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Get in touch with your inner artist and nurture your creative mind with this playful and informative handbook.

Start Painting Now is a practical, accessible guide to discovering your creative spirit, giving you brilliant new tools for relaxation and self-care. Instagram's favourite artist Emily Powell and her sister, doctor Sarah Moore, will guide you through the process of learning to ignore your inner critic and unwind from the stresses of daily life through painting.

Whether you're returning to art after a long break or starting as a complete beginner, this book will inspire you to just pick up a brush and see where it takes you. Backed by the latest research on the benefits of art for mental health and wellbeing, Start Painting Now will empower you to put aside the fear of failure, turn off your phone and throw yourself into the joy of creativity.

Complete with inspiring examples from a range of female artists and set alongside examples of Emily and Sarah’s own work, this book will give you all the tools you need to start painting now.

Becoming a parent is more than just a biological process – it’s a lifelong commitment to sacrifice, service, and most importantly, love. It’s a challenge to get up every day and put your kids first. You will experience moments of heroic compassion and humiliating failure, sometimes within the same day.

But you don’t have to do it alone. From Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the smash hit The Daily Stoic, The Daily Dad provides 366 timeless meditations on parenting in a few manageable paragraphs a day – useful for even the most sleep deprived new parent.

Drawing on his own experience as a father of two as well as lessons from the lives of legends such as Theodore Roosevelt, Bruce Springsteen, Queen Elizabeth II, Marcus Aurelius, and Toni Morrison, this daily devotional provides wisdom and guidance on being the role model your child needs. Whether you’re expecting your first or already a grandparent, The Daily Dad offers encouragement, perspective, and practical advice for every stage of your child’s life.

A tour of Mars in the human imagination, from ancient astrologers to modern explorers.

Mars and its secrets have fascinated and mystified humans since ancient times. Due to its vivid color and visibility, its geologic kinship with Earth, and its potential as our best hope for settlement, Mars embodies everything that inspires us about space and exploration. For the Love of Mars surveys the red planet’s place in the human imagination, beginning with ancient astrologers and skywatchers and ending in our present moment of exploration and virtual engagement.

National Air and Space Museum curator Matthew Shindell describes how historical figures across eras and around the world have made sense of this mysterious planet. We meet Mayan astrologer priests who incorporated Mars into seasonal calendars and religious ceremonies; Babylonian astrologers who discerned bad omens; figures of the Scientific Revolution who struggled to comprehend it as a world; Victorian astronomers who sought signs of intelligent life; and twentieth- and twenty-first-century scientists who have established a technological presence on its surface. Along the way, we encounter writers and artists from each of these periods who take readers and viewers along on imagined journeys to Mars.

By focusing on the diverse human stories behind the telescopes and behind the robots we know and love, Shindell shows how Mars exploration has evolved in ways that have also expanded knowledge about other facets of the universe. Captained by an engaging and erudite expert, For the Love of Mars is a captivating voyage through time and space for anyone curious about Curiosity and the red planet.

A groundbreaking new history of the role of American servicewomen in WWII, illuminating their forgotten yet essential contributions to the Allies' victory.

Now Available in Trade Paperback

Valiant Women is the story of the 350,000 American women who served in uniform during World War II. These incredible women served in every service branch, in every combat theater, and in nearly two-thirds of the available military occupations at the time.

They were pilots, codebreakers, ordnance experts, gunnery instructors, metalsmiths, chemists, translators, parachute riggers, truck drivers, radarmen, pigeon trainers, and much more. They were directly involved in some of the most important moments of the war, from the D-Day landings to the peace negotiations in Paris. These women--who hailed from every race, creed, and walk of life--died for their country and received the nation's highest honors. Their work, both individually and in total, was at the heart of the Allied strategy that won World War II.

Yet, until now, their stories have been relegated to the dusty shelves of military archives or a passing mention in the local paper. Often the women themselves kept their stories private, even from their own families.

Now, military analyst Lena Andrews corrects the record with the definitive and comprehensive historical account of American servicewomen during World War II, based on new archival research, firsthand interviews with surviving veterans, and a deep professional understanding of military history and strategy.

Why care about the past? What good are the arts? At every stage, humanity has sought to understand and transmit to future generations not just the “know-how” of life, but the “know-why”—the meaning and purpose of our existence, as expressed in art, religion, and philosophy. Crucially, societies have always been most successful in both know-how and know-why by adopting and remixing the insights of the past and of other cultures. In this expansive one-volume tour of world culture through the ages, Martin Puchner argues that the arts and humanities are (and have been) essential to the transmission of knowledge that drives and undergirds the efforts of human civilization.

With magnificent global range and narrative flair, Puchner focuses on a series of dramatic turning points to highlight cultural achievements from Nefertiti’s lost city to the plays of Wole Soyinka; from the theaters of ancient Greece to Chinese travel journals to Arab and Aztec libraries; from an Indian statuette found at Pompeii to a time capsule left behind on the Moon. His book astonishes, informs and delights at every turn.

From the noted Hollywood biographer and author of The Contender comes this celebration of the great American love story--the romance between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart--capturing its complexity, contradictions, and challenges as never before.

In Bogie & Bacall, William Mann offers a deep and comprehensive look at Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and the unlikely love they shared. Mann details their early years--Bogart's effete upbringing in New York City; Bacall's rise as a model and actress. He paints a vivid portrait of their courtship and twelve-year marriage: the fights, the reconciliations, the children, the affairs, Bogie's illness and Bacall's steadfastness until his death. He offers a sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of Bacall's life after Bogie, exploring her relationships with Frank Sinatra and Jason Robards, who would become her second husband, and the identity crisis she faced.

Surpassing previous biographies, Mann digs deep into the celebrities' personal lives and considers their relationship from surprising angles. Bacall was just nineteen when she started dating the thrice-married forty-five-year-old Bogart. How might that age gap have influenced their relationship In addition to what she gained, what might Bacall have lost by marrying a Hollywood superstar more than twice her age How did Bogart, a man of average looks, become one of the greatest movie stars of all time Throughout, Mann explains the unparalleled successes of their individual careers as well as the extraordinary love between them and the legend that has endured.

Wisconsin truly is a water-saturated nature-lovers paradise: a land of many lakes, rivers and forests. It is known for free-flowing beer and lots of free-flowing water. Most of the year Wisconsin is a wintry playground, but as their impressive quantity of snow melts, the astounding water within its borders turn into rushing rivers and an impressive cache of bubbling cascades. Wisconsin is home to over 100 remarkable waterfalls and 2,700 miles of hiking trails, making it a preferred destination for hikers and waterfall enthusiasts. This guide covers everything readers need to dream, plan, and tackle the best waterfall hikes in Wisconsin. Complemented with color photography, custom maps, trail descriptions, turn-by-turn directions, and information on access and amenities, readers will be inspired to venture near and far to experience every waterfall in the state.

A Seasonal Guide for Growing & Cooking Foods Right at Home

Learn to garden in any space with Seed to Table, grow and cook nutrient-dense foods to take your gardening and cooking to the next level!

Gardening, cooking, and eating done right! Seed to Table focuses on how to feed your family with nutritious foods from your own outdoor, home and/or kitchen garden. Whether you live in a city or in the country, this book gives you tools on effective growing techniques, seed starting methods, and garden maintenance.

Organic gardening for every individual style! Have fun while you create your own gardening system whether it be for a container garden or a kitchen garden. Try out big and small garden ideas to stock up your fridge with delicious fruits, vegetables, and herbs to grow your self-sufficiency. Maximize your minimal or large space with impactful practices that are perfect for anyone on a sustainability and self-sufficiency journey.

If you could go back in time, who would you want to meet?
In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee--the chance to travel back in time.
Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn't so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.
Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi's internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?
~Weronika

How to grow your own food in the Heartland!  There is nothing more regionally specific than vegetable gardening—what to plant, when to plant it, and when to harvest are decisions based on climate, weather, and first frost. The Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Midwest, by regional expert Michael VanderBrug, focuses on the unique eccentricities of the Midwest gardening calendar. The month-by-month format makes it perfect for beginners and accessible to everyone—gardeners can start gardening the month they pick it up. Perfect for home gardeners in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. 

~Weronika

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s witty comedy of manners—one of the most popular novels of all time—that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues. Renowned literary critic and historian George Saintsbury in 1894 declared it the “most perfect, the most characteristic, the most eminently quintessential of its author’s works,” and Eudora Welty in the twentieth century described it as “irresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be.”

~Weronika

Look At This If You Love Great Art is a must read for anyone with a passion for exceptional art. Featuring 100 of the best artworks ever produced, inside is a collection of insightful summaries on just what it is that makes each one so vital.

Art writer Chloë Ashby talks you through the pieces that resonate with her, revealing the fascinating stories behind them and offering her considered take on why each work should be regarded as a pinnacle of artistic endeavour. With entries curated to offer a unique juxtaposition of styles, mediums and schools of art, expect a contemporary take on classic artworks, where titans of art history cross paths with under-appreciated examples from outside the traditional canon, and where rebellious visionaries blaze trails that still influence today’s cutting-edge artists.

Covering all the most important genres of art –Abstraction, Pop Art, Surrealism, Renaissance art, Impressionism and more – this engaging summary only deals with artworks that really matter and the reasons why you have to see them.

~Weronika
 

The World's Bestselling Mystery

"Ten . . ."
Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen."

"Nine . . ."
At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead.

"Eight . . ."
Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . one by one they begin to die.

"Seven . . ."
Who among them is the killer and will any of them survive?

~Weronika

“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb. . . .

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.

Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
 

They were eleven when they sent a killer to prison. They were heroes . . . but they were liars.

Naomi Shaw used to believe in magic. Twenty-two years ago, she and her two best friends, Cassidy and Olivia, spent the summer roaming the woods, imagining a world of ceremony and wonder. They called it the Goddess Game. The summer ended suddenly when Naomi was attacked. Miraculously, she survived her seventeen stab wounds and lived to identify the man who had hurt her. The girls’ testimony put away a serial killer, wanted for murdering six women. They were heroes.

And they were liars.

For decades, the friends have kept a secret worth killing for. But now Olivia wants to tell, and Naomi sets out to find out what really happened in the woods—no matter how dangerous the truth turns out to be.

No one knows Margo’s real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges.

That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo’s subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a patron’s death in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo’s mysterious past, Patricia can’t resist digging deeper—even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming.

Taut and compelling, How Can I Help You explores the dark side of human nature and the dangerous pull of artistic obsession as these “transfixing dual female narrators” (Kimberly McCreight) hurtle toward a stunning climax.

Victor Chin’s life is turned upside down at the tender age of 15. Diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, otherwise known as leprosy, he’s forced to leave the familiar confines of his father’s laundry business in the Bronx – the only home he’s known since emigrating from China with his older brother – to quarantine alongside patients from all over the country at a federal institution in Carville.

At first, Victor is scared not only of the disease, but of the confinement, and wants nothing more than to flee. Between treatments he dreams of escape and imagines his life as a fugitive. But soon he finds a new sense of freedom far from home – one without the pull of obligations to his family, or the laundry business, or his mother back in China. Here, in the company of an unforgettable cast of characters, Victor finds refuge in music and experiences first love, jealousy, betrayal, and even tragedy. But with the promise of a life-changing cure on the horizon, Victor’s time at Carville is running out, and he has some difficult choices to make.

A groundbreaking work of historical fiction, King of the Armadillos announces Wendy Chin-Tanner as an extraordinary new voice. Inspired by her father’s experience as a young patient at Carville, this tender coming-of-age novel is a captivating look at a forgotten radical community and a lyrical exploration of the power of art.

Canon Daniel Clement is Rector of Champton. He has been there for eight years, living at the Rectory alongside his widowed mother - opinionated, fearless, ever-so-slightly annoying Audrey - and his two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda.

When Daniel announces a plan to install a lavatory in church, the parish is suddenly (and unexpectedly) divided: as lines are drawn, long-buried secrets come dangerously close to destroying the apparent calm of the village.

And then Anthony Bowness - cousin to Bernard de Floures, patron of Champton - is found dead at the back of the church, stabbed in the neck with a pair of secateurs.

As the police moves in and the bodies start piling up, Daniel is the only one who can try and keep his fractured community together... and catch a killer.

A compelling debut that glows with bittersweet heart and touching emotion, deeply interrogating questions of family, redemption, and unconditional love in the sweltering summer heat of Savannah, as two people discover what it means to truly forgive.

It's been eight years since Sara Lancaster left her home in Savannah, Georgia. Eight years since her daughter, Alana, came into this world, following a terrifying sexual assault that left deep emotional wounds Sara would do anything to forget. But when Sara's father falls ill, she's forced to return home and face the ghosts of her past.

While caring for her father and running his bookstore, Sara is desperate to protect her curious, outgoing, genius daughter from the Wylers, the family of the man who assaulted her. Sara thinks she can succeed--her attacker is in prison, his identical twin brother, Jacob, left town years ago, and their mother are all unaware Alana exists. But she soon learns that Jacob has also just returned to Savannah to piece together the fragments of his once-great family. And when their two worlds collide--with the type of force Sara explores in her poetry and Jacob in his astrophysics--they are drawn together in unexpected ways.

Sonny Bates left South Carolina fifteen years ago and never looked back. Now she's a successful Hollywood location scout who travels the world, finding perfect places for movie shoots. Home is wherever she lands, and between her busy schedule and dealing with her boss's demands, she has little time to think about the past . . . until her latest gig lands her a stone's throw from everything she left behind.

Searching off the coast of Charleston for a secluded site to film a key scene, Sonny wanders onto a private barrier island and encounters its reclusive owner, known by locals as the Monster of Indigo Isle. What she finds is a man much more complex than the myth.

Once a successful New York attorney, Hudson Renfrow's grief has exiled him to his island for several years. He spends his days alone, tending his fields of indigo, then making indigo dye--and he has no interest in serving the intrusive needs of a film company or yielding to Sonny's determined curiosity. But when a hurricane makes landfall on the Carolina coast, stranding them together, an unlikely friendship forms between the two damaged souls. Soon the gruff exterior Hudson has long hidden behind crumbles--exposing the tender part of him that's desperate for forgiveness and a second chance.

Colette "Coco" Weber has relocated to her Catalina Island home, where, twenty years before, she was the sole survivor of a deadly home invasion. All Coco wants is to see her aunt Gwen, get as far away from her ex as possible, and get back to her craft--writing obituaries. Thankfully, her college best friend, Maddy, owns the local paper and has a job sure to keep Coco busy, considering the number of elderly folks who are dying on the island.

But as Coco learns more about these deaths, she quickly realizes that the circumstances surrounding them are remarkably similar...and not natural. Then Coco receives a sinister threat in the mail: her own obituary.

As Coco begins to draw connections between a serial killer's crimes and her own family tragedy, she fears that the secrets on Catalina Island might be too deep to survive. Because whoever is watching her is hell-bent on finally putting her past to rest.

Three days prior to [a living] wake, [this novel] traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, the Dominican Republic and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces--one family's journey through their history helping them better navigate all that is to come.

Over a summer in sun-drenched Greece, four incompatible women digging into the past may just find the answers to their futures.

On a remote archeological site in Greece, the mythic home of the first Olympics, four women discover an unusual artifact. It's a piece of history that definitely shouldn't exist. And for the head archaeologist in charge, a relic himself, it means something's gone horribly wrong.

Elise, Kara, Z and Patty all find themselves digging here together, but they couldn't be farther apart. Kara's a polished conservator calling off her wedding. Patty and her bowl cut are desperate for love. Millennial Z just got dumped and fired yet again. And Elise, their star excavator, is a lone wolf about to go rogue.

To figure out what they're really digging for, and to topple the man who wants to hide their history, these dirt-crusted colleagues have to become what they've avoided for years--friends. If they put their own messes aside for one summer, they might just make the discovery of a lifetime.

An enormous snow-covered mountain has appeared in the Pacific Ocean. No one knows when exactly it showed up, precisely how big it might be, or how to explain its existence. When Harold Tunmore is contacted by a shadowy organization to help investigate, he has no idea what he is getting into as he and his team set out for the mountain. 
 
The higher Harold’s team ascends, the less things make sense. Time moves differently, turning minutes into hours, and hours into days. Amid the whipping cold of higher elevation, the climbers’ limbs numb and memories of their lives before the mountain begin to fade. Paranoia quickly turns to violence among the crew, and slithering, ancient creatures pursue them in the snow. Still, as the dangers increase, the mystery of the mountain compels them to its peak, where they are certain they will find their answers. Have they stumbled upon the greatest scientific discovery known to man or the seeds of their own demise? 
 
Framed by the discovery of Harold Tunmore’s unsent letters to his family and the chilling and provocative story they tell, Ascension considers the limitations of science and faith and examines both the beautiful and the unsettling sides of human nature.

Justine Byrne can't trust the people working beside her. Arlington Hall, a former women's college in Virginia has been taken over by the United States Army where hundreds of men and women work to decode countless pieces of communication coming from the Axis powers.

Justine works among them, handling the most sensitive secrets of World War II--but she isn't there to decipher German codes--she's there to find a traitor.

Justine keeps her guard up and her ears open, confiding only in her best friend, Georgette, a fluent speaker of Choctaw who is training to work as a code talker. Justine tries to befriend each suspect, believing that the key to finding the spy lies not in cryptography but in understanding how code breakers tick. When young women begin to go missing at Arlington Hall, her deadline for unraveling the web of secrets becomes urgent and one thing remains clear: a single secret in enemy hands could end thousands of lives.

A powerful and beautifully written debut novel that intimately explores a fractured marriage and the struggles of modern parenthood, set against the backdrop of the chaotic spring of 2020.

Reeling from a painful betrayal in her marriage as the Covid pandemic takes hold in New York City, Alice packs up her family and flees to their vacation home in Maine. She hopes to find sanctuary--from the uncertainties of the exploding pandemic and her faltering marriage.

Putting distance between herself and the stresses and troubles of the city, Alice begins to feel safe and relieved. But the locals are far from friendly. Trapped and forced into quarantine by hostile neighbors, Alice sees the imprisoning structure of her life in his new predicament. Stripped down to the bare essentials of survival and tending to the needs of her two children, she can no longer ignore all the ways in which she feels limited and lost--lost in the big city, lost as a wife, lost as a mother, lost as a daughter and lost as a person.

As the world shifts around her and the balance in her marriage tilts, Alice and her husband, Pete, are left to consider if what keeps their family safe is the same thing as what keeps their family together.

After nearly drowning, eight-year-old Maeve Wilhelm falls into a strange comatose state. As years pass, it becomes clear that Maeve is not physically aging. A wide cast of characters finds themselves pulled toward Maeve, each believing that her mysterious "sleep" holds the answers to their life's most pressing questions: Kevin Marks, a museum owner obsessed with preservation; Monique Gray, a refugee and performance artist; Lionel Wilhelm, an entomologist who dreamed of being an astrophysicist; and Evangeline Wilhelm, Maeve's identical twin. As Maeve remains asleep, the characters grapple with a mysterious new technology and medical advances that promise to ease anxiety and end pain, but instead cause devastating side effects.

Weaving together speculative elements and classic fables, and exploring urgent issues from the opioid epidemic to the hazards of biotech to the obsession with self-improvement and remaining forever young, Rebekah Bergman's The Museum of Human History is a brilliant and fascinating novel about how time shapes us, asking what--if anything--we would be without it.

Porter Beck is the sheriff in the high desert of Nevada, north of Las Vegas. Born and raised there, he left to join the Army, where he worked in Intelligence, deep in the shadows in far off places. Now he's back home, doing the same lawman's job his father once did, before his father started to develop dementia. All is relatively quiet in this corner of the world, until an old, retired FBI agent is found killed. He was brutally tortured before he was killed and clues at the scene point to a mystery dating back to the early days of the nuclear age. If that wasn't strange enough, a current FBI agent shows up to help Beck's investigation.

In a case that unfolds in the past (the 1950s) and the present, it seems that a Russian spy infiltrated the nuclear testing site and now someone is looking for that long-ago, all-but forgotten person, who holds the key to what happened then and to the deadly goings on now.

A new destination, a familiar spark . . .

Two years have passed since Mira and Jake missed their flight and spent a magical 24 hours together in Paris. Sparks flew. Romance bloomed. But life got in the way. When they’re reunited for another whirlwind adventure, will they connect in the same way?

Mira’s living her best life, having started a new chapter by taking a leave from her high pressure corporate position to spend time in Italy. Surrounded by amazing scenery, fantastic food and wine, and endearing locals, her life is nearly perfect—except for the thoughts of what might've been with Jake.

While Jake’s career has never been better, the move to California has been less than perfect. Still, he’s got high hopes that seeing Mira at their friends’ destination wedding can right past wrongs. Except travel has never been his strong suit, and his reunion with Mira is punctuated by another, more recent heartbreak.

When the pair collide again on the gorgeous Amalfi coast, the spark they felt in Paris is reignited, but their quest for a happy ending will surely be as rocky as the Italian coastline.

A haunting, epic novel about betrayal, revenge, and redemption that follows three generations of Russian women, from the 1917 revolution to the last days of the Soviet Union, and the enduring love story at the center.

In a faraway kingdom, in a long-ago land...
 
...a young girl lived happily in Moscow with her family: a sister, a father, and an eccentric mother who liked to tell fairy tales and collect porcelain dolls. 
 
One summer night, everything changed, and all that remained of that family were the girl and her mother.
 
Now, a decade later and studying at Oxford University, Rosie has an English name, a loving fiancé, and a promising future, but all she wants is to understand--and bury--the past. After her mother dies, Rosie returns to Russia, armed with little more than her mother’s strange folklore--and a single key.
 
What she uncovers is a devastating family history that spans the 1917 Revolution, the siege of Leningrad, Stalin’s purges, and beyond.
 
At the heart of this saga stands a young noblewoman, Tonya, as pretty as a porcelain doll, whose actions—and love for an idealistic man—will set off a sweeping story that reverberates across the century....

On a spring afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a fifteen-year-old girl kills an elderly woman in a violent home invasion. In a city with a history of racial tensions and white flight, the girl, Paula Cooper, is Black, and her victim, Ruth Pelke, is white and a beloved Bible teacher. The press swoops in.

When Paula is sentenced to death, no one decries the impending execution of a tenth grader. But the tide begins to shift when the victim’s grandson Bill forgives the girl, against the wishes of his family, and campaigns to spare her life. This tragedy in a midwestern steel town soon reverberates across the United States and around the world—reaching as far away as the Vatican—as newspapers cover the story on their front pages and millions sign petitions in support of Paula.

As Paula waits on death row, her fate sparks a debate that not only animates legal circles but raises vital questions about the value of human life: What are we demanding when we call for justice? Is forgiveness an act of desperation or of profound bravery? As Bill and Paula’s friendship deepens, and as Bill discovers others who have chosen to forgive after terrible violence, their story asks us to consider what radical acts of empathy we might be capable of.

In Seventy Times Seven, Alex Mar weaves an unforgettable narrative of an act of violence and its aftermath. This is a story about the will to live—to survive, to grow, to change—and about what we are willing to accept as justice. Tirelessly researched and told with intimacy and precision, this book brings a haunting chapter in the history of our criminal justice system to astonishing life.

For many people with an interest in 70s décor and design it can be overwhelming to know where to look, what to buy, what colors to use and how to style their home without it looking like a 'junk shop' or a pastiche. That's where 70s House comes in: with advice, tips and tricks to creating a thoroughly 70s space (or even just a few featured items) this vibrant book is crammed full of 70s interiors and bright, retro imagery. Clear and attractive photos illustrate how this can translate to readers' own interior projects. Part living manual, part interiors guide, 70s House will bring not just the colors and kitsch to the modern day, but also the freedom, rebellious spirit, joy and pure fun epitomised by the era - because the 70s is so much more than just the decade that taste forgot.

On a cold October night in 1942, SS guards at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp violently disbanded a rehearsal of a secret Jewish choir led by conductor Rosebery d'Arguto. Many in the group did not live to see morning, and those who survived the guards' reprisal were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau just a few weeks later. Only one of its members survived the Holocaust. Yet their story survives, thanks to Aleksander Kulisiewicz. An amateur musician, he was not Jewish, but struck up an unlikely friendship with d'Arguto in Sachsenhausen. D'Arguto tasked him with a mission: to save the musical heritage of the victims of the Nazi camps.

In Sing, Memory, Makana Eyre recounts Kulisiewicz's extraordinary transformation from a Polish nationalist into a guardian of music and culture from the Nazi camps. Aided by an eidetic memory, Kulisiewicz was able to preserve for posterity not only his own songs about life at the camp, but the music and poetry of prisoners from a range of national and cultural backgrounds. They composed symphonies, organized clandestine choirs, arranged great pieces of music by illustrious composers, and gathered regularly over the course of the war to perform for one another. For many, music enabled them to resist, bear witness, and maintain their humanity in some of the most brutal conditions imaginable.

After the war, Kulisiewicz returned to Poland and assembled an archive of camp music, which he went on to perform in more than a dozen countries. He dedicated the remainder of his life to the memory of the Nazi camps. Drawing on oral history and testimony, as well as extensive archival research, Eyre tells this rich and affecting human story of musical resistance to the Nazi regime in full for the first time.

A beginner friendly guide to making stained glass art using the most popular and accessible method, copper foil.

The traditional art form of stained glass has become extremely popular again and this collection has everything you need to know to get started on this exciting craft. The effect of sunlight streaming through colourful stained glass is visually stunning and this collection brings the craft right up to date with techniques and projects for a new audience.

There are step-step-instructions and photographs for all the main techniques including creating patterns, glass cutting, polishing, using foils and soldering. Artist and stained glass expert, Noor Springael, also explains how to prepare your workspace, how to work with templates, framing and display techniques and important safety information.

Noor shares all her tips and tricks for making beautiful projects including colour palette, using glass overlays and composition. There are 17 projects ranging from wall hangings, sun catchers, decorative windows, glass floral bouquets, jewellery, candle holders, frames and mirrors. Full sized templates are included for all of the projects.

A giftable collection of essays from celebrity contributors celebrating the great work of teachers or a teacher they admire, curated by ABC journalist Deborah Roberts. Contributors include Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, Jenna Bush Hager, Robin Roberts, Brooke Shields, Octavia Spencer, Misty Copeland, among others.

Everyone can name a teacher that had an impact on their life. Educators not only open our minds to new ideas, but they also help us recognize our potential and our passions. However, they rarely get credit for the life changing work they do, and they may not have any idea how that work can impact a student all the way into adulthood.

In The Teacher Who Changed My Life, renowned ABC journalist Deborah Roberts curates a collection of essays, letters, and musings from celebrity friends and colleagues alike that share how teachers changed them and helped them get to where they are today.

Life is story in motion. Each day, you add to your story, revise it, and view it from a different angle. You erase things. Tear pages out. And sometimes, in hindsight, wish you could put them back. A day is a story. A year is a story. A life is a story.
You are a story.

Ruta Sepetys is known for creating vivid characters and harrowing plots. After five award-winning works of historical fiction and countless hours of meticulous research, she can affirm that the secret to strong writing is embedded within your life experience.

You: The Story is a powerful how-to book for aspiring writers that encourages you to look inward and excavate your own memories in order to discover the authentic voices and compelling details that are waiting to be put on the page. Masterfully weaving in humorous and heartfelt stories from her own life that illustrate an aspect of the craft of writing (such as plot, character development, or dialogue), Sepetys then inspires readers with a series of writing prompts and exercises.

Featuring both the story of an historic, unforgettable win and insight into the life of an indelible champion, Choosing to Run is a truly inspirational memoir from Boston Marathon winner and Olympian Des Linden, sharing her personal story and what motivates her to keep showing up. When Des woke up on April 16, 2018, the morning of the Boston Marathon, it was 39 degrees and raining, with high, gusty winds. The weather didn’t bother her. In fact, she thought it might be a blessing. She was far from peak form—recovering from illness and questioning her running future—and didn’t expect much of herself that day.

But as she ticked off mile after mile in the brutal conditions, passing familiar landmarks on the course she knew by heart, something shifted. Opportunity unexpectedly presented itself. Des tapped into her inner strength and remembered all of the reasons she loved to race.

Coming off Heartbreak Hill at Mile 22, Des took the lead and never relinquished it, becoming the 2018 Boston Marathon champion and the first American woman to win the race in thirty-three years. 

Her career has always been defined by tenacity and an independent spirit, stretching back to her first competitive race in San Diego, when she beat better-outfitted, more experienced kids. Des was a two-time All-American at Arizona State University, and as her collegiate years wound down, she decided she wasn’t done with the sport. Des gambled on herself and moved to Michigan to give professional running a try. As she rose through the elite ranks, she became increasingly determined to do things her way in an industry often bound by the status quo.

In her first book, readers will learn the story behind that resolve: the way Des trains, the way she thinks, her relationships with other great runners of her generation, and how much she values her family and friends. They’ll read about her deep connection to the most famous marathon in the world, her two very different Olympic experiences, and how she defined new goals and set a world record at the 50-kilometer distance.
 
Most of all, they’ll learn what makes her get up and run every day.

You can spot a Billy Collins poem immediately. The amiable voice, the light touch, the sudden turn at the end. He "puts the ‘fun’  back in profundity,” says poet Alice Fulton. In his own words, his poems tend to “begin in Kansas and end in Oz.”

Now “America’s favorite poet” (The Wall Street Journal) has found a new form for his unique poetic style: the small poem. Here Collins writes about his trademark themes of nature, animals, poetry, mortality, absurdity, and love—all in a handful of lines. Neither haiku nor limerick, the small poem pushes to an extreme poetry’s famed power to condense emotional and conceptual meaning. Inspired by the small poetry of writers as diverse as William Carlos Williams, W.S. Merwin, Kay Ryan, and Charles Simic, and written with Collins’s recognizable wit and wisdom, the poems of Musical Tables show one of our greatest poets channeling his unique voice into a new phase of his exceptional career.

3:00 AM

Only my hand
is asleep,
but it’s a start.

One of the most celebrated political leaders of a century, Nelson Mandela has been written about by many biographers and historians. But in one crucial area, his life remains largely untold: his marriage to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. During his years in prison, Nelson grew ever more in love with an idealized version of his wife, courting her in his letters as if they were young lovers frozen in time. But Winnie, every bit his political equal, found herself increasingly estranged from her jailed husband’s politics. Behind his back, she was trying to orchestrate an armed seizure of power, a path he feared would lead to an endless civil war.

Jonny Steinberg tells the tale of this unique marriage—its longings, its obsessions, its deceits—turning the course of South African history into a page-turning political biography. Winnie and Nelson is a modern epic in which trauma doesn’t affect just the couple at its center, but an entire nation. It is also a Shakespearean drama in which bonds of love and commitment mingle with timeless questions of revolution, such as whether to seek retribution or a negotiated peace. In this story told with power and tender emotional insight, Steinberg reveals how far these forever entwined leaders would go for each other, and also where they drew the line. For in the end both knew theirs was not simply a marriage, but a struggle to define anti-apartheid itself.

This book introduces the art and science of matching tea with food, to bring out a synergy of flavors. It covers all the basics of tea, from selecting to brewing and serving, and introduces all the world's major tea varieties, from High-Mountain Oolong, to Pu-erh to Darjeeling. The main focus is on how tea marries with different foods, both Asian and Western. For example, it may be hard to believe, but tea can be a better match for cheese than wine! This book looks into various cuisines as well as specific dishes, recommending the teas that will enhance the dining experience. Illustrated with over 500 photos, The Tea Sommelier will appeal not only to tea enthusiasts, but to all foodies out there.

You may not realize it, but many essential therapeutic techniques can be accessed right in your own kitchen. In Mind over Batter, licensed psychotherapist and master baker Jack Hazan guides you through 75 simple, healing recipes that can help you tap into whatever you might be going through that day. Inspired by the Syrian and Middle Eastern baked goods he grew up with, along with his take on classic American desserts, recipes are organized into themed chapters based on common life moments and needs. In need of connection? Make some Pesto Pull-Apart Bread to share with your loved ones. Looking for a way to release some anxiety? Knead away your stress with a Chocolate Babka Crunch. Simply in need of some self-care? Whip up a single-serving indulgence like a Devil's Food Mug Cake. Throughout each chapter are invaluable exercises and "quick sessions" that connect baking processes to the evidence-based therapy tools Jack Hazan uses in his practice every day.

Stunning, safe custom candles made by you. Craft a serene atmosphere with hand-poured candles and inspiring scents. Candlemaking is as rewarding as it is relaxing; you can enjoy custom scents, colors, and holistic ingredients in one-of-a-kind candles that match your style and home decor. Candle Craft is your one-stop guide to mastering the craft from start to finish. Cut through the online clutter and learn from accomplished candlemaking business owner Tiana Coats as she shows you how to create candles that match your desired aesthetic and burn safely. You'll also find tips on selling your candles and starting your own creative business. Simply and successfully bring a sense of serenity to your home with beautiful handcrafted candles in any shape, color, and scent you can imagine. Get started with more than two dozen projects basic and specialty projects! Learn to share your projects with the world with Tiana's small business tips for starting and growing your own creative venture.

In her first book, How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell wrote about the importance of disconnecting from the “attention economy” to spend time in quiet contemplation. But what if you don’t have time to spend?

In order to answer this seemingly simple question, Odell took a deep dive into the fundamental structure of our society and found that the clock we live by was built for profit, not people. This is why our lives, even in leisure, have come to seem like a series of moments to be bought, sold, and processed ever more efficiently. Odell shows us how our painful relationship to time is inextricably connected not only to persisting social inequities but to the climate crisis, existential dread, and a lethal fatalism.

This dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful book offers us different ways to experience time—inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological cues, and geological timescales—that can bring within reach a more humane, responsive way of living. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding; the stretchy quality of waiting and desire; the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory; the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy; the time it takes to heal from injuries. Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life in which time is not reducible to standardized units and instead forms the very medium of possibility.

Saving Time tugs at the seams of reality as we know it—the way we experience time itself—and rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive. If we can “save” time by imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside these things, time might also save us.

One of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? While the science behind this inquiry is fascinating, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is a reflection of our values, our fears, and most importantly, our enduring sense of hope. In The Possibility of Life, acclaimed science journalist Jaime Green traces the history of our understanding, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus to our contemporary quest for exoplanets. Along the way, she interweaves insights from science fiction writers who construct worlds that in turn inspire scientists. Incorporating expert interviews, cutting-edge astronomy research, philosophical inquiry, and pop culture touchstones ranging from A Wrinkle in Time to Star Trek to Arrival, The Possibility of Life explores our evolving conception of the cosmos to ask an even deeper question: What does it mean to be human?

For forty years, Mark Ellison has worked in the most beautiful homes you’ve never seen, specializing in rarefied, lavish, and challenging projects for the most demanding of clients. He built a staircase that the architect Santiago Calatrava called a masterpiece. He constructed the sculpted core of Sky House, which Interior Design named “Apartment of the Decade.” His building projects have included the homes of David Bowie, Robin Williams, and others whose names he cannot reveal. He is regarded by many as the best carpenter in New York.

Building: A Carpenter’s Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work tells the story of an unconventional education and how fulfillment can be found in doing something well for decades. Ellison takes us on a tour of the lofts, penthouses, and townhomes of New York’s elite, before they’re camera-ready. In a singular voice, he offers a window into learning to live meaningfully along the way. From staircases that would be deadly if built as designed and algae-eating snails boiled to escargot in a penthouse pond, to the deceptive complexity of minimalist design, Building exposes the tangled wiring, scrapped blueprints, and outlandish demands that characterize life in the high-stakes world of luxury construction.

Blending Ellison’s musings on work and creativity with immersive storytelling and original sketches, photos, and illustrations, Building is a meditation on crafting a life worth living, and a delightful philosophical inquiry beyond the facades that we all live behind.

Every family has a story. For some of us, our family of origin is a solid foundation that feeds our confidence and helps us navigate life’s challenges. For others, it’s a source of pain, hurt, and conflict that can feel like a lifelong burden. In this empowering guide, licensed therapist and bestselling relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab offers clear advice for identifying dysfunctional family patterns and choosing the best path to breaking the cycle and moving forward.
Covering topics ranging from the trauma of emotional neglect, to the legacy of addicted or absent parents, to mental health struggles in siblings and other relatives, and more, this clear and compassionate guide will help you take control of your own life—and honor the person you truly are.

This is the story of pasta. Award-winning food writer Rachel Roddy has lived and cooked in Rome for almost two decades. She has spent years browsing bucolic Italian markets, cooking with fresh and seasonal vegetables, discovering cheeses, and perfecting the art of making Italy’s favorite food: pasta. Now she has condensed everything she’s learned about pasta in a practical, highly entertaining collection of recipes that will ensure authentic Italian meals and take your pasta dishes to the next level. In this cookbook, you will learn the many ways to pair pasta shapes with sauces, how to make certain pastas from scratch and how to best serve them—from Cavatelli with Sausage, Mint, and Tomato to Fregula with Clams; and from Bucatini with Cauliflower, Saffron, and Anchovies to a spaghetti for every night of the week and a Bolognese-style lasagna. Here, too, are short essays that weave together the history, culture, and astonishing variety of pasta shapes from the tip to the toe of Italy.

Featuring the familiar favorites—pesto, ragù, and carbonara—and new twists on classics, as well as tricks and techniques for maximum flavor, An A-Z of Pasta is a glorious celebration of pasta and an excellent addition to any kitchen.

An engrossing and revealing study of why we deem certain animals "pests" and others not--from cats to rats, elephants to pigeons--and what this tells us about our own perceptions, beliefs, and actions, as well as our place in the natural world

A squirrel in the garden. A rat in the wall. A pigeon on the street. Humans have spent so much of our history drawing a hard line between human spaces and wild places. When animals pop up where we don't expect or want them, we respond with fear, rage, or simple annoyance. It's no longer an animal. It's a pest.

At the intersection of science, history, and narrative journalism, Pests is not a simple call to look closer at our urban ecosystem. It's not a natural history of the animals we hate. Instead, this book is about us. It's about what calling an animal a pest says about people, how we live, and what we want. It's a story about human nature, and how we categorize the animals in our midst, including bears and coyotes, sparrows and snakes. Pet or pest? In many cases, it's entirely a question of perspective.

Bethany Brookshire's deeply researched and entirely entertaining book will show readers what there is to venerate in vermin, and help them appreciate how these animals have clawed their way to success as we did everything we could to ensure their failure. In the process, we will learn how the pests that annoy us tell us far more about humanity than they do about the animals themselves.

Clint Smith's vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult. Above Ground wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body. Smith's lyrical, narrative poems bring the reader on a journey not only through the early years of his children's lives, but through the changing world in which they are growing up--through the changing world of which we are all a part.

Julia Cameron has been teaching the world about creativity since her seminal book, The Artist’s Way, first broke open the conversation around art.

Now, in Write for Life, she turns to one of the subjects closest to her heart: the art and practice of writing.

Over the course of six weeks, Cameron carefully guides readers step by step through the creative process. This latest guide in the Artist’s Way Series:

- Introduces a new tool and expands on powerful tried and true methods.

- Gently guides readers through many common creative issues — from procrastinating and getting started, to dealing with doubt, deadlines, and “crazymakers.”

- Will help you reach your goals, whether your project is a novel, poetry, screenplay, standup, or songwriting.

With the learned experience of a lifetime of writing, Cameron gives readers practical tools to start, pursue, and finish their writing project. Write for Life is an essential read for writers who have completed The Artist’s Way and are looking to continue their creative journey or new writers who are just putting pen to paper.

Organized as a field guide, a literary anthology filled with classic and contemporary poems and essays inspired by wildflowers--perfect for writers, artists, and botanists alike.

American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide collects poems, essays, and letters from the 1700s to the present that focus on wildflowers and their place in our culture and in the natural world. Editor Susan Barba has curated a selection of plants and texts that celebrate diversity: There are foreign-born writers writing about American plants and American writers on non-native plants. There are rural writers with deep regional knowledge and urban writers who are intimately acquainted with the nature in their neighborhoods. There are female writers, Black writers, gay writers, indigenous writers. There are botanists like William Bartram, George Washington Carver, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, and horticultural writers like Neltje Blanchan and Eleanor Perényi. There are prose pieces by Aldo Leopold, Lydia Davis, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil. And most of all, there are poems: from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams and T. S. Eliot to Allen Ginsberg and Robert Creeley, Lucille Clifton and Louise Glück, Natalie Diaz and Jericho Brown.

The book includes exquisite watercolors by Leanne Shapton throughout and is organized by species and botanical family--think of it as a field guide to the literary imagination.

A celebration of season, Flower Philosophy presents a selection of beautiful arrangements designed to free readers from the pressures of perfection and instead encourage creative freedom, intuition and original results.
 
Flowers are not perfect, and flower arranging shouldn’t be either. Anna Potter teaches us how to listen and learn from nature to create something truly original with 25 combinations of stems and foliage. Free yourself from a prescriptive, one- size-fits-all approach and let each unique bloom inspire you with this refreshingly honest and liberating florist’s guide.

Arranged by season, Anna Potter guides you through the process of creating your own wreathes, bouquets and installations, all using flowers that can be bought, found and foraged from your neighborhood.

Few punctuation marks elicit quite as much love or hate as the exclamation mark. It's bubbly and exuberant, an emotional amplifier whose flamboyantly dramatic gesture lets the reader know: here be feelings! Scott Fitzgerald famously stated exclamation marks are like laughing at your own joke; Terry Pratchett had a character say that multiple !!! are a 'sure sign of a diseased mind'. So what's the deal with ! ?

Whether you think it's over-used, or enthusiastically sprinkle your writing with it, ! is inescapable. An Admirable Point recuperates the exclamation mark from its much maligned place at the bottom of the punctuation hierarchy. It explores how ! came about in the first place some six hundred years ago, and uncovers the many ways in which ! has left its mark on art, literature, (pop) culture, and just about any sphere of human activity--from Beowulf to spam emails, ee cummings to neuroscience.

Julia Rothman's series of Anatomy books are beloved by children and adults alike. In Wildlife Anatomy, Rothman captures the excitement and distinctive attributes of wild animals around the world. The book is packed with hundreds of her charming, original illustrations, detailing the unique features of animals of the rainforest, desert, grasslands, oceans, and much more. From lions, bears, and zebras to monkeys, mongoose, bats, elephants, giraffes, hippos, and much more, Rothman's visual guide covers all the key features, right down to the anatomy of a lion's claw and a wild horse's hoof. All the illustrations are accompanied by labels, intriguing facts, and identifying details, such as: When is a Panther Not a Panther? and What Makes Aardvarks So Odd? Rothman's characteristic combination of curiosity and an artist's eye makes this wildlife treasury rich and full, and promises new discoveries every time it's opened.

Penelope Leach has helped millions of parents raise their children for more than forty years with her thoroughly researched, practical, baby-led advice, her wise, empathic, and sensible perspective, and her comforting voice.
 
This new edition has been completely redesigned for today’s parents. Leach has revised the text to reflect the latest research on child development and learning as well as societal changes and the realities of our current world.
 
Your Baby & Child is essential for every new parent. In easy to follow stages from birth through age five (newborn, settled baby, older baby, toddler, young child), Your Baby & Child addresses parents’ every concern over the physical, emotional, and psychological well-being of their baby. Areas covered: feeding; physical growth and everyday care; sleeping; excreting and toilet mastery; crying and comforting; muscle power; seeing and understanding; hearing and learning to speak; playing and learning and thinking; learning how to behave.

From last-minute inspiration for feeding an entire family to satisfying meals for just one person, easy one-pot dinners to no-chop recipes, in these pages Ruby Tandoh shares a feast of homey, globally inspired dishes. A no-nonsense collection of more than 100 accessible, affordable, achievable—and, most importantly, delicious—recipes (plus countless variations), Cook As You Are is an essential resource for every taste, every kitchen, and every body.

When Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse. But that year turned into his life’s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients. In this illuminating book we travel with O’Connell as he navigates the city, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls “a system of friends.” 

Now more than ever, we hold our photo collections dear. They are often some of our most prized possessions. Wouldn't it be great to finally have all your photos organized, safe, accessible, findable, and shareable? With Declutter Your Photo Life by your side, you have just what you need to achieve photo bliss.

With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things--no need for math, no need for map-reading, no need for memorization--are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness?

Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored, and disseminated knowledge. Examining such disciplines as education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography, and broadcasting, he looks at a whole range of knowledge diffusion--from the cuneiform writings of Babylon to the machine-made genius of artificial intelligence, by way of Gutenberg, Google, and Wikipedia to the huge Victorian assemblage of the Mundanaeum, the collection of everything ever known, currently stored in a damp basement in northern Belgium.

Studded with strange and fascinating details, Knowing What We Know is a deep dive into learning and the human mind. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?

And what will the world be like if no one in it is wise?

As a boy growing up in Oklahoma, Burkhard Bilger often heard his parents tell stories about the Germany of their youth. Winters in the Black Forest, when the snow piled up to the eaves and haunches of smoked speck hung from the rafters. Springtime along the Rhine, when the storks came home to nest on rooftops. His parents were born in 1935 and had lived through the Second World War, but those stories, vivid as they were, had strange omissions. His mother was a historian, yet she rarely talked about her father’s relationship to the Nazis, or his role in the war. Then one day a packet of letters arrived from Germany, yellowed with age, and a secret history began to unfold.

Karl Gönner was an elementary school teacher and father of four when the war began. In 1940, he was posted to a village in Alsace, in occupied France, and ordered to reeducate its children—to turn them into proper Germans. He was a loyal Nazi when he arrived, but as the war went on his allegiance wavered. According to some villagers, he risked his life shielding them from his own party’s brutalities. According to others, he ruled the village with an iron fist. After the war, Gönner was charged with giving an order that led police to beat a local farmer to death. Was he guilty or innocent? A war criminal or just an ordinary man, struggling to do right from within a monstrous regime?

Fatherland is the story of Bilger’s nearly ten-year quest to uncover the truth. It is a book of gripping suspense and moral inquiry—a tale of chance encounters and serendipitous discoveries in archives and villages across Germany and France. Long admired for his profiles in The New Yorker, Bilger brings the same open-hearted curiosity to his grandfather’s story and the questions it raises. What do we owe the past? How can we make peace with it without perpetuating its wrongs? Intimate and far-reaching, Fatherland is an extraordinary odyssey through the great upheavals of the past century.

When veteran war reporter Benjamin Hall woke up in Kyiv on the morning of March 14, 2022, he had no idea that, within hours, Russian bombs would nearly end his life. As a journalist for Fox News, Hall had worked in dangerous war zones like Syria and Afghanistan, but with three young daughters at home, life on the edge was supposed to be a thing of the past. Yet when Russia viciously attacked Ukraine in February 2022, Hall quickly volunteered to go. A few weeks later, while on assignment, Hall and his crew were blown up in a Russian strike. With Hall himself gravely injured and stuck in Kyiv, it was unclear if he would make it out alive.

This is the story of how he survived--a story that continues to this day. For the first time, Hall shares his experience in full--from his ground-level view of the war to his dramatic rescue to his arduous, and ongoing, recovery. Going inside the events that have permanently transformed him, Hall recalls his time at the front lines of our world's conflicts, exploring how his struggle to step away from war reporting led him back one perilous last time. Featuring nail-biting accounts from the many people across multiple countries who banded together to get him to safety, Hall offers a stunning look at complex teamwork and heartfelt perseverance that turned his life into a mission.

Through it all, Hall's spirit has remained undaunted, buoyed by that remarkable corps of people from around the world whose collective determination ensured his survival. Evocative, harrowing, and deeply moving, Saved is a powerful memoir of family and friends, of life and healing, and of how to respond when you are tested in ways you never thought possible.

Strangers to Ourselves poses fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Rachel Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman celebrated as a saint who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children’s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn’t know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s gripping exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel—until it no longer does. - Rachel

 

Literature & Libations 2023 Thriller/Suspense Selection

Just as self-driving cars become the trusted, safer norm, eight people find themselves in this terrifying situation, including a faded TV star, a pregnant young woman, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an illegal immigrant, a husband and wife, and a suicidal man.

From cameras hidden in their cars, their panic is broadcast to millions of people around the world. But the public will show their true colors when they are asked, "Which of these people should we save?...And who should we kill first?"

Literature & Libations 2023 Thriller/Suspense Selection

April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford.

Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends--Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily--during their first term. By the end of the second, April was dead.

Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah's world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April's death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide...including a murder.

Literature & Libations Detective Mystery Selection

It was a senselessly violent crime: on a cold night in a remote Swedish farmhouse an elderly farmer is bludgeoned to death, and his wife is left to die with a noose around her neck. And as if this didn’t present enough problems for the Ystad police Inspector Kurt Wallander, the dying woman’s last word is foreign, leaving the police the one tangible clue they have–and in the process, the match that could inflame Sweden’s already smoldering anti-immigrant sentiments.

Unlike the situation with his ex-wife, his estranged daughter, or the beautiful but married young prosecuter who has peaked his interest, in this case, Wallander finds a problem he can handle. He quickly becomes obsessed with solving the crime before the already tense situation explodes, but soon comes to realize that it will require all his reserves of energy and dedication to solve.

Literature & Libations 2023 Detective Mystery Selection

Forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway is in her late thirties. She lives happily alone with her cats in a remote area near Norfolk, land that was sacred to its Iron Age inhabitants--not quite earth, not quite sea. But her routine is harshly upended when a child's bones are found on a desolate beach. Detective Chief Inspector Nelson calls Ruth for help, believing the bones to be the remains of Lucy Downey, a little girl who went missing a decade ago and whose abductor taunts him with bizarre letters referencing ritual sacrifice, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Then a second girl goes missing and Nelson receives a new letter--exactly like the ones about Lucy.

Is it the same killer? Or a copycat murderer, linked in some way to the site near Ruth's remote home?

Literature & Libations 2023 Autobiographical Comic & Cookbook Selection

Lucy Knisley loves food. The daughter of a chef and a gourmet, this talented young cartoonist comes by her obsession honestly. In her forthright, thoughtful, and funny memoir, Lucy traces key episodes in her life thus far, framed by what she was eating at the time and lessons learned about food, cooking, and life. Each chapter is bookended with an illustrated recipe—many of them treasured family dishes, and a few of them Lucy's original inventions.
 

Literature & Libations 2023 Autobiographical Comic Selection

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and gaelic folk songs. After university, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta's oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Katie will be far more than she anticipates.

Arriving in Fort McMurray, Katie finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world's largest oil companies. As one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed.

Literature & Libations 2023 Fantasy Selection

If you could go back in time, who would you want to meet?

In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee--the chance to travel back in time.

Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn't so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.

Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi's internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?

Literature & Libations 2023 Fantasy Selection

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents' attentions, bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in the cake. But her gift is no blessing, for her mother - her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother - tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

Literature & Libations 2023 General Fiction Selection

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.

Literature & Libations 2023 General Fiction Selection

In these pages, Laila Lalami brings us the invented memoirs Mustafa al-Zamori, called Estebanico. The slave of a Spanish conquistador, Estebanico sails for the Americas with his master, Dorantes, as part of a danger-laden expedition to Florida. Within a year, Estebanico is one of only four crew members to survive.

As he journeys across America with his Spanish companions, the Old World roles of slave and master fall away, and Estebanico remakes himself as an equal, a healer, and a remarkable storyteller. His tale illuminates the ways in which our narratives can transmigrate into history—and how storytelling can offer a chance at redemption and survival.

Literature & Libations 2023 Romance Selection

Talia Hibbert, one of contemporary romance’s brightest new stars, delivers a witty, hilarious romantic comedy about a woman who’s tired of being “boring” and recruits her mysterious, sexy neighbor to help her get a life—perfect for fans of Sally Thorne, Jasmine Guillory, and Helen Hoang.

Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s determined to spice up her life and finally fit in with her glamorous family. Her “Get a Life” list has six directives, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her family’s mansion. The next items?

• Enjoy a drunken night out.
• Ride a motorcycle.
• Go camping.
• Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.
• Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.
• And... do something bad.

But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.

Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.

But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior…

Literature & Libations 2023 Romance Selection

When girl meets Duke, their marriage breaks all the rules…

Since his return from war, the Duke of Ashbury’s to-do list has been short and anything but sweet: brooding, glowering, menacing London ne’er-do-wells by night. Now there’s a new item on the list. He needs an heir—which means he needs a wife. When Emma Gladstone, a vicar’s daughter turned seamstress, appears in his library wearing a wedding gown, he decides on the spot that she’ll do.

His terms are simple:

- They will be husband and wife by night only.

- No lights, no kissing. 

- No questions about his battle scars.

- Last, and most importantly… Once she’s pregnant with his heir, they need never share a bed again.

But Emma is no pushover. She has a few rules of her own:

- They will have dinner together every evening.

- With conversation.

- And unlimited teasing.

- Last, and most importantly… Once she’s seen the man beneath the scars, he can’t stop her from falling in love…

Literature & Libations 2023 Romance Selection

Teddy Phillips never thought she would still be spending every day surrounded by toys at almost thirty years old. But working at a vintage toy store is pretty much all she has going on in her life after being unceremoniously dumped by her longtime boyfriend. The one joy that she has kept is her not-so-guilty pleasure: Everett’s Place, a local children’s show hosted by Everett St. James, a man whom Teddy finds very soothing . . . and, okay, cute.

Teddy finds the courage to write to him, feeling slightly like one of the children who write to him on his show. He always gives sound advice and seems like he has everything figured out—and he pretty much does: Everett has a great support system, wonderful friends, and his dream job. But there is still that persistent feeling in the back of his mind that something is missing.

When a woman named Theodora starts writing to Everett, he is drawn to her honesty and vulnerability. They continue writing to each other, all the while living their lives without meeting. When their worlds collide, however, they must both let go of their fears and figure out what they truly want—and if the future they want includes each other.

Literature & Libations 2023 Historical Fiction Selection

1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything--beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses--but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park's few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter--the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger--and their true enemy--closer...

Literature & Libations 2023 Historical Fiction Selection
 
When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.
 
Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers and “should further cement Whitehead as one of his generation's best" (Entertainment Weekly).

2022 Lincolnwood Reads

"A bold and colorful exploration of all the ways that people navigate through the spaces around them and a celebration of the relationships we build along the way. We Move Together follows a mixed-ability group of kids as they creatively negotiate everyday barriers and find joy and connection in disability culture and community. The authors disabled, parents, and activists-have struggled to find books to read to their own kids that positively feature disabled characters in an engaging and non-didactic manner. Not surprising given that, in a recent study of 258 main characters in children's picture books, only one was visibly disabled. That's why they created this perfect tool for families, schools, and libraries to facilitate conversations about disability, accessibility, social justice, and community building. This fun and inspiring book includes a kid-friendly glossary (for ages 3-10)"--

2023 Lincolnwood Reads

The Cherokee community is grateful for blessings and challenges that each season brings. This is modern Native American life as told by an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

The word otsaliheliga (oh-jah-LEE-hay-lee-gah) is used by members of the Cherokee Nation to express gratitude. Beginning in the fall with the new year and ending in summer, follow a full Cherokee year of celebrations and experiences. Written by a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, this look at one group of Native Americans is appended with a glossary and the complete Cherokee syllabary, originally created by Sequoyah.
 

2021 Lincolnwood Reads

Something strange happened on an unremarkable day just before the season changed.

Everybody who was outside . . .

. . . went inside.

Outside, it was quieter, wilder, and different. Inside, we laughed, we cried, and we grew.

We remembered to protect the ones we love and love the ones who protect us.

While the world changed outside, we became stronger on the inside and believed that someday soon spring would come again.

 

2022 Lincolnwood Reads
One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act,

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

2021 Lincolnwood Reads

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

Once the golden boy of the English literary scene, now a clinically depressed writer of pulp crime fiction, Ash Winters has given up on hope, happiness, and--most of all--himself. He lives his life between the cycles of his illness, haunted by the ghosts of other people's expectations.

Then a chance encounter throws him into the path of Essex-born Darian Taylor. Flashy and loud, radiant and full of life, Darian couldn't be more different...and yet he makes Ash laugh, reminding him of what it's like to step beyond the boundaries of his anxiety. But Ash has been living in his own shadow for so long that he can no longer see a way out. Can a man who doesn't trust himself ever trust in happiness? And how can someone who doesn't believe in happiness ever fight for his own.

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Exit West, a story of love, loss, and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change.

In Mohsin Hamid’s “lyrical and urgent” prose (O Magazine), The Last White Man powerfully uplifts our capacity for empathy and the transcendence over bigotry, fear, and anger it can achieve.
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them. Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders’s father and Oona’s mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance at a kind of rebirth--an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.
 

As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

When a remote camera on a large, rugged expanse held by the Land Trust for Wildlife Conservation picks up a blurry image of what could be a mountain caribou, they contact Alex Carter to investigate. After all, mountain caribou went extinct in the contiguous U.S. years ago, and if one has wandered down from Canada, it's monumental.

But when Alex arrives on scene in the Selkirk mountains of northeastern Washington state, she quickly learns that her only challenge isn't finding an elusive caribou on a massive piece of land. The nearby townspeople are agitated; loggers and activists clash over a swath of old growth forest marked for clearcutting. The murdered body of a forest ranger is found strung up in the town's park, and Alex learns of a backcountry hiker who went missing in the same area the year before.

As she ventures into the forest in search of the endangered animal, she quickly finds herself in a fight for her life, caught between factions warring for the future of the forest and a murderer stalking the dense groves of ancient trees.

Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka.

A page-turning mystery featuring hard-boiled Chicago detective Harriet Foster, who's on the hunt for a serial killer with a deadly affinity for redheads.

When a young red-haired woman is found brutally murdered in downtown Chicago, one detail stands out: the red lipstick encircling her wrists and ankles.

Detective Harriet Foster is on the case, even though she's still grieving the sudden death of her partner. As a Black woman in a male-dominated department, Foster anticipates a rocky road ahead acclimating to a new team--and building trust with her new partner isn't coming easily.

After another victim turns up with the same lipstick markings, Foster suspects she's looking for a serial killer. Through a tip from a psychiatrist, Foster learns about Bodie Morgan: a troubled man with a twisted past and a penchant for pretty young redheads with the bluest eyes. As Foster wades into Morgan's sinister history, the killer continues their gruesome assault on Chicago's streets.

In her desperate race to catch the murderer before they strike again, Foster will have to confront the darkest of secrets--including her own.

The supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real. . . Such tales of the dark and the unknown have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while inventing imaginative new ways to unsettle us. Chosen from a wide variety of venues, these stories are as eclectic and varied as shadows.

These 23 tales of terror are sure to delight as well as disturb!

On a January morning in 1938, Samir Vij first locks eyes with Firdaus Khan through the rows of perfume bottles in his family’s ittar shop in Lahore. Over the years that follow, the perfumer’s apprentice and calligrapher’s apprentice fall in love with their ancient crafts and with each other, dreaming of the life they will one day share. But as the struggle for Indian independence gathers force, their beloved city is ravaged by Partition. Suddenly, they find themselves on opposite sides: Samir, a Hindu, becomes Indian and Firdaus, a Muslim, becomes Pakistani, their love now forbidden. Severed from one another, Samir and Firdaus make a series of fateful decisions that will change the course of their lives forever. As their paths spiral away from each other, they must each decide how much of the past they are willing to let go, and what it will cost them.

A magnificent epic of travelers, of discovery, of time, of science, of human connection, and of the impermanent nature of the universe and life itself--a bold and brilliant saga that unfolds through the adventures and experiences of four intriguing characters.

Shai is a young woman in modern India. Lost and drifting, she travels to her country's Northeast and rediscovers, through her encounters with indigenous communities, ways of being that realign and renew her.

Evelyn is a student of science in Edwardian England. Inspired by Goethe's botanical writings, she leaves Cambridge on a quest to wander the sacred forests of the Lower Himalayas.

Linnaeus, a botanist and taxonomist who famously declared "God creates; Linnaeus organizes," sets off on an expedition to an unfamiliar world, the far reaches of Lapland in 1732.

Goethe is a philosopher, writer, and one of the greatest minds of his age. While traveling through Italy in the 1780s, he formulates his ideas for "The Metamorphosis of Plants," a little-known, revelatory text that challenges humankind's propensity to reduce plants--and the world--into immutable parts.

Drawn richly from scientific and botanical ideas, Everything the Light Touches is a swirl of ever-expanding themes: the contrasts between modern India and its colonial past, urban and rural life, capitalism and centuries-old traditions of generosity and gratitude, script and "song and stone." Pulsating at its center is the dichotomy between different ways of seeing, those that fix and categorize and those that free and unify. Pariat questions the imposition of fixity--of our obsession to place permanence on plants, people, stories, knowledge, land--where there is only movement, fluidity, and constant transformation. "To be still," says a character in the book, "is to be without life."

Everything the Light Touches brings together, with startling and playful novelty, people and places that seem, at first, removed from each other in time and place. Yet as it artfully reveals, all is resonance; all is connection.

Soviet Union, 1973: There is perhaps no greater honor for a young girl than to be chosen for the famed USSR gymnastics program. When eight-year-old Anya is selected, her family is thrilled. What is left of her family, that is. Years ago, her mother disappeared without a trace, leaving Anya’s father devastated and their lives dark and quiet in the bitter cold of Siberia. Anya’s only confidant is her neighbor, an older woman who survived unspeakable horrors during her ten years imprisoned in a Gulag camp—and who, unbeknownst to Anya, was also her mother’s confidant and might hold the key to her disappearance.

As Anya rises through the ranks of competitive gymnastics, and as other girls fall from grace, she soon comes to realize that there is very little margin of error for anyone and so much to lose.

“I handle the bodies.”

Whether it's working at his cousin's funeral home or tossing around the local riffraff at his favorite bar, Nathan Waymaker is a man who knows how to handle the bodies. A former marine and sheriff's deputy, Nathan has built a reputation in his small Southern town as a man who can help when all other avenues have been exhausted. When a beloved local minister is found dead, his parishioners ask Nathan to make sure the death isn’t swept under the rug.

What starts out as an easy payday soon descends into a maze of mayhem filled with wannabe gangsters, vicious crime lords, porn stars, crooked police officers, and a particularly treacherous preacher and his mysterious wife. Nathan must use all his varied skills and some of his wit to navigate the murky waters of small town corruption even as dark secrets of his own threaten to come to the surface.

Get in—we’re going storm-chasing!

Imagine a very cool weather nerd has just pulled up to you and yelled this out the window of his custom-built armored storm-chasing truck. The wind is whipping around, he’s munching on Wawa, it’s all very chaotic—yet as you look into his grinning face, you feel the greatest surge of adrenaline you have ever felt in your life. Hallelujah: your cavalry is here!

Welcome to the brilliance of Looking Up, the lively new book from rising meterology star Matthew Cappucci. He’s a meteorologist for The Washington Post, and you might think of him as Doogie Howser meets Bill Paxton from Twister, with a dash of Leonardo DiCaprio from Catch Me If You Can. A self-proclaimed weather nerd, at the age of fourteen he talked his way into delivering a presentation on waterspouts at the American Meteorological Society's annual broadcast conference by fudging his age on the application and created his own major on weather science while an undergrad at Harvard.

Combining reportage and accessible science with personal storytelling and infectious enthusiasm, Looking Up is a riveting ride through the state of our weather and a touching story about parents and mentors helping a budding scientist achieve his improbable dreams. Throughout, readers get a tutorial on the basics of weather science and the impact of the climate.

As our country’s leaders sound the alarm on climate change, few people have as close a view to how serious the situation actually is than those whose job is to follow the weather, which is the daily dose of climate we interact with and experience every day.

The weather affects every aspect of our lives (even our art) as well as our future. The way we think about it requires a whole-life overhaul. Rain or shine, tropical storm or twister, Cappucci is here to help us begin the process.

So get in his storm-chasing truck already, will ya?

This essential beginner's guide provides a complete introduction to growing and combining succulents in ways that are healthy for the plants and pleasing to the eye. It also gives an overview of the most popular succulent and cacti varieties.

This book includes:

• Advice on preparing and potting your succulents.
• Tips on how to propagate new plants from your existing ones.
• Ways to create attractive combinations that can be enjoyed year-round.
• Colorful field guides to over 200 different succulent and cacti varieties.
• And much more!

Throughout the book, color photographs brim with new ideas that will inspire you to tell a unique story through your greenery. With this book as your guide, you're certain to create a beautiful personalized garden that will be sure to impress your friends and bring you joy.

There is nothing more comforting and delicious than toast. And when you top it with a few cleverly paired ingredients, it becomes a full meal—not to mention pure bliss. In Bliss on Toast, Great British Baking Show judge Prue Leith toasts sourdoughs, focaccias, baguettes, flatbreads and more, then pairs them with everything from seasonal vegetables to meat and fish. The collection spans healthy, hearty, salty, and sometimes sweet. Ideal for a busy home cook who loves a full and balanced plate, the recipes are incredibly versatile and perfect for any time of the day: tomatoes, shallots, and oregano on black olive toast; grilled chicken tikka with yogurt on naan; smoked salmon, wasabi, and avocado on multigrain bread; and bananas and ice cream with brandy syrup on panettone. Bliss on Toast is as much a toolkit for quick fridge-raids as it is inspiration for seasonal delights. With 82 years’ experience of good eating and 60 years of cooking, writing about and judging food, there is no one who better knows what makes a meal bliss than Prue Leith.

During the Tokyo Olympics, British diver Tom Daley was often spotted calming his nerves with knitting needles in hand. His new favorite hobby, which he picked up during the Covid lockdown, combined with his gold medal performance, won him a new legion of fans. In fact, his Olympic inspired cardigan, made just before he left for Japan, grabbed nearly as many headlines as his win.

In his native England, Daley is beloved as a four-time Olympic medalist, well-known television personality, and activist in the LGBTQ space. In addition, Daley and his husband, the Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, are the parents of a toddler son, and many of Tom's projects are adorable toys or clothes for Robbie.

Now Tom has created thirty original projects for this book, sharing his joy of knitting and crocheting as a calming and creative outlet alongside his charming, witty personality. Full color and totally bespoke for this book, these projects run the gamut from toys to clothing for adults and kids to home décor. Full of color, full of joy, and Made with Love(tm) (the name of Tom's online store, selling projects, patterns and branded merchandise) this is yarn crafts made very cool.

In the first-ever cookbook from TikTok star and social media sensation Nadia Caterina Munno—a.k.a. The Pasta Queen—is opening the recipe box from her online trattoria to share the dishes that have made her pasta royalty. In this delectable antipasto platter of over 100 recipes, cooking techniques, and the tales behind Italy’s most famous dishes (some true, some not-so-true), Nadia guides you through the process of creating the perfect pasta, from a bowl of naked noodles to a dish large and complex enough to draw tears from the gods. Whether it’s her viral Pasta Al Limone, a classic Carbonara, or a dish that’s entirely Nadia’s—like her famous Assassin’s Spaghetti—The Pasta Queen’s recipes will enchant even the newest of pasta chefs.

From the brightly colored pebbles of Lake McDonald in Montana’s Glacier National Park to the regal granite cliffs of El Capitan and Half Dome in California’s Yosemite Valley, the US National Parks contain some of the most recognizable and iconic natural landmarks in the world. Capture the majesty each national park offers with original beanie patterns created by knitting designer and outdoor enthusiast Nancy Bates.

Bob Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers his extraordinary insight into the nature of popular music. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan’s unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition. Running throughout the book are nearly 150 carefully curated photos as well as a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work’s transcendence.