List

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

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

Lahore, Pakistan. Then.
Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Clouds' Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start.
 
Juniper, California. Now.
Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the swift fury of a star exploding.  
 
Now, Sal scrambles to run the family motel as his mother Misbah’s health fails and his grieving father loses himself to alcoholism. Noor, meanwhile, walks a harrowing tightrope: working at her wrathful uncle’s liquor store while hiding the fact that she’s applying to college so she can escape him—and Juniper—forever.
 
When Sal’s attempts to save the motel spiral out of control, he and Noor must ask themselves what friendship is worth—and what it takes to defeat the monsters in their pasts and the ones in their midst.  

Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. MONSTER.

FADE IN: INTERIOR COURT. A guard sits at a desk behind Steve. Kathy O'Brien, Steve's lawyer, is all business as she talks to Steve.

O'BRIEN
Let me make sure you understand what's going on. Both you and this king character are on trial for felony murder. Felony Murder is as serious as it gets. . . . When you're in court, you sit there and pay attetion. You let the jury know that you think the case is a serious as they do. . . .

STEVE
You think we're going to win ?

O'BRIEN (seriously)
It probably depends on what you mean by "win."

Sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon is on trial for murder. A Harlem drugstore owner was shot and killed in his store, and the word is that Steve served as the lookout.

Guilty or innocent, Steve becomes a pawn in the hands of "the system," cluttered with cynical authority figures and unscrupulous inmates, who will turn in anyone to shorten their own sentences. For the first time, Steve is forced to think about who he is as he faces prison, where he may spend all the tomorrows of his life.

As a way of coping with the horrific events that entangle him, Steve, an amateur filmmaker, decides to transcribe his trial into a script, just like in the movies. He writes it all down, scene by scene, the story of how his whole life was turned around in an instant. But despite his efforts, reality is blurred and his vision obscured until he can no longer tell who he is or what is the truth.

Ernie Cunningham, crime fiction aficionado, is a reluctant guest at his family reunion. Family reunions aren't for everyone, of course. But Ern's part of a notorious crime family--and three years ago, he witnessed his brother kill a man and immediately turned him in to the police. Now Ern's brother is being released from prison and the family is gathering to welcome him home. As if that weren't bad enough, the reunion is taking place at a remote mountain resort. The day before Ern's brother is set to arrive, a man's body is found frozen on the slopes. While most Cunninghams assume the man simply collapsed and died of hypothermia during the night, Ern's stepsister spots a strange detail--the man's airways are clogged with ash. He appears to have died by fire...in a pristine snowfield...without a single burn mark on him. The longer the body goes unidentified, the more overwhelmed the local policeman becomes, and the more Ern realizes it's up to him to find the murderer. Holmes, Christie, Chesterton: he's read them all. He knows what patterns to look for, what rules killers follow. And, of course, he knows his own family. Every member of which, as he's told us from the start, has killed someone.

Can you stop a murder after it's already happened?

It is midnight on the morning of Halloween, and Jen anxiously waits up for her 18-year-old son, Todd, to return home. But worries about his broken curfew transform into something much more dangerous when Todd finally emerges from the darkness. As Jen watches through the window, she sees her funny, seemingly happy teenage son stab a total stranger.

She doesn't know who the victim is, or why Todd has committed such a devastating act of violence. All she knows is that her life, and Todd's, have been shattered.

After her son is taken into custody, Jen falls asleep in despair. But when she wakes up...it is yesterday. The murder has not happened yet--and there may be a chance to stop it. Each morning, when Jen wakes, she is further back in the past, first weeks, then years, before the murder. And Jen realizes that somewhere in the past lies the trigger for Todd's terrible crime...and it is her mission to find it, and prevent it from taking place.

Daisy Wilder prefers the company of horses to people, bare feet and salt water to high heels and society parties. Then, in the dizzying aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Daisy enlists in a top secret program, replacing male soldiers in a war zone for the first time.

Under fear of imminent invasion, the WARDs guide pilots into blacked-out airstrips and track unidentified planes across Pacific skies.

But not everyone thinks the women are up to the job, and the new recruits must rise above their differences and work side by side despite the resistance and heartache they meet along the way.

With America's future on the line, Daisy is determined to prove herself worthy. And with the man she's falling for out on the front lines, she cannot fail.

From radar towers on remote mountaintops to flooded bomb shelters, she'll need her new team when the stakes are highest. Because the most important battles are fought--and won--together.

This inspiring and uplifting tale of pioneering, unsung heroines vividly transports the reader to wartime Hawaii, where one woman's call to duty leads her to find courage, strength and sisterhood.

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Using short-rows to create colorful patterns is not a new technique. It's been used by many knitwear designers across many extremely popular patterns. Surprisingly, no one has explained the technique in full detail or taught it on a widespread level--until now. Woolly Wormhead, known for their innovative hat constructions, presents the first book to develop, teach, and fully utilize short-row colorwork knitting. Beginning with an in-depth and illustrated step-by-step section, Woolly teaches the core concepts. With that new knowledge, knitters can then move on to explore and practice from a stitch dictionary of 50+ stitch patterns. To round out the book, 10 accessory patterns from various designers from around the world are included, showcasing the beauty, ease of accessibility, and versatility of this technique. Colorwork is always a hit among knitters, and this new way to learn and then use short-row colorwork knitting will draw the attention of knitters and designers alike.

The girlboss came in many forms, and she struggled valiantly against our increasing exhaustion at her brand of pinkwashed-capitalism-as-liberation—but it’s time to put her to rest. Yes, money is essential to life, and managing it well can be the difference between freedom and constraint. But once you have enough, the focus should be on converting it into things that are meaningful to you: more time with the people you love, more creativity, more days to just vibe on the couch.

In Beyond Getting By, the women behind The Financial Diet teach you how to create (and pay for) a life you truly enjoy—and that you can be proud of. They show you how to push beyond what society tells you will make you happy to determine what you actually want, with specific advice and interactive exercises on
 
Beyond Getting By is for the woman interested in a life where money is simply a tool and never a reflection of her worth. It’s for the woman who understands the limits of gamifying personal finance, and that following trends isn’t the same as creating a sustainable, wealth-generating plan for the future.

These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare.

For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O'Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare's plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans.

Interspersed with vignettes on audiences, critics, company spirit and rehearsal room etiquette, she serves up priceless revelations on everything from the craft of speaking in verse to her personal interpretations of some of Shakespeare's most famous scenes, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour, striking level of honesty and a peppering of hilarious anecdotes, many of which have remained under lock and key until now.

Instructive and witty, provocative and inspiring, this is ultimately Judi's love letter to Shakespeare, or rather, The Man Who Pays The Rent.

For many years, "nature poetry" has evoked images of Romantic poets standing on mountain tops. But our poetic landscape has changed dramatically, and so has our planet. Edited and introduced by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limón, this book challenges what we think we know about "nature poetry," illuminating the myriad ways our landscapes--both literal and literary--are changing.

You Are Here features fifty previously unpublished poems from some of the nation's most accomplished poets, including Joy Harjo, Diane Seuss, Rigoberto González, Jericho Brown, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Paul Tran, and more. Each poem engages with its author's local landscape--be it the breathtaking variety of flora in a national park, or a lone tree flowering persistently by a bus stop--offering an intimate model of how we relate to the world around us and a beautifully diverse range of voices from across the United States.

Joyful and provocative, wondrous and urgent, this singular collection of poems offers a lyrical reimagining of what "nature" and "poetry" are today, inviting readers to experience both anew.

Home, it turns out, is where the war is. It’s also where the healing begins.

Dana Trent is only a preschooler the first time she uses a razor blade to cut up weed and fill dime bags for her schizophrenic father, King. While King struggles with his unmedicated psychosis, Dana’s mother, the Lady, a cold and self-absorbed woman whose personality disorders rule the home, guards large bricks of drugs from the safety of their squalid trailer. But when the Lady impulsively plucks Dana from the Midwest and moves the two of them south, their fresh start results in homelessness and bankruptcy. In North Carolina, Dana becomes torn between her gritty midwestern past and her newfound desire to be a polite southern girl, struggling to reconcile her shame with an ache to figure out who she is, and where she belongs.

But the past is never far behind. After persevering through childhood and eventually graduating from Duke University, Dana imagines that her hidden Indiana life is finally behind her, only to realize that running from her upbringing has kept her from making peace with the people and places that shaped her. Ultimately, Dana finds that though love for family is universally complicated, there is no shame in survival, and for those who want it, there is always a path home.

Easy, accessible guidance for addressing an essential element to college success: mental health

While being in college can be an exciting time, it can also be a period of uncertainty, anxiety, loneliness, and even depression. The College Student’s Guide to Mental Health is for any college student who wants to understand and maintain mental and emotional health.

Mia Nosanow, a licensed psychologist and college therapist, has drawn upon her more than twenty years of direct experience counseling a diverse college student body to write a comprehensive mental and emotional health manual designed specifically for college students.

Presented in clear, practical language and organized in short chapters, this book breaks down common problems and provides actionable strategies for addressing them. Whether students want to understand challenging emotions, transform negative thoughts, improve relationships, or explore the connection between time management and mental health, these topics and more can be found in this one book — a valuable tool for college students as well as the families and professionals who support them.

In 1934, the Great Depression had destroyed the US economy, leaving residents poverty-stricken. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt urged President Roosevelt to take radical action to help those hit hardest—Appalachian miners and mill workers stranded after factories closed, city dwellers with no hope of getting work, farmers whose land had failed. They set up government homesteads in rural areas across the country, an experiment in cooperative living where people could start over. To boost morale and encourage the homesteaders to find community in their own traditions, the administration brought in artists to lead group activities—including folk music.

As part of a music unit led by Charles Seeger (father of Pete), staffer Sidney Robertson traveled the country to record hundreds of folk songs. Music leaders, most notably Margaret Valiant, were sent to homesteads to use the collected songs to foster community and cooperation. Working almost entirely (and purposely) under the radar, the music unit would collect more than 800 songs and operate for nearly two years, until they were shut down under fire from a conservative coalition in Congress that deemed the entire homestead enterprise dangerously “socialistic."

Despite its early demise, the music unit proved that music can provide hope and a sense of belonging even in the darkest times. It also laid the groundwork for the folk revival that followed, seeing the rise of artists like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Odetta, and Bob Dylan.

Award-winning author and Harvard-trained American music scholar Sheryl Kaskowitz has had the unique opportunity to listen to the music unit’s entire collection of recordings and examine a trove of archival materials, some of which have never been made available to the public.

A Chance To Harmonize reveals this untold story and will delight readers with the revelation of a new and previously undiscovered chapter in American cultural history.

Interior-design sensation Frida Ramstedt changed how we think about designing a harmonious home with her book The Interior Design Handbook. Now she brings that same authoritative and comprehensive focus to this complementary guide that’s all about the most essential and functional items within your home.
 
No matter your style of home, we all want our spaces to feel inviting and comfortable. And the key to that is quality furniture that supports your lifestyle. The Furniture Handbook shares the foundational rules of choosing, arranging, and caring for the furniture in every room of your home. From selecting the perfect size dining table and seating that fits your family to arranging your living room pieces for the best flow, the basic principles that interior designers use and that everyone should master are provided.
 
Complete with simple and elegant illustrations, The Furniture Handbook is your key to creating beautiful, personal spaces in your home.

Spanning cookies, cakes, cupcakes, brownies, bars, pies, crisps, and no-bake treats including fudge and ice cream, this tantalizing collection will inspire home bakers of all ages everywhere. Lindsay Grimes—creator of the blog The Toasted Pine Nut, author of Cauliflower Power, and founder of a line of baking mixes, Good & Gooey—shares 100 of her fabulous recipes for desserts that just happen to be gluten free.

With interest in gluten-free food and home baking at an all-time high, Lindsay’s personal expertise and collection of goodies—which include cakes, cookies, fun projects for kids, and non-bake treats—bring a fresh perspective to this popular subject. Her signature recipes—like brownie brittle ice cream sandwiches, birthday crunch crumble, sweet oat fig galette, cherry pie shortbread bars—are accessible and tantalizing, sure to become new everyday favorites.

When Getting Things Done was published in 2001, it was a game changer. By revealing the principles of healthy high performance at an individual level, it transformed the experience of work and leisure for millions. Twenty years later, it has become clear that the best way to build on that success is at the team level, and one of the most frequently asked questions by dedicated GTD users is how to get an entire team onboard.

By building on the effectiveness of what GTD does for individuals, Team will offer a better way of working in an organization, while simultaneously nourishing a culture that allows individuals’ skills to flourish. Using case studies from some of the world’s largest and most successful companies, Team shows how leaders have employed the principles of team productivity to improve communication, enable effective execution, and reduce stress on team members. These principles are increasingly important in the post-pandemic workplace, where the very nature of how people work together has changed so dramatically.

Team is the most significant addition to the GTD canon since the original, and in offering a roadmap for building a culture of healthy high performance, will be welcomed by readers working in any sized group or organization.

The only book of its kind, Every Tenant’s Legal Guide gives you the legal and practical information you need (plus dozens of sample letters and forms) to find a great rental and landlord. 

The 11th edition of Every Tenant’s Legal Guide includes charts detailing every state’s landlord-tenant laws. This edition also includes information on how to deal with large, impersonal corporate landlords and the competitive rental markets found in nearly every state.

Easy to learn and fun to play, pickleball is also a surprisingly athletic sport. In this user-friendly book, fitness superstars, the Brungardt brothers, focus their expertise on the needs of pickleball players of all levels, applying the same innovative training methods they’ve used with NBA MVPs, Cy Young Award-winners, and Olympic and tennis champions, to make picklers more athletic and injury-resistant.

To safely reach your pickleball potential, health and fitness professionals agree that the sport should not be your only form of exercise. To fill this critical gap, the Brungardts have created PB-150, a comprehensive program that delivers all the components of an elite pro training center experience—with the fun and flexibility of the pickleball spirit.

The Complete Book of Pickleball brings together a dream team of experts in the fields of strength and conditioning, sports movement, sports vision, physical therapy, sports psychology, athletic training, performance nutrition, and sports medicine. Along with the Brungardts, these experts will coach you through an interactive, easy-to-follow, holistic workout.

Combining your passion for the game with the PB-150 training program gives you a portal into all the transformative benefits of exercise, while allowing you to enjoy the game you love, for a lifetime.

Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings, as they moved through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and beguiling encounters. In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites readers on an odyssey across the medieval world, recounting the advice that circulated among those venturing to the road for pilgrimage, trade, diplomacy, and war.

Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens. He takes us from the streets of Rome, more ruin than tourist spot, and tours of the Khan's court in Beijing to Mamluk-controlled Jerusalem, where we ride asses across the holy terrain, and bustling bazaars of Tabriz.

We also learn of rumored fantastical places, like ones where lambs grow on trees and giant canes grow fruit made of gems. And we are offered a glimpse of what non-European travelers thought of the West on their own travels.

Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from a colorful range of travelers, and from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, North Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is a witty and unforgettable exploration of how Europeans understood--and often misunderstood--the larger world.

New: Updated pricing and auction records, new research, new photographs, the latest U.S. Mint data, and more! 472 pages, 2,000+ images, with more than 7,600 listings and 32,500+ coin prices.

Collectors have bought 25 million copies since the 1st edition! The Official Red Book(R)―A Guide Book of United States Coins―is 78 years young and going strong. Since 1946 collectors around the country have trusted the book's grade-by-grade coin values, historical background, detailed specifications, high-resolution photographs, and accurate mintage data. How rare are your coins? How much are they worth?

The 78th edition of the Red Book tells you, covering everything from early colonial copper tokens to hefty Old West silver dollars and dazzling gold coins. You'll find 32,500+ prices and auction records for nearly 8,000 coins, tokens, medals, sets, and other collectibles.

You'll also round out your education in classic and modern commemoratives, Proof and Mint coins, error coins, Civil War tokens, Confederate coins, Philippine coins struck under U.S. sovereignty, private gold, all the latest American Women quarters, Native American dollars, American Innovation dollars, bullion coins (silver, gold, platinum, and palladium), and more. Articles on investing, grading coins, and detecting counterfeits will make you a savvy collector; and entertaining essays on the history of American coinage, third-party grading, and the modern rare-coin market give you an inside look at "the hobby of kings." These are just some of the features of the informative, entertaining, invaluable Red Book―the world's best-selling coin price guide (more than 25 million copies sold). 2025 edition.

At the height of the Civil Rights movement, Lydia Abarca was a Black prima ballerina with a major international dance company—the Dance Theatre of Harlem, a troupe of women and men who became each other’s chosen family. She was the first Black company ballerina on the cover of Dance magazine, an Essence cover star; she was cast in The Wiz and in a Bob Fosse production on Broadway. She performed in some of ballet’s most iconic works with other trailblazing ballerinas, including the young women who became her closest friends—founding Dance Theatre of Harlem members Gayle McKinney-Griffith and Sheila Rohan, as well as first-generation dancers Karlya Shelton and Marcia Sells.

These Swans of Harlem performed for the Queen of England, Mick Jagger, and Stevie Wonder, on the same bill as Josephine Baker, at the White House, and beyond. But decades later there was almost no record of their groundbreaking history to be found. Out of a sisterhood that had grown even deeper with the years, these Swans joined forces again—to share their story with the world.

Captivating, rich in vivid detail and character, and steeped in the glamour and grit of professional ballet, The Swans of Harlem is a riveting account of five extraordinarily accomplished women, a celebration of both their historic careers and the sustaining, grounding power of female friendship, and a window into the robust history of Black ballet, hidden for too long.

Bullied to the point of dropping out of school, Kokoro’s days blur together as she hides in her bedroom, unable to face her family or friends. As she spirals into despair, her mirror begins to shine; with a touch, Kokoro is pulled from her lonely life into a resplendent, bizarre fairytale castle guarded by a strange girl in a wolf mask. Six other students have been brought to the castle, and soon this marvelous refuge becomes their playground. 

The castle has a hidden room that can grant a single wish, but there are rules to be followed, and breaking them will have dire consequences. As Kokoro and her new acquaintances spend more time in their new sanctuary, they begin to unlock the castle’s secrets and, tentatively, each other’s. 

Lonely Castle in the Mirror is a mesmerizing, heart-warming novel about the unexpected rewards of embracing human connection.

~Weronika

In this magical debut, a couple's lives are changed forever by the arrival of a little girl, wild and secretive, on their snowy doorstep
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.

This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

~Weronika

Judy never intended to start wearing the dog. But when she stumbled across her son Teddy's old baby sling during a halfhearted basement cleaning, something in her snapped. So: the dog went into the sling, Judy felt connected to another living being, and she's repeated the process every day since.

Life hasn't gone according to Judy's plan. Her career as a children's book author offered a glimpse of success before taking an embarrassing nose dive. Teddy, now a teenager, treats her with some combination of mortification and indifference. Her best friend is dying. And her husband, Gary, has become a pot-addled professional "snackologist" who she can't afford to divorce. On top of it all, she has a painfully ironic job writing articles for a self-help website--a poor fit for someone seemingly incapable of helping herself.

Wickedly funny and surprisingly tender, Separation Anxiety offers a frank portrait of middle-aged limbo, examining the ebb and flow of life's most important relationships. Tapping into the insecurities and anxieties that most of us keep under wraps, and with a voice that is at once gleefully irreverent and genuinely touching, Laura Zigman has crafted a new classic for anyone taking fumbling steps toward happiness.

- Rachel

In this uplifting memoir, a professor and activist shares what birds can teach us about life, social change, and protecting the environment.

Trish O'Kane is an accidental ornithologist. In her nearly two decades writing about justice as an investigative journalist, she'd never paid attention to nature. But then Hurricane Katrina destroyed her New Orleans home, sending her into an emotional tailspin.

Enter a scrappy cast of feathered characters--first a cardinal, urban parrots, and sparrows, then a catbird, owls, a bittern, and a woodcock--that cheered her up and showed her a new path. Inspired, O'Kane moved to Madison, Wisconsin, to pursue an environmental studies PhD. There she became a full-on bird obsessive--logging hours in a stunningly biodiverse urban park, filling field notebooks with bird doings and dramas, and teaching ornithology to college students and middle-school kids.

When Warner Park--her daily birdwatching haven--was threatened with development, O'Kane and her neighbors mustered a mighty murmuration of nature lovers, young and old, to save the birds' homes. Through their efforts, she learned that once you get outside and look around, you're likely to fall in love with a furred or feathered creature--and find a flock of your own.

In Birding to Change the World, O'Kane details the astonishing science of bird life, from migration and parenting to the territorial defense strategies that influenced her own activism. A warm and compelling weave of science and social engagement, this is the story of an improbably band of bird lovers who saved their park. And it is a blueprint for muscular citizenship, powered by joy.

Billy Dee Williams was born in Harlem in 1937 and grew up in a household of love and sophistication. As a young boy, he made his stage debut working with Lotte Lenya in an Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill production where Williams ended up feeding Lenya her lines. He studied painting, first at the High School of Music and Art, with fellow student Diahann Carroll, and then at the National Academy of Fine Art, before setting out to pursue acting with Herbert Berghoff, Stella Adler, and Sidney Poitier.

His first film role was in The Last Angry Man, the great Paul Muni’s final film. It was Muni who gave Billy the advice that sent him soaring as an actor, “You can play any character you want to play no matter who you are, no matter the way you look or the color of your skin.” And Williams writes, “I wanted to be anyone I wanted to be.”

He writes of landing the role of a lifetime: co-starring alongside James Caan in Brian’s Song, the made-for-television movie that was watched by an audience of more than fifty million people. Williams says it was “the kind of interracial love story America needed.”

And when, as the first Black character in the Star Wars universe, he became a true pop culture icon, playing Lando Calrissian in George Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back (“What I presented on the screen people didn’t expect to see”). It was a role he reprised in the final film of the original trilogy, The Return of the Jedi, and in the recent sequel The Rise of Skywalker.

A legendary actor, in his own words, on all that has sustained and carried him through a lifetime of dreams and adventure.

How much should I let them play? How do I get them to be interested in anything else?!
 
When it comes to family rules around video games, most parents are at a loss. After all, our technologically invasive world is something previous generations didn’t have to wrestle with, so we have no model for how to guide our families through the rapidly changing landscape, no blueprint for setting healthy gaming boundaries and keeping them in place.
 
A former Harvard Medical School instructor and one of the foremost experts on video game psychology, Dr. Alok Kanojia—known as “Dr. K” to his millions of followers—has firsthand knowledge of this modern issue: He needed professional help to break his own gaming habits in college, an experience that fueled his interest in learning how to help others. Drawing on Dr. K’s professional specialization in working with people of all ages and varying degrees of addiction, and the most recent research from neuroscience and psychology, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer teaches parents a new skill set for negotiating gaming culture and offers solutions rooted in the science of treating addiction
 
Whether your goal is to prepare your child for a healthy relationship to technology or to curb unhealthy amounts of time spent gaming, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer will help you better understand, communicate with, and—ultimately—empower your gaming enthusiast to live their best life.

Abraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States. While many books have been written about his temperament, judgment, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know less about Lincoln’s penetrating ideas and beliefs about democracy, which were every bit as important as his character in sustaining him through the crisis.

Allen C. Guelzo, one of America’s foremost experts on Lincoln, captures the president’s firmly held belief that democracy was the greatest political achievement in human history. He shows how Lincoln’s deep commitment to the balance between majority and minority rule enabled him to stand firm against secession while also committing the Union to reconciliation rather than recrimination in the aftermath of war. In bringing his subject to life as a rigorous and visionary thinker, Guelzo assesses Lincoln’s actions on civil liberties and his views on race, and explains why his vision for the role of government would have made him a pivotal president even if there had been no Civil War. Our Ancient Faith gives us a deeper understanding of this endlessly fascinating man and shows how his ideas are still sharp and relevant more than 150 years later.

Wall Street Journal reporters and authors of The Club, Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg tell the riveting saga of how Formula 1 broke through in America, detailing the eclectic culture of racing obsessives, glamorous settings, gearheads, engineering geniuses, dashing racers, and bitter rivalries that have made F1 the world's fastest growing sport.

For decades in America, car racing meant NASCAR, and to a lesser extent IndyCar, with Formula 1--the wealthiest racing league in the world--a distant third. Fast forward to 2023, and F1 has emerged at the front of the pack powered by a passionate yet nascent American fanbase. The F1 juggernaut has arrived, but this checkered flag was far from inevitable.

In The Formula, Wall Street Journal reporters Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg tell the epic story of how F1 saved itself from collapse and finally conquered America through guile, fearlessness, and above all, reinvention. With fast cars, big money, glamorous locales, and beautiful people as the backdrop, The Formula reveals how F1's sudden arrival in the US was actually decades in the making, a product of the sport's near-constant state of transformation and experimentation. Bringing unique insight and access to F1's most storied teams and personalities--from Ferrari to Bernie Ecclestone to Christian Horner to Lewis Hamilton--The Formula offers a riveting portrait of the drivers, corporations, cars, rivalries, and audacious gambles that have shaped the sport for half a century.

The end result is a high-octane history of how modern F1 racing came to be--the first book to tell the story of the outrageous successes and spectacular crashes that led F1 to this extraordinary yet precarious moment. More than just a sports story, The Formula is the tale of a disrupter that broke into the crowded American sports marketplace and claimed its place through cash, personality, and a new understanding of what a sport needs to be in the age of wall-to-wall entertainment.

Needlepoint is back in the spotlight with a graphic and contemporary new look. In this bumper directory of patterns, all the designs are easy to stitch in yarn on canvas.

The main stitch used for these patterns is the Bargello stitch, a stitch that actually includes several variations such as flame stitch and Florentine stitch. This group of stitches use regular, straight stitches that repeat with a regular offset. Further patterns also use other stitches adapted to the canvas, which will allow you to diversify your techniques and obtain more complex designs.

Throughout the pages, you will discover simple patterns that can be repeated ad infinitum, allowing you to cover any size canvas. Follow the colours given or change to your own palettes for even greater pattern variations. Frame your creations or transform them into cushions, bags, cases and more - the hardest part is choosing which of the 500 patterns to start with!

For decades, clothing manufacture was a pillar of U.S. industry. But beginning in the 1980s, Americans went from wearing 70 percent domestic-made apparel to almost none. Even the very symbol of American freedom and style—blue jeans—got outsourced. With offshoring, the nation lost not only millions of jobs but also crucial expertise and artistry.
 
Dismayed by shoddy imported “fast fashion”—and unable to stop dreaming of re-creating a favorite shirt from his youth—Bayard Winthrop set out to build a new company, American Giant, that would swim against this trend. New York Times reporter Steven Kurutz, in turn, began to follow Winthrop’s journey. He discovered other trailblazers as well, from the “Sock Queen of Alabama” to a pair of father-son shoemakers and a men’s style blogger who almost single-handedly drove a campaign to make “Made in the USA” cool. Eye-opening and inspiring, American Flannel is the story of how a band of visionaries and makers are building a new supply chain on the skeleton of the old and wedding old-fashioned craftsmanship to cutting-edge technology and design to revive an essential American dream.

A personal memoir in which Lyn Slater, known on Instagram as “Accidental Icon,” brings her characteristic style, optimism, forward-thinking, and rules-are-meant-to-be-broken attitude to the question of how to live boldly at any age.
When Lyn Slater started her fashion blog, Accidental Icon, at age sixty-one, she discovered that followers were flocking to her account for more than just her A-list style. As Lyn flaunted gray hair, wrinkles, and a megadose of self-acceptance, they found in her an alternative model of older life: someone who defied the stereotypes, refused to become invisible, and showed that all women have the opportunity to be relevant and take major risks at any stage of their life. Youth is not the only time we can be experimental.

How to Be Old tells the ten-year story of Lyn’s sixties, the sometimes-glamorous, sometimes-turbulent decade of Accidental Icon. This memoir is about the hopeful and future-oriented process of reinvention. It shows readers that while you can’t control everything, what you can control is the way you think about your age and the creative ways you respond to the changes in your mind and body as they happen. Rather than trying to meet standards of youth and beauty as a measure of successful aging, Lyn promotes a more inclusive and empowering standard to judge our older selves by.

In this paradigm-shifting memoir, Lyn exemplifies that even with its unique challenges, being old is just like any new beginning in your life and can be the best and most invigorating of all of life’s phases, full of rebellion and reinvention, connection and creativity.

The myth of the ’60s depends on the 1950s being the “before times” of conformity, segregation, straightness—The Lonely Crowd and The Organization Man. This all carries some truth, but it does nothing to explain how, in 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity, thanks to a number of Black geniuses so legendary they go by one name—Monk, Mingus, Rollins, Coltrane, and, above all, Miles. Nineteen fifty-nine saw Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, and more come together to record what is widely considered the greatest jazz album of all time, and certainly the bestselling: Kind of Blue.

3 Shades of Blue is James Kaplan’s magnificent account of the paths of the three giants to the mountaintop of 1959 and beyond. It’s a book about music, and business, and race, and heroin, and the towns that gave jazz its home, from New Orleans and New York to Kansas City, Philadelphia, Chicago, and LA. It’s an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange hothouses that can produce its full flowering. It’s a book about the great forebears of this golden age, particularly Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and the disrupters, like Ornette Coleman, who would take the music down truly new paths. And it’s about why the world of jazz most people know is a museum to this never-replicated period.

But above all, 3 Shades of Blue is a book about three very different men—their struggles, their choices, their tragedies, their greatness. Bill Evans had a gruesome downward spiral; John Coltrane took the mystic’s path into a space far away from mainstream concerns. Miles had three or four sea changes in him before the end. The tapestry of their lives is, in Kaplan’s hands, an American odyssey with no direction home. It is also a masterpiece, a book about jazz that is as big as America.

The innovative James Beard Award-winning podcaster who changed the way you think about pasta shapes with his invention of the viral sensation cascatelli now does the same for pasta sauces in this fun and charmingly obsessive cookbook, which includes a foreword from bestselling author J. Kenji López-Alt.

Dan set out to revolutionize people's conceptions of pasta sauces, just as he did with pasta shapes. He traveled across Italy and worked with an all-star team of recipe developers in the US to create a new kind of pasta sauce cookbook for people bored with the old standbys. That's why there's no 3-hour marinara recipe or fresh pasta made from scratch in this book. No photos of nonnas caked in flour or the hills of Tuscany. Instead it's time to show the world--Anything's Pastable.

With an incredible array of recipes, Dan showcases the limitless pastabilities when you really know how to use your noodle.

Learn to paint colorful, uplifting watercolor scenes with the step-by-step projects and techniques in this beginner-friendly guide.

Welcome to the wonderful world of watercolor! Paint with Me: Vibrant Watercolor introduces beginning artists to the vibrant artwork of Geethu Chandramohan.

The projects are presented step by step, with Geethu’s beautiful, bright artwork and photography accompanying each step.

Complex-sounding subjects are presented simply and encouragingly in a book that’s perfect for beginners as well as more experienced watercolorists looking for a contemporary, vibrant style of artwork.

Paint with Me: Vibrant Watercolor introduces you to the colorful world of watercolor in a fun, easy way.

Half of all 7,000-plus human languages may disappear over the next century and--because many have never been recorded--when they're gone, it will be forever. Ross Perlin, a linguist and co-director of the Manhattan-based non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, is racing against time to map little-known languages across the most linguistically diverse city in history: contemporary New York. In Language City, Perlin recounts the unique history of immigration that shaped the city, and follows six remarkable yet ordinary speakers of endangered languages deep into their communities to learn how they are maintaining and reviving their languages against overwhelming odds. Perlin also dives deep into their languages, taking us on a fascinating tour of unusual grammars, rare sounds, and powerful cultural histories from all around the world.

Enjoy the time-honored tradition of beekeeping in your own backyard or urban rooftop with this accessible resource for beekeepers of all skill levels, now in its 5th edition.

With this complete reference and the expert advice of Bee Culture editor emeritus Kim Flottum, your bees will be healthy, happy, and more productive.

Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers – from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe – Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,” a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for cultivating a slower, more humane alternative.

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.

Define your style and use fashion as a tool for self-discovery using the Three-Word Method and AB Closet-Editing System.

Personal stylist Allison Bornstein has mastered the art of helping people look good and feel good. In Wear It Well, she shares her philosophy and outlines systems that will bring your style into alignment and create a wardrobe that delights your spirit and reflects your most authentic self.

Use the viral Three-Word Method to discover and define your personal style. Curate your closet with the AB Closet-Editing System, eliminating items that don't fit or work for your lifestyle to build a safe and inspiring space that is filled with only clothes that bring you joy, confidence, and empowerment. Create new, sustainable looks by shopping your closet and mixing and matching with the Nine Universal Pieces.

Filled with client stories, gentle guidance, and expressive photography, Wear It Well will inspire you to identify, articulate, and develop your personal style, and dress with ease.

Rhine Fontaine is building the successful life he's always dreamed of—one that depends upon him passing for White. But for the first time in years, he wishes he could step out from behind the façade. The reason: Eddy Carmichael, the young woman he rescued in the desert. Outspoken, defiant, and beautiful, Eddy tempts Rhine in ways that could cost him everything . . . and the price seems worth paying.

Eddy owes her life to Rhine, but she won't risk her heart for him. As soon as she's saved enough money from her cooking, she'll leave this Nevada town and move to California. No matter how handsome he is, no matter how fiery the heat between them, Rhine will never be hers. Giving in for just one night might quench this longing. Or it might ignite an affair as reckless and irresistible as it is forbidden . . . - Rachel

Working as a feature writer in 1976, Thomas Swick falls in love with a visiting Polish student named Hania and soon moves with her to Warsaw. The next decade sees Thomas living in Poland, Greece, and Philadelphia. He declines an invitation to be a Polish informer, sees John Paul II embolden the masses on his first trip back to his homeland since becoming pope, witnesses the rise of Solidarity and the imposition of martial law in Poland, and walks with thousands of Poles on the pilgrimage to Częstochowa, an annual religious rite that blossoms into a nine-day protest march. In 1989, he watches Hania vote in her country's first free elections since pre-war independence. One month later, he lands his dream job as a travel writer.

Falling into Place is the personal story of a young man's discovery of the world and his development as a travel writer. It is also a love story, as he and Hania overcome cultural differences, communist bureaucracy, and unhealthy separations. Intertwined with both is the story of the revolution that altered history. With the world's attention once again turned to Eastern Europe, and a Cold War reality, this memoir can help Americans better understand both.

From chef Nichole Accettola, Scandinavian from Scratch brings to the page an assortment of baked goods and simple morning and midday meals rooted in Scandinavian cuisine. After moving back to the United States following more than a decade abroad, Accettola found herself longing for the wholesome breads, buttery pastries, decadent cakes, and cookies that she enjoyed on a daily basis while living in Copenhagen. She set out on a mission to bring the tastes and treats of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark to San Francisco and opened her now beloved bakery café, Kantine. 

In Scandinavian from Scratch, Accettola has curated 75 delicious bakes, organized by occasion and arranged from simplest to most complex, drawing from her collection of each Scandinavian country’s baking traditions. Fill your home kitchen with the enticing aromas of Coconut Dream Cake, Black Currant Caves, Cardamom Morning Buns, Saffron Rusks, Gravlax and Chive Potato Salad Smørrebrød, and so much more. The easy-to-follow recipes will expand your baking horizons and bring something special to the table, from breakfast and brunch to afternoon tea to holiday celebrations.

Felt flowers bloom all year long

Make beautiful felt flower decorations, bouquets, and accessories that perfectly match any space, mood, or season! Back by popular demand, Bryanne Rajamannar gives you a whole new variety of flowers and plants in this follow-up to Felt Flower Workshop. This beginner-friendly book has simple lessons for creating felt flowers, plants, and projects for all seasons of the year--including wreaths, centerpieces, garlands, and headbands. First, learn to craft each individual flower and leaf by following instructions for cutting the felt from simple patterns, assembling the pieces, and polishing them into lifelike blooms. Then, combine them into endlessly unique arrangements! Immerse yourself in a craft that is easy, inexpensive, and stunning.

Complete Guide to Natural Home Remedies is a comprehensive guide including 100+ recipes and nearly 70 applications to understanding how to use herbs and oils to help the mind, body and soul. Herbal remedies include everything from teas to ointments to tonics and tinctures. They help with ailments such as bug bites and stings, food poisoning, insomnia, shingles, sore throat, acne, arthritis and so much more! Easy to follow chapters are divided by the body's primary systems including digestive, nervous, respiratory, urinary, and skin as well as sections on the remedies to help the heart and mind. With the recipes and their uses in the forefront, this book is the go-to guide for home remedies.

From the multi-award-winning performer, author, and activist, a comprehensive program for addressing mental and physical health--and encouraging communities to do the same.

Common has achieved success in many facets of his life and career, from music to acting to writing. But for a long time, he didn't feel that he had found fulfillment in his body and spirit.

And Then We Rise is about Common's journey to wellness as a vital element of his success. A testimony to the benefits of self-care, this book is composed of four different sections, each with its own important lessons: "The Food" focuses on nutrition. "The Body" focuses on fitness. "The Mind" focuses on mental health. And "The Soul" focuses on perhaps the most profound thing of all--spiritual well-being.

Common's personal stories act as the backbone of his book, but he also wants to give his readers the gift of professional expertise. Here, he acts as the liaison to his own nutritionist and chef, his own physical trainer, and his own therapist, as well as to those who act as his spiritual influences.

Wise, accessible, and powerful, And Then We Rise offers a comprehensive, holistic approach to wellness that will allow readers to transform their thinking, their actions, and, ultimately, their lives.

From acclaimed Abraham Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, a groundbreaking account of Lincoln’s grappling with the politics of immigration against the backdrop of the Civil War.

In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation’s demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America’s newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry.

Abraham Lincoln’s rise ran parallel to this turmoil; even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it. Tensions over immigration would split and ultimately destroy Lincoln’s Whig Party years before the Civil War. Yet the war made clear just how important immigrants were, and how interwoven they had become in American society.

Harold Holzer, winner of the Lincoln Prize, charts Lincoln’s political career through the lens of immigration, from his role as a member of an increasingly nativist political party to his evolution into an immigration champion, a progression that would come at the same time as he refined his views on abolition and Black citizenship. As Holzer writes, “The Civil War could not have been won without Lincoln’s leadership; but it could not have been fought without the immigrant soldiers who served and, by the tens of thousands, died that the ‘nation might live.’” An utterly captivating and illuminating work, Brought Forth on This Continent assesses Lincoln's life and legacy in a wholly original way, unveiling remarkable similarities between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first.

In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of contemporary anthems at turns tender and piercing and deeply inspiring throughout. Featuring work from well-loved poets such as Rita Dove, Jericho Brown, Warsan Shire, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, and Nikki Giovanni, This Is the Honey is a rich and abundant offering of language from the poets giving voice to generations of resilient joy, "each incantation," as Mahogany L. Browne puts it in her titular poem, is "a jubilee of a people dreaming wildly."

This essential collection, in the tradition of Dudley Randall's The Black Poets and E. Ethelbert Miller's In Search of Color Everywhere, contains poems exploring joy, love, origin, race, resistance, and praise. Jacqueline A.Trimble likens "Black woman joy" to indigo, tassels, foxes, and peacock plumes. Tyree Daye, Nate Marshall, and Elizabeth Acevedo reflect on the meaning of "home" through food, from Cuban rice and beans to fried chicken gizzards. Clint Smith and Cameron Awkward-Rich enfold us in their intimate musings on love and devotion. From a "jewel in the hand" (Patricia Spears Jones) to "butter melting in small pools" (Elizabeth Alexander), This Is the Honey drips with poignant and delightful imagery, music, and raised fists.

Fresh, memorable, and deeply moving, this definitive collection a must-have for any lover of language and a gift for our time.

Some of humanity's mightiest engineering achievements are small in scale--and, without them, the complex machinery on which our modern world runs would not exist. In Nuts and Bolts, structural engineer Roma Agrawal examines seven of these extraordinary elements: the nail, the wheel, the spring, the magnet, the lens, the string, and the pump.

Tracing the evolution from Egyptian nails to modern skyscrapers, and Neanderthal string to musical instruments, Agrawal shows us how even our most sophisticated items are built on the foundations of these ancient and fundamental breakthroughs. She explores an array of intricate technologies--dishwashers, spacesuits, microscopes, suspension bridges, breast pumps--making surprising connections, explaining how they work, and using her own hand-drawn illustrations to bring complex principles to life.

Alongside deeply personal experiences, she recounts the stories of remarkable--and often uncredited--scientists, engineers, and innovators from all over the world, and explores the indelible impact these creators and their creations had on society. In preindustrial Britain, nails were so precious that their export to the colonies was banned--and women were among the most industrious nail makers. The washing machine displayed at an industrial fair in Chicago in 1898 was the only machine featured that was designed by a woman. The history of the wheel, meanwhile, starts with pottery, and takes us to India's independence movement, where making clothes using a spinning wheel was an act of civil disobedience.

Eye-opening and engaging, Nuts and Bolts reveals the hidden building blocks of our modern world, and shows how engineering has fundamentally changed the way we live.

In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander—author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger—gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America’s most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life—with relevant flashbacks to provide context—to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday’s artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law.

During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop—a reference to the last two words of Strange Fruit, her moving song about lynching—limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.

Boost your confidence, ace your interview, and get the job

Job Interviewing For Dummies will teach you how to prepare for your next job interview, deal with tough questions, and gain the tools and skills to interview with confidence and poise. This book offers a structured, step-by-step approach for succeeding in virtual and in-person interviews. You’ll find information, strategies, and examples to empower you to present your best self to potential employers. Learn how to anticipate and prepare for the most likely questions, regardless of your level or industry, and be prepared for anything—an interview on short notice, explaining gaps on your resume, changing careers, and beyond. With examples and stories from the interview trenches, this friendly Dummies guide will help you breathe new life into your job search.

This book is for anyone interested in finding a new job or helping others in their job search. With Job Interviewing For Dummies, be prepared to hear “yes” more often!

In this indispensable guide by the mega-popular Bucket List Family, discover expert tips for traveling with kids and 50 not-to-be-missed destination itineraries.

As a family of five, the Bucket List Family has swum with whales in Tonga, slept in castles in Ireland, lived on a houseboat in Amsterdam, eaten breakfast with giraffes in Kenya, spent Halloween in Disneyland, and visited more than 90 countries around the world. Now, Jessica Gee brings her tips and tricks to you in the ultimate expert's guide to traveling as a family.

This beautifully illustrated guide provides all the know-how to fulfill your own family's bucket list--including how-tos for picking a destination, packing, budgeting, and even surviving a 12-hour plane ride. Along with personal family anecdotes, Jess offers 50 itineraries for family-friendly destinations and inspiring top-10 lists with destinations for every age.

This insider's guide from one of the world's most traveled families will inspire you to create new and lasting memories with your family for years to come.

Internationally bestselling author and renowned scientist Tim Flannery and his daughter, scientist Emma Flannery, delivers an informative-yet-intimate portrait of the megalodon, an extinct shark and the largest predator of all time

When Tim Flannery was a boy he found a fossilized tooth of the giant shark megalodon at a beach near his home in Australia. This remarkable find--the tooth was large enough to cover his palm--sparked an interest in paleontology that was to inform his life's work and a lifelong quest to uncover the secrets of the great shark Otodus megalodon.

Tim passed on his love of the natural world and interest in the fossil record to his daughter, Emma, a scientist and writer. And now, together, they have written a fascinating account of this ancient marine creature.

Big Meg charts the evolution of megalodon, its super-predator status for about fifteen million years and its decline and extinction. It delves into the fossil record to answer questions about its behavior and role in shaping marine ecosystems as well as its impact on the human psyche. It contains stories of the scientist and amateur fossil hunters who have scoured the seas, and land, for fossil remains, drawn to the beauty and mystique of the great shark, sometimes meeting their death in the process.

Deemed "in the league of the all-time great explorers" by David Attenborough, Tim Flannery has come together with Emma Flannery to spin a story of the great natural history of our planet as enthralling as the fossil record itself.

Born into a "formerly untouchable manual-scavenging family in small-town India," Yashica Dutt was taught from a young age to not appear “Dalit looking.” Although prejudice against Dalits, who compose 25% of the population, has been illegal since 1950, caste-ism in India is alive and well. Blending her personal history with extensive research and reporting, Dutt provides an incriminating analysis of caste’s influence in India over everything from entertainment to judicial systems and how this discrimination has carried over to US institutions.

Dutt traces how colonial British forces exploited and perpetuated a centuries old caste system, how Gandhi could have been more forceful in combatting prejudice, and the role played by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, whom Isabel Wilkerson called “the MLK of India’s caste issues” in her book Caste. Alongside her analysis, Dutt interweaves personal stories of learning to speak without a regional accent growing up and desperately using medicinal packs to try to lighten her skin.

Published in India in 2019 to acclaim, this expanded edition includes two new chapters covering how the caste system traveled to the US, its history here, and the continuation of bias by South Asian communities in professional sectors. Amid growing conversations about caste discrimination prompting US institutions including Harvard University, Brandeis University, the University of California system, and the NAACP to add caste as a protected category to their policies, Dutt’s work sheds essential light on the significant influence caste-ism has across many aspects of US society.

Raw and affecting, Coming Out as Dalit brings a new audience of readers into a crucial conversation about embracing Dalit identity, offering a way to change the way people think about caste in their own communities and beyond.

In Cool Food, celebrated actor and philanthropist Robert Downey Jr. and New York Times bestselling author Thomas Kostigen team up to discover how we can erase our carbon footprints--one bite at a time.

What we eat matters--to us, and to the planet. Cool food is a game-changing new food category and way of thinking that can help fix the climate. This engaging and persuasive book will show you how to make simple choices, starting today--in the supermarket, in your kitchen, and in the world--to reduce your environmental impact. Hundreds of cool foods exist, but until now have gone largely uncelebrated for their climate-positive powers. Some of these foods may already be on your shelf, and some are just on the horizon. But cool food is much more than just a shopping list: it's a way of life vitally important to our future.

Packed with eye-opening information, actionable items, and two dozen delicious recipes, Cool Food comes alive with engaging storytelling and refreshing humor. Robert and Tom have talked with experts around the globe--from farmers who are pioneering new pathways to more sustainable food, to cutting-edge, climate-friendly chefs.

What we choose to eat, where we shop, and how we plan our meals are daily choices that can have a wide impact on the world, whether we realize it or not. We have the power with each one of our daily purchases and our individual food habits to encourage a healthier and more sustainable food system for everyone.

Join Robert and Tom on this fun, exciting, and enlightening adventure and learn how to become part of the Cool Food revolution.

Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips. She was preparing to enter her freshman year of high school as the number one student when suddenly, her own country took away the most important right a child has: the right to have a family.

When her parents’ visas expired and they were forced to return to Mexico, Elizabeth was left responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being a “statistic,” she knew that even though her parents couldn’t stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide. Armed with only her passport and sheer teenage determination, Elizabeth became what her school would eventually describe as an unaccompanied homeless youth, one of thousands of underage victims affected by family separation due to broken immigration laws.

For fans of Educated by Tara Westover and The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, My Side of the River explores separation, generational trauma, and the toll of the American dream. It’s also, at its core, a love story between a brother and a sister who, no matter the cost, is determined to make the pursuit of her brother’s dreams easier than it was for her.

Winner of the Caldecott Medal! A Coretta Scott King Award Author and Illustrator Honor book, a National Book Award finalist, and a New York Times bestseller! This deeply moving story shares valuable lessons about fitting in, standing out, and the beauty of joyful acceptance, from an award-winning creator.

2024 Lincolnwood Reads

Discover compelling scientific evidence for the value of fun - and of how having more of it will help you achieve better work-life balance, reduce stress and much more. Doesn't it seem that the more we seek happiness, the more elusive it becomes? There is an easy fix, hiding in plain sight. Fun is an action you can take here and now, practically anywhere, anytime. There is a multitude of research that proves how beneficial fun is to our physical and psychological well-being, yet all too often, its absence from our modern lives is striking. Whether you're a frustrated high-achiever trying to find a better work-life balance or someone simply seeking relief from life's overwhelming challenges, it's time to look into fun as a solution. The Fun Habit is the ultimate guide to reaping the serious benefits of fun. Drawing on cutting edge research, accessible science, and practical recommendations, Dr. Mike Rucker explains how you can build having fun into an actionable and effortless habit and why doing so will help you become healthier, joyful and more productive.

Hi'i is proud to be a Naupaka, a family renowned for its contributions to hula and her hometown of Hilo, Hawaii, but there's a lot she doesn't understand. She's never met her legendary grandmother and her mother has never revealed the identity of her father. Worse, unspoken divides within her tight-knit community have started to grow, creating fractures whose origins are somehow entangled with her own family history.

In hula, Hi'i sees a chance to live up to her name and solidify her place within her family legacy. But in order to win the next Miss Aloha Hula competition, she will have to turn her back on everything she had ever been taught, and maybe even lose the very thing she was fighting for.

On an ordinary night in an ordinary year, Tommy Llewellyn's doting parents wake in a home without toys and diapers, without photos of their baby scattered about, and without any idea that the small child asleep in his crib is theirs.

That's because Tommy is a boy destined to never be remembered.

On the same day every year, everyone around him forgets he exists, and he grows up enduring his own universal Reset. That is until something extraordinary happens: Tommy Llewellyn falls in love.

Determined to finally carve out a life for himself and land the girl of his dreams, Tommy sets out on a mission to finally trick the Reset and be remembered. But legacies aren't so easily won, and Tommy must figure out what's more important--the things we leave behind or the people we bring along with us.

In this riveting take on One Thousand and One Nights, Shaherazade, at the center of her own story, uses wit and political mastery to navigate opulent palaces brimming with treachery and the perils of the Third Crusade as her Persian homeland teeters on the brink of destruction.

Five friends arrive back in Eternal Springs, Arkansas, the small town they all fled after high school graduation. Each is drawn home by a cryptic, scrawled two-word letter that reads, You promised.

It has been fifteen years since the summer that changed their lives, and they’re anxious to find out why Brandi called them back, especially when they vowed never to return.

But Brandi is missing. She’d been acting erratically for months, railing at whoever might listen about magic all around them. About a power they can’t see. And about strange houses that appear only when you need them . . .

Told in two enthralling timelines, The Wonder State is a gorgeous, immersive, speculative Gothic tale about searching for home.

Amid the alleyways of the Zamzam neighborhood of Tehran, a woman lights herself on fire in a desperate act of defiance, setting off a chain reaction of violence and protest. Haunted by the woman’s death, Issa is forced to confront the contradictions of his own family history, throughout which his late brother Hashem, a prominent queer artist in Tehran’s underground, had defied their father, a skilled martial artist bound to traditional notions of honor and masculinity.

Issa soon finds himself thrown into a circle of people living on the margins of society, negotiating a razor-like code of conduct that rewards loyalty and encourages aggression and intolerance in equal measure. As the city explodes around him, Issa realizes that it is the little acts of kindness that matter most, the everyday humanity of individuals finding love and doing right by one another.

Vibrant and evocative, intimate and intelligent, A Nearby Country Called Love is both a captivating window into contemporary Iran and a portrait of the parallel fates of a man and his country—a man who acknowledges the sullen and rumbling baggage of history but then chooses to step past its violent inheritance.

Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach--if she can just grow up fast enough. Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda's newborn brother several years before, Theo turns to the dangerous dream of extending his daughter's childhood just a little longer. The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time.

Decades later, Nedda has achieved her long-held dream and is traveling aboard the space ship Chawla, part of a small group hoping to colonize a distant planet. But as she floats in zero gravity, far from earth, she and her crewmates face a serious crisis. Nedda may hold the key to the solution, if she can come to terms with her past and the future that awaits her.

For fans of The Age of Miracles and The Immortalists, Erika Swyler’s Light from Other Stars is a masterful and ambitious novel about fathers and daughters, women and the forces that hold them back, and the true meaning of progress. - Rachel

It's the middle of the night in the middle of Paris and a woman just woke up with no memory.

She only knows three things for certain:

1. She has a splitting headache.

2. The hottest guy she has (probably) ever seen is standing over her, telling her to run.

And oh yeah...

3. People keep trying to kill her.

She doesn't know who. Or why. But when she sees footage of herself fighting off a dozen men there's only one explanation: obviously. . . she's a spy!

Except, according to Mr. Hot Guy, she's not. She's a spy's identical twin sister.

Too bad the only person who knows she's not the woman they're looking for is this very grouchy, very sexy, very secret agent who (reluctantly) agrees to help her disappear. Which is easier said than done when a criminal organization wants you dead and every intelligence service in the world wants you caught.

Luckily, no one is looking for a pair of lovesick newlyweds on their honeymoon. And soon they're lying their way across Europe--dodging bullets and faking kisses as they race to unravel a deadly conspiracy and clear her sister's name.

But with every secret they uncover, the truth shifts, until she no longer knows who to trust: the twin she can't remember or the mysterious man she can't let herself forget...

A new door opens...

Once there were four worlds, nestled like pages in a book, each pulsing with fantastical power and connected by a single city: London.

After a desperate attempt to prevent corruption and ruin in the four Londons, there are only three—Grey London, thriving but barely able to remember its magical heritage; Red London, ruled lately by the Maresh family, flourishing and powerful; and White London, left to brutality and decay.

Now the worlds are going to collide anew—brought to a dangerous precipice by the discoveries of three remarkable magicians.

There's Kosika, the child queen of White London, who has nourished her city on blood and dreams—and whose growing devotion to both is leading her down a dangerous path.

Then there's Delilah Bard, born a thief in Grey London, who crossed the worlds to become a legend far from there. She's an infamous magician, a devious heroine, and a risk-taking rogue, all rolled into one unforgettable package. Having disappeared to seek new adventure, an old favor now calls Lila back to a dangerous port, to join some old friends who need more help than they realize.

Last there is Tes, a young runaway with an unusual and powerful ability, hiding out in Red London while trying to stay out of the limelight.

Tes is the only one who can keep all the worlds from unraveling—if she manages to stay alive first.

Explore the powerful medium of mosaic in this book which offers a fresh perspective on the ancient art. Packed with photographs, clear instructions, and new ideas about how to create stunning mosaic pieces for indoors and outdoors, Make Your Own Mosaics explains the principles of mosaic making as practiced since Roman times.

This easy-to-follow book contains step by step instructions on how to make mosaics, covering every aspect of the process from designing mosaics to tools, adhesives, and substrates. Written for creators with all levels of experience, this book opens up a fascinating world showing how ceramic and glass alongside recycled and reclaimed materials can be used to make lasting pieces for the home and garden.

Make Your Own Mosaics offers eight unique mosaic projects and seven different approaches to this addictive skill. Chapters on Learning from the Ancients are included alongside practical tips and information on how to choose the right mosaic method for your project. From making a mosaic house number to a garden wall plaque or seasonal decorations, this book will show you how. Whether you want to make classically inspired mosaics, experiment with found materials or decorate your space with beautiful and expressive art, Make Your Own Mosaics is for you.

Each year, colleges are inundated with earnest, eager applications. Your own essay may need to shine from among as many as 60,000 others to get noticed!

All the essays collected in this book are real examples of successful, stand-out writing, and each is annotated with explanations from The Princeton Review’s admissions experts about its most memorable or effective techniques. Get reading—and then writing—and let these model essays give you the kick-app advantage!

Make 75 amazing pizzas at home with foolproof dough recipes, super-fun topping combos, and tips and tricks and shortcuts from the pros in the Food Network Kitchen.

Pizza night just got even more exciting! This cookbook from the editors of Food Network Magazine is packed with recipes for every kind of pizza lover including different styles of pies and tons of new topping combos.

You don’t need to be a pro pizza-maker to get on board: There are options for cooks at every level, whether you're just starting out or you have your own pizza oven. Plus, all the recipes have been triple tested, so you know they’ll turn out just right.

Four historic teams. Four legendary players. One unforgettable season.

The 1980s were a transformative decade for the NBA. Since its founding in 1946, the league had evolved from a bruising, earthbound game of mostly nameless, underpaid players to one in which athletes became household names for their thrilling, physics-defying play. The 1987–88 season was the peak of that golden era, a year of incredible drama that featured a pantheon of superstars in their prime—the most future Hall of Famers competing at one time in any given season—battling for the title, and for their respective legacies.

In When the Game Was War, bestselling author Rich Cohen tells the story of this incredible season through the four teams, and the four players, who dominated it: Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics, Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers, Isiah Thomas and the Detroit Pistons, and a young Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls. From rural Indiana to the South Side of Chicago, suburban North Carolina to rust-belt Michigan, Cohen explores the diverse journeys each of these iconic players took before arriving on the big stage. Drawing from dozens of interviews with NBA insiders, Cohen brings to vivid life some of the most colorful characters of the era—like Bill Laimbeer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Danny Ainge, and Charles Oakley—who fought like hell to help these stars succeed. 

For anyone who longs to understand how the NBA came to be the cultural juggernaut it is today—and to relive the magic and turmoil of those pivotal years—When the Game Was War brilliantly recasts one unforgettable season and the four transcendent players who were at the center of it all.

In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics.

In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country, revealing the rich political, social, and cultural landscape that existed amid oppression and hardship. Drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews and documents, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, beyond the Wall.

The greatest popular songs, whether it’s Aretha Franklin singing “Respect” or Bob Dylan performing “Blind Willie McTell,” have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling when you hear that song again. In Holding the Note, David Remnick writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years.

He portrays a series of musical lives and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. From Cohen’s performing debut, when his stage fright was so debilitating he couldn’t get through “Suzanne,” to Franklin’s iconic mink-drop at the Kennedy Center, Holding the Note delivers a view of some of the greatest creative minds of our time written with a lifetime’s passionate attachment to music that has shaped us all.

Linked to a special mini season of the award-winning StarTalk podcast, this enlightening illustrated narrative by the world's most celebrated astrophysicist explains the universe from the solar system to the farthest reaches of space with authority and humor.

No one can make the mysteries of the universe more comprehensible and fun than Neil deGrasse Tyson. Drawing on mythology, history, and literature--alongside his trademark wit and charm--Tyson and StarTalk senior producer Lindsey Nyx Walker bring planetary science down to Earth and principles of astrophysics within reach. In this entertaining book, illustrated with vivid photographs and art, readers travel with him through space and time, starting with the Big Bang and voyaging to the far reaches of the universe and beyond. Along the way, science greets pop culture as Tyson explains the triumphs--and bloopers--in Hollywood's blockbusters: all part of an entertaining ride through the cosmos.

The book begins as we leave Earth, encountering new truths about our planet's atmosphere, the nature of sunlight, and the many missions that have demystified our galactic neighbors. But the farther out we travel, the weirder things get. What's a void and what's a vacuum? How can light be a wave and a particle at the same time? When we finally arrive in the blackness of outer space, Tyson takes on the spookiest phenomena of the cosmos: parallel worlds, black holes, time travel, and more.

For science junkies and fans of the conundrums that astrophysicists often ponder, To Infinity and Beyond is an enlightening adventure into the farthest reaches of the cosmos.

A sweeping exploration of the relationship between the language we speak and our perception of such fundamentals of experience as time, space, color, and smells.

We tend to assume that all languages categorize ideas and objects similarly, reflecting our common human experience. But this isn’t the case. When we look closely, we find that many basic concepts are not universal, and that speakers of different languages literally see and think about the world differently.

Caleb Everett takes readers around the globe, explaining what linguistic diversity tells us about human culture, overturning conventional wisdom along the way. For instance, though it may seem that everybody refers to time in spatial terms—in English, for example, we speak of time “passing us by”—speakers of the Amazonian language Tupi Kawahib never do. In fact, Tupi Kawahib has no word for “time” at all. And while it has long been understood that languages categorize colors based on those that speakers regularly encounter, evidence suggests that the color words we have at our disposal affect how we discriminate colors themselves: a rose may not appear as rosy by any other name. What’s more, the terms available to us even determine the range of smells we can identify. European languages tend to have just a few abstract odor words, like “floral” or “stinky,” whereas Indigenous languages often have well over a dozen.

Why do some cultures talk anthropocentrically about things being to one’s “left” or “right,” while others use geocentric words like “east” and “west”? What is the connection between what we eat and the sounds we make? A Myriad of Tongues answers these and other questions, yielding profound insights into the fundamentals of human communication and experience.

You know the adage-good things come in small packages. Here's proof: dozens of delicious little destinations that delight travelers who crave fun, safe, surprising, and under-the-radar escapes from big-city bustle and congestion. Time to downshift and discover the natural beauty, unique spirit, and enduring character of unusual burgs of Wisconsin. All of these special places have a population of no more than five thousand people. Midwest U.S. travel, regional foods, and German heritage are Mary Bergin's writing specialties. The author of Wisconsin Supper Club Cookbook boasts decades of newspaper work as an editor and reporter. She has earned four Lowell Thomas Awards for her efforts in travel journalism.

When government scientist David Allen arrived at his new jobsite in the 1990s, the Fox River near Wisconsin's Green Bay was dominated by hulking paper mills, noxious industrial odors, and widespread ecological damage. Confronted by his lack of resources to force the politically powerful "Paper Valley" polluters to fix their mess, Allen proceeds against all bureaucratic odds in building a $1 billion case against the paper company bosses. Two small but vital players, Allen along with journalist Susan Campbell were relentless in bringing the case to the public at the time. They do so again in this book: an act of radical transparency to uncover the intrigue that nearly blocked the cleanup behind the scenes at US Fish and Wildlife, Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources, and the US Environmental Protection Agency. In a rare and major environmental win, the Fox River became the site of the largest polychlorinated biphenyls cleanup in history, paid for by the paper companies rather than taxpayers, to the tune of $1.3 billion, and completed in 2020.

This true story of struggle, perseverance, and success inspires hope for environmentalists who strive to restore natural landscapes. The detailed account given in this book is meant to inspire and offer practical knowledge and solutions for those fighting similar opponents of environmental cleanup and restoration. Allen and Campbell eloquently outline the problematic bureaucracy involved in environmental cleanup efforts and reveal tactics to compel corporate entities who would dodge accountability for decades worth of contamination.

A fascinating look into how Einstein's genius and science continues to show up in so many facets of our everyday lives and his enduring legacy as an unlikely pop culture icon.

Albert Einstein was the first modern-day celebrity and, decades after his death, still has the world's most recognizable face. His influence is seen in much of the technology we use every day: GPS, remote controls, weather forecasts, even toothpaste. But it's not just Einstein's scientific discoveries that continue to shape our world. His legacy underpins the search for aliens, the rescue of refugees, the invention of time machines, and the debunking of fake news. He appears in new books, TV shows, and movies all the time--and fans are paying millions for Einstein relics at auction.

Award-winning author and journalist Benyamin Cohen has a bizarre side hustle as the manager of Einstein's official social media accounts, which have 20 million followers--more than most living celebrities. In The Einstein Effect, Cohen embarks on a global quest to unearth Einstein's ongoing relevance today. Along the way, he meets scientists and celebrities, speaks to dozens with the last name Einstein (including two rabbis), and even tracks down the brain of Einstein, stolen from his body during the autopsy. Cohen shows us the myriad ways the Nobel Prize winner's influence is still with us, giving an in-depth--and often hilarious--look at the world's favorite genius like you've never seen him before.

Struggling with debt? Find solutions here.

Conquering overwhelming debt starts with understanding your options. Solve Your Money Troubles gives you the tools you need to get your finances back on track.

In addition to up-to-date legal information, you’ll find practical tools, such as sample creditor letters and budgeting worksheets. 

In this engrossing and timely journey to the crossroads of food and identity award-winning writer Anya von Bremzen explores six of the world’s most fascinating and iconic culinary cultures—France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Mexico, and Turkey—brilliantly weaving cuisine, history, and politics into a work of scintillating connoisseurship and charm

We all have an idea in our heads about what French food is—or Italian, or Japanese, or Mexican, or . . . But where did those ideas come from? Who decides what makes a national food canon? Recipient of three James Beard awards, Anya von Bremzen has written definitive cookbooks on Russian, Spanish, and Latin American cuisines, as well as her internationally acclaimed memoir Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. Now in National Dish, she sets out to investigate the truth behind the eternal cliché—“we are what we eat”—traveling to six storied food capitals, going high and low, from world-famous chefs to scholars to strangers in bars, in search of how cuisine became connected to place and identity.

Paris is where the whole idea of food as national heritage was first invented, and so it is where Anya must begin. With an inquisitive eye and unmistakable wit, she ponders the codification of French food and the current tension between locavorism and globalization. From France, she’s off to Naples, to probe the myth and reality of pizza, pasta, and Italian-ness. Next up, Tokyo, where Anya and her partner Barry explore ramen, rice, and the distance between Japan’s future and its past. From there they move to Seville, to search for the community-based essence of Spain’s tapas traditions, and then Oaxaca, where debates over postcolonial cultural integration find expression in maize and mole. In Istanbul, a traditional Ottoman potluck becomes a lens on how a former multicultural empire defines its food heritage. Finally, they land back in their beloved home in Queens, for a dinner centered on Ukrainian borsch, a meal that has never felt more loaded, or more precious and poignant.

A unique and magical cook’s tour of the world, National Dish brings us to a deep appreciation of how the country makes the food, and the food the country.

Discover how to make and use natural remedies from home-grown herbs to improve your health and wellbeing.

In recent years, more people than ever have turned to natural remedies for general health and wellbeing, and for help with ailments, from the common cold to arthritis. This comprehensive book of expert advice teaches you how to grow your own herbs, harvest plants from the wild, and process ingredients to create your own cabinet of natural remedies, all with safety in mind.

In this updated, expanded, and fully redesigned edition of his bestselling classic, author Andrew Chevallier - a fellow and former president of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists - combines the latest scientific research with the traditional and folkloric use of the plants to give detailed information about the benefits and constituents of more than 560 herbs, from aloe vera and cardamom through to witch hazel and yarrow.

Clear imagery will help you identify and distinguish between the different healing plants, while a detailed self-help section shows you how to treat more than 150 common ailments, including with practical herbal remedies you can make at home: learn how to create delicate tea infusions, strong tinctures, sweet syrups, infused oils, powdered poultices, and more.

Whether you're a natural health newbie or an experienced herbalist, the Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine is the unrivalled guide to natural healing, with practical recipes and advice you can trust.

In 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson first walked onto the diamond at Ebbets Field, the all-white, upper-crust US Lawn Tennis Association opened its door just a crack to receive a powerhouse player who would integrate "the game of royalty." The player was a street-savvy young Black woman from Harlem named Althea Gibson who was about as out-of-place in that rarefied and intolerant world as any aspiring tennis champion could be. Her tattered jeans and short-cropped hair drew stares from everyone who watched her play, but her astonishing performance on the court soon eclipsed the negative feelings being cast her way as she eventually became one of the greatest American tennis champions.

Gibson had a stunning career. Raised in New York and trained by a pair of tennis-playing doctors in the South, Gibson’s immense talent on the court opened the door for her to compete around the world. She won top prizes at Wimbledon and Forest Hills time and time again. The young woman underestimated by so many wound up shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth II, being driven up Broadway in a snowstorm of ticker tape, and ultimately became the first Black woman to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated and the second to appear on the cover of Time. In a crowning achievement, Althea Gibson became the No. One ranked female tennis player in the world for both 1957 and 1958. Seven years later she broke the color barrier again where she became the first Black woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA).

In Althea, prize-winning former Boston Globe reporter Sally H. Jacobs tells the heart-rending story of this pioneer, a remarkable woman who was a trailblazer, a champion, and one of the most remarkable Americans of the twentieth century.

The President's Wife; a Glamorous Superstar; the rivalry that shook the world...

Jackie Kennedy was beautiful, sophisticated, and contemplating leaving her ambitious young senator husband. Life in the public eye with an overly ambitious--and unfaithful--man who could hardly be coaxed to return from a vacation after the birth of a stillborn child was breaking her spirit. So when she's offered a holiday on the luxurious yacht owned by billionaire Ari Onassis, she says yes...to a meeting that will ultimately change her life.

Maria Callas is at the height of her operatic career and widely considered to be the finest soprano in the world. And then she's introduced to Aristotle Onassis, the world's richest man and her fellow Greek. Stuck in a childless, sexless marriage, and with pressures on all sides from opera house managers and a hostile press, she finds her life being turned upside down by this hyper-intelligent and impeccably charming man...

Little by little, Maria's and Jackie's lives begin to overlap, and they come closer and closer until everything they know about the world changes on a dime.

An instant New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick from beloved author Alice Hoffman—the spellbinding prequel to Practical Magic.

Find your magic.

For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man.

Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. Difficult Franny, with skin as pale as milk and blood red hair, shy and beautiful Jet, who can read other people’s thoughts, and charismatic Vincent, who began looking for trouble on the day he could walk.

From the start Susanna sets down rules for her children: No walking in the moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles, no books about magic. And most importantly, never, ever, fall in love. But when her children visit their Aunt Isabelle, in the small Massachusetts town where the Owens family has been blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong, they uncover family secrets and begin to understand the truth of who they are. Yet, the children cannot escape love even if they try, just as they cannot escape the pains of the human heart. The two beautiful sisters will grow up to be the memorable aunts in Practical Magic, while Vincent, their beloved brother, will leave an unexpected legacy.

Alice Hoffman delivers “fairy-tale promise with real-life struggle” (The New York Times Book Review) in a story how the only remedy for being human is to be true to yourself. Thrilling and exquisite, real and fantastical, The Rules of Magic is “irresistible…the kind of book you race through, then pause at the last forty pages, savoring your final moments with the characters” (USA TODAY, 4/4 stars).

Now an HBO limited series starring Ben Mendelsohn!​

Evil has many faces…maybe even yours in this #1 New York Times bestseller from master storyteller Stephen King.

An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is discovered in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens—Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon have DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

As the investigation expands and horrifying details begin to emerge, King’s story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps create a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle’s complexion isn’t dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white—her complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths she must go to—for the protection of her family and her legacy—to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.

In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.

Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit--and her sister--before it's too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters' childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.

Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who's just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina--the tobacco capital of the South--where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt's glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives.

But she soon learns that Bright Leaf isn't quite the carefree paradise that it seems. A trail of misfortune follows many of the women, including substantial health problems, and although Maddie is quick to believe that this is a coincidence, she inadvertently uncovers evidence that suggests otherwise.

Maddie wants to report what she knows, but in a town where everyone depends on Big Tobacco to survive, she doesn't know who she can trust--and fears that exposing the truth may destroy the lives of the proud, strong women with whom she has forged strong bonds.

Shedding light on the hidden history of women's activism during the post-war period, at its heart, The Tobacco Wives is a deeply human, emotionally satisfying, and dramatic novel about the power of female connection and the importance of seeking truth.

Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification and loss, and, eventually, what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando. As Cara confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight.

Structurally inventive and emotionally kaleidoscopic, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is Angie Cruz’s most ambitious and moving novel yet, and Cara is a heroine for the ages.

The critically acclaimed cult novelist makes visceral the terrors of life in Jim Crow America and its lingering effects in this brilliant and wondrous work of the imagination that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy.

Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, 22-year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus’s ancestors—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.

At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction.

A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of two black families, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today. - Bill

"Goodbye, Eastern Europe" is a crucial, elucidative read, a sweeping epic chronicling a thousand years of strife, war, and bloodshed--from pre-Christianity to the fall of Communism--illuminating the remarkable cultural significance and richness of a place perpetually lost to the margins of history. Eastern Europe, the moniker, has gone out of fashion since the fall of the Soviet Union. Ask someone now, and they might tell you that Estonia is in the Baltics, or Scandinavia, that Slovakia is in Central Europe and Croatia is in the Eastern Adriatic or the Balkans. In fact, Eastern Europe is a place that barely exists at all, except in cultural memory. Yet it remains a powerful marker of identity for many, with a fragmented and wide history, defined by texts, myths, and memories of centuries of hardship and suffering. "Goodbye, Eastern Europe" is a masterful narrative about a place that has survived the brink of being forgotten. Beginning with long-lost accounts of early pagan life, Mikanowski offers a kaleidoscopic tour recounting the rise and fall of the great empires--Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Russian--the dawn of the modern era, the ravages of Fascism and Communism, as well as Capitalism, the birth of the modern nation-state, and more. A student of literature, history, and the ghosts of his own family's past, Mikanowski paints a magisterial portrait of a place united by diversity, and eclecticism, and a people with the shared story of being the dominated rather than the dominating. The result is a loving and ebullient celebration of the distinctive and vibrant cultures that stubbornly persisted at the margins of Western Europe, and a powerful corrective that re-centers our understanding of how the modern Western world took shape.

~ Johnny

A narrative history of how Attila, Genghis Khan and the so-called barbarians of the steppes shaped world civilization. The barbarian nomads of the Eurasian steppes have played a decisive role in world history, but their achievements have gone largely unnoticed. These nomadic tribes have produced some of the world's greatest conquerors: Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, among others. Their deeds still resonate today. Indeed, these nomads built long-lasting empires, facilitated the first global trade of the Silk Road and disseminated religions, technology, knowledge and goods of every description that enriched and changed the lives of so many across Europe, China and the Middle East. From a single region emerged a great many peoples--the Huns, the Mongols, the Magyars, the Turks, the Xiongnu, the Scythians, the Goths--all of whom went on to profoundly and irrevocably shape the modern world. In this new, comprehensive history, Professor Kenneth W. Harl vividly re-creates the lives and world of these often-forgotten peoples from their beginnings to the early modern age. Their brutal struggle to survive on the steppes bred a resilient, pragmatic people ever ready to learn from their more advanced neighbors. In warfare, they dominated the battlefield for over fifteen hundred years. Under charismatic rulers, they could topple empires and win their own.

~ Johnny

This suspenseful and propulsive account of the days leading up to the end of World War II, is told through the stories of three men: Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, who had overall responsibility for decisions about the atomic bomb; Gen. Carl "Tooey" Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in Europe and the Pacific, who was in charge of actually dropping the bombs; and Shigenori Tōgō, the Japanese Foreign Minister, who was the only one in Emperor Hirohito's Court and Supreme War Council who knew and believed that Japan must surrender. 1945 was Stimson's last year of his career as a statesman in the administrations of five presidents. When Truman, a peripheral figure in the momentous decision, accepted Stimson's recommendation to drop the bomb, you are there as Army Air Force commander General Spaatz accepts the order, gets into one of the planes, and the planes take off. Like Stimson, Spaatz agonized over the command even as he recognized it would end the war, and that a prolonged war would cause even greater destruction. But Spaatz and Stimson were on only one side of the story. On the other side of the world was a commander whom they would never meet. From the start of the Pacific war, Foreign Minister Tōgō worked to mediate negotiations between the Japanese Prime Minister, the Emperor, and his Court, all of whom believed surrender was impossible. Finally, Tōgō convinced the Emperor that surrender was the best option for Hirohito, and for Japan

~ Johnny

The Creek War is one of the most tragic episodes in American history, leading to the greatest loss of Native American life on what is now U.S. soil. What began as a vicious internal conflict among the Creek Indians metastasized like a cancer. The ensuing Creek War of 1813-1814 shattered Native American control of the Deep South and led to the infamous Trail of Tears, in which the government forcibly removed the southeastern Indians from their homeland. The war also gave Andrew Jackson his first combat leadership role, and his newfound popularity after defeating the Creeks would set him on the path to the White House. In A Brutal Reckoning, Peter Cozzens vividly captures the young Jackson, describing a brilliant but harsh military commander with unbridled ambition, a taste for cruelty, and a fraught sense of honor and duty. Jackson would not have won the war without the help of Native American allies, yet he denied their role and even insisted on their displacement, together with all the Indians of the American South in the Trail of Tears. A conflict involving not only white Americans and Native Americans, but also the British and the Spanish, the Creek War opened the Deep South to the Cotton Kingdom, setting the stage for the American Civil War yet to come. No other single Indian conflict had such significant impact on the fate of America—and A Brutal Reckoning is the definitive book on this forgotten chapter in our history.

~ Johnny

A sixty-year saga of frostbite and fake news that follows the no-holds-barred battle between two legendary explorers to reach the North Pole, and the newspapers which stopped at nothing to get-and sell-the story. In the fall of 1909, a pair of bitter contests captured the world's attention. The American explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook both claimed to have discovered the North Pole, sparking a vicious feud that was unprecedented in international, scientific, and geographic circles. At the same time, the rivalry between two powerful New York City newspapers-the storied Herald and the ascendant Times-fanned the flames of the so-called polar controversy, as each paper financially and reputationally committed itself to an opposing explorer and fought desperately to defend him. The Herald was owned and edited by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., an eccentric playboy whose nose for news was matched only by his appetite for debauchery and champagne. "Battle of Ink and Ice" presents a frank portrayal of Arctic explorers, brave men who both inspired and divided the public. It also recounts a sixty-year saga of frostbite and fake news, one that culminates with an unjustly overlooked chapter in the origin story of the modern New York Times. 

~ Johnny

The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist.

The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, above all, following our dreams.

-Angie 

Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification and loss, and, eventually, what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando. As Cara confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight.
 

-AM

Who are the Rat Queens? A pack of booze-guzzling, death-dealing battle maidens-for-hire, and they're in the business of killing all god's creatures for profit. It's also a darkly comedic sass-and-sorcery series starring Hannah the Rockabilly Elven Mage, Violet the Hipster Dwarven Fighter, Dee the Atheist Human Cleric and Betty the Hippy Smidgen Thief. This modern spin on an old school genre is a violent monster-killing epic that is like Buffy meets Tank Girl in a Lord of the Rings world on crack! - BH

Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she’s always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only thing keeping her sane is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime. At these meetings they’re as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are about their own families.

One evening after book club, Patricia is viciously attacked by an elderly neighbor, bringing the neighbor's handsome nephew, James Harris, into her life. James is well traveled and well read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn’t felt in years. But when children on the other side of town go missing, their deaths written off by local police, Patricia has reason to believe James Harris is more of a Bundy than a Brad Pitt. The real problem? James is a monster of a different kind—and Patricia has already invited him in. 
 
Little by little, James will insinuate himself into Patricia’s life and try to take everything she took for granted—including the book club—but she won’t surrender without a fight in this blood-soaked tale of neighborly kindness gone wrong. - Bill

From New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience. Fans of Jordan Peele and Tommy Orange will love this story as it follows the lives of four American Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way. - Bill

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Utterly original and compelling, it has been hailed as a modern true crime classic—one which fulfilled Michelle's dream: helping unmask the Golden State Killer.