euphoria turned to devastation when the Court of Arbitration for Sport stripped her of that medal based on nothing but semantics. Jordan called the ruling, "One of the most challenging moments of my career. Believe me when I say I have had many."

In her powerful, eye-opening memoir, Jordan digs deep, sharing the story of her life's challenges--the racism she encountered as a gifted Black girl in a predominantly white elite sport, the battles with body image and subsequent unhealthy relationship with food, the grueling practices, the injuries, the moments of nearly calling it quits. Through it all, Jordan refused to give up. Through sheer grit--and the love of her family--she kept working and winning. When Simone Biles stepped away from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after a case of the "twisties," Jordan stepped in to play a key role in securing silver for Team USA. And in Paris, Jordan made history as part of the first all-Black podium in all of men's and women's gymnastics.

Told with refreshing candor and Jordan's irrepressible spirit, I'm That Girl is a glimpse of life in the psychologically and physically demanding upper echelons of women's elite gymnastics. Exploring the deep bonds so often forged in pressure cookers, Jordan speaks openly about her relationships with her teammates, including her best friend and "big sister" Simone Biles, and how their support for one another has proved invaluable on and off the mat.

With the highs, lows, twists, and turns characteristic of the sport, and featuring a 16-page color photo insert, I'm That Girl reveals how one extraordinary young woman keeps her balance in a uniquely dizzying life. By way of her unwavering tenacity, Jordan has changed the culture of gymnastics, fighting every day to ensure that the girls she inspires are not pre-judged for their hair, their bodies, or their skin color. Insightful and deeply moving, I'm That Girl is a testament to the power of perseverance and the transformative joy of doing what you love, told by a fierce and unique individual who has been and will always be That Girl--the ultimate hype woman who shows up and gives it her all.

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Super-Italian

Giada De Laurentiis

Description

Discover the Italian approach to healthful eating—where nothing is off the menu—with 100 delicious, superfood-packed recipes from New York Times bestselling author Giada De Laurentiis.

From the day Giada De Laurentiis started cooking professionally, her fundamental formula for making meals memorable has not changed: Good Cooking = Technique + Ingredients + Ambience. This same formula is the key to good health when you choose ingredients that promote wellness, cook them simply, and eat them joyfully. In her skillful hands, a pantry of Italian superfoods is the starting point to better health and longevity.

Super-Italian helps you stock your shelves with healthy Italian superfoods and create meals that are nutritionally dense, supportive of health, and still downright craveable. The superfoods featured and incorporated into every recipe are:

Olives + olive oil: Umbrian Chicken Stew with Green Olives, Kale Salsa Verde, and Grilled Swordfish with Olive Bagna Cauda
Beans + Legumes: Artichoke Dip with White Beans, Crunchy Roasted Butter Beans, and Creamy Cannellini Beans
Cruciferous vegetables: Winter Beans and Greens Soup, Orecchiette with Almond Pesto and Broccoli Rabe, and Green Gazpacho
Small fish: Caesar Aioli, Pasta Assassina, and Anchovy Pasta with Walnuts
Vinegar: Balsamic Chocolate Truffles, Grilled Endive Salad with Citrus and Pancetta, and Filet Mignon with Gorgonzola and Balsamic
Tomatoes: Sicilian Pesto, Tomatoes Gratinata, and Calabrian Pomodoro

By using carbs and fats mindfully and amplifying vegetables, lean proteins, and flavor-boosting superfoods at every meal, Giada shows how easy it is to eat like an Italian. With 100 stunning photographs of finished meals and their superfood components, Giada teaches us that when you start with truly excellent, minimally processed ingredients, simply prepared, you can have your pasta and eat it too!

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Who Is Government?

Michael Lewis

Description

Who works for the government and why does their work matter? An urgent and absorbing civics lesson from an all-star team of writers and storytellers.

The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone.

    Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers to find someone doing an interesting job for the government and write about them in a special in-depth series for the Washington Post. The stories they found are unexpected, riveting, and inspiring, including a former coal miner devoted to making mine roofs less likely to collapse, saving thousands of lives; an IRS agent straight out of a crime thriller; and the manager who made the National Cemetery Administration the best-run organization, public or private, in the entire country. Each essay shines a spotlight on the essential behind-the-scenes work of exemplary federal employees.

    Whether they’re digitizing archives, chasing down cybercriminals, or discovering new planets, these public servants are committed to their work and universally reluctant to take credit. Expanding on the Washington Post series, the vivid profiles in Who Is Government? blow up the stereotype of the irrelevant bureaucrat. They show how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters.

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Everything Is Tuberculosis

John Green

Description

John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with hu­manity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John be­came fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequi­ties that allow this curable, preventable infec­tious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year.

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world—and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.

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The Story She Left Behind

Patti Callahan Henry

Description

Inspired by a true literary mystery, New York Times bestselling author of the mesmerizing The Secret Book of Flora Lea returns with the sweeping story of a legendary book, a lost mother, and a daughter’s search for them both.

In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington’s magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her departure leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beautiful mother.

By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. When a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother’s lost language. Clara is skeptical. Compelled by the tragedy of her mother’s vanishing, she crosses the Atlantic with Wynnie only to arrive during one of London’s most deadly natural disasters—the Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in peril, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jameson’s family retreat nestled in the Lake District. It is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind.

Told in Patti Callahan Henry’s lyrical, enchanting prose, The Story She Left Behind is a captivating novel of mystery and family legacy that captures the profound longing for a mother and the evergreen allure of secrets.

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Ward D

Freida McFadden

Description

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden!

All she has do is make it through the night shift...

Ward D is the hospital's mental health unit and as a medical student, Amy is required to gain experience on the floor. But little do her colleagues know it may force her to confront a past she's fought hard to forget.

The night starts. The countdown begins.

As the hours tick by, Amy grows increasingly convinced something terrible is happening within the ward's tightly secured walls. When patients and staff start to vanish without a trace, it becomes clear that everyone on the unit is in grave danger.

Amy never wanted to spend the night on Ward D. Now she might not make it out alive.

In Ward D, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden delivers a taut, locked room thriller that will make you want to leave the light on...

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Kills Well with Others

Deanna Raybourn

Description

“Much like fine wine, battle-hardened assassins grow better with age.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

Four women assassins, senior in status—and in age—sharpen their knives for another bloody good adventure in this riotous follow-up to the New York Times bestselling sensation Killers of a Certain Age.

After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their time off, but the lack of excitement is starting to chafe: a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions without itching to strangle someone...literally. When they receive a summons from the head of the elite assassin organization known as the Museum, they are ready tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.

Someone on the inside has compiled a list of important kills committed by Museum agents, connected to a single, shadowy figure, an Eastern European gangster with an iron fist, some serious criminal ambition, and a tendency to kill first and ask questions later. This new nemesis is murdering agents who got in the way of their power hungry plans and the aging quartet of killers is next.

Together the foursome embark on a wild ride across the globe on the double mission of rooting out the Museum’s mole and hunting down the gangster who seems to know their next move before they make it. Their enemy is unlike any they’ve faced before, and it will take all their killer experience to get out of this mission alive.

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Beach Vibes

Susan Mallery

Description

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery comes an unforgettable beach read about love, secrets, betrayal and the family we're born into--and the one we choose for ourselves, perfect for fans of Emily Giffin and Mary Kay Andrews.



What would you do if you caught your brother cheating on your best friend? 



While Beth is proud of her Malibu beach shop, Surf Sandwiches, she's even prouder of her charismatic brother Rick, who rose from foster care through surgical residency. She makes subs, he saves lives. Life takes a turn for the happy after she finds out Rick is dating her new best friend, Jana. Then Jana's handsome brother adds even more sparkle to Beth's days...and nights.



But when she catches Rick with another woman--like, with-with--her visions of an idyllic family future disappear in one awful instant. Either she betrays her brother, or she keeps his secret and risks losing the man she loves and her best friend.



Love and loyalty collide with secrets and betrayal in this witty and emotional tale about the lengths we'll go to for family, from Susan Mallery, New York Times bestselling author of The Boardwalk Bookshop.



Discover more heartwarming tales by Susan Mallery:

 

  • One Big Happy Family
  • The Summer Book Club
  • The Happiness Plan
  • Home Sweet Christmas
  • The Boardwalk Bookshop



 

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Fight or Flight

Fern Michaels

Description

In this season's must-read for fans of Nora Roberts, Danielle Steel, and Janet Evanovich, a woman imprisoned by her painful past faces a crisis that might just set her free to claim the life she deserves.

From the comfort of her beautiful mountain-top retreat, Katherine Winston creates her bestselling young adult series, Girls with Unusual Powers. No one in the nearby small town has any idea of her true identity. To them, she’s just the reclusive woman on the mountain, and Katherine is grateful to be left alone.

It wasn’t always this way. Though her parents were as neglectful as they were wealthy, Katherine built up a busy, full life. Then tragedy struck and she retreated, panic-stricken at the idea of engaging with anyone again. Aside from her two faithful dogs who provide companionship and security, Katherine mostly interacts with people anonymously online through reader fan pages.

Now one of those fans appears to be in danger, and Katherine desperately wants to help. But that means moving beyond her isolated world for the first time in years. More and more, Katherine can’t shake the feeling that some of her fears may be justified. Someone is watching her, she’s sure of it, and they’re getting closer all the time. And only by leaving her self-imposed exile can she hope to find the answers she needs, the courage to trust again, and an unexpected new beginning . . .

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The Summer Guests

Tess Gerritsen

Description

From New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen comes a chilling follow-up to The Spy Coast, plunging the Martini Club into the search for a missing teen--with a startling connection to their own pasts.

When former spy Maggie Bird retired to the seaside hamlet of Purity, Maine, she settled in for a quiet life with breathtaking views. But enemies from her past soon threatened to destroy everything.

Maggie survived, thanks to her wits and the collective intelligence of the Martini Club, the circle of ex-CIA friends in her cocktail-sipping book club. Their handiwork, however, caught the attention of young police chief Jo Thibodeau. Now Jo and her neighborhood ex-spies have an uneasy alliance.

After a teenager vanishes--and Maggie's neighbor becomes the prime suspect--she joins the investigation, determined to prove her friend's innocence. But the girl's wealthy family pushes for an arrest. And when authorities discover a long-dead corpse in a nearby pond, the case becomes doubly complicated, with unthinkable ties to long-buried secrets.

As Jo grapples with two unexplained mysteries, the Martini Club races to uncover the truth behind shadowy secrets...before more lives are lost.

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Blood Moon

Sandra Brown

Description

"Fast-paced, complex, and deliciously scary!" - Kathy Reichs



#1 New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown returns with another gripping thriller where an embittered detective and an ambitious TV show producer are in a race against the clock to prevent another young woman from disappearing before the next blood moon, in this "absolute tour de force!" (Tia Williams)



Detective John Bowie is one misstep away from being fired from the Auclair Police Department in coastal Louisiana. Recently divorced and slightly heavy-handed with his liquor, Bowie does all that he can to cope with the actions taken (or not taken) during the investigation of Crissy Mellin, a teenage girl who disappeared more than three years prior. But now, Crisis Point, a long-running true crime television series, is soon to air an episode documenting the unsolved Mellin case. Bowie has been instructed by his unscrupulous boss to keep to himself his grievances and criticisms over the mishandling of the investigation.



Beth Collins, a senior producer on Crisis Point, knows what classifies as a great story and when there's something more to be told. After working on the show for seven years researching, fact-checking, and editing dozens of episodes, Collins is convinced that Crissy Mellin's disappearance was not an isolated incident. A string of disappearances of teenage girls in nearby areas has only one thing in common: They took place on the night of a blood moon. In a last-ditch effort to find out the truth, Beth leaves New York City for Louisiana to enlist Detective Bowie in helping her figure out what happened to Crissy and find the true culprit before he acts on the next blood moon--in four days' time.



At the risk of their careers, credibility, and very lives, Bowie and Collins band together to identify and capture a canny perpetrator, while fighting an irresistible spark between them that threatens to upend everything.

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The Jackal's Mistress

Chris Bohjalian

Description

In this Civil War love story, inspired by a real-life friendship across enemy lines, the wife of a missing Confederate soldier discovers a wounded Yankee officer and must decide what she's willing to risk for the life of a stranger, from the New York Times bestselling author of such acclaimed historical fiction as Hour of the Witch and The Sandcastle Girls.

Virginia, 1864--Libby Steadman's husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It's an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield. 

And then she finds a gravely injured Union officer left for dead in a neighbor's house, the bones of his hand and leg shattered. Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade is her enemy--but he's also a human being, and Libby must make a terrible decision: Does she leave him to die alone? Or does she risk treason and try to nurse him back to health? And if she succeeds, does she try to secretly bring him across Union lines, where she might negotiate a trade for news of her own husband? 

A vivid and sweeping story of two people navigating the boundaries of love and humanity in a landscape of brutal violence, The Jackal's Mistress is a heart-stopping new novel, based on a largely unknown piece of American history, from one of our greatest storytellers.

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The Writer

James Patterson

Description

From #1 New York Times murder-thriller author James Patterson, when a world-famous crime writer's husband is found dead, detectives must uncover if she is the target, the next victim--or a mastermind.



NYPD Detective Declan Shaw gets a call: How fast can you get to the Beresford building on Central Park West?



In the tower apartment, Shaw finds a woman waiting for him. She's covered in blood. A body is lying dead on the floor of the luxurious living room.



Every book in the apartment's floor-to-ceiling shelves is by the same author: bestselling true-crime writer Denise Morrow. 



"This is you?" Shaw asks the woman. "You're a writer?"



Only one person knows the ending to this story. Is it the victim or the killer?

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Nobody's Fool

Harlan Coben

Description

A year after the devastating events that took place in Fool Me Once, Harlan Coben's bestselling thriller and #1 Netflix series, a secret from former Detective Sami Kierce's college days comes back to haunt him. Present day is hard enough for the disgraced Kierce, but his past isn't through with him yet...

Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning, covered in blood. There's a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend. Anna. Dead. He doesn't know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts--and then he runs.

Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is a new father who's working off his debts by doing low level surveillance jobs and teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognizes a familiar face at the back of the classroom. Anna. It's unmistakably her. As soon as Kierce makes eye contact with her, she bolts. For Kierce there is no choice. He knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment since that terrible day.

His investigation will bring him face-to-face with his past--and prove, after all this time, he's nobody's fool.

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Far From Home

Danielle Steel

Description

#1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel delivers an exciting and moving historical novel about a courageous wife and mother hiding in occupied France.

In July 1944, Arielle von Auspeck arrives at the glamorous Hotel Ritz in occupied Paris. Half French, half German, she is happy to be back in France, where her husband, Gregor, a retired colonel, will join her soon from Germany. Arielle and Gregor have thus far been able to hide their private opposition to Hitler.

Then her world falls apart. She receives word that Gregor was part of Operation Valkyrie, a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in Poland, and has been shot as a traitor. Now, holding a French passport handed to her by another high-level collaborator, she is whisked away from Paris under cover of darkness for her own safety.

As the Allies storm the beaches, she goes into hiding in a small village in Normandy under an assumed name, unable to contact her adult children. There, she forms a friendship with Sebastien Renaud, whose wife and daughter were deported in 1941, and who eventually reveals himself as a forger in the Resistance. As war rages on, Arielle and Sebastien work for the Resistance and hold out for the time when they can search for their loved ones.

In Far From Home, Danielle Steel captures the devastation of World War II with a sweeping story of family love that transcends impossible odds.

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Lethal Prey

John Sandford

Description

Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers join forces to track down a ruthless killer who will do whatever it takes to keep the past buried, in this latest thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author John Sandford.

Doris Grandfelt, an employee at an accounting firm, was brutally stabbed to death . . . but nobody knew exactly where the crime took place. Her body was found the next night, dumped among a dense thicket of trees along the edge of an urban park, eight miles east of St. Paul, Minnesota. Despite her twin sister Lara Grandfelt’s persistent calls to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the killer was never found.

Twenty years later, Lara has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Confronted with the possibility of her own death, she’s determined to find Doris’s killer once and for all. Finally taking matters into her own hands, she dumps the entire investigative file on every true-crime site in the world and offers a $5 million reward for information leading to the killer’s arrest. Dozens of true-crime bloggers show up looking for both new evidence and “clicks,” and Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to review anything that might be a new lead.

When one of the bloggers locates the murder weapon, Lucas and Virgil begin to uncover vital details about the killer’s identity. But what they don’t know is the killer lurks in plain sight, and with the true-crime bloggers blasting every clue online, the killer can keep one step ahead. As the nation maneuvers the detectives closer to the truth, Lucas and Virgil will find that digging up Doris’s harrowing past might just get them buried instead.

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Fearless and Free

Josephine Baker

Description

**A February LibraryReads Notable Nonfiction Bonus Pick**

“A gorgeous, captivating gem of a memoir…Josephine Baker’s as enthralling on the page as she was on the stage.” —Abbott Kahler, New York Times bestselling author of Eden Undone and Sin in the Second City

Published in the US for the first time, Fearless and Free is the memoir of the fabulous, rule-breaking, one-of-a-kind Josephine Baker, the iconic dancer, singer, spy, and Civil Rights activist

After stealing the spotlight as a teenaged Broadway performer during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Josephine then took Paris by storm, dazzling audiences across the Roaring Twenties. In her famous banana skirt, she enraptured royalty and countless fans—Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso among them. She strolled the streets of Paris with her pet cheetah wearing a diamond collar. With her signature flapper bob and enthralling dance moves, she was one of the most recognizable women in the world.

When World War II broke out, Josephine became a decorated spy for the French Résistance. Her celebrity worked as her cover, as she hid spies in her entourage and secret messages in her costumes as she traveled. She later joined the Civil Rights movement in the US, boycotting segregated concert venues, and speaking at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr. 

First published in France in 1949, her memoir will now finally be published in English. At last we can hear Josephine in her own voice: charming, passionate, and brave. Her words are thrilling and intimate, like she’s talking with her friends over after-show drinks in her dressing room. Through her own telling, we come to know a woman who danced to the top of the world and left her unforgettable mark on it.

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Shift

Ethan Kross

Description

“A revolutionary guide to mastering your emotional life.”—Charles Duhigg
“Brilliant, engaging, and deeply insightful.”—Lisa Damour
“Breaks new ground.”—Adam Grant
“Illuminating.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) 

A myth-busting, science-based guide that addresses the timeless question of how to manage your emotional life using tools you already possess—from the bestselling author of Chatter.

Whether it’s anxiety about going to the doctor, boiling rage when we’re stuck in traffic, or devastation after a painful break-up, our lives are filled with situations that send us spiraling. But as difficult as our emotions can be, they are also a superpower. Far from being “good” or “bad,” emotions are information. When they’re activated in the right ways and at the right time, they function like an immune system, alerting us to our surroundings, telling us how to react to a situation, and helping us make the right choices. 

But how do we make our emotions work for us rather than against us? Acclaimed psychologist Dr. Ethan Kross has devoted his scientific career to answering this question. In Shift, he dispels common myths—for instance, that avoidance is always toxic or that we should always strive to live in the moment—and provides a new framework for shifting our emotions so they don’t take over our lives. 

Shift weaves groundbreaking research with riveting stories of people struggling and succeeding to manage their emotions—from a mother whose fear prompted her to make a spur-of-the-moment decision that would save her daughter’s life mid-flight to a nuclear code-carrying Navy SEAL who learned how to embrace both joy and pain during a hellish training activity. Dr. Kross spotlights a wide array of tools that we already have access to—in our bodies and minds, our relationships with other people, and the cultures and physical spaces we inhabit—and shows us how to harness them to be healthier and more successful. 

Filled with actionable advice, cutting-edge research, and riveting stories, Shift puts the power back into our hands, so we can control our emotions without them controlling us—and help others do the same.

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Lorne

Susan Morrison

Description

The definitive biography of Lorne Michaels, the man behind America’s most beloved comedy show

Over the fifty years that Lorne Michaels has been at the helm of Saturday Night Live, he has become a revered and inimitable presence in the entertainment world. He’s a tastemaker, a mogul, a withholding father figure, a genius spotter of talent, a shrewd businessman, a name-dropper, a raconteur, the inspiration for Dr. Evil, the winner of more than a hundred Emmys—and, essentially, a mystery. Generations of writers and performers have spent their lives trying to figure him out, by turns demonizing and lionizing him. He’s “Obi-Wan Kenobi” (Tracy Morgan), the “great and powerful Oz” (Kate McKinnon), “some kind of very distant, strange comedy god” (Bob Odenkirk).
 
Lorne will introduce you to him, in full, for the first time. With unprecedented access to Michaels and the entire SNL apparatus, Susan Morrison takes readers behind the curtain for the lively, up-and-down, definitive story of how Michaels created and maintained the institution that changed comedy forever.
 
Drawn from hundreds of interviews—with Michaels, his friends, and SNL’s iconic stars and writers, from Will Ferrell to Tina Fey to John Mulaney to Chris Rock to Dan Aykroyd—Lorne is a deeply reported, wildly entertaining account of a man singularly obsessed with the show that would define his life and have a profound impact on American culture.

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Air-Borne

Carl Zimmer

Description

The fascinating, untold story of the air we breathe, the hidden life it contains, and invisible dangers that can turn the world upside down

Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air—and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life. This last great biological frontier remains so mysterious that it took over two years for scientists to finally agree that the Covid pandemic was caused by an airborne virus.

In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. We travel to the tops of mountain glaciers, where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air, and follow Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments. We meet the long-forgotten pioneers of aerobiology including William and Mildred Wells, who tried for decades to warn the world about airborne infections, only to die in obscurity.

Air-Borne chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of airborne biological weapons designed to spread anthrax, smallpox, and an array of other pathogens. Air-Borne also leaves readers looking at the world with new eyes—as a place where the oceans and forests loft trillions of cells into the air, where microbes eat clouds, and where life soars thousands of miles on the wind.

Weaving together gripping history with the latest reporting on Covid and other threats to global health, Air-Borne surprises us on every page as it reveals the hidden world of the air.

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Food for Thought

Alton Brown

Description

From Alton Brown, the New York Times bestselling cookbook author and beloved culinary food personality, a debut collection of personal essays defined by his flair, wit, and insight.

From cameraman to chef, musician to food scientist, Alton Brown has had a diverse and remarkable career. His work on the Food Network, including creating Good Eats and hosting Iron Chef America and Cutthroat Kitchen, has resonated with countless viewers and home cooks. Now, he shares exactly what’s on his mind, mixing compelling anecdotes from his personal and professional life with in-depth observations on the culinary world, film, personal style, defining meals of his lifetime, and much more.

With his whip-smart and engaging voice, Brown explores everything from wrestling a dumpster full of dough to culinary cultural appropriation to his ultimate quest for the perfect roast chicken. Deliciously candid and full of behind-the-scenes stories fans will love, Food for Thought is the ultimate reading experience for anyone who appreciates food and the people that prepare it.

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I'll Have What She's Having

Chelsea Handler

Description

In hilarious and tender essays, #1 New York Times bestselling author Chelsea Handler shares her unforgettable story of becoming the woman she always wanted to be. 

There’s a woman I want to become, Chelsea Handler thought as a child. She’ll be strong and confident. She’ll light up a room and spread that light to make others feel better. She’ll make a living being herself. She’ll be a survivor. 

At ten years old, Chelsea opened a lemonade stand and realized she’d make more money if the drinks were spiked. So she added vodka to her recipe and used her earnings to upgrade herself to first-class on a family vacation—leaving her parents and siblings in coach. She moved to Los Angeles and got fired from her temp job when she admitted she didn’t know how to transfer calls. She’s played pickleball with the scions of an American dynasty. She’s sexted a governor. She shared psychedelics with strangers in Spain. When she accidentally ended up at dinner with Woody Allen, she was not going to leave the table without asking him a very personal pointed question. She went on national television and talked about having threesomes. She's never been one to hold back. 

But this life of adventure and absurdity is only part of her story. Chelsea knows what it is to truly show up for her family—canine and human, biological and chosen. She’s discovered how to spend time with herself, how to meditate, how to be open to love, and how to end a relationship with dignity. She is a sister to the many women who rely on her.

Surprisingly vulnerable and always outrageous, Chelsea Handler captures the antic-filled, exhilarating, and joyful life she’s built—a life that makes the rest of us think, I’ll have what she’s having.

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Booster Shots

Adam Ratner, MD, MPH

Description

A pediatrician and infectious disease specialist warns of the resurgence of measles, the antivaccine movement, and how we can prepare for the next pandemic

Every single child diagnosed with measles represents a system failure—an inexcusable unforced error. The technology to prevent essentially 100 percent of measles cases has been in our hands since before the moon landing. But this serious airborne disease, once seemingly defeated, is resurgent around the globe. Why, at a time when biomedical science is so advanced, do parents turn away from vaccination, endangering their own children and the health of the wider population?
Using a combination of patient narrative, historical analysis, and scientific research, Dr. Adam Ratner, pediatrician and infectious disease specialist, argues that the reawakening of measles and the subsequent coronavirus pandemic are bellwethers of forgotten knowledge—indicators of decaying trust in science and an underfunded public health infrastructure. Our collective amnesia is starkly revealed in the growth of the antivaccine movement and the missteps in our responses to the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, leading to preventable tragedies in both cases.
Trust in medicine and public health is at a nadir. Declining vaccine confidence threatens a global reemergence of other vaccine-preventable diseases in the coming years. Ratner details how solving these problems requires the use of literal and figurative “booster shots” to gather new knowledge and retain the crucial lessons of the past. Learning—and remembering—these lessons is our best hope for preparing for the next pandemic. With attention and care and the tools we already have, we can make the world much safer for children tomorrow than it is today.

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Memorial Days

Geraldine Brooks

Description

A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse

Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at the beach. But all of this ended abruptly when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony’s death.

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.

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Source Code

Bill Gates

Description

The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age

The business triumphs of Bill Gates are widely known: the twenty-year-old who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company that became an industry giant and changed the way the world works and lives; the billionaire many times over who turned his attention to philanthropic pursuits to address climate change, global health, and U.S. education.
 
Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world.
 
Bill Gates tells this, his own story, for the first time: wise, warm, revealing, it’s a fascinating portrait of an American life.

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Famous Last Words

Gillian McAllister

Description

"From the author of Reese's Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time! An addictive thriller about a new mother's world upended when her husband commits a terrifying crime-and then disappears. How well does she truly know the man she loves? And what danger does she face if her entire life has been built on a lie? It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla's life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But after she arrives at the office, police officers storm the foyer: in the city, just near her work, a man has taken three hostages and is now in a tense standoff with law enforcement. And Luke, the person she's loved for more than a decade, the father of her child, is involved. But he is not a hostage. He is the kidnapper. All she has is a half-written cryptic note that Luke left for her. Seven years after the crime that shocked the nation, and her husband's subsequent disappearance, Camilla has slowly accepted that she will never have answers about what really happened that day. But just as she prepares to let Luke go for good, an anonymous location, sent to her by text message, reignites her suspicions about the kidnapping and sends her on a dangerous search for the truth. What follows is a propulsive, twisty story of motherhood, marriage, and the secrets at the heart of our closest relationships. Famous Last Words cements Gillian McAllister's reputation as "the best at putting her characters in impossible situations and making her readers not only contemplate but feel what it would be like to find themselves in those situations" (Emily Henry)"--

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Deep End

Ali Hazelwood

Description

A competitive diver and an ace swimmer jump into forbidden waters in this steamy college romance from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis.

Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. She has no time for relationships—at least, that’s what she tells herself.
 
Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he wins gold medals and breaks records: complete focus, with every stroke. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.
 
So they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water...

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Midnight Black

Mark Greaney

Description

With his lover imprisoned in a Russian gulag, the Gray Man will stop at nothing to free her in this latest entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.

A winter sunrise over the great plains of Russia is no cause for celebration. The temperature barely rises above zero, and the guards at Penal Colony IK22 are determined to take their misery out on the prisoners--chief among them, one Zoya Zakharova. Once a master spy for Russian foreign intelligence, then the partner and lover of the Gray Man, she has information the Kremlin wants, and they don't care what they have to do to get it.

But if they think a thousand miles of frozen wasteland and the combined power of the Russian police state is enough to protect them, they don't know the Gray Man. He's coming, and no one's safe.

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Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

Lisa Unger

Description

"Pacy and gripping, I couldn't read fast enough." --Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author of The Sanatorium



An extreme game of hide-and-seek turns deadly in this riveting new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger 



When the real game begins, who will make it to the count of 10?



Charismatic daredevil and extreme adventurer Maverick Dillan invites you to the ultimate game of hide-and-seek. But as the players gather on Falcao Island, the event quickly spirals into a chilling test of survival. A storm rages as a deadly threat stalks the contestants, turning the challenge into something far more sinister than the social media stunt it was intended to be.



Enter Adele, a single mother with a fierce determination to protect her children at all costs. When she begins the game, she unwittingly enters a twisted web of deception and intrigue. Can she maneuver through the treacherous storm and the relentless competition and get home to her family? In a ruthless battle for survival where the stakes are higher than ever, the blurry line between the virtual and the real proves that the only person we can trust is ourselves.

 

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The Medici Return

Steve Berry

Description

From celebrated New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry comes the latest installment in his wildly popular Cotton Malone series--now in development as a streaming series. The Medici Return takes Cotton to Italy to solve a five hundred year-old mystery. 



Cotton Malone is on the hunt for a forgotten 16th century Pledge of Christ--a sworn promise made by Pope Julius II that evidences a monetary debt owed by the Vatican, still valid after five centuries--now worth in the trillions of dollars. But collecting that debt centers around what happened to the famed Medici of Florence--a family that history says died out, without heirs, centuries ago. 



Who will become the next prime minister of Italy, and who will be the next pope? Finding answers proves difficult until Cotton realizes that everything hinges on when, and if, the Medici return.

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The Queens of Crime

Marie Benedict

Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Mystery of Mrs. Christie—a thrilling story of the five greatest women writers of the Golden Age of Mystery and their bid to solve a real-life murder. 

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden. 

Inspired by a true story in Sayers’ own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels.

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Three Days in June

Anne Tyler

Description

A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.

But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer at the height of her powers.

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Battle Mountain

C.J. Box

Description

Outlaw falconer Nate Romanowski is off the grid and out for revenge in this riveting new novel from #1 New York Times bestseller C. J. Box.

The campaign of destruction that Axel Soledad and Dallas Cates wreaked on Nate Romanowski and Joe Pickett left both men in tatters, especially Nate, who lost almost everything. Wondering if the civilized life left him vulnerable to attack, Nate dropped off the grid with his falcons in tow to prepare for vengeance.

When Joe gets a call from the governor asking for help finding his son-in-law, who has gone missing in the Sierra Madre mountain range, he enlists the help of a local, a rookie game warden named Susan Kany.

As Nate and fellow falconer Geronimo Jones circle closer to their prey, Joe and Susan follow the nearly cold trail to Warm Springs. Little do Nate and Joe know that their separate journeys are about to converge . . . at Battle Mountain.

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Open Season

Jonathan Kellerman

Description

The most beloved and enduring duo in American crime fiction is back.

Psychologist Alex Delaware and Homicide Detective Milo Sturgis race against time to find a twisted killer in this riveting thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling “master of suspense” (Los Angeles Times).

People come to Los Angeles to chase their dreams. Sometimes they find themselves cast into a nightmare. And sometimes, the most ardent dreamers turn out to be the most vicious monsters.

The body of an aspiring actress is found dumped near a hospital emergency room. She’s been drugged and murdered and the motive for the callous crime remains maddeningly out of reach. Until, a prime suspect materializes. Another Hollywood hopeful. Only to be shot dead by a sniper using a weapon that turns out to have been catalogued in a previous murder. And another, before that. It’s not long before more bodies begin piling up.

What makes the murderous spree baffling is the apparent lack of connection among the victims. Is this the work of a random thrill killer, the toughest of all cases to unravel?

But as Alex and Milo dig deeper they’re faced with an even knottier scenario: a highly complex killer with deep-seated motivation that will require all of their highly honed skills to decipher.

The latest page-turner from #1 New York Times bestseller Jonathan Kellerman, is a tale of psychological complexity, dark suspense, and shocking surprises. A wild ride through L.A.’s surreal underbelly climaxed by an edge-of-the chair conclusion.

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We All Live Here

Jojo Moyes

Description

The #1 New York Times bestselling author, whose books so many love, brings us a fresh, contemporary story of a woman and her unruly blended family

“Nobody writes women the way Jojo Moyes does.” —Jodi Picoult

Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.

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Bonded in Death

J. D. Robb

Description

The #1 New York Times bestselling author J. D. Robb spins an epic tale of loyalty, treachery, murder, and the long shadow of war...

His passport read Giovanni Rossi. But decades ago, during the Urban Wars, he was part of a small, secret organization called The Twelve. Responding to an urgent summons from an old compatriot, he landed in New York and eased into the waiting car. And died within minutes...

Lieutenant Eve Dallas finds the Rossi case frustrating. She’s got an elderly victim who’d just arrived from Rome; a widow who knows nothing about why he’d left; an as-yet unidentifiable weapon; and zero results on facial recognition. But when she finds a connection to the Urban Wars of the 2020s, she thinks Summerset—fiercely loyal, if somewhat grouchy, major-domo and the man who’d rescued her husband from the Dublin streets—may know something from his stint as a medic in Europe back then.

When Summerset learns of the crime, his shock and grief are clear—because, as he eventually reveals, he himself was one of The Twelve. It’s not a part of his past he likes to revisit. But now he must—not only to assist Eve’s investigation, but because a cryptic message from the killer has boasted that others of The Twelve have also died. Summerset is one of those who remain—and the murderous mission is yet to be fully accomplished...

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Paranoia

James Patterson

Description

NYPD Detective Michael Bennett will stop at nothing to protect family: his wife, his kids--and his fellow officers--in the latest psychological thriller from bestselling author James Patterson.



At every death scene, Bennett says a prayer over the victim. 

But recently, too many of the departed have been fellow cops. 

"I want you to look at these deaths on special assignment," NYPD Inspector Celeste Cantor says. "Report only to me."

Bennett excels as a solo investigator. But he's chasing a killer who feeds on isolation... and paranoia.

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Eat Your Age

Ian K. Smith

Description

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Dr. Ian K. Smith, learn how to defy the effects of aging by implementing simple changes at every decade.

Whether we like it or not, lots of things change as we age: our joints start to creak, our muscles weaken, and we lose coordination. Our bodies simply don't look or perform the same each decade of life, and our risks for various diseases and medical conditions also increase as the years do. Getting old may be inevitable, but feeling old is not: we can age well and maximize each decade of life if we do the right things at the right time.

In Eat Your Age, acclaimed doctor and bestselling author Ian K. Smith shows readers the steps they need to take in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond to increase longevity and stave off future illnesses and ailments. By eating the right foods, keeping tabs on the right numbers, moving the right way, and sleeping better, we can slow the hands on the proverbial clock. Since food is medicine, this book will teach you what to eat at every age to prevent life-threatening diseases. For example:

  • 30s--vitamin B6 (milk, ricotta cheese, tuna, eggs, sweet potato, bananas), magnesium (dark leafy greens, black beans, lentils, pumpkin seeds), Brussel sprouts, cauliflower
  • 40s--probiotic, plant-based milk, avocado, spinach, chickpeas
  • 50s--bromelain (pineapple, papaya, kiwifruit, asparagus, yogurt, sauerkraut), turmeric, berries, tomatoes, squash, carrots
  • 60s+--Omega-3 (fatty fish like salmon and mackerel as well as chia, flaxseed, edamame), vitamin B12 (clams, beef, fortified cereal, tuna, milk and dairy products, fortified nondairy products), probiotic, high fiber foods (pinto beans, acorn squash, collard greens, guava, strawberries, broccoli)

With specific lifestyle and diet advice including fitness tests for each decade of life, this book proves that it's never too late to start battling the aging process. With Dr. Smith's sage plan, readers have the opportunity to function their best and find greater joy in life at any age.

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Before Elvis

Preston Lauterbach

Description

In this thought-provoking book, the Black musicians who influenced Elvis Presley's music finally receive recognition and praise.



After Baz Luhrmann's movie, Elvis, hit theaters, audiences and critics alike couldn't help but question the Black origins of Elvis Presley's music and style, reigniting a debate that has been circling for decades. In Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King​, author Preston Lauterbach answers these questions definitively, based on new research and extensive, previously unpublished interviews with the artists who blazed the way and the people who knew them. 



Within these pages, Lauterbach examines the lives, music, legacies, and interactions with Elvis Presley of the four innovative Black artists who created a style that would come to be known as Rock 'n' Roll: Little Junior Parker, Big Mama Thornton, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, and mostly-unknown eccentric Beale Street guitarist Calvin Newborn. Along the way, he delves into the injustices of copyright theft and media segregation that resulted in Black artists living in poverty as white performers, managers, and producers reaped the lucrative rewards. 



In the wake of continuing conversations about American music and appropriation, Before Elvis is indispensable.

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Parent Yourself First

Bryana Kappadakunnel

Description

A fresh, no-nonsense parenting guide that shows you how to become a great parent (even if you didn’t have one yourself).

Many of us didn’t have a perfect childhood. But it’s never too late (or too early!) to transform into the parent you were always meant to be—grounded, present, intentional, compassionate, and confident. In Parent Yourself First, licensed marriage and family therapist Bryana Kappadakunnel argues that the secret to successful parenting is to UN-learn the wounded patterns you grew up with and create new ways to connect with your child. Parenting from a place of connection may feel unlike anything you experienced as a child or what you thought parenting was meant to be. But the results can be remarkable—and transformative.

As the founder of the popular Conscious Mommy community on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, Kappadakunnel explains that your upbringing is probably impacting your parenting style in ways you don’t even fully recognize, from how you manage your own emotions to how you connect with your kids in their vulnerable moments. In Parent Yourself First, she shares powerful stories from the families she’s counseled and practical tools for managing common parenting woes like tantrums and defiance. Her promise: You can break free of past patterns that no longer serve you and liberate your soul from old traumas and wounds.

Everyone has baggage. But it’s your responsibility to make sure your baggage doesn’t become your child’s problem. Healing yourself allows you to truly connect with your child; understand their needs; and guide them to live the happy, authentic life that they deserve.

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The Way of Play

Tina Payne Bryson

Description

The simple way to help your kids face their fears, handle big emotions, and bolster their social skills—from the New York Times bestselling co-author of The Whole-Brain Child and a renowned play therapist

“A parenting guide as useful as it is scientifically sound, The Way of Play is a gift for anyone who cares about human development and the growth-promoting importance of having fun in life!”—Daniel J. Siegel, MD
 
Most parents understand that free, unstructured playtime is great for children’s development. What they may not know is that playful interaction with parents is also a powerful way for kids to cultivate healthy emotional development and resilience. Kids often want their parents to play with them, but many parents don’t know how to play or see it only as an (often boring) way to kill time.
 
Playing with your kids doesn’t have to mean enrolling in countless parent-and-me classes or getting on all fours and making toy car sounds; the little daily moments together can make the most impact. In The Way of Play, world-renowned pediatric therapists and play experts Tina Payne Bryson and Georgie Wisen-Vincent break down seven simple, playful techniques that harness this caregiving magic in only a few minutes each day:
 
Leaning in to emotions helps children let go of anxieties, drama, and chaotic behavior.
Tuning in to the body teaches children to practice the art of surfing sensory waves.
Storytelling promotes better problem-solving.
Thinking out loud fosters calmer thinking and stronger communication with parents, siblings, and everyone else.
 
Full of science-backed research, real-life stories, and charming line illustrations to bring this novel advice to life, The Way of Play will help you nurture your kids and encourage them to become calm listeners, cooperative problem solvers, and respectful communicators. Just as important, it will help your whole family have more fun together and build stronger relationships.

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I Am Nobody's Slave

Lee Hawkins

Description

A 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist and former Wall Street Journal writer exhaustively examines his family's legacy of post-enslavement trauma and resilience, in this riveting memoir--a soulful, shocking, and spellbinding read that blends the raw power of Natasha Tretheway's Memorial Drive and the insights of Clint Smith's How the Word is Passed.

I Am Nobody's Slave tells the story of one Black family's pursuit of the American Dream through the impacts of systemic racism and racial violence. This book examines how trauma from enslavement and Jim Crow shaped their outlook on thriving in America, influenced each generation, and how they succeeded despite these challenges.

To their suburban Minnesotan neighbors, the Hawkinses were an ideal American family, embodying strength and success. However, behind closed doors, they faced the legacy of enslavement and apartheid. Lee Hawkins, Sr. often exhibited rage, leaving his children anxious and curious about his protective view of the world. Thirty years later, his son uncovered the reasons for his father's anxiety and occasional violence. Through research, he discovered violent deaths in his family for every generation since slavery, mostly due to white-on-Black murders, and how white enslavers impacted the family's customs.

Hawkins explores the role of racism-triggered childhood trauma and chronic stress in shortening his ancestors' lives, using genetic testing, reporting, and historical data to craft a moving family portrait. This book shows how genealogical research can educate and heal Americans of all races, revealing through their story the story of America--a journey of struggle, resilience, and the heavy cost of ultimate success.

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Defy

Dr. Sunita Sah

Description

Why is it so hard to speak up, even when we know something’s wrong?

This is the definitive book on defiance, a clear-eyed dissection of the forces that silence us, featuring groundbreaking research and legendary stories alongside everyday examples and strategies for how to unleash the power of a “True No.”

Many of us comply much more than we realize. How many times have you wanted to object, disagree, or opt out of something but ended up swallowing your words, shaking your head, and just going along? Analyzing cases ranging from corporate corruption and sexual abuse to everyday acquiescence at work, the doctor’s office, and in our personal lives, award-winning organizational psychologist Dr. Sunita Sah delves deep into why the pressure to comply is a corrosive and often invisible force in our society.

With her own revelatory research, she radically transforms our idea of defiance from a misunderstood negative trait into a crucial, positive force for personal and societal change. Taking us through her five stages of defiance, Dr. Sah equips readers with simple tools to make decisions that align with their values. Defy is the essential playbook for how to speak up and act when it matters most.

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The Power Pause

Neha Ruch

Description

A paradigm-shifting guide to career breaks after kids that rebrands stay-at-home parenthood for a new generation of women and families.

"So, what do you do?"

When Neha Ruch had to answer this seemingly innocent question for the first time after leaving her corporate job to care for her infant son, she drew a shameful blank. She couldn’t find the words to describe this new stage of life she’d just embarked on. She wasn’t a 1950s June Cleaver type, nor was she one of today’s updated stereotypes. (Craft Project Mom? Exhausted-in-Sweatpants Mom?) How, then, was she to navigate this identity shift?

Frustrated, Ruch embarked on a mission to rebrand the stay-at-home mother for a new generation of women who don’t want to leave their ambition behind just because they decide to pause or change their careers post-kids. Her online community, Mother Untitled, has become the leading voice and resource for women navigating this transition. In The Power Pause, Ruch addresses all the questions women face at this inflection point, such as, Can I afford to pause? Who am I without my career identity? How do I find meaning in the role? And can I ever transition back to paid work?

With expert advice and diverse stories of stay-at-home mothers who buck every stereotype, as well as interactive exercises to help the reader plot a course for the long term, The Power Pause is an essential handbook for a new generation of caregivers.

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The Woman Who Knew Everyone

Meryl Gordon

Description

A TOWN & COUNTRY MUST READ BOOK OF 2025

A deeply researched biography of the socialite, political hostess, activist and United States envoy to Luxembourg, Perle Mesta, from New York Times bestselling author Meryl Gordon.

Perle Mesta was a force to be reckoned with. In her heyday, this wealthy globe-trotting Washington widow was one of the most famous women in America, garnering as much media attention as Eleanor Roosevelt. Renowned for her world-class parties featuring politicians and celebrities, she was very close to three presidents-Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson. Truman named her as the first female envoy to Luxembourg, which inspired the hit musical based on Perle's life - "Call Me Madam" - which starred Ethel Merman, ran on Broadway for two years and later became a movie. A pioneering supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, she was a prodigious Democratic fundraiser and rescued Harry Truman's financially flailing 1948 campaign.

In this intensely researched biography, author Meryl Gordon chronicles Perle's lavish life and society adventures in Newport, Manhattan and Washington, while highlighting her important, but nearly forgotten contribution to American politics and the feminist movement.

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Save Our Souls

Matthew Pearl

Description



 

From the bestselling author of The Taking of Jemima Boone, the unbelievable true story of a real-life Swiss Family Robinson (and their dog) who faced sharks, shipwreck, and betrayal.

On December 10, 1887, a shark fishing boat disappeared. On board the doomed vessel were the Walkers--the ship's captain Frederick, his wife Elizabeth, their three teenage sons, and their dog--along with the ship's crew. The family had spotted a promising fishing location when a terrible storm arose, splitting their vessel in two and leaving those onboard adrift on the perilous sea.

When the castaways awoke the next morning, they discovered they had been washed ashore--on an island inhabited by a large but ragged and emaciated man who introduced himself as Hans. Hans appeared to have been there for a while and could quickly educate the Walkers and their crew on the island's resources. But Hans had a secret . . . and as the Walker family gradually came to learn more, what seemed like a stroke of luck to have the mysterious man's assistance became something ominous, something darker.

Like David Grann and Stacy Schiff, Matthew Pearl unveils one of the most incredible yet little-known historical true stories, and the only known instance in history of an actual family of castaways. Save Our Souls asks us to consider who we might become if we found ourselves trapped on a deserted island.

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Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old

Brooke Shields

Description

From generational icon Brooke Shields comes an intimate and empowering exploration of aging that flips the script on the idea of what it means for a woman to grow older

Brooke Shields has spent a lifetime in the public eye. Growing up as a child actor and model, her every feature was scrutinized, her every decision judged. Today Brooke faces a different kind of scrutiny: that of being a “woman of a certain age.”

And yet, for Brooke, the passage of time has brought freedom. At fifty-nine, she feels more comfortable in her skin, more empowered and confident than she did decades ago in those famous Calvin Kleins. Now, in Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old, she’s changing the narrative about women and aging.

This is an era, insists Brooke, when women are reclaiming agency and power, not receding into the shadows. These are the years when we get to decide how we want to live—when we get to write our own stories.

With remarkable candor, Brooke bares all, painting a vibrant and optimistic picture of being a woman in the prime of her life, while dismantling the myths that have, for too long, dimmed that perception. Sharing her own life experiences with humor and humility, and weaving together research and reporting, Brooke takes aim at the systemic factors that contribute to age-related bias.

By turns inspiring, moving, and galvanizing, Brooke’s honesty and vulnerability will resonate with women everywhere, and spark a new conversation about the power and promise of midlife.

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Simply Jamie

Jamie Oliver

Description

PRE-ORDER THE BRAND NEW COOKBOOK FROM JAMIE OLIVER

This edition has been adapted for the US market.

In five knockout chapters covering Midweek Meals, Weekend Wins, Reliable Roasting Pans, Pantry Love and Delicious Desserts, Jamie has produced a cookbook that will fit seamlessly into your life.

Simply Jamie exists to inspire you to get cooking – it’s full of delicious, achievable recipes you’ll love to make. Whatever your needs, you can trust that these tried and tested recipes will slot right into the rhythms of your week – from 20-minute-to-table dishes and no-time-to-shop pantry rescues to weekend wins that create smart leftover ideas, meaning mealtimes are simple in the days that follow.

Recipes include:

Jarred Pepper Pasta 
Roasted Veg with Camembert Fondue 
Batch-It-Up Bolognese
Gochujang Chicken Noodle Bake 
8 Cool Ways With Salmon
Smash Burger
Spicy Paneer & Veg Squash Bake
Pantry Raid Fishcakes
Hot & Crispy Ice Cream Parcel
Epic Sticky Toffee Pudding

This is a book about inspiration and bringing joy back into the kitchen.

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The JFK Conspiracy

Brad Meltzer

Description

From the New York Times bestselling authors of The Nazi Conspiracy and The Lincoln Conspiracy comes a true, little-known story about the first assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy, right before his inauguration.

Kennedy, the thirty-fifth president of the United States, is often ranked among Americans’ most well-liked presidents. Yet what most Americans don’t know is that JFK’s historic presidency almost ended before it began—at the hands of a disgruntled sociopathic loner armed with dynamite.

On December 11, 1960, shortly after Kennedy’s election and before his inauguration, a retired postal worker named Richard Pavlick waited in his car—a parked Buick—on a quiet street in Palm Beach, Florida. Pavlick knew the president-elect’s schedule. He knew when Kennedy would leave his house. He knew where Kennedy was going. From there, Pavlick had a simple plan—one that could’ve changed the course of history.

Written in the gripping, page-turning style that is the hallmark of Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch’s bestselling series, this is a slice of history vividly brought to life. Meltzer and Mensch are at the top of their game with this brilliant exploration of what could’ve been for one of the most compelling leaders of the 20th century.

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Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Grady Hendrix

Description

There’s power in a book…
 
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.
 
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
 
Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid...and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master” (NPR).

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Beautiful Ugly

Alice Feeney

Description

“Her best book yet.” —Harlan Coben
The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists Alice Feeney returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage. . . 
. . . and revenge.

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.

Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared.

A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible – a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.

“Magnetic and jaw-dropping.” —Mary Kubica, bestselling author
"Unforgettable." —Chris Whitaker, bestselling author

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Grave Danger

James Grippando

Description



 

Bestselling author James Grippando's legendary criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck is back to defend a single mother accused of kidnapping her own child in a perilous case involving politics and international diplomacy that will test his legal expertise and his marriage.

Jack Swyteck's new client fled Iran to Miami with her daughter, and has been accused of kidnapping by her husband. The seasoned attorney must not only plan a winning defense. To stop the father from taking the girl back to Tehran, Jack must build a case under international law and prove that returning the child would put her at risk.

But everything in this case isn't what it seems, and Jack quickly learns that his client is really the child's aunt and that the biological mother may have been killed by Iran's morality police. But what role did the father play in his wife's death, and why is Jack's wife, FBI Agent Andie Henning, being pressured by her bosses to persuade Jack to drop the case

Plunging into an investigation unlike any other, Jack must discover who is behind the legal maneuvering and what their interest is. As politics threatens to derail the case and compromise the best interests of the child, Jack and Andie find themselves on opposite sides--with their marriage hanging in the balance. For their relationship to survive, the couple must navigate a treacherous web of deceit that extends from a Miami courthouse to the highest echelons of Washington DC, and spells grave danger at every turn.

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Order of Swans

Jude Deveraux

Description

In this spellbinding, fantasy-rich romance, a woman is swept into a world where she has the power to alter fairy tales, and change a kingdom's destiny...



To Kaley Arens, a PhD student and expert in folklore, fairy stories have always had a power and an allure beyond mere entertainment.



It's only when Kaley accompanies her lifelong friend Jobi on a visit to his home that she realizes how much she still has to learn. Bellis isn't the remote island that she believed it to be. It's another world--a stunningly beautiful and seductive one, with its own royalty, its own rules, and inhabitants who breathe life into the tales she was taught were fiction.



Kaley's presence is no simple holiday. She has a mysterious connection with Jobi and with Bellis, and abilities that may help determine this world's fate. Tasked with locating a lost prince, Kaley and her companions--the enigmatic Tanek, a member of the Order of Swans, and Sojee, Kaley's colossal bodyguard--journey through a land both thrilling and terrifying, where the uncanny and the familiar go hand in hand.



But in fairy tales, heroes and villains are easy to discern. Here, nothing is quite as it seems. And though Kaley is discovering that she can change the outcome of the fairy tales she knows so well, her own story is unfolding in ways impossible to predict, with a destiny she could never have foretold...

 

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Shattering Dawn

Jayne Ann Krentz

Description

An unsettling investigation teaches two deeply suspicious people how to trust in the next thrilling novel of the Lost Night Files trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz.

Amelia Rivers, a member of the Lost Night Files podcast team, hires private investigator Gideon Sweetwater to catch the stalker who has been watching her. Amelia suspects the stalker may be connected to the shadowy organization responsible for the night that she and her two friends lost to amnesia—a night that upended their lives and left them with paranormal talents.

Gideon suspects that Amelia is either paranoid or an outright con artist, but he can’t resist the chemistry between them. He takes the case despite his skepticism. For her part, Amelia has second thoughts about the wisdom of employing the mysterious Mr. Sweetwater. She is wary of the powerful attraction between them, and deeply uneasy about the nightmarish paintings on the walls of his home. She senses they were inspired by his own dreamscapes.

Amelia knows she doesn’t have time to find another investigator, and Gideon is forced to reckon with the truth when he disrupts what was intended to be Amelia’s kidnapping. Now the pair is on the run, with no choice but to return to the haunting ruins of the old hotel where Amelia’s lost night occurred. They are desperate to stop a killer and the people who are conducting illegal experiments with a dangerous drug that is designed to enhance psychic abilities. If they are to survive, they will have to trust each other and the passion that bonds them.

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The Crash

Freida McFadden

Description

A brand new psychological thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden!

The nightmare she's running from is nothing compared to where she's headed.

Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn't realize she's heading straight into a blizzard.

She never arrives at her destination.

Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she's made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle occurs: she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.

But something isn't right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realize she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn't what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet.

And now she must do whatever it takes to save herself--and her unborn child.

A gut-wrenching story of motherhood, survival, and twisted expectations, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden delivers a snowbound thriller that will chill you to the bone.

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The Big Empty

Robert Crais

Description

Elvis Cole and his enigmatic partner, Joe Pike, race to find a terrifying, unidentified killer in this twisting, unpredictable thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robert Crais.

Traci Beller was thirteen when her father disappeared in the sleepy town of Rancha, not far from Los Angeles. The evidence says Tommy Beller abandoned his family, but Traci never believed it. Now, ten years later, Traci is a high-profile influencer with millions of followers and the money to hire the best detective she can find: Elvis Cole.

Elvis heads to Rancha where an ex-con named Sadie Givens and her daughter, Anya, might have a line on the missing man. But when Elvis finds himself shadowed by a gang of vicious criminals, the missing persons cold case becomes far more sinister.

Elvis calls his ex-Marine friend, Joe Pike, for help, and they follow Tommy Beller's trail into the depths of a monstrous, hidden evil. The case flips on its head, victims become predators, predators become prey, and the question becomes: Can Elvis Cole save them all from this nightmare?

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Onyx Storm (Standard Edition)

Rebecca Yarros

Description

After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty.

Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust.

Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.

They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth.

But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath. 

The Empyrean series is best enjoyed in order.
Reading Order:
Book #1 Fourth Wing
Book #2 Iron Flame
Book #3 Onyx Storm

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Never Say Never

Danielle Steel

Description

#1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel’s deeply moving novel is the story of a woman who finds her life turned upside down while living temporarily in the French countryside.

Oona Kelly Webster has much to be grateful for. A striking woman with red hair and green eyes, she has a loving family and a job she adores, editing a prestigious line of books. To celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, she and her husband, Charles, have planned a visit to France.

But then Charles drops a bombshell. He has been living a lie—hiding an affair for a year—and he is leaving Oona for a younger male lover.

Although devastated, Oona decides to travel to France without Charles. She arrives in a charming village an hour outside of Paris, and settles into the house she has rented, called La Belle Florence—named after the king’s mistress for whom it was built. But just as she’s catching her breath, she’s dealt another blow: Her company’s merger will eliminate her job. 

In the space of a few months, everything she nurtured for decades has slipped through her fingers. The only silver lining is that she can remain in France, where the simple life in beautiful surroundings slowly begins to heal her, as does the little white dog she rescues, and her friendly neighbor hailing from Trinidad, who delights her with his openness and warmth. 

Though she does not recognize him at first, she soon realizes her neighbor is a well-known actor. As their feelings for each other begin to deepen, Oona wrestles with the risks of opening her heart again—especially to a younger, very famous man.

Never Say Never is an inspiring novel about a woman who finds a second chance at happiness and love, all because she understands the importance of being brave enough to stay open to change.

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Presumed Guilty

Scott Turow

Description

Read Scott Turow's new "unputdownable" courtroom drama from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent, the phenomenon that redefined the legal thriller and is the basis for Apple TV+'s most-watched drama series ever (Kristin Hannah, #1 NYT bestselling author). 



"No one does it better."―David Baldacci, #1 NYT Bestselling Author

"The truth is, Turow is just better at this than the rest of us."―Greg Iles, #1 NYT Bestselling Author

"This is manna for legal-thriller fans."―Booklist, starred review

"This easily ranks among Turow's best."―Publishers Weekly, starred review

"An absorbing and entertaining read." ―Kirkus



Rusty is a retired judge attempting a third act in life with a loving soon-to-be wife, Bea, with whom he shares both a restful home on an idyllic lake in the rural Midwest and a plaintive hope that this marriage will be his best, and his last. But the peace that's taken Rusty so long to find evaporates when Bea's young adult son, Aaron, living under their supervision while on probation for drug possession, disappears. If Aaron doesn't return soon, he will be sent back to jail.



Aaron eventually turns up with a vague story about a camping trip with his troubled girlfriend, Mae, that ended in a fight and a long hitchhike home. Days later, when she still hasn't returned, suspicion falls on Aaron, and when Mae is subsequently discovered dead, Aaron is arrested and set for trial on charges of first-degree murder.



Faced with few choices and even fewer hopes, Bea begs Rusty to return to court one last time, to defend her son and to save their last best hope for happiness. For Rusty, the question is not whether to defend Aaron, or whether the boy is in fact innocent--it's whether the system to which he has devoted his life can ever provide true justice for those who are presumed guilty.

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Holmes Is Missing

James Patterson

Description

"Best-selling author James Patterson populates his murder-mystery novels with cold-blooded killers and smart detectives" (USA Today). In Holmes is Missing, PI Brendan Holmes has committed the perfect crime--he's made himself disappear.



Success has come quickly to Holmes, Marple & Poe Investigations. The New York City agency led by three detectives--Brendan Holmes, "the brain," Margaret Marple, "the eyes," and Auguste Poe, the "muscle"--with famous names and mysterious pasts is one major case away from cementing its professional reputation. 



But as a series of child abductions tests the PIs' legendary skills, the cerebral Holmes's absence leaves a gaping hole in the agency roster.



Only by closing ranks and solving the mystery within can they recover all that's been lost.

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The Texas Murders

James Patterson

Description

In this thrilling novel from a #1 New York Times bestselling author, the great Texas Rangers go on a no-holds-barred pursuit of the most dangerous killer ever to terrorize Texas. 



Texas Ranger Rory Yates protects his home state wearing a five-pointed silver badge and carrying a Sig Sauer. 



When a native woman disappears on the summer solstice, clues point to a cold case. 



Yates, a quick-draw champion, partners with expert archer Ava Cruz of the Tigua Tribal police.



The investigation leads to the edges of Texas's most unforgiving landscape, where the officers take dead aim with every shot in their arsenals.

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Trial by Ambush

Marcia Clark

Description

In this dramatic true account about the power of sensationalized crime, one woman's case is exposed for its sexism, flagrant disregard for the truth, and, ultimately, the dangers posed by an unbridled prosecution.

Unwanted and neglected from birth, Barbara Graham had to overcome the odds just to survive. Her beauty was both a blessing and a curse--offering her too many options of all the wrong kind. Her innate sensitivity left her vulnerable to the harsh realities of the street, where she was left to fend for herself before she reached double digits. Her record of petty crimes spoke to a life that constantly teetered on the brink of disaster.

But in 1953, a catastrophic twist of fate would catapult her out of obscurity and into the headlines.

When a robbery spiraled out of control and escalated into a brutal murder, Barbara became the centerpiece of a media circus. Her beauty enraptured the press, and they were quick to portray her as a villainous femme fatale despite abundant evidence to the contrary--a fiction the prosecution eagerly promoted.

The frenzy of public interest and willful distortion paved a treacherous path for Barbara Graham. In Trial by Ambush, author and criminal lawyer Marcia Clark investigates the case exposing the fallacies in the demonizing picture they painted and the critical evidence that was never revealed.

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Heretic

Catherine Nixey

Description

"Heretic has the mother lode of tales too hot for Christendom. Nixey has carefully wrung out a number of apocryphal texts for scandal." --Harper's Magazine

From a celebrated classicist and author of The Darkening Age ("[a] ballista-bolt of a book"--New York Times Book Review), a biography of the many, diverse variations of Jesus who thrived in early Christian traditions--and how they were lost until just one "true" Christ survived.

Contrary to the teachings of the church today, in the first several centuries of Christianity's existence, there was no consensus as to who Jesus was or why he had mattered. Instead, there were many different Christs. One had a twin brother and traveled to India; another consorted with dragons. One particularly terrifying Christ scorned his parents and killed those who opposed him.

Moreover, in the early years of the first millennium there were many other saviors, many sons of gods who healed the sick and cured the lame. But as Christianity spread, they were pronounced unacceptable - even heretical - and they faded from view.

Heretic unearths the different versions of Christ who existed in the minds of early Christians, and the process of evolution--and elimination--by which Jesus became the singular figure we know today.

"A brilliant book--sometimes frightening, occasionally funny, frequently unsettling and always a thrill to read. It probes painfully into the pathology of belief." -- The Times



 

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The Cure for Women

Lydia Reeder

Description

How Victorian male doctors used false science to argue that women were unfit for anything but motherhood—and the brilliant doctor who defied them

After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school, more women demanded a chance to study medicine. Barred entrance to universities like Harvard, women built their own first-rate medical schools and hospitals. Their success spurred a chilling backlash from elite, white male physicians who were obsessed with eugenics and the propagation of the white race. Distorting Darwin’s evolution theory, these haughty physicians proclaimed in bestselling books that women should never be allowed to attend college or enter a profession because their menstrual cycles made them perpetually sick. Motherhood was their constitution and duty.

Into the midst of this turmoil marched tiny, dynamic Mary Putnam Jacobi, daughter of New York publisher George Palmer Putnam and the first woman to be accepted into the world-renowned Sorbonne medical school in Paris. As one of the best-educated doctors in the world, she returned to New York for the fight of her life. Aided by other prominent women physicians and suffragists, Jacobi conducted the first-ever data-backed, scientific research on women's reproductive biology. The results of her studies shook the foundations of medical science and higher education. Full of larger than life characters and cinematically written, The Cure for Women documents the birth of a sexist science still haunting us today as the fight for control of women’s bodies and lives continues.

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Oathbreakers

Matthew Gabriele

Description

"This is a serious, meticulous history that will also appeal to Game of Thrones fans, who will discover intriguing parallels between history and fiction." -- Booklist

"An enlightening portrait of the medieval mindset." -- Publishers Weekly

The authors of The Bright Ages return with a real-life Game of Thrones--the story of the Carolingian Civil War, a bloody, protracted battle pitting brother against brother, father against son, that would end an empire, upend a continent, and redefine the future of Europe

By the early ninth century, the Carolingian empire was at the height of its power. The Franks, led by Charlemagne, had built the largest European domain since Rome in its heyday. Though they jockeyed for power, prestige, and profit, the Frankish elites enjoyed political and cultural consensus. But just two generations later, their world was in shambles. Civil war, once an unthinkable threat, had erupted after Louis the Pious's sons tried to overthrow him--and then placed their knives at the other's neck. Families who had once charged into battle together now drew each other's blood.

The Carolingian Civil War would rage for years as kings fought kings, brother faced off against brother, and sons challenged fathers. Oathbreakers is the dramatic history of this brutal, turbulent time. Medieval historians David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele illuminate what happens when a once unshakeable political and cultural order breaks down and long suppressed tensions flare into deadly violence. Drawn from rich primary sources, featuring a wide cast of characters, packed with dramatic twists and turns, this is history that rivals the greatest fictional epics--with consequences that continue to shape our own world.

Oathbreakers offers lessons of what deep cracks in a once-stable social and political fabric might reveal, and the bloody consequences of disagreeing on facts and reality. The Civil War at the heart of this tale asks: who is "in" and who is "out"? And what happens when things fall apart?

 

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LifeStyled

Shira Gill

Description

Transform your entire life by cutting mental clutter, reducing overwhelm, and simplifying your daily routines with this inspiring and comprehensive guide from the bestselling author of Minimalista and Organized Living.

As a professional home organizing expert with a diverse roster of clients ranging from students to CEOs, Shira Gill realized that almost everyone she worked with was overextended, overscheduled, and overwhelmed. So, using her signature blend of practical minimalism and organization, Shira designed a game-changing framework to streamline and simplify every part of your life, regardless of lifestyle or budget.

LifeStyled is built around three key steps: adjusting volume, creating systems, and implementing habits. 

Applying these tools, you can transform your home, life, mindset, and schedule with accessible tips and quick wins—little things you can integrate or practice for quick, transformative results.

Chapters cover health, home, relationships, career, finance, and personal development with actionable prompts to help you:

 

  • Learn realistic strategies to optimize your sleep, nutrition, and overall wellness.
  • Implement simple habits and routines to create and maintain a home that feels good.
  • Cut the relationship clutter and invest in meaningful connections and community.
  • Redefine success on your own terms and align your financial strategy with your values.
  • Prioritize activities that help you feel energized, engaged, and fully alive.
  • Disrupt unproductive thought patterns and create motivating new narratives.


Shira has dedicated her career to helping people gain clarity and activate their best selves, even when they are short on time or capacity. In LifeStyled, she shows readers how to achieve more ease, alignment, and freedom, one tiny step at a time.

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Good Nature

Kathy Willis

Description

A Next Big Idea Club must-read selection!

An Amazon Editor's Pick for Best Nonfiction Book!

A ground-breaking investigation into newly discovered evidence showing that remarkable things happen to our bodies and our minds when our senses connect with the natural world. 

We all take for granted the idea that being in nature makes us feel better. But if you were a skeptical scientist—or indeed any kind of skeptic—who wanted hard scientific evidence for this idea, where would you look? And how would that evidence be gathered?

It wasn’t until Dr. Kathy Willis was asked to contribute to an international project looking for the societal benefits we gain from plants that she stumbled across a study that radically changed the way she saw the natural world. In the study there was clear proof that patients recovering from gall bladder operations recovered more quickly if they were looking at trees.

In fact, in the last decade there has been an explosion of “proof" that incredible things happen to our bodies and our minds when our senses interact with the natural world. In Good Nature, Kathy Willis takes the reader on a journey with her to dig out all the experiments around the world that are looking for this evidence—experiments made easier by the new kinds of data being collected from satellites and big-data biobanks. Having a vase of roses on your desk or a green wall in your office makes a measurable difference to your well-being; certain scents in room diffusers genuinely can boost your immune system; and, in a chapter that Kathy calls "Hidden Sense," we learn that touching organic soil has a significant effect on the healthiness of your microbiome.

What is remarkable about this book is how its revelations should be commonsense—schools should let children play in nature to improve their health and concentration; urban streets should have trees—and yet it reveals just how difficult it is to prove this to businesses and governments. As Kathy Willis says in her narrative, "We now know enough to self-prescribe in our homes, offices or working spaces, gardens, and when out walking. However small these individual actions might be, overall they have the potential to provide a large number of health benefits. And we need to be encouraging others to do the same. Nature is far more than just something that is useful for our health. It is not a dispensable commodity. It is an inherent part of us."

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The Last Tsar

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

Description

"Elegantly written and magisterially researched" (Robert Service, author of A History of Modern Russia), the definitive story behind the self-destruction of the autocratic Romanov dynasty, by the world's foremost expert



When Tsar Nicholas II fell from power in 1917, Imperial Russia faced a series of overlapping crises, from war to social unrest. Though Nicholas's life is often described as tragic, it was not fate that doomed the Romanovs--it was poor leadership and a blinkered faith in autocracy.



Based on a trove of new archival discoveries, The Last Tsar narrates how Nicholas's resistance to reform doomed the monarchy. Encompassing the captivating personalities of the era, it untangles the struggles between the increasingly isolated Nicholas and Alexandra and the factions of scheming nobles, ruthless legislators, and pragmatic generals who sought to stabilize the restive Russian empire either with the Tsar or without him. By rejecting compromise, Nicholas undermined his supporters at crucial moments. His blunders cleared the way for all-out civil war and the eventual rise of the Soviet Union.



Definitive and engrossing, The Last Tsar uncovers how Nicholas II stumbled into revolution, taking his family, the Romanov dynasty, and the whole Russian Empire down with him.

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The Paris Girl

Francelle Bradford White

Description

Movingly written by her own daughter, this captivating and intimate biography chronicles the astonishing courage Andrée Griotteray, a teenage girl in Nazi-occupied Paris who would become a hero of the French Resistance through her harrowing work as an underground intelligence courier. For readers of Three Ordinary Girls, A Woman of No Importance, Lis Parisiennes, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line, and the many other untold stories of WWII’s “hidden figures.”

Andrée Griotteray was just 19 when the Germans invaded France and occupied Paris, where she worked as a clerk in the passport office. When her younger brother, Alain, created a resistance network named Orion, Andrée joined his efforts, secretly typing up and printing copies of an underground newspaper, and stealing I.D. cards which allowed scores of Jewish citizens to escape persecution.

Charming and pretty, Andrée nimbly avoided the unwanted attentions of German officers, even as she secretly began working as an undercover courier. Displaying fearlessness in the face of immense pressure, she traveled throughout the county delivering vital intelligence destined for France’s allies—until the day she was betrayed and arrested.

Throughout her ordeal, Andrée stayed composed, refusing to inform on her comrades. Before she was set free, she even duped her interrogators into revealing who had betrayed Orion, and continued her underground activities until France’s liberation.

Weaving in diary entries, letters, and conversations, Andrée’s daughter, Francelle, brings a uniquely personal slant to her mother’s story. The Paris Girl reveals the narrow escapes and moments of terror, the daily acts of bravery and defiance, and the extraordinary courage displayed by Andrée and so many of her contemporaries, that helped turned the tide of war.

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Custodians of Wonder

Eliot Stein

Description

A vivid look at 10 astonishing people who are maintaining some of the world's oldest and rarest cultural traditions.

Eliot Stein has traveled the globe in search of remarkable people who are preserving some of our most extraordinary cultural rites. In Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive, Stein introduces readers to a man saving the secret ingredient in Japan's 700-year-old original soy sauce recipe. In Italy, he learns how to make the world's rarest pasta from one of the only women alive who knows how to make it. And in India, he discovers a family rumored to make a mysterious metal mirror believed to reveal your truest self. From shadowing Scandinavia's last night watchman to meeting a 27th-generation West African griot to tracking down Cuba's last official cigar factory “readers” more than a century after they spearheaded the fight for Cuban independence, Stein uncovers an almost lost world.

Climbing through Peru’s southern highlands, he encounters the last Inca bridge master who rebuilds a grass-woven bridge every year from the fabled Inca Road System. He befriends a British beekeeper who maintains a touching custom of "telling the bees" important news of the day. And he crunches through a German forest to find the official mailman of the only tree in the world with its own address – to which countless people from across the world have written in hopes of finding love. These are just some of the last custodians preserving age-old rites on the brink of disappearance against all odds. Let Eliot Stein introduce you to all of them.

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The Last Kilo

T J English

Description

From true-crime legend T. J. English, the epic, behind-the-scenes saga of "Los Muchachos," one of the most successful cocaine trafficking organizations in American history--a story of glitz, glamour, and organized crime set against 1980's Miami.

Despite what Scarface might lead one to believe, violence was not the dominant characteristic of the cocaine business. It was corruption: the dirty cops, agents, lawyers, judges, and politicians who made the drug world go round. And no one managed that carousel of dangerous players better than Willy Falcon.

A Cuban exile whose family escaped Fidel Castro's Cuba when he was eleven years old, Falcon, as a teenager, became active in the anti-Castro movement. He began smuggling cocaine into the U.S. as a way to raise money to buy arms for the Contras in Central America. This counter-revolutionary activity led directly to Willy's genesis as a narco. He and his partners built an extraordinary international organization from the ground up. Los Muchachos, the syndicate founded by Falcon, thrived as a major cocaine distribution network in the U.S. from the late 1970's into the early 1990's. At their height, Los Muchachos made more than a hundred million dollars a year. At the same time, Willy, his brother Tavy Falcon, and partner Sal Magluta became famous as championship powerboat racers.

Cocaine, used by everyone from A-list celebrities to lawyers and people in law enforcement, came to define an era, and for a time, Willy Falcon and those like him--major suppliers, of whom there were only a few--became stars in their own right. They were the deliverers of good times, at least until the downside of persistent cocaine use became apparent: delusions of grandeur, psychological addiction, financial ruin. Thus, the War on Drugs was born, and federal authorities came after Falcon and his crew with a vengeance. Willy found himself on the run, his marriage and family life in shambles, the halcyon days of boat races and lavish trips to Vegas and parties at the Mutiny night club seemingly a distant memory.

T. J. English has been granted unprecedented access to the inner workings of Los Muchachos, sitting down with Willy Falcon and his associates for many lengthy interviews, and revealing never-before-understood details about drug trafficking. A classic of true-crime writing from a master of the genre, The Last Kilo traces the rise and fall of a true cocaine empire--and the lives left in its wake.

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Sisters in Science

Olivia Campbell

Description

The extraordinary true story of four women pioneers in physics during World War II and their daring escape out of Nazi Germany

In the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of scientific thought. But after the Nazis took power, Jewish and female citizens were forced out of their academic positions. Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer and Hildegard Stücklen were eminent in their fields, but they had no choice but to flee due to their Jewish ancestry or anti-Nazi sentiments.

Their harrowing journey out of Germany became a life-and-death situation that required Herculean efforts of friends and other prominent scientists. Lise fled to Sweden, where she made a groundbreaking discovery in nuclear physics, and the others fled to the United States, where they brought advanced physics to American universities. No matter their destination, each woman revolutionized the field of physics when all odds were stacked against them, galvanizing young women to do the same.

Well researched and written with cinematic prose, Sisters in Science brings these trailblazing women to life and shows us how sisterhood and scientific curiosity can transcend borders and persist--flourish, even--in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

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Sister Snake

Amanda Lee Koe

Description

A glittering, bold, darkly funny novel about two sisters--one in New York, one in Singapore--who are bound by an ancient secret

Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. Emerald is a nihilistic sugar baby in New York, living from whim to whim and using her charms to make ends meet. But they share a secret: once, they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang dynasty China.

A thousand years later, their mysterious history is the only thing still binding them together. When Emerald experiences a violent encounter in Central Park and Su boards the next flight to New York, the two reach a tenuous reconciliation for the first time in decades. Su convinces Emerald to move to Singapore so she can keep an eye on her--but she soon begins to worry that Emerald's irrepressible behavior will out them both, in a sparkling, affluent city where everything runs like clockwork and any deviation from the norm is automatically suspect.

Razor-sharp, hilarious, and raw in emotion, Sister Snake explores chosen family, queerness, passing, and the struggle against conformity. Reimagining the Chinese folktale "The Legend of the White Snake," this is a novel about being seen for who you are--and, ultimately, how to live free.

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Rental House

Weike Wang

Description

DAKOTA JOHNSON’S TEATIME PICTURES DECEMBER BOOK CLUB PICK 

ONE OF NPR’S “BOOKS WE LOVE” 2024

“One of the most nuanced, astute critiques of America now I’ve read in years. And it’s also frequently hilarious.”
Los Angeles Times

“A funny, perceptive look at what it means to defy societal expectations…timeless.” 
—Washington Post

“[For] basically anyone who is breathing, Rental House is a must-read."
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Sharp, insightful, occasionally heartbreaking, and incredibly relatable.”
—Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“For anyone who’s experienced demanding parents, misunderstanding in-laws, a vacation-gone-wrong, or mid-life questions about how to reconcile your own personality liabilities with those of the person you love most.”
—Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot

From the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife. 
 
Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash?  How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?

With her “wry, wise, and simply spectacular” style (People) and “hilarious deadpan that recalls Gish Jen and Nora Ephron” (O, The Oprah Magazine), Weike Wang offers a portrait of family that is equally witty, incisive, and tender.

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Against the Grain

Peter Lovesey

Description

Detective Peter Diamond goes undercover at a seasonal festival in this delightful and bittersweet conclusion to the multi-award-winning series.

Detective Peter Diamond, chief of the Avon and Somerset Murder Squad, is taking a short holiday in the country. His former colleague Julie Hargreaves has invited Diamond and his partner, Paloma, to visit the idyllic village of Baskerville (no relation to the Sherlock Holmes story, so he’s told). It turns out Julie’s invitation was not without ulterior motives. The woman who owns the village’s largest dairy farm has been convicted of manslaughter following a terrible accident in her grain silo. Julie’s ex-investigator instinct tells her there has been a miscarriage of justice and a murderer is on the loose—but Julie’s been keeping secrets of her own, and can’t take her inquiry any further.

Diamond takes the bait; the case is a fascinating one, and he’s quite enjoying his incognito information-gathering, getting to know the villagers as they prepare for their annual Harvest Festival. The deeper into the cow dung Diamond mucks, the more convinced he becomes there was foul play. But maintaining his innocent tourist facade becomes harder as he closes in on his suspects. To protect his alias, he might have to learn how to operate a tractor or drive a herd of wayward cows. He might even be forced to attend a hoedown—not that he’d dance, not even to catch a killer. Or would he? The curmudgeonly detective has plenty to learn about himself as he tries on some new hats: undercover private investigator; village detective; country gentleman.

Over 30 years and 21 other novels, Peter Lovesey has bewitched his enormous fandom with the wry, stubborn, and fiendishly clever Peter Diamond. Now he brings his Anthony, Macavity, and CWA Dagger–winning series to a close with this delightful and bittersweet final installment.

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The Secret of the Three Fates

Jess Armstrong

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Following the atmospheric and award-winning gothic historical mystery debut, The Curse of Penryth Hall, USA Today bestselling author Jess Armstrong's heroine, Ruby Vaughn, returns in The Secret of the Three Fates, where the Scottish Hills hold ghosts of the past that threaten Ruby’s present.

American heiress Ruby Vaughn still hasn't entirely forgiven her octogenarian employer and housemate Mr. Owen for bringing the occult into their lives during her recent trip to Cornwall. He claims their journey to Manhurst Castle in the Scottish Borders is simply to appraise and acquire illuminated manuscripts for their rare books shop, however when Ruby discovers there are no manuscripts and receives news of a séance to be held that very night, she begins to grow suspicious about the true reason why they have come.

The Great War left grieving families willing to sacrifice anything for the chance to say goodbye to a lost loved one. Mr. Owen is no exception. He is desperate to speak to his son, but he doesn’t want to face the spirits alone. When the séance—hosted by a trio of mediums billing themselves as The Three Fates—goes awry, Mr. Owen’s secrets begin to unravel, threatening to reveal a history that he has been running from for half his life. Something Ruby knows all too well how to do.

When Ruby finds one of the Three Fates murdered the night of the seance, she and Mr. Owen quickly become the prime suspects. To clear their names, Ruby enlists the help of Ruan Kivell, the folk healer Pellar who helped her weeks before in Cornwall. As their investigation progresses Ruby and Ruan realize someone is determined to prevent them from uncovering the truth about what happened to the dead medium.

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