List

Situated hundreds of miles within the inhospitable desert of northern Kenya where only thorn bushes grow, Dadaab refugee camp is a city like no other. Ben Rawlence became a first-hand witness to this strange and desperate limbo-land, getting to know many of those who have come there seeking sanctuary. In City of Thorns, Rawlence interweaves the stories of nine individuals to show what life is like in the camp and to sketch the wider political forces that keep the refugees trapped there. 

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born, a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam. This letter serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.

In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the "Devil's Highway." Three years later, Luis Alberto Urrea wrote about what happened to them. 

Nuri is a beekeeper and Afra, his wife, is an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the hills of the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo. When all they love is destroyed by war, Nuri knows they have no choice except to leave their home. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss but also make the difficult journey back to each other, a path once so familiar yet rendered foreign by the heartache of displacement.

In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to play mah jong, remember the past, and gossip into the night. They call themselves the Joy Luck Club. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of the matriarchal ties that they believe have stymied their ability to face the uncertainties of the future. 

When fifteen-year-old Maribel Rivera sustains a terrible injury, the Riveras leave behind a comfortable life in Mexico and risk everything to come to the United States so that Maribel can have the care she needs. Once they arrive, it’s not long before Maribel attracts the attention of Mayor Toro, the son of one of their new neighbors, who sees a kindred spirit in this beautiful, damaged outsider. Their love story sets in motion events that will have profound repercussions for everyone involved. 

America is consumed by tensions over immigration and the question of which bodies are welcome. Editors Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman hand the microphone to an incredible range of authors whose humanity and right to be here is under attack. The writers in this urgent collection share powerful personal stories of living between cultures and languages while struggling to figure out who they are and where they belong.

In 2017, during the worst global refugee crisis in history, Roger C. Sullivan High School's immigrant population numbered close to three hundred--or nearly half the school--and many were refugees from thirty-five different countries, speaking more than thirty-eight different languages. Award-winning author Elly Fishman offers a riveting chronicle of the 2017-18 school year at Sullivan High. Even as we follow teachers and administrators grappling with the everyday challenges facing many urban schools, we witness the complicated circumstances and unique needs of refugee and immigrant children. 

In these powerful stories, written over a period of twenty years and set in both Vietnam and America, Nguyen paints a vivid portrait of the experiences of people leading lives between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth.

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, Nadia and Saeed embark on a furtive love affair. When unrest explodes in their city, they begin to hear whispers about doors that can whisk people far away. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. They emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. 

Structured around the forty questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.

A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. 

Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the question of what it means to love.

Zahra and Maryam have been best friends since childhood in Karachi, even though they are unlike in nearly every way. They never speak of the differences in their backgrounds or their value. Three decades later, Zahra and Maryam have grown into powerful women who have each cut a distinctive path through London. When two troubling figures from their past resurface, they must finally confront their differences and discover whether their friendship can survive.

Set in seventeenth century France, this novel tells the story of d'Artagnan's journey to Paris to join the legendary Musketeers of the Guard. The Three Musketeers is a masterful adventure romp packed with humor, satire, love, and daring-do.

Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at all-female Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels boardinghouse. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, policeman's daughter Nora, , frustrated baseball star Beatrice, and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene. Grace's weekly attic-room dinner parties become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. 

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is his embrace of the mainstream. The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Hua prefers subculture, like making ’zines and haunting Bay Area record shops. Despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking not even three years after the day they first meet. Hua turned to writing to hold on to his memories of Ken, all he had left of their friendship. 

Celebrity cooking show host Marni McGuire has seen it all. She's been married--twice--and widowed and divorced. Now in her mid-fifties, she's happily single. She just needs to convince her pregnant daughter, Bella, of this fact. Similarly single, Marni's best friend and colleague is confident she's content without a man. Both older women find themselves leading by example as the young intern on their show appears caught in a toxic relationship, then Bella reveals her own marriage maybe isn't built to withstand the stresses of a new baby. The four women find themselves navigating together the challenges of dating, marriage, loneliness and love.

Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn’t Lucy’s life or Ann’s life, but the parts of their lives they shared. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined and what happens when one is left behind.

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place.
 

Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in Wembley, in West London after losing his beloved wife. Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library who discovers a crumpled-up list of novels in the back of a returned book. She decides to read every book on the list. When Mukesh arrives at the library, Aleisha passes along the reading list, hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls.

In the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. She turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

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.