Recommended Reads

Two former Texas Rangers, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, have been running a ramshackle stock operation near the Mexican border with a lot of work and not much success. When they hear rumors of freewheeling opportunities in the newly opened territory, they decide to break camp, pull up stakes, and head north. Their dusty trek is filled with troubles, violence, and unfilled yearning. 

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?

In The Other Significant Others, NPR's Rhaina Cohen invites us into the lives of people who have defied convention by choosing a friend as a life partner—these are friends who are home co-owners, co-parents or each other’s caregivers. Their riveting stories unsettle widespread assumptions about relationships, including the idea that sex is a defining feature of partnership and that people who raise kids together should be in a romantic relationship. Platonic partners from different walks of life—spanning age and religion, gender and sexuality and more—reveal how freeing and challenging it can be to embrace a relationship model that society doesn't recognize. 

Five years ago, Geeta lost her no-good husband when he walked out on her and she has no idea where he is. In her remote village in India, rumor has it that Geeta killed him. It turns out that being known as a “self-made” widow comes with some perks. Now other women are asking for her “expertise,” making her an unwitting consultant for husband disposal. With Geeta’s dangerous reputation becoming a double-edged sword, she has to find a way to protect the life she’s built—but even the best-laid plans of would-be widows tend to go awry. 

When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family together. It becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger. Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: His own particular set of skills. Roman begins his work for the criminals, who underestimate him. A dangerous mistake, since Roman is willing to do anything to save his family. 

Iris Collins doesn't believe in plans. But when she inherits a quaint purple Victorian in the quirky town of St. Claire, she seizes the chance to start over--on her terms. Her grand idea? Turn the rambling house into a haven for anyone who's ever felt like they didn't quite belong. A cranky vampire with a secret past. A werewolf with anxiety. A ghost with unresolved issues. And maybe even a mysterious man from Iris's past who seems too good to be true.

In this moving and intimate story, Kindred writes about his rise to professional success and the changes that brought him back to his hometown of Morton, Illinois late in life. As he dealt with personal hardship, his urge to write sustained him. For years, he has recapped the games of the Lady Potters, including their many runs to state championships. He attended game after game, sitting in the stands and making notes, paid in nothing but Milk Duds. And the team and their community were there for him as he lost a grandson to addiction and his wife to long-term illness. 

A successful caterer, Claire Waverley prepares dishes made with her mystical plants. Meanwhile, her elderly cousin, Evanelle, is known for distributing unexpected gifts whose uses become uncannily clear. They are the last of the Waverleys—except for Claire’s rebellious sister, Sydney, who fled Bascom the moment she could, abandoning Claire, as their own mother had years before. When Sydney suddenly returns home with a young daughter of her own, Claire’s quiet life is turned upside down—along with the protective boundary she has so carefully constructed around her heart. 

In the 1910s Carol Milford, a young and progressive librarian living in St Paul, Minnesota, falls in love with and marries Will Kennicott, a doctor who dreams of returning to Gopher Prairie, the small town of his childhood. Carol is disappointed by the town's drab appearance and its provincial, small-minded inhabitants. Brimming with optimism and tenacity, she sets out to convince the town to modernize and embrace her progressive values. Her ideas are not received as she hoped. 

After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now the true crime podcast "Listen for the Lie" has decided to investigate Savvy’s murder. Lucy is forced to return to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one that did it.
 

Nestled in the historic waterfront town of Beaufort, North Carolina, Chapters Bed-and-Breakfast is a reader's paradise. It's the perfect literary retreat--until a rare book dealer turns up dead in the carriage house during a celebration of Golden Age mystery author Josephine Tey. The victim's daughter points the finger at forty-two-year-old widow and former schoolteacher Charlotte Reed, who inherited the B&B from her great-aunt Isabella. She is shocked to discover that the book dealer suspected Isabella of being a thief who founded Chapters on her ill-gotten gains. Charlotte is determined to prove her innocence and to clear her great-aunt's name. 

When 38 jetliners bound for the United States were forced to land at Gander International Airport in Canada by the closing of U.S. airspace on September 11, the population of this small town on Newfoundland Island swelled from 10,300 to nearly 17,000. The citizens of Gander met the stranded passengers with an overwhelming display of friendship and goodwill.

In 1915, Edgar Lee Masters published a book of dramatic monologues written in free verse about a fictional town called Spoon River, based on the Midwestern towns where he grew up. Masters raises the dead "sleeping on the hill" in their village cemetery to tell the truth about their lives, and their testimony topples the American myth of the moral superiority of small-town life. Spoon River, as undeniably corrupt and cruel as the big city, is home to murderers, drunkards, crooked bankers, lechers, bitter wives, abusive husbands, failed dreamers, and a few good souls. 

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear. The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling.

The summer of 1928 was a vintage season for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma's belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding—remembered forever in moving, interconnected vignettes, by the incomparable Ray Bradbury.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it's a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.

Forbes may have labeled Ford Grant the World's Hottest Billionaire, but all he cares about is escaping the press and opening a recording studio in gorgeous small town Rose Hill. Something that comes to a screeching halt when he ends up face-to-face with a young girl who claims he's her biological father. Now, he spends his days balancing business with parenting a sullen twelve-year-old, all while trying desperately to keep his hands the hell off his best friend's sister, Rosie Belmont. Ford knows damn well he shouldn't cross this line. But shouldn't and can't are two very different things.

Tiny Haines, Alaska, is ninety miles north of Juneau, accessible mainly by water or air—and only when the weather is good. There's no traffic light and no mail delivery; people can vanish without a trace and funerals are a community affair. Heather Lende posts both the obituaries and the social column for her local newspaper. If anyone knows the going-on in this close-knit town—from births to weddings to funerals—she does. Like Bailey White's tales of Southern life or Garrison Keillor's reports from the Midwest, NPR commentator Heather Lende's take on her offbeat Alaskan hometown celebrates life in a dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful place.

Between these two poles--wind as a malevolent force, and wind as savior of our planet--lies a world of fascination, history, literature, science, poetry, and engineering which Simon Winchester explores with the curiosity and vigor that are the hallmarks of his bestselling works. In The Breath of the Gods, he explains how wind plays a part in our everyday lives, from airplane or car travel to the "natural disasters" that are becoming more frequent and regular.

It began with a letter from a screenwriter, asking about a story. Your family. World War II. Nazi spies. Christine Kuehn was shocked and confused. When she asked her seventy-year-old father, Eberhard, what this could possibly be about, he stalled, deflected, demurred, and then wept. He knew this day would come.

In a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and "the neighborhood homosexual," Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son's desire for privacy as a personal affront. When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn't be better. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget. 

Rocky, still anxious, nostalgic, and funny, is living in Western Massachusetts with her husband Nick and their daughter Willa, who's back home after college. Their son, Jamie, has taken a new job in New York, and Mort, Rocky's widowed father, has moved in.
It all couldn't be more ridiculously normal . . . until Rocky finds herself obsessed with a local accident that only tangentially affects them--and with a medical condition that, she hopes, won't affect them at all.

 

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. 

The Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s and had all the hallmarks of the most notorious serial killers. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the sky-high murder rates, and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten. This gripping true-crime narrative tells the story of the Last Call Killer and the decades-long chase to find him. And at the same time, it paints a portrait of his victims and a vibrant community navigating threat and resilience.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives’ tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.

In this novel, Malamud tells the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era. 

A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats.
 

A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. He lives alone, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. But when a mysterious package appears at the bookstore, its unexpected arrival gives Fikry the chance to make his life over--and see everything anew.   

In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them. The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. 

Kel is an orphan, stolen from the life he knew to become the Sword Catcher, the body double of a royal heir, Prince Conor Aurelian. His destiny is to die for Conor. Lin Caster is a skilled physician but cannot heal her best friend without access to forbidden knowledge. After a failed assassination attempt brings Lin and Kel together, they are drawn into the web of the mysterious Ragpicker King, the ruler of Castellane’s criminal underworld. 

Joe King Oliver's beloved Grandma B has only a single, dying wish: to see her long-lost son. King has been estranged from his father, Chief Odin Oliver, since he was a young boy. He swore to never speak to the man again when he was taken away in handcuffs. But now, Grandma B's pure ask has opened King's heart, and through his hunt, he gains a deeper understanding of his father as a complicated, righteous man. Although Chief was released from prison years ago, he's been living underground ever since. Now, King must not only find his father but also prove his innocence to protect the future of his entire family.

This is the story of Moses Herzog, a great sufferer, joker, mourner, and charmer. Although his life steadily disintegrates around him—he has failed as a writer and teacher, as a father, and has lost the affection of his wife to his best friends—Herzog sees himself as a survivor, both of his private disasters and those of the age. He writes unsent letters to friends and enemies, colleagues and famous people, revealing his wry perception of the world and the innermost secrets of his heart.

When the struggling station needs a new concept, Shay Goldstein proposes a show that her boss green-lights with excitement. On The Ex Talk, two exes will deliver relationship advice live, on air. Their boss decides Shay and her new co-worker, Dominic Yun, are the perfect co-hosts since they despise each other, even if they never dated. Their audience gets invested fast, and it's not long before The Ex Talk becomes a must-listen in Seattle and climbs podcast charts. As the show gets bigger, so does their deception, especially when Shay and Dominic start to fall for each other. 

Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. 
 

"If I know why they are the way they are, then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am," says Alex Tuchman of her parents. Now that her father is on his deathbed, Alex--a strong-headed lawyer, devoted mother, and loving sister--feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who Victor is and what he did over the course of his life and career. ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS is a timely, piercing exploration of what it means to be caught in the web of a toxic man who abused his power, impacting his family for generations.  

Rosemary Laws barely remembers the Before times when deadly viruses and terror attacks didn't keep everyone confined inside. She spends her days in Hoodspace, helping customers order all of their goods online for no-contact drone delivery. By lucky chance, she finds a new job and a new calling: discover amazing musicians and bring their concerts to everyone via virtual reality. The only catch: She'll have to go out in public to find the illegal concerts and bring musicians into the limelight they deserve. After that, maybe virtual reality won't be enough.

After working with the bestselling crime writer Alan Conway for years, editor Susan Ryeland is intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful, enough so that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job. Conway’s latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. The more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder.

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes a unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island. Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.

Revised to reflect the latest in survival knowledge and technology, and covering new topics such as urban survival and terrorism, the SAS Survival Handbook is the ultimate guide to survival anywhere. From basic campcraft and navigation to fear management and strategies for coping with any type of disaster, this complete course is the definitive resource for all campers, hikers, and outdoor adventurers. 

Dylan’s geologist friend Clay has discovered an untouched cliff face in the Kentucky wilderness. Dylan is going to be the first person to climb it, cementing her place as the next rising star in rock climbing. She sets off along with Clay, his assistant Sylvia, and Dylan's boyfriend Luke. When three bodies are discovered seven months later in various states of decay, Dylan is still missing. No trace of her, dead or alive, has been found.

In The Unthinkable, prize-winning journalist Amanda Ripley, who has covered some of the most devastating disasters of our age, sets out to discover why some people perish while others survive. To understand the human reaction to chaos and imminent danger, she turns to leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists, and other disaster experts. Along the way, we get firsthand accounts and knowledge about the invisible factors that can make the difference between death and survival.

In this novel based on a true story, the year is 1823. Trapper Hugh Glass is among the Rocky Mountain Fur Company’s finest trackers and most experienced frontiersmen. When a scouting mission leaves him viciously mauled by a grizzly bear, two company men are dispatched to stay behind and tend to Glass. Instead, they abandon him. Glass is driven to survive by one desire: revenge. 

When writer and navigator Tristan Gooley journeys outside, he sees a natural world filled with clues. To help you understand nature as he does, Gooley shares more than 850 tips for forecasting, tracking, and more. This is the ultimate resource on what the land, sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and clouds can reveal if you only know how to look.

A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.

When best friends Wynn and Jack decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddling. One night, they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank; the next day, a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the same man they heard? And if he is, where is the woman? 

The Worst Journey in the World recounts Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Apsley Cherry-Garrard—the youngest member of Scott’s team and one of three men to make and survive the notorious Winter Journey—draws on his firsthand experiences as well as the diaries of his compatriots to create a stirring and detailed account of Scott’s legendary expedition. 

Mara was surprised when reality TV producers showed up at her survival school to tell her she had been cast in their new show, 'Civilization.' Whisked away by helicopter to an undisclosed location, Mara meets her teammates. When the cast wakes one morning to find something has gone horribly wrong, fear ripples through the group. Soon Mara and the others face terrifying decisions as "survival" becomes more than a game.

In June 1992, best friends Jim Davidson and Mike Price stood triumphantly atop Washington's Mount Rainier, celebrating their first mountaineering milestone. On the way down, a cave-in plunged them deep inside a pitch-black, ice-walled glacial crevasse. Trapped on a narrow, unstable frozen ledge, deep below daylight and high above a yawning chasm, Davidson would desperately battle crumbling ice and snow that threatened to bury him alive, while struggling in vain to save his fatally injured companion.

Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip. This time an unexpected intruder stumbles upon their campsite who is shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry. Before they know it, Tim and the boys are thrust into a harrowing struggle for survival with no escape from the elements, the infected, or one another.

In Extremes, renowned geographer and travel writer Nick Middleton puts his body and mind to the test in an attempt to find out how people endure the world's most remote and inhospitable landscapes. His mission is to learn how to cope with four horrendous habitats: arctic wasteland, jungle, desert, and swamp. Nick explains the geographical conditions that conspire to produce the world’s harshest ecologies -- as well as the various human quirks that people have evolved to make life at the edge bearable.
 

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker, Valerie Gillis goes missing 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.

How to Forage for Wild Foods without Dying is a book for anyone who likes to go on nature walks and would like to learn about the edible plants they're most likely to come across no matter what region they're in. With Zachos's expert advice and easy-to-follow guidelines, readers will be confident in identifying which plants they can safely eat and which ones they should definitely avoid. 
 

In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong. Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, and commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, she uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong’s Year of the Tiger will galvanize readers.

As a child, Tarana Burke reeled from her sexual assault, believing she was responsible. Unable to confess her experience for fear of shattering her family, her soul split in two between the curious, well-informed intellectual and the shame-ridden victim who blamed herself. Tarana fought to reunite her fractured self through organizing, pursuing justice, and supporting Black and brown girls. In sharing her path toward healing and saying "me too," Tarana reaches out a hand to help all on their journeys.

This powerful novel transports readers to the breathtaking world of Out of Africa—1920s Kenya—and reveals the extraordinary adventures of Beryl Markham, a woman before her time. Headstrong young Beryl becomes caught up in a passionate love triangle with the irresistible safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and the writer Baroness Karen Blixen. Brave and audacious and contradictory, Beryl must conquer her own heart to embrace her true destiny: to fly.

A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately Silvia Vasquez-Lavado was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest. But Silvia didn’t go alone. She gathered a group of young female survivors and led them to base camp alongside her. 

Elizabeth Blackwell's intelligence and intensity made her the first woman in American to receive an M.D. in 1849. She was soon joined in her iconic achievement by her younger sister, Emily, who was actually the more brilliant physician. Together the Blackwells founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, the first hospital staffed entirely by women. Both sisters were tenacious and visionary, but their convictions did not always align with the emergence of women’s rights—or with each other. 

From the chaos of campaign strategy sessions to the intensity of debate prep under relentless scrutiny and the private moments that rarely make headlines, Kamala Harris offers an unfiltered look at the pressures, triumphs, and heartbreaks of a history-defining race for President of the United States. With behind-the-scenes details and a voice that is both intimate and urgent, this is a chronicle of resilience, leadership, and the high stakes of democracy in action.

This novel reimagines the life of Martha Ballard, real-life midwife, healer, and diarist. When the Kennebec River freezes in1789, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Her record soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. Although Selma went on to become a celebrated Hollywood actress and model, she could never quite shake the periods of darkness that overtook her, and she secretly drank to escape. Over the course of this memoir, Selma lays bare her life filled with brutal violence, passionate love, true friendship, the gift of motherhood, and, finally, the surprising salvation of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis.
 

In this comprehensive, revelatory biography, historian Jane Sherron De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, and her meticulous jurisprudence. At the heart of her story is her Jewish background, specifically the concept of tikkun olam, the Hebrew injunction to “repair the world,” with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II.

Based on a true story, this novel relates the rise and downfall of Hannah Elias, one of the richest black women in America in the late 1800s. A murder and a case of mistaken identity brings the police to Hannah Elias' mansion on Central Park West. Born in Philadelphia, Hannah slips on a new identity before relocating to New York City to become as rich as a robber baron through her wise investments. The murder investigation brings to light Elias' African-American background. When this truth is revealed, Mrs. Elias finds herself alone, ensnared in a scandalous trial, and accused of stealing her fortune from whites.
 

Merle Oberon made history when she was announced as a nominee for the Best Actress Oscar in 1936. Her nomination for "The Dark Angel" marked the first time the Academy recognized a performer of color. Oberon, born to a South Asian mother and white father in India, broke through a racial barrier-but no one knew it since she was "passing" for white. Against the backdrop of Hollywood's racially exclusionary Golden Age and the United States's hostile immigration policy towards South Asians in the twentieth century, Oberon rose to the highest echelons of the film-world elite, all while keeping a secret that could have destroyed her career.

In August 2018 a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day in order to protest the climate crisis. No One Is Too Small to Make A Difference brings you Greta in her own words, for the first time. Her actions sparked a global movement, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Her book is a rallying cry for why we must all wake up and fight to protect the living planet, no matter how powerless we feel. 

Inspired by trailblazer Forugh Farrokhzad's verse, letters, films, and interviews--and including original translations of her poems--this haunting novel uses the lens of fiction to capture the tenacity, spirit, and conflicting desires of a brave woman who represents the birth of feminism in Iran--and who continues to inspire generations of women around the world.
 

As a child, Isabelle Allende watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without “resources or voice.” Isabel became determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have. As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote “with a knife between our teeth” about women’s issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime and knows where, and what, feminism needs to be next.

Now in paperback—the intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States, featuring a new introduction by Michelle Obama, a letter from the author to her younger self, and a book club guide with 20 discussion questions and a 5-question Q&A
 
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WATCH THE EMMY-NOMINATED NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS

Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. In her memoir, the former First Lady invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. 

1861. Elle Burns is a former slave with a passion for justice. To spy for the Union Army, she is willing to risk the brutal indignity of the slave system deeply entrenched in the South. Malcolm McCall, a seasoned detective for Pinkerton's Secret Service, is ordered to infiltrate and embed himself within a Rebel Virginia enclave. Together with Elle, these two brave spies stumble across a plot that could turn the tide of the war in the Confederacy's favor. They must foil the plan and preserve the Union at any cost, even if they lose each other.

Felix Rivendale, the Marquess of Wrenworth, is The Ideal Gentleman, a man all men want to be and all women want to possess. But underneath is a damaged soul soothed only by public adulation. Louisa Cantwell needs to marry well to support her sisters. She does not, however, want Lord Wrenworth--though he seems inexplicably interested in her. Still, when he is the only man to propose at the end of the London season, she reluctantly accepts.

In Why We Love, renowned anthropologist Helen Fisher offers a new map of the phenomenon of love—from its origins in the brain to the thrilling havoc it creates in our bodies and behavior. Working with a team of scientists to scan the brains of people who had just fallen madly in love, Fisher proved what psychologists had until recently only suspected: when you fall in love, specific areas of the brain "light up" with increased blood flow. This sweeping new book uses this data to argue that romantic passion is hardwired into our brains by millions of years of evolution. 
 

Host of the popular student radio show Brown Sugar, Kiki Banjo has made it her mission to make sure the women of Whitewell University do not fall into the mess of "situationships", players, and heartbreak. But when she kisses Malakai Korede, the guy she just publicly denounced as "The Wasteman of Whitewell,"she finds her show on the brink. Kiki and Malakai are soon embroiled in a fake relationship to try and salvage their reputations. 

With their signature wit and hilarious voice, authors, bloggers, and entrepreneurs Shane and Hannah Burcaw have put together a collection of sweet and unforgettable true love stories about interabled couples who navigate their relationships in an ableist world. 

Nora Stephens' life is books. She lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby adores her. When Libby begs workaholic Nora to take some time in the country, Big Sis can't say no. But Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute. Thrown together again and again, what Nora and Charlie discover rewrites the stories they've told about themselves.

Witch Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, but she can't resist one exception: an online account, where she posts videos "pretending" to be a witch. Then an unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. When Mika agrees, she is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also Jamie, the handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House who would do anything to protect the children. 

Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and thereby exposes herself to the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.

When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. When the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse. Handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. 

Ayesha Shamsi lives with her boisterous Muslim family and is always being reminded that her flighty younger cousin, Hafsa, is close to rejecting her one hundredth marriage proposal. Though Ayesha is lonely, she doesn't want an arranged marriage. Then she meets Khalid, who is just as smart and handsome as he is conservative and judgmental. When a surprise engagement is announced between Khalid and Hafsa, Ayesha is torn between how she feels about the straightforward Khalid and the unsettling new gossip she hears about his family. 

When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world. As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion. 

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. When she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, she listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.

Accountant Ember Lee Cardinal thrives in corporate life. And Danuwoa Colson, the IT guy and fellow Native who caught her eye on her first day, seems to actually be interested in her too. Despite her unease over the no-dating policy at work, they start to see each other secretly. But when a scheming colleague blackmails Ember, threatening to expose their relationship, she must make the hard decision to either stay silent or tell the truth, which could cost her everything.

Modern Love, Revised and Updated, features dozens of the most memorable essays to run in The New York Times “Modern Love” column since its debut in 2004. Together, they tell the larger story of how relationships begin, often fail, and—when we’re lucky—endure.

Paris, 1889: The Exposition Universelle is underway, drawing Luz Alana Heith-Benzan, heiress to the Caña Brava rum empire. Luz Alana set sail from Santo Domingo armed with three hundred casks of rum. But in the City of Lights, buyers and shippers alike can't imagine doing business with a woman of color. Enter James Evanston Sinclair, Earl of Darnick, who's built a whisky brand that's his only passion until he's confronted with Luz, a force of nature who turns his life upside down.

Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Over four years, three unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon.

Two hundred years after migrating into space, mankind is in turmoil. When a reluctant ship's captain and washed-up detective find themselves involved in the case of a missing girl, what they discover brings our solar system to the brink of civil war, and exposes the greatest conspiracy in human history.
 

A stunning novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally, author of Daughter of Mars, uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden—Schindler’s Jews—to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil.

Based on true events of a child's demonic possession in the 1940s, The Exorcist tells the story of eleven-year-old Regan MacNeil and her mother Chris, a famous actress and doting mother. When Regan's personality unexpectedly shifts and she starts exhibiting disturbing, often violent behavior, her desperate mother is driven to seek help from two Catholic priests, men who will risk everything--including their own souls-- to free the girl from the ancient malevolent force possessing her.

Mattie Ross is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory.

London, England: Slough House is where washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what’s left of their failed careers. The “slow horses,” as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated there. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, the slow horses see an opportunity to redeem themselves. But is the victim really who he appears to be?

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma after oil was discovered beneath their land. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case. Director, J. Edgar Hoover turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. 

Recently widowed Melinda Monroe decides that the remote mountain town of Virgin River might be the perfect place to escape her heartache and to reenergize the midwifery / nursing career she loves. But her high hopes are dashed within an hour of arriving. Realizing she's made a huge mistake, Mel decides to leave town the following morning. But a tiny baby abandoned on a front porch changes her plans, and former marine Jack Sheridan cements them into place.

The corpse had been “scalped,” its palms and soles removed after death. Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police knows immediately he will have his hands full with this case, a certainty that is supported by the disturbing occurrences to follow. A mysterious nighttime plane crash, a vanishing shipment of cocaine, and a bizarre attack on a windmill only intensify Chee’s fears. A dark and very ill wind is blowing through the Southwestern desert, a gale driven by Navajo sorcery and white man’s greed. 

Geralt is a Witcher, a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless hunter. Yet he is no ordinary killer. His sole purpose: to destroy the monsters that plague the world. But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good. In every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.
 

Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is a drifter. He’s just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he’s arrested for murder. Not much of a welcome. All Reacher knows is that he didn’t kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn’t stand a chance of convincing anyone. Not in Margrave, Georgia. Not a chance in hell.

The Otis-Winbury wedding promises to be an event to remember as a lavish ceremony at an oceanfront estate. When a body is discovered in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony, everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash interviews the bride, the groom, the groom's famous mystery-novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, he discovers that every wedding is a minefield-and no couple is perfect. 

Mickey Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers -- they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence, it's about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it's even about justice.
 

Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of exceptionally talented female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. When America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff, these overlooked African-American women answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia. Even as Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.

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. 

Alice has been unhappy ever since her parents sent her to Prince Edward Island to live with her strict grandmother. Alice is fanciful, prone to telling tall tales, and absolutely OBSESSED with dragons! Fairies deliver dragon eggs to a select few, known as Kindreds, but no egg has ever arrived for Alice.

While wandering the woods alone, she finds and secretly befriends a mysterious old dragon named Brim. Alice is excited to finally have a dragon friend of her own, but when Brim suddenly falls ill, Alice must set out on a desperate quest to save him.

 

Go undercover and crack the case in Agent Cupcake, perfect for fans of Mac B. Kid Spy and Spy School! Twelve-year-old Miguel Mangayayam has always loved one thing: mystical beasts. So he’s thrilled when he’s hired by the Mystical Beasts Bureau (MBB) to be their first ever human spy where he’ll use his encyclopedic knowledge of hippogriffs, mermaids, dragons, and more to solve the latest cases. Even better? He’s partnered with the supercool unicorn superspy, Agent Cupcake! Together, they’ll go undercover, gather intel, crack codes, and collect clues to solve the MBB’s toughest mysteries. But when they receive reports that unicorns are losing their magical powers, Miguel and Agent Cupcake will have to put their spy skills to the test to figure out why, even if it means going up against a mega corporation like HOARD. Could someone be trying to steal magic to put unicorns out of business?