Closure Notice: Staff Training

HPL and HPL Express are closed 9 a.m.-1 p.m. on Monday, February 16 for staff training. Both locations will reopen at 1 p.m. and resume regular hours.

Recommended Reads

Category
Audience
Image for "Gravity"

Gravity

Sarah Deming

Description

A. S. King meets Chris Crutcher in boxing journalist Sarah Deming's YA novel about a young female boxer who learns to fight for what she wants.

Gravity "Doomsday" Delgado is good at breaking things. Maybe she learned it from her broken home.

But since she started boxing with a legendary coach at a gym in Brooklyn, Gravity is finding her talent for breaking things has an upside. Lately, she's been breaking records, breaking her competitors, and breaking down the walls inside her. Boxing is taking her places, and if she just stays focused, she knows she'll have a shot at the Olympics.

Life outside the ring is heating up, too. Suddenly she's flirting (and more) with a cute boxer at her gym--much to her coach's disapproval. Meanwhile, things at home with Gravity's mom are reaching a tipping point, and Gravity has to look out for her little brother, Ty. With Olympic dreams, Gravity will have to decide what is worth fighting for.

View Details
Image for "Furia (Spanish Edition)"

Furia

Yamile Saied

Description

Ganadora de la medalla Pura Belpré 2021 para autores jóvenes.
 
Yo era la Furia, después de todo. Sería la elegida para romper el círculo.
 
En Rosario, Argentina, Camila Hassan tiene una doble vida. En casa es una hija atenta y en la cancha es la imparable Furia. Cuando su equipo califica para el torneo Sudamericano, sabrá cuán lejos puede llegar. El camino es difícil. Camila deberá enfrentarse a un mundo que no está preparado para chicas como ella, pero La Furia no puede ser negada.
 
Furia es una conmovedora historia sobre la familia, la identidad, el primer amor y, por supuesto, el fútbol. Resonará en cualquier muchacha a quien alguna vez le han dicho que no puede y no haya parado hasta conseguirlo.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

A powerful contemporary YA for fans of The Poet X and I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter set in Argentina, about a rising soccer star whomust put everything on the line —even her blooming love story— to follow her dreams.

In Rosario, Argentina, Camila Hassan lives a double life.

At home, she is a careful daughter, living within her mother’s narrow expectations, in herrising-soccer-star brother’s shadow, and under the abusive rule of her short-temperedfather.

On the field, she is La Furia, a powerhouse of skill and talent. When her team qualifies forthe South American tournament, Camila gets the chance to see just how far those talentscan take her. In her wildest dreams, she’d get an athletic scholarship to a North Americanuniversity.

But the path ahead isn’t easy. Her parents don’t know about her passion. They wouldn’t allow a girl to play fútbol—and she needs their permission to go any farther. And the boy she once loved is back in town. Since he left, Diego has become an international star, playing in Italy for the renowned team Juventus. Camila doesn’t have time to be distracted by her feelings for him. Things aren’t the same as when he left: she has herown passions and ambitions now, and La Furia cannot be denied. As her life becomesmore complicated, Camila is forced to face her secrets and make her way in a world with no place for the dreams and ambition of a girl like her.

Filled with authentic details and the textures of day-to-day life in Argentina, heart-soaringromance, and breathless action on the pitch, Furia is the story of a girl’s journey to make her life her own.

View Details
Image for "Good Energy"

Good Energy

Casey Means, MD

Description

The instant #1 New York Times bestseller!

A bold new vision for optimizing our health now and in the future


What if depression, anxiety, infertility, insomnia, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, cancer and many other health conditions that torture and shorten our lives actually have the same root cause?
    Our ability to prevent and reverse these conditions - and feel incredible today -  is under our control and simpler than we think. The key is our metabolic function - the most important and least understood factor in our overall health. As Dr. Casey Means explains in this groundbreaking book, nearly every health problem we face can be explained by how well the cells in our body create and use energy. To live free from frustrating symptoms and life-threatening disease, we need our cells to be optimally powered so that they can create “good energy,” the essential fuel that impacts every aspect of our physical and mental wellbeing.
   If you are battling minor signals of “bad energy” inside your body, it is often a warning sign that more life-threatening illness may emerge later in life. But here’s the good news: for the first time ever, we can monitor our metabolic health in great detail and learn how to improve it ourselves.
    Weaving together cutting-edge research and personal stories, as well as groundbreaking data from the health technology company Dr. Means founded, Good Energy offers an essential four-week plan and explains:

 

 

  • The five biomarkers that determine your risk for a deadly disease.
  • How to use inexpensive tools and technology to “see inside your body” and take action.
  • Why dietary philosophies are designed to confuse us, and six lifelong food principles you can implement whether you’re carnivore or vegan.
  • The crucial links between sleep, circadian rhythm, and metabolism
  • A new framework for exercise focused on building simple movement into everyday activities
  • How cold and heat exposure helps build our body’s resilience
  • Steps to navigate the medical system to get what you need for optimal health


   Good Energy offers a new, cutting-edge understanding of the true cause of illness that until now has remained hidden.  It will help you optimize your ability to live well and stay well at every age.

 

 

View Details
Image for "Better Living Through Birding"

Better Living Through Birding

Christian Cooper

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Central Park birder Christian Cooper takes us beyond the viral video that shocked a nation and into a world of avian adventures, global excursions, and the unexpected lessons you can learn from a life spent looking up.

“Wondrous . . . captivating.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of An Immense World

A Washington Post and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year • Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal

Christian Cooper is a self-described “Blerd” (Black nerd), an avid comics fan and expert birder who devotes every spring to gazing upon the migratory birds that stop to rest in Central Park, just a subway ride away from where he lives in New York City. While in the park one morning in May 2020, Cooper was engaged in the birdwatching ritual that had been a part of his life since he was ten years old when what might have been a routine encounter with a dog walker exploded age-old racial tensions. Cooper’s viral video of the incident would send shock waves through the nation.

In Better Living Through Birding, Cooper tells the story of his extraordinary life leading up to the now-infamous incident in Central Park and shows how a life spent looking up at the birds prepared him, in the most uncanny of ways, to be a gay, Black man in America today. From sharpened senses that work just as well at a protest as in a park to what a bird like the Common Grackle can teach us about self-acceptance, Better Living Through Birding exults in the pleasures of a life lived in pursuit of the natural world and invites you to discover them yourself.

Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and primer on the art of birding, this is Cooper’s story of learning to claim and defend space for himself and others like him, from his days at Marvel Comics introducing the first gay storylines to vivid and life-changing birding expeditions through Africa, Australia, the Americas, and the Himalayas. Better Living Through Birding recounts Cooper’s journey through the wonderful world of birds and what they can teach us about life, if only we would look and listen.

View Details
Image for "Outlive"

Outlive

Peter Attia, MD

Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD • A groundbreaking manifesto on living better and longer that challenges the conventional medical thinking on aging and reveals a new approach to preventing chronic disease and extending long-term health, from a visionary physician and leading longevity expert
 
“One of the most important books you’ll ever read.”—Steven D. Levitt, New York Times bestselling author of Freakonomics

AN ECONOMIST AND BLOOMBERG BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.
 
For all its successes, mainstream medicine has failed to make much progress against the diseases of aging that kill most people: heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and type 2 diabetes. Too often, it intervenes with treatments too late to help, prolonging lifespan at the expense of healthspan, or quality of life. Dr. Attia believes we must replace this outdated framework with a personalized, proactive strategy for longevity, one where we take action now, rather than waiting.
 
This is not “biohacking,” it’s science: a well-founded strategic and tactical approach to extending lifespan while also improving our physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Dr. Attia’s aim is less to tell you what to do and more to help you learn how to think about long-term health, in order to create the best plan for you as an individual. In Outlive, readers will discover:
 
• Why the cholesterol test at your annual physical doesn’t tell you enough about your actual risk of dying from a heart attack.
• That you may already suffer from an extremely common yet underdiagnosed liver condition that could be a precursor to the chronic diseases of aging.
• Why exercise is the most potent pro-longevity “drug”—and how to begin training for the “Centenarian Decathlon.”
• Why you should forget about diets, and focus instead on nutritional biochemistry, using technology and data to personalize your eating pattern.
• Why striving for physical health and longevity, but ignoring emotional health, could be the ultimate curse of all.
 
Aging and longevity are far more malleable than we think; our fate is not set in stone. With the right roadmap, you can plot a different path for your life, one that lets you outlive your genes to make each decade better than the one before.

View Details
Image for "Mind Magic"

Mind Magic

James R. Doty, MD

Description

A deep exploration of the neuroscience behind manifestation, with a six-part plan for realizing your dreams

For decades the practice of manifestation has been widely dismissed as self-involved, materialistic pseudoscience. But as neuroscientist and recognized compassion leader Dr. James Doty reveals, manifestation introduces us to different possibilities, and it lays the groundwork for a kinder, better world.
Doty grounds us in the practices that change our brain structures: attention, meditation, visualization, and compassion. This mind magic allows us to move through the world in ways that help us see clearly—reclaiming our agency, realizing our dreams, and reaching out to help others along the path.
Where previous works about manifestation have focused narrowly on outward success and individual benefit, Mind Magic delivers an openhearted call to make manifestation part of a deeper contribution to healing the problems we face today.

View Details
Image for "Break the Cycle"

Break the Cycle

Dr. Mariel Buqué

Description

The definitive, paradigm-shifting guide to healing intergenerational trauma—weaving together scientific research with practical exercises and stories from the therapy room—from Dr. Mariel Buqué, PhD, a Columbia University–trained trauma-informed psychologist and practitioner of holistic healing
 

From Dr. Mariel Buqué, a leading trauma psychologist, comes this groundbreaking guide to transforming intergenerational pain into intergenerational abundance. With Break the Cycle, she delivers the definitive guide to healing inherited trauma. Weaving together scientific research with practical exercises and stories from the therapy room, Dr. Buqué teaches readers how trauma is transmitted from one generation to the next and how they can break the cycle through tangible therapeutic practices, learning to pass down strength instead of pain to future generations.

When a physical wound is left unhealed, it continues to cause pain and can infect the whole body. When emotions are left unhealed, they similarly cause harm that spreads to other parts of our lives, hurting our family, friends, community members, and others. Eventually, this hurt can injure an entire lineage, metastasizing across years and generations. This is intergenerational trauma.

This trauma is why some of us become estranged from our families, why some of us are people pleasers, why some of us find ourselves in codependent relationships. This trauma can be rooted in the experiences of ancestors, who may have suffered due to unhealthy family dynamics, and it can be collective, the result of a shared experience like systemic oppression, or harmful ingrained behaviors in a culture like the acceptance of physical discipline of children, or even a natural disaster like a pandemic. These wounds are complex, impacting our minds, bodies, and spirits. Healing requires a holistic approach that has so far been absent from the field of psychology. Until now.

 

View Details
brave new medicine

Brave New Medicine

Cynthia Li

Description

In this revelatory memoir, Doctor Cynthia Li shares the truth about her disabling autoimmune illness, the limitations of Western medicine, and her hard-won lessons on healing—mind, body, and spirit. 

Li had it all: a successful career in medicine, a loving marriage, children on the horizon. But it all came crashing down when, after developing an autoimmune thyroid condition, mysterious symptoms began consuming her body. Test after test came back "within normal limits," baffling her doctors—and baffling herself. Housebound with two young children, Li began a solo odyssey from her living room couch to find a way to heal.

Brave New Medicine details the physical and existential crisis that forces a young doctor to question her own medical training. She dives into the root causes of her illness, learning to unlock her body's innate intelligence and wholeness. Li relates her story with the insight of a scientist, and the humility and candor of a patient, exploring the emotional and spiritual shifts beyond the physical body.

Millions of people worldwide are affected by autoimmune disease. While complex conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) are gaining attention, patients struggling with these mysterious ailments remain largely dismissed by their doctors, families, and friends. This is the harsh reality that doctor-turned-"difficult patient" Li faced firsthand.

Drawing on cutting-edge science, ancient healing arts, and the power of intuition, this memoir offers support, validation, and a new perspective for doctors and patients alike. Through her story, you can find the wisdom and heart to start your own healing journey, too.

View Details
Image for "The Mind-Gut Connection"

The Mind-Gut Connection

Emeran Mayer

Description

Cutting-edge neuroscience combines with the latest discoveries on the human microbiome to inform this practical guide that proves once and for all the inextricable, biological link between mind and body.

We have all experienced the connection between our mind and our gut—the decision we made because it “felt right;” the butterflies in our stomach before a big meeting; the anxious stomach rumbling when we’re stressed out. While the dialogue between the gut and the brain has been recognized by ancient healing traditions, including Aryuvedic and Chinese medicine, Western medicine has failed to appreciate the complexity of how the brain, gut, and more recently, the microbiome—the microorganisms that live inside us—communicate with one another. In The Mind-Gut Connection, Dr. Emeran Mayer, Executive Director of the UCLA Center for Neurobiology of Stress, offers a revolutionary look at this developing science, teaching us how to harness the power of the mind-gut connection to take charge of our health.

The Mind-Gut Connection, shows how to keep the communication brain-gut communication clear and balanced to:

• Heal the gut by focusing on a plant-based diet

• Balance the microbiome by consuming fermented foods and probiotics, fasting, and cutting out sugar and processed foods

• Promote weight loss by detoxifying and creating a healthy digestion and maximum nutrient absorption

• Boost immunity and prevent the onset of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s

• Generate a happier mindset and reduce fatigue, moodiness, anxiety, and depression

• Prevent and heal GI disorders such as leaky gut syndrome; food sensitivities and allergies; and IBS; as well as digestive discomfort such as heartburn and bloating

• And much more.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

View Details
The Darlings

The Darlings

Hannah McKinnon

Description

On a secluded stretch of Cape Cod, a wedding is being planned at a beloved beach house—only for a long kept secret to emerge that hurtles both the wedding and the family off course, in this fresh, lyrical new novel from the acclaimed author of the “charming and warmhearted” (PopSugar) The Summer House.

At age ninety-two, Tish Darling is the matriarch and protector of what’s left of the Darling family fortune, including the decades-old beach house, Riptide. Located on the crook of Cape Cod, it’s a place she once loved but has not returned to in decades, since a tragic family accident one perfect summer day. Still, she is determined to keep Riptide in the family. Even if that means going back there on the cusp of her granddaughter’s wedding. Even if it means revealing someone else’s truth.

Her daughter-in-law Cora has her own complicated feelings surrounding Tish’s return as well as doubts about her place within the Darling family. After all, Cora came into the family carrying a secret that her husband promised to keep for her forever. Tish’s sudden return to Riptide may force everything they’ve worked so hard to protect out into the light.

Meanwhile, Cora’s eldest daughter, Andi isn’t exactly looking forward to her little sister’s wedding so soon after her own divorce. To make matters worse, her ex has arrived on the Cape with his insufferable new girlfriend. Andi has no idea how she’ll be able to survive this family reunion…until she bumps into an old friend from the past. A friend who may just offer her a second chance.

As the three distinct generations of Darling women arrive at Riptide, they have no idea that this summer will forever change them. One old secret, kept with the best of intentions, threatens to not only divide the family, but shatter each member’s sense of who they really are. Can the ties that bind survive, when the history you’ve always been told turns out to be untrue?

View Details
Image for "The Guncle"

The Guncle

Steven Rowley

Description

National Bestseller • Wall Street Journal Bestseller • USA Today Bestseller
An NPR Book of the Year
Finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor
Finalist for the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards

From the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus and The Editor comes a warm and deeply funny novel about a once-famous gay sitcom star whose unexpected family tragedy leaves him with his niece and nephew for the summer.


Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for weeklong visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. But in terms of caretaking and relating to two children, no matter how adorable, Patrick is, honestly, overwhelmed.

So when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and Patrick's brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of "Guncle Rules" ready to go, Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled acting career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine-year-old. Quickly realizing that parenting--even if temporary--isn't solved with treats and jokes, Patrick's eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you're unfailingly human.

With the humor and heart we've come to expect from bestselling author Steven Rowley, The Guncle is a moving tribute to the power of love, patience, and family in even the most trying of times.

View Details
Image for "Charlotte Illes Is Not a Detective"

Charlotte Illes Is Not a Detective

Katie Siegel

Description

“An immensely fun, voice-y read with a twisty mystery.” –Mia P. Manansala, author of the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Award-winning Arsenic and Adobo

“Charlotte is a delight.” —The New York Times

For anyone seeking to satisfy their Harriet the Spy, Encyclopedia Brown, or Nancy Drew nostalgia, this charming, entertaining debut based on the popular @katiefliesaway TikTok series stars a twentysomething former kid detective who’s coaxed out of retirement for one last case.


The downside of being a famous child detective is that sooner or later, you have to grow up . . .

As a kid, Charlotte Illes’ uncanny sleuthing abilities made her a minor celebrity. But in high school, she hung up her detective’s hat and stashed away the signature blue landline in her “office”—aka garage—convinced that finding her adult purpose would be as easy as tracking down missing pudding cups or locating stolen diamonds.

Now twenty-five, Charlotte has a nagging fear that she hit her peak in middle school. She’s living with her mom, scrolling through job listings, and her love life consists mostly of first dates. When it comes to knowing what to do next, Charlotte hasn’t got a clue.

And then, her old blue phone rings . . .

Reluctantly, Charlotte is pulled back into the mystery-solving world she knew—just one more time. But that world is a whole lot more complicated for an adult. As a kid, she was able to crack the case and still get her homework done on time. Now she’s dealing with dead bodies, missing persons, and villains who actually see her as a viable threat. And the detective skills she was once so eager to never use again are the only things that can stop a killer ready to make sure her next retirement is permanent . . .

“Kept me guessing and left me with a warm and happy glow.” –Mary Robinette Kowal, author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning The Calculating Stars

View Details
Image for "Arsenic and Adobo"

Arsenic and Adobo

Mia P. Manansala

Description

A RUSA Award-winning novel!

The first book in a new culinary cozy series full of sharp humor and delectable dishes—one that might just be killer....


When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, her life seems to be following all the typical rom-com tropes. She's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case.

With the cops treating her like she's the one and only suspect, and the shady landlord looking to finally kick the Macapagal family out and resell the storefront, Lila's left with no choice but to conduct her own investigation. Armed with the nosy auntie network, her barista best bud, and her trusted Dachshund, Longanisa, Lila takes on this tasty, twisted case and soon finds her own neck on the chopping block…

View Details
Image of The Summer place

The Summer Place

Jennifer Weiner

Description

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTELLER

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of That Summer comes another heartfelt and unputdownable novel of family, secrets, and the ties that bind.


When her twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser is shocked. But the wheels are in motion. Headstrong Ruby has already set a date (just three months away!) and spoken to her beloved safta, Sarah’s mother Veronica, about having the wedding at the family’s beach house in Cape Cod. Sarah might be worried, but Veronica is thrilled to be bringing the family together one last time before putting the big house on the market.

But the road to a wedding day usually comes with a few bumps. Ruby has always known exactly what she wants, but as the wedding date approaches, she finds herself grappling with the wounds left by the mother who walked out when she was a baby. Veronica ends up facing unexpected news, thanks to her meddling sister, and must revisit the choices she made long ago, when she was a bestselling novelist with a different life. Sarah’s twin brother, Sam, is recovering from a terrible loss, and confronting big questions about who he is—questions he hopes to resolve during his stay on the Cape. Sarah’s husband, Eli, who’s been inexplicably distant during the pandemic, confronts the consequences of a long ago lapse from his typical good-guy behavior. And Sarah, frustrated by her husband, concerned about her stepdaughter, and worn out by challenges of life during quarantine, faces the alluring reappearance of someone from her past and a life that could have been.

When the wedding day arrives, lovers are revealed as their true selves, misunderstandings take on a life of their own, and secrets come to light. There are confrontations and revelations that will touch each member of the extended family, ensuring that nothing will ever be the same.

From “the undisputed boss of the beach read” (The New York Times), The Summer Place is a testament to family in all its messy glory; a story about what we sacrifice and how we forgive. Enthralling, witty, big-hearted, and sharply observed, this is Jennifer Weiner’s love letter to the Outer Cape and the power of home, the way our lives are enriched by the people we call family, and the endless ways love can surprise us.

View Details
Image for "Our Italian Summer"

Our Italian Summer

Jennifer Probst

Description

Three generations of women in the Ferrari family must heal the broken pieces of their lives on a trip of a lifetime through picturesque Italy from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Probst
 
Workaholic, career-obsessed Francesca is fiercely independent and successful in all areas of her life except one: family. She struggles to make time for her relationship with her teenage daughter, Allegra, and the two have become practically strangers to each other. When Allegra hangs out with a new crowd and is arrested for drug possession, Francesca gives in to her mother's wish that they take one epic summer vacation to trace their family roots in Italy. She just never expected to face a choice that might change the course of her life. . .
 
Allegra wants to make her grandmother happy, but she hates the idea of forced time with her mother and vows to fight every step of the ridiculous tour, until a young man on the verge of priesthood begins to show her the power of acceptance, healing, and the heartbreaking complications of love.
 
Sophia knows her girls are in trouble. A summer filled with the possibility for change is what they all desperately need. Among the ruins of ancient Rome, the small churches of Assisi, and the rolling hills of Tuscany, Sophia hopes to show her girls that the bonds of family are everything, and to remind them that they can always lean on one another, before it's too late.

View Details
Image for "Last Summer at the Golden Hotel"

Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

Elyssa Friedland

Description

 

A Good Morning America Buzz Pick
A Can’t-Miss Beach Read For Summer 2021 from The Skimm
A Best Beach Read of 2021 from Bustle
A Best Summer Read of 2021 from PopSugar

A family reunion for the ages when two clans convene for the summer at their beloved getaway in the Catskills—perfect for fans of Dirty Dancing and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel—from the acclaimed author of The Floating Feldmans.

In its heyday, The Golden Hotel was the crown jewel of the hotter-than-hot Catskills vacation scene. For more than sixty years, the Goldman and Weingold families – best friends and business partners – have presided over this glamorous resort which served as a second home for well-heeled guests and celebrities. But the Catskills are not what they used to be – and neither is the relationship between the Goldmans and the Weingolds. As the facilities and management begin to fall apart, a tempting offer to sell forces the two families together again to make a heart-wrenching decision. Can they save their beloved Golden or is it too late?

Long-buried secrets emerge, new dramas and financial scandal erupt, and everyone from the traditional grandparents to the millennial grandchildren wants a say in the hotel’s future. Business and pleasure clash in this fast-paced, hilarious, nostalgia-filled story, where the hotel owners rediscover the magic of a bygone era of nonstop fun even as they grapple with what may be their last resort.

 

View Details
Image for "Save What's Left"

Save What's Left

Elizabeth Castellano

Description

GMA BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF PEOPLE MAGAZINE'S BEST BOOKS OF SUMMER • An outrageously funny debut novel about a woman who moves to a small beach town looking for peace, only to find herself in an all-out war with her neighbors.

“Irreverent and unexpectedly tender, this story takes neighborhood feuding to new heights and finds beauty and reinvention in unlikely places." —Oprah Daily

"Brings a tongue-in-cheek tone to the beach read genre."—TIME


When Kathleen Deane’s husband, Tom, tells her he's no longer happy with his life and their marriage, Kathleen is confused. They live in Kansas. They’ve been married thirty years. Who said anything about being happy? But with Tom off finding himself, Kathleen starts to think about what she wants. And her thoughts lead her to a small beach community on the east coast, a town called Whitbey that has always looked lovely in the Christmas letters her childhood friend Josie sends every year.

It turns out, though, that life in Whitbey is nothing like Josie’s letters. Kathleen’s new neighbor, Rosemary, is cantankerous, and the town’s supervisor won't return Kathleen’s emails, but worst of all is the Sugar Cube, the monstrosity masquerading as a holiday home that Kathleen’s absentee neighbors are building next door to her quaint (read: tiny) cottage. As Kathleen gets more and more involved in the fight against the Sugar Cube and town politics overall, she realizes that Whitbey may not be a fairytale, but it just might be exactly what she needed.

Save What’s Left can best be described as the “un-beach read.” It pulls back the curtain on life in a beach town, revealing the true cost of a pretty view. Told from the candid and irreverent perspective of a newcomer turned local, this is a story of forgiveness, fortitude, and second chances.

View Details
Image for "This Summer Will Be Different"

This Summer Will Be Different

Carley Fortune

Description

THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

A glorious and tantalizing new escape from #1 New York Times bestselling author Carley Fortune.

This summer they’ll keep their promise. This summer they won't give into temptation. This summer will be different.


Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother. Lucy and Felix’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again.

It’s easier said than done.

Each year, Lucy escapes to PEI for a big breath of coastal air, fresh oysters and crisp vinho verde with her best friend, Bridget. Every visit begins with a long walk on the beach, beneath soaring red cliffs and a golden sun. And every visit, Lucy promises herself she won’t wind up in Felix’s bed. Again.

If Lucy can’t help being drawn to Felix, at least she’s always kept her heart out of it.

When Bridget suddenly flees Toronto a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to follow her to the island. Her mission is to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she’s never been able to. But Felix’s sparkling eyes and flirty quips have been replaced with something new, and Lucy’s beginning to wonder just how safe her heart truly is.

View Details
Image for "Sunset Beach"

Sunset Beach

Mary Kay Andrews

Description

Pull up a lounge chair and have a cocktail at Sunset Beach – it comes with a twist.

Drue Campbell’s life is adrift. Out of a job and down on her luck, life doesn’t seem to be getting any better when her estranged father, Brice Campbell, a flamboyant personal injury attorney, shows up at her mother’s funeral after a twenty-year absence. Worse, he’s remarried – to Drue’s eighth grade frenemy, Wendy, now his office manager. And they’re offering her a job.

It seems like the job from hell, but the offer is sweetened by the news of her inheritance – her grandparents’ beach bungalow in the sleepy town of Sunset Beach, a charming but storm-damaged eyesore now surrounded by waterfront McMansions.

With no other prospects, Drue begrudgingly joins the firm, spending her days screening out the grifters whose phone calls flood the law office. Working with Wendy is no picnic either. But when a suspicious death at an exclusive beach resort nearby exposes possible corruption at her father’s firm, she goes from unwilling cubicle rat to unwitting investigator, and is drawn into a case that may – or may not – involve her father. With an office romance building, a decades-old missing persons case re-opened, and a cottage in rehab, one thing is for sure at Sunset Beach: there’s a storm on the horizon.

Sunset Beach is a compelling ride, full of Mary Kay Andrews' signature wit, heart, and charm.

View Details
Image for "Jackpot Summer"

Jackpot Summer

Elyssa Friedland

Description

USA Today bestseller
A Skimm Reads Pick
She Reads - Most Anticipated Contemporary Fiction 2024

After the Jacobson siblings win a life-changing fortune in the lottery, they assume their messy lives will transform into sleek, storybook perfection–but they couldn’t be more wrong.

 
The four Jacobson children were raised to respect the value of a dollar. Their mother reused tea bags and refused to pay retail; their father taught them to budget before he taught them to ride a bike. And yet, now that they’re adults, their financial lives are in disarray.
 
The siblings reunite when their newly widowed father puts their Jersey Shore beach house on the market. Packing up childhood memories isn’t easy, especially when there’s other drama brewing. Matthew is miserable at his corporate law job and wishes he had more time with his son; Laura’s marriage is imploding in spectacular fashion; Sophie’s art career is stalled while her boyfriend’s is on the rise; and Noah’s total failure to launch has him doing tech repair for pennies.
 
When Noah sees an ad for a Powerball drawing, he and his sisters go in on tickets while their brother Matthew passes.  All hell breaks loose when one of the tickets is a winner and three of the four Jacobsons become overnight millionaires. Without their mother’s guidance, and with their father busy playing pickleball in a Florida retirement village, the once close-knit siblings search for comfort in shiny new toys instead of each other.
 
It’s not long before the Jacobsons start to realize that they’ll never feel rich unless they can pull their family back together.
 

View Details
Image for "The Vacation"

The Vacation

John Marrs

Description

Longlisted for the 2022 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, The Vacation is a compulsive, holiday-set thriller from John Marrs, bestselling author of The One, now a Netflix Original Series.

"John Marrs's creative, high-concept thrillers never fail to keep me furiously turning the pages."--Sarah Pearse
"John Marrs is a master of suspense." --Jeneva Rose

How far would you run to escape your past?

Venice Beach, Los Angeles. A paradise on earth. Tourists flock to the golden coast and the promise of Hollywood. But for eight strangers at a beach-front hostel, there is far more on their minds than an extended vacation. All of them are running from something. And they all have secrets they'd kill to keep...
 

View Details
Image for "Hot Summer"

Hot Summer

Elle Everhart

Description

Sparks fly when a young woman finds herself cast on a Love Island-inspired reality show and has to choose between her heart and her strategy in this sizzling new queer romantic comedy from the beloved author of Wanderlust.

This summer, things are about to heat up.

Cas Morgan has spent years of her life watching Hot Summer, the hit reality dating show that pairs together a bunch of sexy singles in an exotic island location. Like the rest of the TV-watching UK public, she’s captivated by the hot contestants, outrageous fights, and hilarious banter. But she never quite thought she’d be a part of it, until her company secures a partnership with the production team behind the show, and Cas is handpicked as a contestant. She won’t get any extra help making it through the eight weeks in the hot Cypriot sun, but if she does well and makes it to the finals, her long-awaited promotion will be secured.

Cas is ready to spend the summer trying to make herself more likeable to win over the voting public—and, if not likeable, then at least iconic. But just as she steps into the villa, her entire plan goes off course. She’s instantly smitten with fellow contestant, Ada, who shockingly appears to be on the show to find a genuine relationship, one Cas can't give. Ada is gorgeous and charming, and seems to like Cas exactly as she is, sharp-edges and all. Cas isn't used to the side of herself Ada brings out, and when their connection becomes undeniable—and Cas's own standing in the villa precarious—she's torn between listening to her heart or sticking to her strategy.

View Details
Image for "Mrs. Nash's Ashes"

Mrs. Nash's Ashes

Sarah Adler

Description

A New York Public Library Best Book of 2023

A Most Anticipated Summer Read by Today Barnes & NobleBookRiot ∙ GoodReadsCulturess ∙ and more!


A starry-eyed romantic, a cynical writer, and (the ashes of) an elderly woman take the road trip of a lifetime that just might upend everything they believe about true love.


Millicent Watts-Cohen is on a mission. When she promised her elderly best friend that she’d reunite her with the woman she fell in love with nearly eighty years ago, she never imagined that would mean traveling from D.C. to Key West with three tablespoons of Mrs. Nash’s remains in her backpack. But Millie’s determined to give her friend a symbolic happily-ever-after, before it’s (really) too late—and hopefully reassure herself of love’s lasting power in the process.

She just didn’t expect to have a living travel companion.

After a computer glitch grounds flights, Millie is forced to catch a ride with Hollis Hollenbeck, an also-stranded acquaintance from her ex’s MFA program. Hollis certainly does not believe in happily-ever-afters—symbolic or otherwise—and makes it quite clear that he can’t fathom Millie’s plan ending well for anyone.

But as they contend with peculiar bed-and-breakfasts, unusual small-town festivals, and deer with a death wish, Millie begins to suspect that her reluctant travel partner might enjoy her company more than he lets on. Because for someone who supposedly doesn’t share her views on romance, Hollis sure is becoming invested in the success of their journey. And the closer they get to their destination, the more Millie has to admit that maybe this trip isn’t just about Mrs. Nash’s love story after all—maybe it’s also about her own.

View Details
Image for "Savvy Sheldon Feels Good as Hell"

Savvy Sheldon Feels Good as Hell

Taj McCoy

Description

"This feel-good, uplifting read is filled with positive messages about self-care and self-love. It is sure to please foodies, home-makeover buffs, and anyone looking for a light-hearted romantic read." -USA Today



A sexy romance about a plus-size sweetheart who gets a full-life makeover after a brutal breakup and falls for the incredibly hot contractor renovating her home.



Savvy Sheldon spends a lot of time tiptoeing around the cracks in her life: her high-stress and low-thanks job, her clueless boyfriend and the falling-apart kitchen she inherited from her beloved grandma--who taught her how to cook and how to love people by feeding them. But when Savvy's world starts to crash down around her, she knows it's time for some renovations.



Starting from the outside in, Savvy tackles her crumbling kitchen, her relationship with her body, her work-life balance (or lack thereof) and, last but not least, her love life. The only thing that doesn't seem to require effort is her ride-or-die squad of friends. But as any home-reno-show junkie can tell you, something always falls apart during renovations. First, Savvy passes out during hot yoga. Then it turns out that the contractor she hires is the same sexy stranger she unintentionally offended by judging based on appearances. Worst of all, Savvy can't seem to go anywhere without tripping over her ex and his latest "upgrade." Savvy begins to realize that maybe she should've started her renovations the other way around: beginning with how she sees herself before building a love that lasts.



"A heartfelt, hopeful, and humorous exploration of the importance of learning to love yourself...a joy to read." -Booklist, STARRED review



Don't miss Taj's new book, Zora Books Her Happily Ever After: A heart-pounding, curvy romance about an indie bookstore owner who finds herself in a love triangle!
 

View Details
Image for "Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies"

Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

Catherine Mack

Description

A USA Today Bestseller
#1 Toronto Star Bestseller in Canadian Fiction

A Globe and Mail Bestseller in Canadian Fiction
A Vancouver Sun Bestseller in New Releases

An Indie Next List Pick (May 2024)
An Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense (May 2024)
Library Journal’s Mystery Pick of the Month (April 2024)

Ten days, eight suspects, six cities, five authors, three bodies . . . one trip to die for.

"Quick, captivating, and oh-so-much-fun! This delicious mystery is as spellbinding as Knives Out."—Elle Cosimano, New York Times bestselling author of the Finlay Donovan series

All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series—is that too much to ask?

Clearly, because when an attempt is made on the real Connor’s life—the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can't get out of her life—Eleanor’s enlisted to help solve the case.

Contending with literary competitors, rabid fans, a stalker—and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly—theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who’s really trying to get away with murder?

Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies is the irresistible and hilarious series debut from Catherine Mack, introducing bestselling fictional author Eleanor Dash on her Italian book tour that turns into a real-life murder mystery, as her life starts to imitate the world in her books.

View Details
Image for "Love and Hot Chicken"

Love and Hot Chicken

Mary Liza Hartong

Description

"Delightful! This novel will open your heart and preach to your funny bone."--Jill Conner Browne, New York Times bestselling author of the Sweet Potato Queen's Book of Love

The debut of a dynamite new voice from the South, Love and Hot Chicken is a spicy and hilarious Tennessee story about family, friendship, fried chicken, and two girls in love.

The Chickie Shak is something of a historical landmark. Red clapboard walls, thriving wasp population, yard-toilets resplendent with sunflowers. My best friend Lee Ray and I used to come after our softball games and snag a picnic table while our mammas ordered the home team special. Truth is, most people around here order the same thing until the day somebody throws their ashes off a roller coaster at Dollywood. The line snakes around the building as far as you can see, the grimiest bunch of Jessies, Pearls, and Scooters you ever did behold, hobnobbing in the parking lot from noon until night.

When PJ Spoon returns home for her beloved daddy's funeral, she doesn't expect to stick around. Why abandon her PhD program at Vanderbilt for the humble charms of her hometown, Pennywhistle, Tennessee? Mamma's broken heart, that's why. But truth be told, PJ's own heart ain't doing too good either. She impulsively takes a job as a fry cook at Pennywhistle's beloved Chickie Shak, where locals gather for Nashville-style hot chicken. It may not be glamorous, but it's something to do.

Fate shakes up PJ's life again when the town rallies around the terribly retro and terribly fun Hot Chicken Pageant. PJ finally notices her cute redheaded coworker Boof, a singer-songwriter with a talent as striking as her curly hair, and learns to fear her smack-talking manager, Linda.

As PJ and Boof fall for each other, Boof's search for her birth mother--a Pennywhistle native--catapults the budding couple into a mystery that might be better left unsolved. The Chickie Shak pageant takes off, spurring old rivalries and new friendships in this tale of unexpected connections and new beginnings.

View Details
Image for "Happy Place"

Happy Place

Emily Henry

Description

A couple who broke up months ago pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.
 
Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.
 
They broke up five months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
 
Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blissful week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
 
Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week…in front of those who know you best?

View Details
Image for "The Burnout"

The Burnout

Sophie Kinsella

Description

Sparks fly in this delightful novel about two burned out professionals who meet at a ramshackle resort on the British seaside—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Party Crasher.

“I devoured The Burnout in one greedy gulp. It’s funny, sad, relatable, and brilliantly done. Sophie Kinsella is the queen of romantic comedy.”—Jojo Moyes

She can do anything . . . just not everything.

Sasha has had it. She cannot bring herself to respond to another inane, “urgent” (but obviously not at all urgent) email or participate in the corporate employee joyfulness program. She hasn’t seen her friends in months. Sex? Seems like a lot of effort. Even cooking dinner takes far too much planning. Sasha has hit a wall.

Armed with good intentions to drink kale smoothies, try yoga, and find peace, she heads to the seaside resort she loved as a child. But it’s the off season, the hotel is in a dilapidated shambles, and she has to share the beach with the only other occupant: a grumpy guy named Finn, who seems as stressed as Sasha. How can she commune with nature when he’s sitting on her favorite rock, watching her? Nor can they agree on how best to alleviate their burnout (Sasha: manifesting, wild swimming; Finn: drinking whisky, getting pizza delivered to the beach).

When curious messages, seemingly addressed to Sasha and Finn, begin to appear on the beach, the two are forced to talk—about everything. How did they get so burned out? Can either of them remember something they used to love? (Answer: surfing!) And the question they try and fail to ignore: what does the energy between them—flaring even in the face of their bone-deep exhaustion—signify?

View Details
Image for "Mistakes We Never Made"

Mistakes We Never Made

Hannah Brown

Description

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER!

Bachelorette fan-favorite and New York Times bestselling author Hannah Brown delivers the perfect beach read with her fiction debut--"a fun, fast, epic rom-com" (Abby Jimenez, #1 New York Times bestselling author).

Emma Townsend can sum up her situationship with hot-as-hell romantic red flag Finn Hughes in one word: almost. They almost dated in high school. They almost hooked up after college. They almost took things too far one magical night. Their whole story is one series of "almosts" and "nearlys," and now they just kind of can't stand each other. Like, at all.

But this weekend, one of their mutuals is getting married . . . and Emma and Finn will have to pretend they don't remember how disastrous it was the last time they were in a room together.

Emma's doing a stellar job of playing it cool--until the bride goes missing. Now, with two days before the wedding, Emma and Finn are hitting the road in a sweet vintage sports car in hopes of salvaging someone else's happily-ever-after.

Yet somewhere between Emma's breakfast burrito throw down, a high-stakes kayak chase (it can happen), and an outrageous Vegas detour, these sworn enemies are crossing more than just state lines. As old feelings spark once more, Emma begins to question whether risking your heart is ever really a mistake.

View Details
Image for "The Ride of Her Life"

The Ride of Her Life

Jennifer Dugan

Description

An irresistible enemies-to-lovers, grumpy/sunshine queer romcom for fans of Delilah Green Doesn't Care, about a wedding-obsessed city girl who inherits a horse farm from her estranged late aunt, and clashes with the cocky, unfairly hot farrier who thinks she's going to run the barn into the ground.

Molly McDaniel's life is falling apart. Between her day job as a barista, her night job at a call center, and her crushing student loans, she's barely getting by. And that dream she has of starting a wedding event planning business? The dream that led to all those student loan in the first place? She can feel it slipping farther and farther out of reach every day. So the absolute last thing she needs is to discover she's inherited a run-down, struggling horse barn out of the blue, courtesy of her estranged late aunt.

Molly is so ill-equipped to run the barn, it's laughable. She certainly doesn't have the money, time or knowledge needed to save it, no matter how much faith everyone who loved her aunt has that she will. But the more Molly gets involved, the more she starts to wonder: maybe the barn is a blessing in disguise. If she can sell the land, the profits could be the small-business seed money miracle she's been waiting for. So what if she's starting to love everyone in the mismatched family she's found here?

Well, everyone except Shani, the resident farrier and family friend who took care of Molly's aunt in her last days. Judgmental, grouchy Shani, who refuses to give up on the barn; who walks around like she so much better than Molly; who's actually really good with the horses...and kind of thoughtful. And obnoxiously hot. And unfailingly loyal.

And suddenly, Shani has become an entirely different kind of problem, one Molly can't possibly solve, not without risking her whole future, no matter how much her heart wishes she could.

View Details
Image for "In the Watchful City"

In the Watchful City

S. Qiouyi Lu

Description

"This masterful work positions Lu among the vanguard of contemporary futurism and speculative fiction."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

In the tradition of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, debut author S. Qiouyi Lu has written a multifaceted story of borders, power, diaspora, and transformation with In the Watchful City.

The city of Ora is watching.


Anima is an extrasensory human tasked with surveilling and protecting Ora’s citizens via a complex living network called the Gleaming. Although ær world is restricted to what æ can see and experience through the Gleaming, Anima takes pride and comfort in keeping Ora safe from harm.

When a mysterious outsider enters the city carrying a cabinet of curiosities from around with the world with a story attached to each item, Anima’s world expands beyond the borders of Ora to places—and possibilities—æ never before imagined to exist. But such knowledge leaves Anima with a question that throws into doubt ær entire purpose: What good is a city if it can’t protect its people?

View Details
Image for "README.txt"

README.txt

Chelsea Manning

Description

An intimate, revealing memoir from one of the most important activists of our time.

While working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq for the United States Army in 2010, Chelsea Manning disclosed more than seven hundred thousand classified military and diplomatic records that she had smuggled out of the country on the memory card of her digital camera. In 2011, she was charged with twenty-two counts related to the unauthorized possession and distribution of classified military records, and in 2013, she was sentenced to thirty-five years in military prison.

The day after her conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition, seeking hormones through the federal court system. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence and she was released from prison.

In README.txt, Manning recounts how her pleas for increased institutional transparency and government accountability took place alongside a fight to defend her rights as a trans woman. Manning details the challenges of her childhood and adolescence as a naive, computer-savvy kid, what drew her to the military, and the fierce pride she has about the work she does. This powerful, observant memoir will stand as one of the definitive testaments of our digital, information-driven age.

View Details
LGBTQ history cover

The LGBTQ + History Book

DK

Description

Presents a bold and accessible overview of LGBTQ+ history: the good, the bad, and the clandestine.

Discover the rich and complex history of LGBTQ+ people around the world—their struggles, triumphs, and cultural contributions.

Exploring and explaining the most important ideas and events in LGBTQ+ history and culture, this book showcases the breadth of the LGBTQ+ experience. This diverse, global account explores the most important moments, movements, and phenomena, from the first known lesbian love poetry of Sappho to the Kinseys' modern sexuality studies, and features biographies of key figures from Anne Lister to Allen Ginsberg.

The LGBTQ+ History Book celebrates the victories and untold triumphs of LGBTQ+ people throughout history, such as the Stonewall Riots and first transgender surgeries, as well as commemorating moments of tragedy and persecution, from the Renaissance Italian “Night Police” to the 20th century “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy. The book also includes major cultural cornerstones—the secret language of polari, Black and Latinx ballroom culture, and the many flags of the community—and the history of LGBTQ+ spaces, from 18th-century “molly houses” to modern “gayborhoods.”

Using the “Big Ideas” series’ trademark combination of authoritative, accessible text and bold graphics, The LGBTQ+ History Book celebrates the long, proud—and often hidden—history of LGBTQ+ people, cultures, and places from around the world.


 

View Details
Image for "The Pride Atlas"

The Pride Atlas

Maartje Hensen

Description

Combining immersive photography with expertly researched travel writing, this is the ultimate guidebook for LGBTQ+ travelers--whether you're planning your next getaway, daydreaming from the comfort of your armchair, or seeking to learn about queer culture in other parts of the world.



This swoon-worthy guide to the best places and events the queer world has to offer spans the globe, taking you from metropolitan must-sees, like the birthplace of Pride in New York or the world's first gayborhood in Berlin, to lesser-known gems, like a trans designer's clothing store in São Paulo or the first LGBTQ+ bar in Nepal.



Maartje Hensen and a diverse team of international travel writers have put together information on the best drag shows, Pride parades, and film festivals all around the world, as well as resources regarding laws, restrictions, and cultural attitudes--ensuring that travelers can safely enjoy their sojourns and find community wherever they go. Whether you're looking for relaxation, romance, or adventure, The Pride Atlas will help you plan your next gaycation.



SERIOUS EYE CANDY: Bursting at the seams with full-color photographs, The Pride Atlas is a colorful addition to any bookshelf or coffee table. It offers an immersive, take-me-there reading experience, as well as the nuts-and-bolts practical information that will transform armchair travel into actual trip planning.



INCLUSIVE AND INFORMATIVE: Whether you are a drag show fanatic, a gay couple in search of international community, an ally planning an ethical and informed vacation, or a cohort of queers looking for a good time--this is the travel book for you. With information on both festivities for and frustrations facing queer travelers, written by a diverse team of LGBTQ+ travel bloggers, The Pride Atlas is a unique and valuable resource.



Perfect for:

  • LGBTQ+ vacation planners and armchair travelers
  • Informed, ethical travelers who want to know about LGBTQ+ rights and culture in the places they visit
  • A practical and inspiring birthday, graduation, wedding, bon voyage, or special occasion gift for all who love to explore
View Details
Image for "Perris, California"

Perris, California

Rachel Stark

Description

A glorious debut...it will rouse your deepest well of empathy.” —Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone

“This novel will live alongside classics of young womanhood.” —Susan Straight, author of bestsellers Mecca and In the Country of Women

In this unforgettable debut novel, twenty-seven-year-old Tessa, pregnant with her third child and living in a trailer on her mother-in-law’s property, encounters the woman she used to love—leading Tessa to question the very foundations of the life she’s built


Abandoned first by her father and then her mother, as a girl Tessa is left to live with her abusive stepfather and stepbrother. She survives by finding reserves of strength in herself, and by the surprising, transformative love of another teenage girl, Mel, who sees through Tessa’s tough exterior to the vulnerable, scarred, loving woman inside. When she suddenly loses Mel, too, Tessa stumbles into a saving grace of a different kind with Henry and his mama, Angie, becoming a mother and finding herself in a familial existence that somehow carries her into adulthood—until the day she runs into Mel, who has just returned to Perris after years away.

Filled with violence, tragedy, tenderness, longing, and the unvarnished courage of women living in a mostly unseen America, Perris, California is the utterly gripping story of Tessa’s journey from trauma to healing, and it introduces us to one of the most indelible female characters since Bone Boatwright in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina or Ruth Langmore in Ozark.

View Details
Image for "Bellies"

Bellies

Nicola Dinan

Description

"Smart, hilarious, and deeply moving." --Elliot Page

It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at their local university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink. Confident and witty, a magnetic young playwright, Ming is the perfect antidote to Tom's awkward energy, and their connection is instant. Tom finds himself deeply and desperately drawn into Ming's orbit, and on the cusp of graduation, he's already mapped out their future together. But shortly after they move to London to start their next chapter, Ming announces her intention to transition.

From London to Kuala Lumpur, New York to Cologne, we follow Tom and Ming as they face tectonic shifts in their relationship and friend circle in the wake of Ming's transition. Through a spiral of unforeseen crises--some personal, some professional, some life-altering--Tom and Ming are forced to confront the vastly different shapes their lives have taken since graduating, and each must answer the essential question: Is it worth losing a part of yourself to become who you are?
 

Buoyed by a voice as tender, effervescent and wryly funny as the cast of characters it centers, Bellies is an unforgettable story of youth, intimacy, hunger and heartbreak, at once boldly original yet fiercely familiar, which unabashedly holds a mirror up to our most vulnerable selves and desires.

View Details
Image for "Grave Expectations"

Grave Expectations

Alice Bell

Description

A fast-paced and hilarious debut crime novel, in which a burnt-out Millennial medium must utilize her ability to see ghosts and team-up with a band of oddball investigators to figure out which member(s) of a posh English family are guilty of murder.

Almost-authentic medium Claire and her best friend, Sophie, agree to take on a seemingly simple job at a crumbling old manor in the English countryside: performing a seance for the family matriarch's 80th birthday. The pair have been friends since before Sophie went missing when they were seventeen. Everyone else is convinced Sophie simply ran away, but Claire knows the truth. Claire knows Sophie was murdered because Sophie has been haunting her ever since.

Despite this traumatic past, Claire and Sophie are still unprepared for what they encounter when they arrive at the manor: a ghost, tragic and unrecognizable, and clearly the spirit of someone killed in a rage at the previous year's party. Given her obsession with crime shows—not to mention Sophie's ability to walk through walls—Claire decides they're the best people to solve the case. And with the help of the only obviously not-guilty members of their host family—sexy ex-policeman Sebastian and far-too-cool non-binary teen Alex—they launch an investigation into which of last year's guests never escaped the manor's grounds.

What follows is somewhat irregular detective work involving stealing a priest's cassock, getting too drunk to remember to question your suspect, and of course, Chekhov's sparkly purple dildo. As Claire desperately tries to keep a lid on the shameful secret that would definitely alienate her new friends, the gang must race against their own incompetence to find the murderer before the murderer finds them.

View Details
Image for "The River We Remember"

The River We Remember

William Kent Krueger

Description

AN EDGAR AWARD NOMINEE

In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by a shocking murder, pouring fresh fuel on old grievances in this dazzling novel, an instant New York Times bestseller and “a work of art” (The Denver Post).

On Memorial Day in Jewel, Minnesota, the body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. The investigation falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife. As suspicions and accusations mount and the town teeters on the edge of more violence, Dern struggles not only to find the truth of Quinn’s murder but also put to rest the demons from his own past.

Caught up in the torrent of anger that sweeps through Jewel are a war widow and her adolescent son, the intrepid publisher of the local newspaper, an aging deputy, and a crusading female lawyer, all of whom struggle with their own tragic histories and harbor secrets that Quinn’s death threatens to expose.

Both a complex, spellbinding mystery and a masterful portrait of mid-century American life that is “a novel to cherish” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), The River We Remember offers an unflinching look at the wounds left by the wars we fight abroad and at home, a moving exploration of the ways in which we seek to heal, and a testament to the enduring power of the stories we tell about the places we call home.

View Details
Image for "Yellowface"

Yellowface

R. F. Kuang

Description

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK

"Hard to put down, harder to forget." -- Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author

White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences... Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn't write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American--in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel.

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena's a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena's death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena's just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena's novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song--complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn't this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That's what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

But June can't get away from Athena's shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June's (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang's novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

View Details
Image for "Happiness Falls (Good Morning America Book Club)"

Happiness Falls (Good Morning America Book Club)

Angie Kim

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • When a father goes missing, his family’s desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another in this thrilling page-turner, a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek.

OPRAH DAILY’S #1 NOVEL OF THE YEAR • ONE OF PEOPLE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR •  A WASHINGTON POST, BOOKPAGE, KIRKUS REVIEWS, NEW YORK POST, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, BOOK RIOT, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, REAL SIMPLE, CRIMEREADS, AND SHE READS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Belletrist Book Club Pick •
Finalist for the New American Voices Award • “This is a story with so many twists and turns I was riveted through the last page.”—Jodi Picoult

“A brilliant, satisfying, compassionate mystery that is as much about language and storytelling as it is about a missing father. I loved this book.”—Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“I fell in love with the fascinating, brilliant family at the center of this riveting book.”—Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful


“We didn’t call the police right away.” Those are the electric first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything—which is why she isn’t initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don’t return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia’s brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.

What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. Full of shocking twists and fascinating questions of love, language, and human connection, Happiness Falls is a mystery, a family drama, and a novel of profound philosophical inquiry. With all the powerful storytelling she brought to her award-winning debut, Miracle Creek, Angie Kim turns the missing-person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must go to remarkable lengths to truly understand one another.

View Details
Image for "Our Wives Under the Sea"

Our Wives Under the Sea

Julia Armfield

Description

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (NPR, The Washington Post, Lit Hub, The Telegraph, Goodreads, Tor.com, them, and more)

A FINALIST for the LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD and GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD


“A deeply strange and haunting novel in the best possible way...An impressive and exciting debut novel that may leave you thinking about your own relationships in a new light.” —NPR

“Shocking...Achingly poetic...Sharp and beautiful as coral polyps...Armfield exercises an exquisite—even sadistic—sense of suspense." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.

By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, Our Wives Under the Sea is an exploration of the unknowable depths within each of us, and the love that compels us nevertheless toward one another.

View Details
Image for "Smithsonian Asian Pacific American History, Art, and Culture in 101 Objects"

Smithsonian Asian Pacific American History, Art, and Culture in 101 Objects

Theodore S. Gonzalves

Description

A rich and compelling introduction to the history of Asian Pacific American communities as told through 101 objects, from a fortune cookie baking mold to the debut Ms. Marvel comic featuring Kamala Khan

Smithsonian Asian Pacific American History, Art, and Culture in 101 Objects invites readers to experience both well-known and untold stories through influential, controversial, and meaningful objects. Thematic chapters explore complex history and shared experiences: navigation, intersections, labor, innovation, belonging, tragedy, resistance and solidarity, community, service, memory, and joy.

The book features vibrant full-color illustrations of objects that embody and engage with Asian Pacific American issues, including the immigrant experience, the importance of media representation, what history gets officially documented vs. what does not, and so much more. Those objects include:

 

 

  • Name tag for Challenger astronaut Ellison Onizuka
  • Photograph of Hollywood actress Anna May Wong

 

 

  • Hello Kitty bento box
  • Stella Abrera's ballet shoes, pancaked to match her skin color
  • Caravan’s Thailand: Songs for Life album
  • Sewing kit of internment camp survivor May Ishimoto
  • Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii
  • The Devanagari typographical font patented by Hari Govind Govil


Asian Americans are the fastest growing group in the United States and include approximately 50 distinct ethnic groups, but their stories and experiences have often been sidelined or stereotyped. This spirited and beautifully illustrated book offers a vital window into the triumphs and tragedies, strength and ingenuity, and traditions and cultural identities of these communities. Smithsonian Asian Pacific American History, Art, and Culture in 101 Objects is a crucial and celebratory read.

View Details
cover Making a Scene

Making a Scene

Constance Wu

Description

“Illuminating.” —The Washington Post * “Candid and relatable.” —Time *“Riveting and personal.” —Mindy Kaling * “Captivatingly immediate.” —The Skimm *

A “poignant, frank, and intimate” (The New York Times) memoir by actress Constance Wu about family, love, sex, shame, trauma, and how she found her voice.

Growing up in the friendly suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, Constance Wu was often scolded for having big feelings or strong reactions. “Good girls don’t make scenes,” people warned her. And while she spent most of her childhood suppressing her bold, emotional nature, she found an early outlet in community theater—it was the one place where big feelings were okay—were good, even. Acting became her refuge, and eventually her vocation. At eighteen she moved to New York, where she’d spend the next ten years of her life auditioning, waiting tables, and struggling to make rent before her two big breaks: the TV sitcom Fresh Off the Boat and the hit film Crazy Rich Asians.

Here Constance shares private memories of childhood, young love and heartbreak, sexual assault and harassment, and how she “made it” in Hollywood. Raw, relatable, and enthralling, Making a Scene is an intimate portrait of the pressures and pleasures of existing in today’s world.

View Details
Owner of a Lonely Heart

Owner of a Lonely Heart

Beth Nguyen

Description

Named a Best Memoir of 2023 by Oprah Daily • Selected by Time, NPR, and BookPage as a Best Book of 2023

“This book…is what memoir writing in the hands of a caring, curious wunderkind can be.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fractured by war and resettlement.

At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only Beth’s mother stayed—or was left—behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together.

Owner of a Lonely Heart is “a portrait of things left unsaid” (The New York Times), a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth’s relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, some alone with her mother and others with the company of her sister—Beth tells an “unforgettable” (People) coming-of-age story that spans her childhood in the Midwest, her first meeting with her mother, and her own experience of parenthood.

View Details
Image for "Corky Lee's Asian America"

Corky Lee's Asian America

Corky Lee

Description

A collection of over 200 breathtaking photos celebrating the history and cultural impact of the Asian American social justice movement, from a beloved photographer who sought to change the world, one photograph at a time

“For generations, Corky taught us how to see ourselves—as individuals and as a community.”Hua Hsu, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Stay True


Known throughout his lifetime as the “undisputed, unofficial Asian American photographer laureate,” the late photojournalist Corky Lee documented Asian American and Pacific Islander communities for fifty years, breaking the stereotype of Asian Americans as docile, passive, and, above all, foreign to this country. Corky Lee’s Asian America is a stunning retrospective of his life’s work--a selection of the best photographs from his vast collection, from his start in New York’s Chinatown in the 1970s to his coverage of diverse Asian American communities across the country until his untimely passing in 2021.

Corky Lee's Asian America traces Lee’s decades-long quest for photographic justice, following Asian American social movements for recognition and rights alongside his artistic development as an activist social photographer. Iconic photographs feature protests against police brutality in New York in the 1970s, a Sikh man draped in an American flag after 9/11, and a reenactment of the completion of the transcontinental railroad of 1869 featuring descendants of Chinese railroad workers, and his last photos of community life and struggle during the coronavirus pandemic. Asian American writers, artists, activists, and friends of Lee reflect on his life and career and provide rich historical and cultural context to his photographs, including a foreword from writer Hua Hsu and contributions from artist Ai Weiwei, filmmaker Renée Tajima-Peña, writer Helen Zia, photographer Alan Chin, historian Gordon Chang, playwright David Henry Hwang, and more.

Featuring never-before-seen photographs alongside his best-known images, Corky Lee’s Asian America represents Lee’s mission to chronicle a history of inclusion, resistance, ethnic pride, and patriotism. This is a remarkable documentation of vital moments in Asian American history and a timely reminder that it’s also a history that we continue to make.

View Details
Image for "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou

Description

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.
 
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.
 
Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.”—James Baldwin

View Details
cover my antonia

My Ántonia

Willa Cather

Description

After the death of her immigrant father, Antonia works as a servant for neighbors in the farmlands of Nebraska. She leaves for an unfortunate affair with an Irish railway conductor, but returns home, eventually marries and raises a large family in true pioneer style.

View Details
cover American Women's Almanac

The American Women's Almanac

Deborah G. Felder

Description

Celebrate the vital roles and vibrant experiences of women in America!

The most complete and affordable single-volume reference on women’s history available today, The American Women’s Almanac: 500 Years of Vitality, Triumph and Excellence is a unique and valuable resource devoted to illustrating the moving and often lost history of women in America. It is a fascinating mix of biographies, little-known or misunderstood historical facts, enlightening essays on significant legislation and movements, and numerous photographs and illustrations. Honoring and celebrating achievements from the First Nations women and the French Huguenot Women of Fort Caroline to the unprecedented number of ethnically diverse women running for modern office, it provides insights on the long-ignored influence, inspiration, and impact of women on U.S. society and culture.

From the first indigenous women in North America and the dangers and hardships of the 15th, 16th, and 17th century journeys to the New World to the continual push against patriarchal political, military, corporate, and societal systems and expectations, this essential book illustrates the important events and figures surrounding the suffrage movement; literature, art, and music; business leaders and breakthroughs; political history and office holders; advances in science and medicine; and other vital topics. Learn about the Nineteenth Amendment; Title IX; the legalization of birth control in 1966; the dramatic increase in women attending colleges and universities in the United States; the limitations of 19th-century women’s fashion on athletes; and so much more.

The most illustrious figures, as well as less-known stars, are revealed in The American Women’s Almanac, including Abigail Adams, Louisa May Alcott, Maya Angelou, Susan B. Anthony, Ruth Asawa, Clara Barton, Sara Blakely, Nellie Bly, Tarana Burke, Annie Jump Cannon, Hattie Wyatt Caraway, Carrie Chapman Catt, Bessie Coleman, Rebecca Harding Davis, Maya Deren, Amelia Earhart, Sarah Emma Edmonds, Carly Fiorina, Dian Fossey, Helen Frankenthaler, Aretha Franklin, Temple Grandin, Mia Hamm, Anna Mae Hays, Grace Hopper, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, Barbara Jordan, Helen Keller, Julie Krone, Juliette Gordon Low, Dolley Madison, Maria Montoya Martinez, Lucretia Mott, Sara Nelson, Lynn Nottage, Sandra Day O’Connor, Pocahontas, Letty Cotton Pogrebin, E. Annie Proulx, Sally Ride, Sacagawea, Bernice Sandler, Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gloria Steinem, Lucy Stone, Pat Summitt, Amy Tan, Martha Washington, Randi Weingarten, Gladys West, Susan Wojcicki, Kristi Yamaguchi, and approximately 350 others.

This important reference also has a helpful bibliography, an extensive index, a timeline, and 550 photos, adding to its usefulness. Commemorating and honoring the achievements, people, and essential influence of women in American history, The American Women’s Almanac brings to light all there is to admire and discover about these incredible women.

View Details
Image for "The Handmaid's Tale"

The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood

Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (The New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss.

Look for The Testaments, the bestselling, award-winning the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid’s Tale is a modern classic.

Includes an introduction by Margaret Atwood

 

View Details
Image for "To Kill a Mockingbird"

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

Description

Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred

One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

View Details
Image for "Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?"

Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?

Kathleen Collins

Description

“From the first page you know you're in the hands of an exceptional writer… I adored this book.” —Zadie Smith

“Sexy and radical and intimate.” —Miranda July

Named a Best Book of 2016 by VICE, Elle, Nylon, Publishers Weekly and NPR

Named one of the most anticipated books of the fall by the Huffington Post, New York, The Boston Globe, Lit Hub, and The Millions

 

Now available in Ecco’s Art of the Story series: a never-before-published collection of stories from a brilliant yet little known African American artist and filmmaker—a contemporary of revered writers including Toni Cade Bambara, Laurie Colwin, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Grace Paley—whose prescient work has recently resurfaced to wide acclaim.

Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins’s stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues—race, gender, family, and sexuality—that shape the ordinary moments in our lives.

In “The Uncle,” a young girl who idolizes her handsome uncle and his beautiful wife makes a haunting discovery about their lives. In “Only Once,” a woman reminisces about her charming daredevil of a lover and his ultimate—and final—act of foolishness. Collins’s work seamlessly integrates the African-American experience in her characters’ lives, creating rich, devastatingly familiar, full-bodied men, women, and children who transcend the symbolic, penetrating both the reader’s head and heart.

Both contemporary and timeless, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? is a major addition to the literary canon, and is sure to earn Kathleen Collins the widespread recognition she is long overdue.

 

View Details
Image of "Life in short"

Life in short

Kelly, Dasha,

Description

Life in Short is part poetry, part prose and all about the beveled angles of living. Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a poet laureate, a published author and a seasoned storyteller. The collection of micro stories –all 100-words apiece– is described as a “memoir in moments.” Kelly Hamilton began writing the personal vignettes back in 2015 and emailing them weekly to a growing subscribers’ list. In the spare space, she crafts robust stories about growing up as an Army brat, stumbles as a quirky preteen, world travels as a writer and performer, and indelible lessons about sex, race, parenting, and pancakes. Life in Short is published as part of an encore residency with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

View Details
Image for "The Princess Bride"

The Princess Bride

William Goldman

Description

Once upon a time came a story so full of high adventure and true love that it became an instant classic and won the hearts of millions. Now in hardcover in America for the first time since 1973, this special edition of The Princess Bride is a true keepsake for devoted fans as well as those lucky enough to discover it for the first time. What reader can forget or resist such colorful characters as

Westley . . . handsome farm boy who risks death and much, much worse for the woman he loves; Inigo . . . the Spanish swordsman who lives only to avenge his father's death; Fezzik . . . the Turk, the gentlest giant ever to have uprooted a tree with his bare hands; Vizzini . . . the evil Sicilian, with a mind so keen he's foiled by his own perfect logic; Prince Humperdinck . . . the eviler ruler of Guilder, who has an equally insatiable thirst for war and the beauteous Buttercup; Count Rugen . . . the evilest man of all, who thrives on the excruciating pain of others; Miracle Max. . . the King's ex-Miracle Man, who can raise the dead (kind of); The Dread Pirate Roberts . . . supreme looter and plunderer of the high seas; and, of course, Buttercup . . . the princess bride, the most perfect, beautiful woman in the history of the world.

S. Morgenstern's timeless tale--discovered and wonderfully abridged by William Goldman--pits country against country, good against evil, love against hate. From the Cliffs of Insanity through the Fire Swamp and down into the Zoo of Death, this incredible journey and brilliant tale is peppered with strange beasties monstrous and gentle, and memorable surprises both terrible and sublime.

View Details
Image for "A Murder in Time"

A Murder in Time

Julie McElwain

Description

When brilliant FBI agent Kendra Donovan stumbles back in time and finds herself in a 19th century English castle under threat from a vicious serial killer, she scrambles to solve the case before it takes her life—200 years before she was even born.

Beautiful and brilliant, Kendra Donovan is a rising star at the FBI. Yet her path to professional success hits a speed bump during a disastrous raid where half her team is murdered, a mole in the FBI is uncovered and she herself is severely wounded. As soon as she recovers, she goes rogue and travels to England to assassinate the man responsible for the deaths of her teammates.

While fleeing from an unexpected assassin herself, Kendra escapes into a stairwell that promises sanctuary but when she stumbles out again, she is in the same place—Aldrich Castle—but in a different time: 1815, to be exact.

Mistaken for a lady's maid hired to help with weekend guests, Kendra is forced to quickly adapt to the time period until she can figure out how she got there; and, more importantly, how to get back home. However, after the body of a young girl is found on the extensive grounds of the county estate, she starts to feel there's some purpose to her bizarre circumstances. Stripped of her twenty-first century tools, Kendra must use her wits alone in order to unmask a cunning madman.

View Details
Image for "The Eyre Affair"

The Eyre Affair

Jasper Fforde

Description

Great Britain circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodas are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Based on an imaginary world where time and reality bend in the most convincing and original way since The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Eyre Affair is a delightful rabbit hole of a read: once you fall in you may never come back. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in Wordsworth poems, militant Baconians roam freely spreading the gospel that Bacon, not Shakespeare, penned those immortal works. And forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. This is all business as usual for brainy, bookish (and heat-packing) Thursday Next, a renowned Special Operative in literary detection -- that is, until someone begins murdering characters from works of literature. When this madman plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Bronte's novel Thursday faces the challenge of her career. Aided and abetted by characters that include her time-traveling father, an executive of the all-powerful Goliath Corporation, and Edward Rochester himself, Thursday must track down the world's Third Most Wanted criminal and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide. A brilliantly outlandish and absorbing caper destined to become a classic adventure tale, The Eyre Affair is an irresistible thriller and the introduction to the imagination of a most distinctive writer. In Jasper Fforde's singular fictional universe no literary character is safe from crime. And for Special Operative Thursday Next this is only the beginning ...

View Details
Image for "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing"

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

Matthew Perry

Description

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER


The BELOVED STAR OF FRIENDS takes us behind the scenes of the hit sitcom and his struggles with addiction in this “CANDID, DARKLY FUNNY...POIGNANT” memoir (The New York Times)

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK by Time, Associated Press, Goodreads, USA Today, and more!

“Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.”

So begins the riveting story of acclaimed actor Matthew Perry, taking us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was five-year-old Matthew, who traveled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; fourteen-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; twenty-four-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us. . . and so much more.

In an extraordinary story that only he could tell—and in the heartfelt, hilarious, and warmly familiar way only he could tell it—Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true. But he also details the peace he’s found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humor, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fueled it despite seemingly having it all.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is an unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening—as well as a hand extended to anyone struggling with sobriety. Unflinchingly honest, moving, and uproariously funny, this is the book fans have been waiting for.

View Details
Image for "The Christie Affair"

The Christie Affair

Nina de Gramont

Description

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

"Sizzles from its first sentence." - The Wall Street Journal
A Reese's Book Club Pick

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

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

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

View Details
Image for "The Secret Daughter of the Tsar"

The Secret Daughter of the Tsar

Jennifer Laam

Description

A compelling alternate history of the Romanov family in which a secret fifth daughter—smuggled out of Russia before the revolution—continues the royal lineage to dramatic consequences

In her riveting debut novel, The Secret Daughter of the Tsar, Jennifer Laam seamlessly braids together the stories of three women: Veronica, Lena, and Charlotte.

Veronica is an aspiring historian living in present-day Los Angeles when she meets a mysterious man who may be heir to the Russian throne. As she sets about investigating the legitimacy of his claim through a winding path of romance and deception, the ghosts of her own past begin to haunt her.

Lena, a servant in the imperial Russian court of 1902, is approached by the desperate Empress Alexandra. After conceiving four daughters, the Empress is determined to sire a son and believes Lena can help her. Once elevated to the Romanov's treacherous inner circle, Lena finds herself under the watchful eye of the meddling Dowager Empress Marie.

Charlotte, a former ballerina living in World War II occupied Paris, receives a surprise visit from a German officer. Determined to protect her son from the Nazis, Charlotte escapes the city, but not before learning that the officer's interest in her stems from his longstanding obsession with the fate of the Russian monarchy.

As Veronica's passion intensifies, and her search for the true heir to the throne takes a dangerous turn, the reader learns just how these three vastly different women are connected. The Secret Daughter of the Tsar is thrilling from its first intense moments until its final, unexpected conclusion.

View Details
Image for "Disability Visibility"

Disability Visibility

Alice Wong

Description

“Disability rights activist Alice Wong brings tough conversations to the forefront of society with this anthology. It sheds light on the experience of life as an individual with disabilities, as told by none other than authors with these life experiences. It's an eye-opening collection that readers will revisit time and time again.” —Chicago Tribune

One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act,

From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.

View Details
Image for "Sitting Pretty"

Sitting Pretty

Rebekah Taussig

Description

A memoir-in-essays from Rebekah Taussig, disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty, reflecting on identity, accessibility, and representation and processing a lifetime of memories to paint a more beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.

Rebekah Taussig has been paralyzed for as long as she can remember but didn't begin to unpack it until she was in her mid-twenties working on a PhD in disability studies. She began writing mini-essays about what it means to live as a disabled woman and exploring the limited ways we typically see disability: something monstrous (the Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). She longed for stories that reflected her experiences--stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.

Sitting Pretty offers an honest look at disability and its effects on identity, love, money, and self-worth. Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn't fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and the false idea of "ableism."

Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. We all need more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. A timely reminder to look beyond ourselves and our singular experiences, Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.

 

 

 

View Details
Image for "Barracoon"

Barracoon

Zora Neale Hurston

Description

New York Times Bestseller • Amazon's Best History Book of the Year 201 • TIME Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 • New York Public Library’s Best Book of 2018 • NPR’s Book Concierge Best Book of 2018 • Economist Book of the Year • SELF.com’s Best Books of 2018 • Audible’s Best of the Year • BookRiot’s Best Audio Books of 2018 • The Atlantic’s Books Briefing: History, Reconsidered • Atlanta Journal Constitution, Best Southern Books 2018  • The Christian Science Monitor’s Best Books 2018 • Barnes & Noble’s Best Books of the Year

 

 

“A profound impact on Hurston’s literary legacy.”—New York Times

“One of the greatest writers of our time.”—Toni Morrison

“Zora Neale Hurston’s genius has once again produced a Maestrapiece.”—Alice Walker

A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States.

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.

In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past—memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War.

Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo’s unique vernacular, and written from Hurston’s perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.

 

 

 

View Details
book cover for Severance

Severance

Ling Ma

Description

Maybe it’s the end of the world, but not for Candace Chen, a millennial, first-generation American and office drone meandering her way into adulthood in Ling Ma’s offbeat, wryly funny, apocalyptic satire, Severance.

"A stunning, audacious book with a fresh take on both office politics and what the apocalypse might bring." Michael Schaub, NPR.org

“A satirical spin on the end times-- kind of like The Office meets The Leftovers.” --Estelle Tang, Elle

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: NPR * The New Yorker ("Books We Loved") * Elle * Marie Claire * Amazon Editors * The Paris Review (Staff Favorites) * Refinery29 * Bustle * Buzzfeed * BookPage * Bookish * Mental Floss * Chicago Review of Books * HuffPost * Electric Literature * A.V. Club * Jezebel * Vulture * Literary Hub * Flavorwire

Winner of the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award * Winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction * Winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award * Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel * A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 * An Indie Next Selection

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend.

So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.

Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.

View Details
Image for "The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store"

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

James McBride

Description

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR/FRESH AIR, WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, AND TIME MAGAZINE

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023

“A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.” —Danez Smith, The New York Times Book Review

“We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them


In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

View Details
Image for "The little liar"

The little liar

Albom, Mitch

Description

Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis never told a lie. When the Nazi’s invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer, who offers him a chance to save his family. All Nico has to do is convince his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading to 'new homes' where they are promised jobs and safety. Unaware that this is all a cruel ruse, the innocent boy goes to the station platform every day and reassures the passengers that the journey is safe. But when the final train is at the station, Nico sees his family being loaded into a large boxcar crowded with other neighbors. Only after it is too late does Nico discover that he helped send the people he loved—and all the others—to their doom at Auschwitz. Nico never tells the truth again....Mitch Albom interweaves the stories of Nico, his brother Sebastian, and their schoolmate Fanni, who miraculously survive the death camps and spend years searching for Nico, who has become a pathological liar, and the Nazi officer who radically changed their lives.

View Details
Image for "The list"

The list

Adegoke, Yomi.

Description

Elite couple Ola Olajide and her fiancé Michael seem to have it all, until they see "The List," an anonymous account posting serious allegations all over social media. And Michael's name is on it.

View Details
Image for "Main character energy"

Main character energy

Varon, Jamie.

Description

When struggling writer Poppy Bank's aunt dies, and leaves her a villa in the French Riviera--on the condition that she can finish her novel in six months--Poppy realizes she has more to confront than her writer's block.

View Details
Image for "Just once"

Just once

Kingsbury, Karen.

Description

In 1941, beautiful Irvel Ellis is too focused on her secret to take much notice in the war raging overseas. She's dating Sam but in love with his brother, Hank, and Irvel has no idea how to break the news when the unthinkable happens--Pearl Harbor is attacked. With their lives turned upside down overnight, Sam is drafted, and Hank wants to enlist. But Sam insists Hank stay home, where he and Irvel take up the battle on the home front. While Sam fights in Europe, an undeniable chemistry builds between Irvel and Hank but neither would dare cross that line. Then a telegram comes, and the news is devastating. Hank enlists the next day and has just two weeks until he ships out. Will either brother make it home alive? Or will Irvel lose everything? And can love find a way, even from the ashes of the greatest heartbreak?

View Details
Image for "Wildfire"

Wildfire

Grace, Hannah.

Description

Maple Hills students Russ Callaghan and Aurora Roberts cross paths at a party celebrating the end of the academic year, where a drinking game results in them having a passionate one-night stand. Never one to overstay her welcome (or expect much from a man), Aurora slips away before Russ even has the chance to ask for her full name. Imagine their surprise when they bump into each other on the first day of the summer camp where they are both counselors, hoping to escape their complicated home lives by spending the summer working. Russ hopes if he gets far enough away from Maple Hills, he can avoid dealing with the repercussions of his father's gambling addiction, while Aurora is tired of craving attention from everyone around her, and wants to go back to the last place she truly felt at home. Russ knows breaking the camp's strict "no staff fraternizing" rule will have him heading back to Maple Hills before the summer is over, but unfortunately for him, Aurora has never been very good at caring about the rules. Will the two learn to peacefully coexist? Or did their one night together start a fire they can't put out?

View Details
Image for "The hexologists"

The Hexologists

Bancroft, Josiah.

Description

Bancroft (The Fall of Babel) brilliantly inaugurates a new fantasy series with this suspenseful and humorous introduction to “private investigators of the paranormal” Isolde Ann Always Wilby and her husband, Warren, who took her last name when they married. These spell-casting celebrity sleuths get a daunting challenge from Horace Alman, Royal Secretary to Luthland’s King Elbert III. Alman is concerned that the monarch has gone off his rocker after Elbert repeatedly declares that he wants to be “baked into a cake,” and even crawls into an oven to achieve this goal. The secretary traces the king’s mental collapse back to his receipt of a letter from someone purporting to be Elbert’s bastard son, a claim buttressed by the envelope’s having been sealed with a royal signet that went missing 25 years earlier. Isolde and Warren agree to investigate, probing into the letter writer’s identity and motives for coming forward—even when doing so lands them in some supernaturally dangerous situations. This light and charming tale encompasses a twisty mystery, detailed Victorian-esque worldbuilding, and nuanced protagonists who love each other dearly, all relayed in Bancroft’s superior prose. 

View Details
Image for "Longhorns east"

Longhorns east

Boggs, Johnny D.

Description

Tom Candy Ponting was no ordinary trail boss. But his skills and know-how are put to the test when he accepts a bet he might live to regret: lead a cattle drive from Texas to New York City.

View Details
Image for "Straw Dogs of the Universe"

Straw dogs of the universe

Description

A Chinese railroad worker and his daughter sold into servitude in nineteenth-century California search for family and belonging in a violent new land that rejects you, even as it relies upon your labor.

View Details
Image for "The spy coast"

The spy coast : a thriller

Gerritsen, Tess.

Description

Former spy Maggie Bird came to the seaside village of Purity, Maine, eager to put the past behind her after a mission went tragically wrong. These days, she’s living quietly on her chicken farm, still wary of blowback from the events that forced her early retirement. But when a body turns up in Maggie’s driveway, she knows it’s a message from former foes who haven’t forgotten her. Maggie turns to her local circle of old friends―all retirees from the CIA―to help uncover the truth about who is trying to kill her, and why. This 'Martini Club' of former spies may be retired, but they still have a few useful skills that they’re eager to use again, if only to spice up their rather sedate new lives. Complicating their efforts is Purity’s acting police chief, Jo Thibodeau. More accustomed to dealing with rowdy tourists than homicide, Jo is puzzled by Maggie’s reluctance to share information―and by her odd circle of friends, who seem to be a step ahead of her at every turn. As Jo’s investigation collides with the Martini Club’s maneuvers, Maggie’s hunt for answers will force her to revisit a clandestine career that spanned the globe, from Bangkok to Istanbul, from London to Malta. The ghosts of her past have returned, but with the help of her friends―and the reluctant Jo Thibodeau―Maggie might just be able to save the life she’s built.

View Details
image for "There's no coming back from this"

There's no coming back from this

Garvin, Ann Wertz.

Description

After her accountant absconded with her life savings, newly bankrupt Poppy is on the verge of losing her home when an old flame, now a hotshot producer, gives her a surprising way out: a job in costumes on a Hollywood film set. It's a bold move to pack her bags and head to Los Angeles, but Poppy's a capable person, how hard can it be? Even so, she has a lot to learn about the fast and loose world of movie stars, iconic costumes, and back-lot intrigue. Floundering and overlooked, Poppy has one ally: Allen Carol, an ill-tempered movie star taken with Poppy's unfiltered candor and general indifference to stardom. When Poppy stumbles upon corruption, she relies on everyone underestimating her to discover who's at the center of it, a revelation that shakes her belief in humanity. What she thought was a way to secure a future for her daughter becomes a spotlight illuminating the facts: Poppy is out of her league.

View Details
image for "The future"

The future

Alderman, Naomi.

Description

The future, as the richest people on the planet have discovered, is where the money is. The Future is a few billionaires leading the world to destruction while safeguarding their own survival with secret lavish bunkers. The Future is private weather, technological prophecy and highly deniable weapons. The Future is a handful of friends, the daughter of a cult leader, a non-binary hacker, an ousted Silicon Valley visionary, the concerned wife of a dangerous CEO, and an internet-famous survivalist, hatching a daring plan. It could be the greatest heist ever. Or the cataclysmic end of civilization. he Future is what you see if you don't look behind you. The Future is the only reason to do anything, the only object of desire. The Future is here.

View Details
Image for "Black Punk Now"

Black Punk Now

Chris L. Terry

Description

A canonizing, bold, and urgent anthology setting a new precedent for Black Punk Lit, created by generations of Black punks—featuring both new voices and those from the not-so-recent past

Black Punk Now is an anthology of contemporary nonfiction, fiction, illustrations, and comics that collectively describe punk today and give punks—especially the Black ones—a wider frame of reference. It shows all of the strains, styles, and identities of Black punk that are thriving, and gives newcomers to the scene more chances to see themselves.

Curated from the perspective of Black writers with connections to the world of punk, the collection mixes media as well as generations, creating a new reference point for music-lovers, readers, and historians by capturing the present and looking towards the future. With strong visual elements integrated throughout, this smart, intimate collection is demonstrative of punk by being punk itself: underground, rebellious, aesthetic but not static—working to decenter whiteness by prioritizing other perspectives.

Edited by graphic novelist and filmmaker James Spooner, and author Chris L. Terry, contributors to the collection include critic Hanif Abdurraqib and Mars Dixon, conversations with Brontez Purnell, and a roundtable of all femme festival organizers.

View Details
Image for "The Sun Does Shine"

The Sun Does Shine

Anthony Ray Hinton

Description

Winner of the 2019 Christopher Award

Oprah's Book Club Summer 2018 Selection

The Instant New York Times Bestseller

A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit.

"An amazing and heartwarming story, it restores our faith in the inherent goodness of humanity.”
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu


In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free.

But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence—full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015.

With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Destined to be a classic memoir of wrongful imprisonment and freedom won, Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy.

View Details
Image for "March: Book One"

March: Book One

John Lewis

Description

#1 New York Times Bestseller

Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon and key figure of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.

Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times Book Prize finalist for Swallow Me Whole).

March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement.

Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall.

Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1958 comic book "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story." Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations.

Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award — Special Recognition
#1 Washington Post Bestseller
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
An ALA Notable Book
One of YALSA's Top 10 Great Graphic Novels for Teens
One of YALSA's Top 10 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults
One of YALSA's Outstanding Books for the College Bound
One of Reader's Digest's Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read
Endorsed by NYC Public Schools' "NYC Reads 365" program
Selected for first-year reading programs by Michigan State University, Marquette University, and Georgia State University
Nominated for three Will Eisner Awards
Nominated for the Glyph Award
Named one of the best books of 2013 by USA TodayThe Washington PostPublishers WeeklyLibrary Journal, School Library JournalBooklistKirkus ReviewsThe Horn Book, PasteSlateComicsAlliance, Amazon, and Apple iBooks.

View Details
Image for "Dreams From My Father"

Dreams From My Father

Barack Obama

Description

Before Barack Obama became a politician he was, among other things, a writer. Dreams from My Father is his masterpiece: a refreshing, revealing portrait of a young man asking the big questions about identity and belonging.

The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama recounts an emotional odyssey. He retraces the migration of his mother’s family from Kansas to Hawaii, then to his childhood home in Indonesia. Finally he travels to Kenya, where he confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

View Details
Image for "Envisioning Emancipation"

Envisioning Emancipation

Deborah Willis

Description

The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. As we approach its 150th anniversary, what do we really know about those who experienced slavery? In their pioneering book, Envisioning Emancipation, renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs--some never before published--from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. The authors vividly display the seismic impact of emancipation on African Americans born before and after the Proclamation, providing a perspective on freedom and slavery and a way to understand the photos as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration. Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation will be a keepsake for many years to come. Deborah Willis, a leading historian and curator of African American photography and culture, is Chair and Professor of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Her most recent books are Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present and Black Venus 2010: They Called Her "Hottentot" (Temple). Barbara Krauthamer is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South as well as many articles and essays on the history of slavery and emancipation.

View Details
Image for "Black Cake"

Black Cake

Charmaine Wilkerson

Description

NOW A HULU STERAMING SERIES • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • Two estranged siblings delve into their mother’s hidden past—and how it all connects to her traditional Caribbean black cake—in this immersive family saga, “a character-driven, multigenerational story that’s meant to be savored” (Time).
 
“Wilkerson transports you across the decades and around the globe accompanied by complex, wonderfully drawn characters.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones & The Six, and Malibu Rising

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, NPR, BuzzFeed, Glamour, PopSugar, Book Riot, She Reads


We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.

View Details
Image for "Tell Me Everything"

Tell Me Everything

Minka Kelly

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Washington Post best celebrity memoir of 2023
An Audible best celebrity memoir of 2023

“A timely, urgent portrait of working-class American women.”
—Gabrielle Union

In her highly anticipated memoir Tell Me Everything, Minka Kelly shares a story as powerful as it is page-turning.

Fans know her as the spoiled, rich cheerleader Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights or as the affluent, mysterious Samantha on the HBO megahit Euphoria. But as revealed for the first time in these pages, Minka Kelly’s life has been anything but easy.

Raised by a single mother who worked as a stripper and struggled with addiction, Minka spent years waking up in strange apartments as she and her mom bounced around the country, relying on friends and relatives to take them in. At times they even lived in storage units. She reconnected with her father, Aerosmith’s Rick Dufay, and eventually made her way to Los Angeles, where she landed the role of a lifetime on Friday Night Lights.

Now an established actress and philanthropist, Minka takes this next step in her career as a writer. She has poured her soul into the pages of this book, which ultimately tells a story of triumph over adversity, and how resilience and love are all we have in the end.

View Details
Image for "Hyperion"

Hyperion

Dan Simmons

Description

A stunning tour de force filled with transcendent awe and wonder, Hyperion is a masterwork of science fiction that resonates with excitement and invention, the first volume in a remarkable epic by the multiple-award-winning author of The Hollow Man.

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.

On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.

Praise for Dan Simmons and Hyperion

“Dan Simmons has brilliantly conceptualized a future 700 years distant. In sheer scope and complexity it matches, and perhaps even surpasses, those of Isaac Asimov and James Blish.”The Washington Post Book World

“An unfailingly inventive narrative . . . generously conceived and stylistically sure-handed.”The New York Times Book Review

“Simmons’s own genius transforms space opera into a new kind of poetry.”The Denver Post

“An essential part of any science fiction collection.”Booklist

View Details
Image for "The Big Bang Theory"

The Big Bang Theory

Jessica Radloff

Description

The definitive, behind-the-scenes look at the most popular sitcom of the last decade, The Big Bang Theory, packed with all-new, exclusive interviews with the producers and the entire cast.

The Big Bang Theory is a television phenomenon. To the casual viewer, it's a seemingly effortless comedy, with relatable characters tackling real-life issues, offering a kind of visual comfort food to its millions of dedicated fans. But the behind-the-scenes journey of the show from a failed pilot to a global sensation is a fascinating story that even the most die-hard fans don't know in its entirety.

The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series is a riveting, entertaining look at the sitcom sensation, with the blessing and participation of co-creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, executive producers Steve Molaro and Steve Holland, as well as Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Melissa Rauch, Mayim Bialik, and more. Glamour senior editor Jessica Radloff, who has written over 150 articles on the series (and even had a cameo in the finale!), gives readers an all-access pass to its intrepid producing and writing team and beloved cast. It's a story of on-and-off screen romance told in hilarious and emotional detail, of casting choices that nearly changed everything (which even some of the actors didn't know until now), of cast members bravely powering through personal tragedies, and when it came time to announce the 12th season would be its last, the complicated reasons why it was more difficult than anyone ever led on. Through hundreds of hours of interviews with the sitcom's major players, Radloff dives into all this and much more. The book is the ultimate celebration of this once-in-a-generation show and a must-have for all fans.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY GLAMOUR

"Talking with Jessica, I realized how easy it had been for me to kind of put all 12 years of my time on Big Bang Theory under one general umbrella, as it were. The questions she asked and the information she'd reveal to me from someone else she'd interviewed forced me into a frame of mind where each season - and sometimes each episode - became it's own, separate entity again. . . Frankly, it turned into a version of therapy I hadn't realized I'd needed and couldn't have known how much I'd enjoy." --Jim Parsons

View Details
Image for "The Eye of the World"

The Eye of the World

Robert Jordan

Description

The Wheel of Time is now an original series on Prime Video, starring Rosamund Pike as Moiraine!

The Eye of the World, the first novel in Robert Jordan's #1 New York Times bestselling epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time®, follows Moiraine Damodred as she arrives in Emond's Field on a quest to find the one prophesized to stand against The Dark One.


The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

When a vicious band of half-men, half beasts invade the Two Rivers seeking their master’s enemy, Moiraine persuades Rand al’Thor and his friends to leave their home and enter a larger unimaginable world filled with dangers waiting in the shadows and in the light.

Since its debut in 1990, The Wheel of Time® has captivated millions of readers around the globe with its scope, originality, and compelling characters. The last six books in series were all instant #1 New York Times bestsellers, and The Eye of the World was named one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read.

The Wheel of Time®
New Spring: The Novel
#1 The Eye of the World
#2 The Great Hunt
#3 The Dragon Reborn
#4 The Shadow Rising
#5 The Fires of Heaven
#6 Lord of Chaos
#7 A Crown of Swords
#8 The Path of Daggers
#9 Winter's Heart
#10 Crossroads of Twilight
#11 Knife of Dreams

By Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
#12 The Gathering Storm
#13 Towers of Midnight
#14 A Memory of Light

By Robert Jordan and Teresa Patterson
The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time

By Robert Jordan, Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons
The Wheel of Time Companion

By Robert Jordan and Amy Romanczuk
Patterns of the Wheel: Coloring Art Based on Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time

View Details
Image for "Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm"

Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm

Laura Warrell

Description

GMA BUZZ PICK • How do we find belonging when love is unrequited? A "gorgeously written debut" (Celeste Ng, best-selling author of Little Fires Everywhere) filled with jazz and soul, about the perennial temptations of dangerous love, told by the women who love Circus Palmer—trumpet player and old-school ladies’ man—as they ultimately discover the power of their own voices.

“Elegant, unexpected and…unforgettable.” —New York Times Book Review
 
“A modern masterpiece.” —Jason Reynolds, best-selling author of Look Both Ways     

It’s 2013, and Circus Palmer, a forty-year-old Boston-based trumpet player and old-school ladies’ man, lives for his music and refuses to be tied down. Before a gig in Miami, he learns that the woman who is secretly closest to his heart, the free-spirited drummer Maggie, is pregnant by him. Instead of facing the necessary conversation, Circus flees, setting off a chain of interlocking revelations from the various women in his life.

Most notable among them is his teenage daughter, Koko, who idolizes him and is awakening to her own sexuality even as her mentally fragile mother struggles to overcome her long-failed marriage and rejection by Circus. Delivering a lush orchestration of diverse female voices, Warrell spins a provocative, soulful, and gripping story of passion and risk, fathers and daughters, wives and single women, and, finally, hope and reconciliation.

View Details
Image for "Muhammad Ali his life and times"

Muhammad Ali : his life and times

Thomas Hauser

Description

This volume is a biography of American former professional boxer Muhammad Ali (b. 1942). Ail is generally considered among the greatest heavyweights in the sport's history. Through accounts of noteworthy admirers and close-associates, this work chronicles Ali's life and times. The author follows Ali through his growth from a brash, boisterous heavyweight contender to a highly devoted man of God who brings happiness wherever he goes. For fight fans, all of the classic bouts from Liston I to Manila are covered; anecdotes to be especially savored are those leading up to the first Liston fight, where Ali was arguably out of his mind in the extent to which he went in taunting his opponent, as well as the unadvised beating Ali suffered at the hands of Larry Holmes in the twilight of his career. The author also recounts Ali's relationship with Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam at the beginning of his first reign as heavyweight champion and to his conscientiously objecting to fighting in Vietnam. Showing "warts and all", this portrayal also shows Ali as an unfaithful husband, at times a cruel tormentor, as a foolhardy spendthrift, and as a confused and angry young man, as he transitions into his Muslim persona.

View Details
Image for "The Color Purple"

The Color Purple

Alice Walker

Description

A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize * Winner of the National Book Award

Published to unprecedented acclaim, The Color Purple established Alice Walker as a major voice in modern fiction. This is the story of two sisters--one a missionary in Africa and the other a child wife living in the South--who sustain their loyalty to and trust in each other across time, distance, and silence. Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, this classic novel of American literature is rich with passion, pain, inspiration, and an indomitable love of life.

"Intense emotional impact . . . Indelibly affecting . . . Alice Walker is a lavishly gifted writer." -- New York Times Book Review

"Places Walker in the company of Faulkner." -- The Nation

"Superb . . . A work to stand beside literature of any time and place." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"A novel of permanent importance." -- Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek

View Details
Image for "Entertaining Race"

Entertaining Race

Michael Eric Dyson

Description

One of Kirkus Review's Best Books About Being Black in America | On Detroit Free Press' Holiday Book Gift List

"Dyson’s work clearly comes from a deep well of love—for his country, for his people and for the intellectual and cultural figures he admires." —New York Times

"Entertaining Race is a splendid way to spend quality time reading one of the most remarkable thinkers in America today."
Speaker Nancy Pelosi

"To read Entertaining Race is to encounter the life-long vocation of a teacher who preaches, a preacher who teaches and an activist who cannot rest until all are set free."
Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock

For more than thirty years, Michael Eric Dyson has played a prominent role in the nation as a public intellectual, university professor, cultural critic, social activist and ordained Baptist minister. He has presented a rich and resourceful set of ideas about American history and culture. Now for the first time he brings together the various components of his multihued identity and eclectic pursuits.

Entertaining Race is a testament to Dyson’s consistent celebration of the outsized impact of African American culture and politics on this country. Black people were forced to entertain white people in slavery, have been forced to entertain the idea of race from the start, and must find entertaining ways to make race an object of national conversation. Dyson’s career embodies these and other ways of performing Blackness, and in these pages, ranging from 1991 to the present, he entertains race with his pen, voice and body, and occasionally, alongside luminaries like Cornel West, David Blight, Ibram X. Kendi, Master P, MC Lyte, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alicia Garza, John McWhorter, and Jordan Peterson.

Most of this work will be new to readers, a fresh light for many of his long-time fans and an inspiring introduction for newcomers. Entertaining Race offers a compelling vision from the mind and heart of one of America’s most important and enduring voices.

View Details
Image for "Ida B the queen"

Ida B. the Queen

Michelle Duster

Description

Journalist. Suffragist. Antilynching crusader. In 1862, Ida B. Wells was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi. In 2020, she won a Pulitzer Prize.

Ida B. Wells committed herself to the needs of those who did not have power. In the eyes of the FBI, this made her a “dangerous negro agitator.” In the annals of history, it makes her an icon.

Ida B. the Queen tells the awe-inspiring story of an pioneering woman who was often overlooked and underestimated—a woman who refused to exit a train car meant for white passengers; a woman brought to light the horrors of lynching in America; a woman who cofounded the NAACP. Written by Wells’s great-granddaughter Michelle Duster, this “warm remembrance of a civil rights icon” (Kirkus Reviews) is a unique visual celebration of Wells’s life, and of the Black experience.

A century after her death, Wells’s genius is being celebrated in popular culture by politicians, through song, public artwork, and landmarks. Like her contemporaries Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, Wells left an indelible mark on history—one that can still be felt today. As America confronts the unfinished business of systemic racism, Ida B. the Queen pays tribute to a transformational leader and reminds us of the power we all hold to smash the status quo.

View Details
Image for "Illustrated Black History"

Illustrated Black History

George McCalman

Description

*AWARD WINNER* of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Debut Author / and the NCBR Recognition Award

A gorgeous collection of 145 original portraits that celebrates Black pioneers--famous and little-known--in politics, science, literature, music, and more--with biographical reflections, all created and curated by an award-winning graphic designer.

Illustrated Black History is a breathtaking collection of original portraits depicting black heroes--both famous and unsung--who made their mark on activism, science, politics, business, medicine, technology, food, arts, entertainment, and more. Each entry includes a lush drawing or painting by artist George McCalman, along with an insightful essay summarizing the person's life story.

The 145 entries range from the famous to the little-known, from literary luminary James Baldwin to documentarian Madeline Anderson, who produced "I Am Somebody" about the 1969 strike of mostly female hospital workers; from Aretha Franklin to James and Eloyce Gist, who had a traveling ministry in the early 1900s; from Colin Kaepernick to Guion S. Bluford, the first Black person to travel into space.

Beautifully designed with over 300 unique four-color artworks and accessible to readers of all ages, this eye-opening, educational, dynamic, and timely compendium pays homage to Black Americans and their achievements, and showcases the depth and breadth of Black genius.

View Details
Image for "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman"

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

Ernest J. Gaines

Description

“Grand, robust, a rich and big novel.”—Alice Walker, The New York Times Book Review

“In [Jane Pittman], Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure. . . . Gaines’s novel brings to mind other great works: The Odyssey, for the way his heroine’s travels manage to summarize the American history of her race, and Huckleberry Finn, for the clarity of [Pittman’s] voice, for her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years and things to find the one true story of it all.”—Newsweek

Miss Jane Pittman. She is one of the most unforgettable heroines in American fiction, a woman whose life has come to symbolize the struggle for freedom, dignity, and justice. Ernest J. Gaines’s now-classic novel—written as an autobiography—spans one hundred years of Miss Jane’s remarkable life, from her childhood as a slave on a Louisiana plantation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. It is a story of courage and survival, history, bigotry, and hope—as seen through the eyes of a woman who lived through it all. 
 
A historical tour de force, a triumph of fiction, Miss Jane’s eloquent narrative brings to life an important story of race in America—and stands as a landmark work for our time.

View Details
Image for "Wicked Autumn"

Wicked Autumn

G. M. Malliet

Description

What could be more dangerous than cozy village life in the English countryside? 

Max Tudor has adapted well to his post as vicar of St. Edwold’s in the idyllic village of Nether Monkslip. The quiet village seems the perfect home for Max, who has fled a harrowing past as an MI5 agent. Now he has found a measure of peace among urban escapees and yoga practitioners, artists and crafters and New Agers. But this new-found serenity is quickly shattered when the highly vocal and unpopular president of the Women’s Institute turns up dead at the Harvest Fayre. The death looks like an accident, but Max’s training as a former agent kicks in, and before long he suspects foul play. 

Max has ministered to the community long enough to be familiar with the tangled alliances and animosities among the residents, but this tragedy surprises and confounds him. It is impossible to believe anyone in his lovely village capable of the crime, and yet given the victim, he must acknowledge that almost everyone had probably fantasized about killing Wanda Batton-Smythe.

As the investigation unfolds, Max becomes more intricately involved. Memories he’d rather not revisit are stirred, evoking the demons from the past which led him to Nether Monkslip. In WICKED AUTUMN, G.M. Malliet serves up an irresistible English village—deliciously skewered—a flawed but likeable protagonist, and a brilliantly modern version of the traditional drawing room mystery.One of The Boston Globe's Best Mysteries of 2011 One of Library Journal's Best Mystery Books of 2011

View Details
Image for "Forty Acres Deep"

Forty Acres Deep

Michael Perry

Description

When farmer Harold wakes to find his wife dead beside him in bed and snow threatening to crush the last life from his dwindling farm, he takes drastic steps toward a fresh start. Set in a world of stark wintry beauty, Forty Acres Deep is the brief, unrelenting tale of one person's attempt to make sense of a world he no longer recognizes while pitilessly calling himself into account. Seamed with grim humor and earthy revelations, it is an unforgiving story...and yet leaves open the idea that we might surrender to hope.

View Details
Image for "Lady Tan's Circle of Women"

Lady Tan's Circle of Women

Lisa See

Description

*NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!*

From “one of those special writers capable of delivering both poetry and plot” (The New York Times Book Review) an immersive historical novel inspired by the true story of a woman physician in 15th-century China—perfect for fans of Lisa See’s classics Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane.

According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.

From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose—despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it—and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom.

But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife—embroider bound-foot slippers, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.

How might a woman like Yunxian break free of these traditions and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? How might the power of friendship support or complicate these efforts? A captivating story of women helping each other, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is a triumphant reimagining of the life of one person who was remarkable in the Ming dynasty and would be considered remarkable today.

View Details
Image for "Indian Flavor Every Day"

Indian Flavor Every Day

Maya Kaimal

Description

Introduce rich, complex Indian flavors to your everyday cooking with 80 easy recipes and ingenious guidance from Julia Child Best First Book Award winner Maya Kaimal.

In Indian Flavor Every Day, Indian cooking authority Maya Kaimal proves it’s possible to experience the joy of this cuisine with minimal time and just a handful of essential ingredients like spices, ghee, and dried chilies. She distills foundational flavor-building methods, like creating spice blends and sizzling whole seeds in oil to release their essence, and applies them to accessible, versatile ingredients any home cook has on hand.
 
These adaptable techniques open a world of possibility as you’ll not only whip up traditional dishes but also amp up the flavors of your favorite ingredients or meals whenever a craving strikes. Why not swirl some popped mustard seeds into a butternut squash soup or top ho-hum steamed broccoli with a crispy garlic-chili-cumin tarka? How about serving charred carrots with a gingery yogurt sauce next to your roasted chicken, or adding a pinch of garam masala to your cookie dough?
 
With many vegetarian, gluten-free, and wholesome, hearty offerings, Indian Flavor Every Day includes both simplified classic dishes and new twists. Recipes like Golden Noodles with Tarka Crunch, Roasted Asparagus with Tamarind and Crispy Shallots, and deeply flavorful Chicken Chettinad with Black Pepper Coconut Masala are designed to build your confidence and spark inspiration, so incredible new flavors can become an everyday pleasure.
 
Embrace the simple tips in this book, purchase a few ingredients for your pantry, and Maya Kaimal promises that Indian flavors can be woven into your meals with delicious ease.

View Details
Image for "Before She Finds Me"

Before She Finds Me

Heather Chavez

Description

Two unlikely mothers race to uncover the truth behind a horrific attack--even after it becomes clear that the truth will destroy one of their families--in this shocking thriller that is "both timely and emotional" (Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author).



"Slick, smart, layered, and full of surprises."
--Lisa Unger

"An exciting thriller perfect for fans of Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Pieces of Her." --Buzzfeed

"Wholly addictive." --May Cobb

"Chavez is at the top of her game." --Jeneva Rose

"Fresh and surprising." --BookPage (starred review)



Named a "Summer Must-Read" by CrimeReads * Book Riot * BuzzFeed * Fresh Fiction * BookBub * Wealth of Geeks * Daily Times * Ground News * SheReads * Mercury News * East Bay Times * Boston Herald * The Orange County Register




Julia Bennett has worked hard to create a stable life for her daughter, Cora, in Southern California. So when Cora leaves for college, the worst thing Julia expects on move-in day is an argument with her ex-husband and his new wife. But a sudden attack leaves the campus stunned--and only Julia's quick actions save Cora's life. Shaken in the aftermath, and haunted by a dark secret, Julia starts to wonder: What if the attack wasn't as random as everyone believes?



Newly pregnant Ren Petrovic has an unusual career--she's a trained assassin, operating under a strict moral code. Ren wasn't on campus that day, but she knows who was: her husband, Nolan. What she doesn't know is why Nolan has broken their rules by not telling her about the job in advance. The more Ren looks into the attack, the more she begins to question: Who really hired Nolan? And why did one woman in the crowd respond so differently from all the rest?



Julia and Ren each want answers, but their searches quickly pit them against each other. One woman is a hired killer, but the other is a determined survivor. And both mothers will defend their families to the bitter end.

View Details
Image for "Winter Counts"

Winter Counts

David Heska Wanbli Weiden

Description

ANTHONY AWARD WINNER FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

THRILLER AWARD WINNER FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

EDGAR AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

"Winter Counts is a marvel. It's a thriller with a beating heart and jagged teeth." --Tommy Orange, author of There There

A Best Book of 2020: NPR * Publishers Weekly * Library Journal * CrimeReads * Goodreads * Sun Sentinel * SheReads * MysteryPeople

A groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx.

Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that's hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil's nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop.

They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.

Winter Counts is a tour-de-force of crime fiction, a bracingly honest look at a long-ignored part of American life, and a twisting, turning story that's as deeply rendered as it is thrilling.

Winner, Spur Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and Best First Novel * Winner, Lefty Award for Best Debut Mystery Novel * Shortlisted, Best First Novel, Bouchercon Anthony Awards * Shortlisted, Best First Novel, International Thriller Writers * Shortlisted, Dashiell Hammett Prize for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing, International Association of Crime Writers * Longlisted, VCU Cabell First Novel Award * Shortlisted, Barry Award for Best First Novel * Shortlisted, Reading the West Award * Shortlisted, Colorado Book Award (Thriller)

View Details
Image for "Lore Olympus: Volume One"

Lore Olympus: Volume One

Rachel Smythe

Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Scandalous gossip, wild parties, and forbidden love—witness what the gods do after dark in this stylish and contemporary reimagining of one of the best-known stories in Greek mythology, featuring a brand-new, exclusive short story from creator Rachel Smythe.

HUGO AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “What Scott Pilgrim did for Canadian slackers, Lore Olympus does for the Greek pantheon, while being so beautiful that you know Aphrodite is just staring daggers in its direction.”—Kieron Gillen, co-creator of The Wicked + The Divine


Persephone, young goddess of spring, is new to Olympus. Her mother, Demeter, has raised her in the mortal realm, but after Persephone promises to train as a sacred virgin, she’s allowed to live in the fast-moving, glamorous world of the gods. When her roommate, Artemis, takes her to a party, her entire life changes: she ends up meeting Hades and feels an immediate spark with the charming yet misunderstood ruler of the Underworld. Now Persephone must navigate the confusing politics and relationships that rule Olympus, while also figuring out her own place—and her own power.

This edition of Smythe’s original Eisner-winning webcomic Lore Olympus brings Greek mythology into the modern age in a sharply perceptive and romantic graphic novel.

This volume collects episodes 1–25 of the #1 WEBTOON comic Lore Olympus.

View Details
Image for "The Old Woman with the Knife"

The Old Woman with the Knife

Gu Byeong-Mo

Description

*A New York Times Book Review Notable Book*

*An NPR Best Book of the Year*

*An NPR Book We Love*

*A New York Times Editors' Choice Pick*

*A Most Anticipated Read in LitHub, CrimeReads, Thrillist, and Popsugar*

*A Boston Globe Thriller to Read on Your Summer Vacation*

*A Crime Reads Best International Crime Fiction for 2022*



The kinetic story of a sixty-five-year-old female assassin who faces an unexpected threat in the twilight of her career--this is an international bestseller and the English language debut from an award-winning South Korean author



At sixty-five, Hornclaw is beginning to slow down. She lives modestly in a small apartment, with only her aging dog, a rescue named Deadweight, to keep her company. There are expectations for people her age--that she'll retire and live out the rest of her days quietly. But Hornclaw is not like other people. She is an assassin.



Double-crossers, corporate enemies, cheating spouses--for the past four decades, Hornclaw has killed them all with ruthless efficiency, and the less she's known about her targets, the better. But now, nearing the end of her career, she has just slipped up. An injury leads her to an unexpected connection with a doctor and his family. But emotions, for an assassin, are a dangerous proposition. As Hornclaw's world closes in, this final chapter in her career may also mark her own bloody end.



A sensation in South Korea, and now translated into English for the first time by Chi-Young Kim, The Old Woman with the Knife is an electrifying, singular, mordantly funny novel about the expectations imposed on aging bodies and the dramatic ways in which one woman chooses to reclaim her agency.

View Details