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Number One Is Walking

Steve Martin

Steve Martin has never written about his career in the movies before. In Number One Is Walking, he shares anecdotes from the sets of his beloved films—Father of the Bride, Roxanne, The Jerk, Three Amigos, and many more—bringing readers directly into his world. He shares charming tales of antics, moments of inspiration, and exploits with the likes of Paul McCartney, Diane Keaton, Robin Williams, and Chevy Chase. Martin details his forty years in the movie biz, as well as his stand-up comedy, banjo playing, writing, and cartooning, all with his unparalleled wit.

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You Are Your Own Fairy Tale

Amanda Lovelace

Goodreads Choice Award-winning poet and bestselling author amanda lovelace presents the you are your own fairy tale series bound collection-- a beautiful and empowering trilogy that proves the only thing needed for a happily ever after is yourself.

This elegantly bound edition of amanda lovelace's you are your own fairy tale trilogy includes all of the poems from break your glass slippers, shine your icy crown, & unlock your storybook heart that you fell in love with, as well as a new & never-before-seen introduction written by the author. you are your ownfairy tale is a must have for every lover of beautiful things & magical words.

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Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light

Joy Harjo

A magnificent selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s fifty years as a poet.

In this gemlike volume, Harjo selects her best poems from across fifty years, beginning with her early discoveries of her own voice and ending with moving reflections on our contemporary moment. Generous notes on each poem offer insight into Harjo’s inimitable poetics as she takes inspiration from Navajo horse songs and jazz, reckons with home and loss, and listens to the natural messengers of the earth. 

 

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Empire of Ice and Stone

Buddy Levy


Just six weeks after the Karluk departed for the Arctic Ocean, giant ice floes closed in around her. As the ship became icebound, Stefansson disembarked with five companions and struck out on what he claimed was a 10-day caribou hunting trip. Most on board would never see him again.

Twenty-two men and an Inuit woman with two small daughters now stood on a mile-square ice floe, their ship and their original leader gone. Under Bartlett’s leadership they built make-shift shelters, surviving the freezing darkness of Polar night. Captain Bartlett now made a difficult and courageous decision. He would take one of the young Inuit hunters and attempt a 1000-mile journey to save the shipwrecked survivors. It was their only hope.

Set against the backdrop of the Titanic disaster and World War I, filled with heroism, tragedy, and scientific discovery, Buddy Levy's Empire of Ice and Stone tells the story of two men and two distinctively different brands of leadership: one selfless, one self-serving, and how they would forever be bound by one of the most audacious and disastrous expeditions in polar history, considered the last great voyage of The Heroic Age of Discovery.

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The Last Hill

Bob Drury


They were known as “Rudder’s Rangers,” the most elite and experienced attack unit in the United States Army. In December 1944, Lt. Col. James Rudder's 2nd Battalion would form the spearhead into Germany, taking the war into Hitler’s homeland at last. In the process, Rudder was given two objectives: Take Hill 400 . . . and hold the hill by any means possible. To the last man, if necessary. The battle-hardened battalion had no idea that several Wehrmacht regiments, who greatly outnumbered the Rangers, had been given the exact same orders. The clash of the two determined forces was one of the bloodiest and most costly encounters of World War II.

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My Travels with Mrs. Kennedy

Clint Hill

While preparing to sell his home in Alexandria, Virginia, retired Secret Service agent Clint Hill uncovers an old steamer trunk in the garage, triggering a floodgate of memories. As he and Lisa McCubbin, his coauthor on three previous books, pry it open for the first time in fifty years, they find forgotten photos, handwritten notes, personal gifts, and treasured mementos from the trips on which Hill accompanied First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy as her Secret Service agent—trips that took them from Paris to London, through India, Pakistan, Greece, Morocco, Mexico, South America, and “three glorious weeks on the Amalfi Coast.” During these journeys, Jacqueline Kennedy became one of her husband’s—and America’s—greatest assets; in Hill’s words and the opinion of many others, “one of the best ambassadors the United States has ever had.”

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Barkley

Timothy Bella

He's one of the most interesting American athletes in the past fifty years. Passionate, candid, iconoclastic, and gifted both on and off the court, Charles Barkley has made a lasting impact on not only the world of basketball but pop culture at large.

Yet few people know the real Charles. Raised by his mother and grandmother in Leeds, Alabama, he struggled in his early years to fit in until he found a sense of community and purpose in basketball. In the NBA he went toe-to-toe with the biggest legends in the game, from Magic to Michael to Hakeem to Shaq. But in the years since, he has become a bold agitator for social change, unafraid to grapple, often brashly, with even the thorniest of cultural issues facing our nation today.

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The Storyteller

David Grohl

So, I've written a book.

 

 

Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities ("It's a piece of cake! Just do 4 hours of interviews, find someone else to write it, put your face on the cover, and voila!") I have decided to write these stories just as I have always done, in my own hand. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I've recorded and can't wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child.

This certainly doesn't mean that I'm quitting my day job, but it does give me a place to shed a little light on what it's like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, walking through life while living out the crazy dreams I had as young musician. From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters...the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement.

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My First Popsicle

Zosia Mamet

What is your most poignant memory surrounding food? 
Of all the essentials for survival: oxygen, water, sleep, and food, only food is a vast treasure trove of memory and of sensory experience. It is a portal to culture, to times past, to disgust, to comfort, to love: no matter one's feelings about a particular dish, they are hardly ever neutral.  
The author, daughter of playwright David Mamet, has curated some of the most prominent voices in art and culture to tackle the topic of food in its elegance, its profundity, and its incidental charm. With contributions from Stephanie Danler on vinaigrette and starting over, Anita Lo on the cultural responsibility of dumplings, Tony Hale on his obsession with desserts at chain restaurants, Patti LuPone on childhood memories of seeking out shellfish,  Andrew Rannells on his nostalgia for Jell-O Cake, Sloane Crosley on the pesto that got her through the pandemic, Jia Tolentino on the chicken dish she makes to escape reality, and more, MY FIRST POPSICLE is as much an ode to food and emotion as it is to life. After all, the two are inseparable.

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The Trials of Harry S. Truman

Jeffrey Frank

The nearly eight years of Harry Truman’s presidency—among the most turbulent in American history—were marked by victory in the wars against Germany and Japan; the first use of an atomic weapon; the beginning of the Cold War; creation of the NATO alliance; the founding of the United Nations; the Marshall Plan to rebuild the wreckage of postwar Europe; the Red Scare; and the fateful decision to commit troops to fight in Korea.

Historians have tended to portray Truman as stolid and decisive, with a homespun manner, but the man who emerges in The Trials of Harry S. Truman is complex and surprising. He believed that the point of public service was to improve the lives of one’s fellow citizens, and was disturbed by the brutal treatment of African Americans. Yet while he supported stronger civil rights laws, he never quite relinquished the deep-rooted outlook of someone with Confederate ancestry reared in rural Missouri. He was often carried along by the rush of events and guided by men who succeeded in refining his fixed and facile view of the postwar world. And while he prided himself on his Midwestern rationality, he could act out of emotion, as when, in the aftermath of World War II, moved by the plight of refugees, he pushed to recognize the new state of Israel.

The Truman who emerges in these pages is a man with generous impulses, loyal to friends and family, and blessed with keen political instincts, but insecure, quick to anger, and prone to hasty decisions. Archival discoveries, and research that led from Missouri to Washington, Berlin and Korea, have contributed to an indelible, and deeply human, portrait of an ordinary man suddenly forced to shoulder extraordinary responsibilities, who never lost a schoolboy’s romantic love for his country, and its Constitution.

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Greatest Escape

Douglas Miller

The Greatest Escape: A True American Civil War Adventure tells the story of the largest prison breakout in U.S. history. It took place during the Civil War, when more than 1,200 Yankee officers were jammed into Libby, a special prison considered escape-proof, in the Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia. A small group of men, obsessed with escape, mapped out an elaborate plan and one cold and clear night, 109 men dug their way to freedom. Freezing, starving, clad in rags, they still had to travel 50 miles to Yankee lines and safety. They were pursued by all the white people in the area, but every Black person they encountered was their friend. In every instance, slaves risked their lives to help these Yankees, and their journey was aided by a female-led Union spy network. Since all the escapees were officers, they all could read and write well. Over 50 of them would publish riveting accounts of their adventures. This is the first book to weave together these contemporary accounts into a true-to-life narrative. Much like a Ken Burns documentary, this book uses the actual words the prisoners recorded more than 150 years ago, as found in their many diaries and journals.

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Prisoners of the Castle

Ben Macintyre

In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.

But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—like the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.

Prisoners of the Castle traces the war’s arc from within Colditz’s stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler’s war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.

 

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More Chicago Haunts

Ursula Bielski

Chicago. A town with a past. A people haunted by its history in more ways than one. A "windy city" with tales to tell... Critics called Ursula Bielski's Chicago Haunts: Ghostlore of the Windy City a "must-read," "a masterpiece of the genre," and "an absolutely first-rate book," and readers agreed. Now she s back with more history, more legends, and more hauntings, including the personal scary stories of Chicago Haunts readers. More Chicago Haunts brings you the Ovaltine factory haunts, the Monster of 63rd Street's castle of terror, phantom blueberry muffins, the ghosts of Wrigley Field, Al Capone's yacht, and 45 other glimpses into the haunted myths and memories of Chicagoland.

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Clark and Division

Naomi Hirahara

A New York Times Best Mystery Novel of 2021
Chicago, 1944: Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life in California the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled two thousand miles away in Chicago, where Aki’s older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier and moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family’s reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Aki, who worshipped her sister, is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose’s death a suicide. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth. Inspired by historical events, Clark and Division infuses an atmospheric and heartbreakingly real crime with rich period details and delicately wrought personal stories Naomi Hirahara has gleaned from thirty years of research and archival work in Japanese American history.                                          Barbara
 

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Chevy in the Hole

Kelsey Ronan

When we meet August "Gus" Molloy on the opening pages of Chevy in the Hole, he's just overdosed at the Detroit restaurant where he works. Shortly after, he packs it in and returns home to his family for another shot at sobriety. There, he meets and falls quickly in love with Monae Livingston, an urban farmer trying to coax a tenuous rebirth from the damaged land.

As Gus and Monae begin dreaming up an oasis together in Flint, the city's water supply is being quietly poisoned. Woven throughout their story are the stories of Gus's and Monae's families-Gus's white and Monae's Black - members of which have had their own triumphs and devastating setbacks trying to survive and thrive in their troubled city. 

A novel about the things that change over time and the things that don't, Chevy in the Hole is ultimately a love letter to Flint and the resilience of its people. Throughout, the city reverberates through these families and friendships, which remind us again and again what people need from one another and from the city they call home.

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The Wrong End of the Telescope

Rabih Alameddine

WINNER OF THE 2022 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION

 

By National Book Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine, comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman's journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island.

Mina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor, arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently summoned for help by her friend who runs an NGO there. Alienated from her family except for her beloved brother, Mina has avoided being so close to her homeland for decades. But with a week off work and apart from her wife of thirty years, Mina hopes to accomplish something meaningful, among the abundance of Western volunteers who pose for selfies with beached dinghies and the camp's children. Soon, a boat crosses bringing Sumaiya, a fiercely resolute Syrian matriarch with terminal liver cancer. Determined to protect her children and husband at all costs, Sumaiya refuses to alert her family to her diagnosis. Bonded together by Sumaiya's secret, a deep connection sparks between the two women, and as Mina prepares a course of treatment with the limited resources on hand, she confronts the circumstances of the migrants' displacement, as well as her own constraints in helping them.

 

Not since the inimitable Aaliya of An Unnecessary Woman has Rabih Alameddine conjured such a winsome heroine to lead us to one of the most wrenching conflicts of our time. Cunningly weaving in stories of other refugees into Mina's singular own, The Wrong End of the Telescope is a bedazzling tapestry of both tragic and amusing portraits of indomitable spirits facing a humanitarian crisis.

 

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Our Missing Hearts

Celeste Ng

From the author of Little Fires Everywhere, this inspiring novel tells the story about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear. In our not too distant future, a young boy is on a quest to find his mother who has disappeared after being labeled an enemy of the state. Mirroring current and past world evens, Ng bring the reader a life-affirming drama about the power of art and love to resist this totalitarian society. There's even an underground network of librarians that help the boy on his journey. This is story-telling at its best!                                                                                                      Barbara, Adult Services Librarian
 
 

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Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

For generations, readers around the world have come of age with Louisa May Alcott's March girls: hardworking eldest sister Meg, headstrong, impulsive Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. With their father away at war, and their loving mother Marmee working to support the family, the four sisters have to rely on one another for support as they endure the hardships of wartime and poverty. We witness the sisters growing up and figuring out what role each wants to play in the world, and, along the way, join them on countless unforgettable adventures.

-Colleen

 

 

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A Darker Shade of Magic

V. E. Schwab

Kell is one of the last Antarimagicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black.

Kell was raised in ArnesRed Londonand officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.

-Colleen

 

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Red Rising

Pierce Brown

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power.  He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.

-Colleen

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Peril at End House

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is the Queen of Mystery and the best-selling novelist of all time. If you haven't read one of her books, then you are greatly encouraged to give one a try. 

Hercule Poirot's relaxing holiday takes an unexpected turn when he meets young and beautiful Nick Buckley. Though Nick tries to shrug off the bullet that barely misses her as an accident, just one more event in her recent chain of bad luck, Poirot is convinced she needs his protection. After a fatal attack, apparently aimed at Nick but gone awry, Poirot spirits her away to a nursing home for her protection. Yet even this doesn't prevent another attempt on her life, and Poirot is driven to staging a seance with Nick's friends and relatives to uncover the murderer.

-Colleen

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Ready Player One

Ernest Cline

In 2045, reality is ugly. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a virtual world most everyone spends their time.

When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself. 

Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win. You don't have to be obsessed with the 1980s to have a thriller of a time reading this fun and fast-paced sci-fi classic.

-Brian

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Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir

Ryland Grace doesn’t remember anything because he was heavily drugged by a friend who had been deceiving him for a long time. He wakes up on a space ship in trouble.

Project Hail Mary smartly doesn't dwell on this deception, but uses it to give Grace the beginning of his character arc. He's a failed loner scientist morphed into the cool public school science teacher who happens to be at the right place (or wrong place) to help make some initial discoveries related to unexpected solar activity.

From there he's launched on a spectacular interstellar journey full of humor, hope, and optimism, and a crazy alien sidekick in his attempt to survive and save Earth.

-Brian

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The Martian

Andy Weir

This is Apollo 13 and Castaways amped up higher than ever. Author Weir is brutal to main character astronaut Mark Watney who is abandoned on Mars after a mishap. After Watney has fixed one thing, something else bad happens. There's fun hard science and humor galore. A joyful exploration of resourcefulness and an amazingly quick read.

-Brian

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Dark Matter

Blake Crouch

Jason Dessen is a physicist who declines to pursue cutting edge research to instead make a family with his wife Daniela. He, Daniela, and their son George have a nice life, but in Chicago they are constantly confronted with others who have more than them. And he keeps up his knowledge of physics as a professor.

Crouch changes one thing about our world - choices in our lives create break points through which alternate versions live differently. Jason and his friend Ryan invent a way to access those alternate realities. This results in a mind bending awesome thriller that's sci-fi and human at the same time.

-Brian

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.
 
Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human—a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we’ll go to claim the lives we dream of.

-Publisher

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The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

Stacy Schiff

A revelatory biography of arguably the most essential Founding Father--the one who stood behind the change in thinking that produced the American Revolution. "A glorious book that is as entertaining as it is vitally important" (Ron Chernow).

Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, "Samuel Adams was the man." John Adams thought his cousin "the most sagacious politician" of all. With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history.

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd, eloquent, and intensely disciplined man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution. A singular figure at a sin- gular moment, Adams packaged and amplified the Boston Massacre. He helped to mastermind the Boston Tea Party. He employed every tool in an innovative arsenal to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. For his efforts he became the most wanted man in America: When Paul Revere rode to Lexington in 1775, it was to warn Samuel Adams that he was about to be arrested for treason.

In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff brings her masterful skills to Adams's improbable life, illuminating his transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, beguiling radical who mobilized the colonies. Arresting, original, and deliriously dramatic, this is a long-overdue chapter in the history of our nation.

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National Geographic Stargazer's Atlas

National Geographic

Richly illustrated with luminous photographs and informative maps and graphics, this expansive book is the perfect guide for everyone discovering the wonders of the night sky, from those just learning the constellations to dedicated telescope observers.

Combining science, exploration, and storytelling, National Geographic Stargazer's Atlas invites readers to roam the night sky for constellations, planets and moons, eclipses, comets and meteor showers, auroras, and deep-sky treasures including nebulae and galaxies--many visible to the naked eye and all with binoculars or a backyard telescope.

Beginning with basic space science and including a complete set of night sky maps for all four seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, this fascinating book guides the reader toward the most rewarding observations. A unique chapter on astrotourism highlights ancient observatories, dark-sky preserves, and other global destinations for the sky-seeking traveler; a final chapter details current and future space missions and what they might discover.

Richly illustrated with awe-inspiring imagery--including photos from space missions and telescopes, science-based artists' interpretations, and explanatory graphics--the book also contains 170 maps and charts of planets, moons, and constellations, from Earth's moon to moons of Saturn. Practical advice throughout helps readers see what they have been reading about, building key observational skills such as "star hopping" from easy-to-find stars to fainter deep-sky objects and focusing on "deep sky treasures:" areas rich in observable phenomena.

Approachable and authoritative, gorgeous and fascinating, National Geographic Stargazer's Atlas will intrigue all who love to gaze up in wonder at the night sky--and find themselves wanting to know more.

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Mecca

Susan Straight

Johnny Frías has California in his blood. A descendant of the state’s Indigenous people and Mexican settlers, he has Southern California’s forgotten towns and canyons in his soul. He spends his days as a highway patrolman pulling over speeders, ignoring their racist insults, and pushing past the trauma of his rookie year, when he killed a man assaulting a young woman named Bunny, who ran from the scene, leaving Johnny without a witness. But like the Santa Ana winds that every year bring the risk of fire, Johnny’s moment of action twenty years ago sparked a slow-burning chain of connections that unites a vibrant, complex cast of characters in ways they never see coming.

In Mecca, the celebrated novelist Susan Straight crafts an unforgettable American epic, examining race, history, family, and destiny through the interlocking stories of a group of native Californians all gasping for air. With sensitivity, furor, and a cinematic scope that captures California in all its injustice, history, and glory, she tells a story of the American West through the eyes of the people who built it—and continue to sustain it. As the stakes get higher and the intertwined characters in Mecca slam against barrier after barrier, they find that when push comes to shove, it’s always better to push back.

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The Cold Millions

Jess Walter

"One of the most captivating novels of the year." - Washington Post

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A Best Book of the Year: Bloomberg Boston Globe Chicago Public Library Chicago Tribune Esquire Kirkus New York Public Library New York Times Book Review (Historical Fiction) NPR's Fresh Air O Magazine Washington Post Publishers Weekly Seattle Times USA Today

A Library Reads Pick An Indie Next Pick

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins comes another "literary miracle" (NPR)--a propulsive, richly entertaining novel about two brothers swept up in the turbulent class warfare of the early twentieth century.

An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams.

The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.

Dubious of Gig's idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war?

Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, The Cold Millions is a tour de force from a "writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors" (Boston Globe).

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Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

Deepa Anappara

In a sprawling Indian city, a boy ventures into its most dangerous corners to find his missing classmate. . . .

Through market lanes crammed with too many people, dogs, and rickshaws, past stalls that smell of cardamom and sizzling oil, below a smoggy sky that doesn't let through a single blade of sunlight, and all the way at the end of the Purple metro line lies a jumble of tin-roofed homes where nine-year-old Jai lives with his family. From his doorway, he can spot the glittering lights of the city's fancy high-rises, and though his mother works as a maid in one, to him they seem a thousand miles away. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line plunges readers deep into this neighborhood to trace the unfolding of a tragedy through the eyes of a child as he has his first perilous collisions with an unjust and complicated wider world.

Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows, and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari (though she gets the best grades) and Faiz (though Faiz has an actual job). When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit.

But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force, and rumors of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again.

Drawing on real incidents and a spate of disappearances in metropolitan India, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is extraordinarily moving, flawlessly imagined, and a triumph of suspense. It captures the fierce warmth, resilience, and bravery that can emerge in times of trouble and carries the reader headlong into a community that, once encountered, is impossible to forget.

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Pachinko

Min Jin Lee

Literature & Libations 2023 Historical Fiction Selection

In this gorgeous, page-turning saga, four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan, exiled from a home they never knew.

"There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones."

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.
 

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Beartown

Fredrik Backman

"From the New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here, comes a poignant, charming novel about a forgotten town fractured by scandal, and the amateur hockey team that might just change everything. Winning a junior ice hockey championship might not mean a lot to the average person, but it means everything to the residents of Beartown, a community slowly being eaten alive by unemployment and the surrounding wilderness. A victory like this would draw national attention to the ailing town: it could attract government funding and an influx of talented athletes who would choose Beartown over the big nearby cities. A victory like this would certainly mean everything to Amat, a short, scrawny teenager who is treated like an outcast everywhere but on the ice; to Kevin, a star player just on the cusp of securing his golden future in the NHL; and to Peter, their dedicated general manager whose own professional hockey career ended in tragedy. At first, it seems like the team might have a shot at fulfilling the dreams of their entire town. But one night at a drunken celebration following a key win, something happens between Kevin and the general manager's daughter--and the next day everything seems to have changed. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected. With so much riding on the success of the team, the line between loyalty and betrayal becomes difficult to discern. At last, it falls to one young man to find the courage to speak the truth that it seems no one else wants to hear. Fredrik Backman knows that we are forever shaped by the places we call home, and in this emotionally powerful, sweetly insightful story, he explores what can happen when we carry the heavy weight of other people's dreams on our shoulders"--

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Killers of the Flower Moon

David Grann

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

Disturbing and riveting...It will sear your soul. --Dave Eggers, New York Times Book Review

SHELF AWARENESS'S BEST BOOK OF 2017

Named a best book of the year by Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, GQ, Time, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, NPR's Maureen Corrigan, NPR's On Point, Vogue, Smithsonian, Cosmopolitan, Seattle Times, Bloomberg, Lit Hub's Ultimate Best Books, Library Journal, Paste, Kirkus, Slate.com and Book Browse

From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances.
In this last remnant of the Wild West--where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the "Phantom Terror," roamed--many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization's first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled the case. In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only American Indian agents in the bureau. The agents infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.

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A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles

The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers, soon to be a Showtime/Paramount series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotelIn 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

 

 

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Sisters in Arms

Kaia Alderson

"Sisters in Arms is heartwarming but fierce, a novel brimming with camaraderie and fire, starring women you'd love to make your friends. Prickly, musical Grace and bubbly, privileged Eliza may not make the most natural allies, but it's fight or die when they're thrown together in the Army's first class of female officers--and the first Black women allowed to serve their country in World War II. . . . Kaia Alderson's debut is a triumph!"-- Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code

Kaia Alderson's debut historical fiction novel reveals the untold, true story of the Six Triple Eight, the only all-Black battalion of the Women's Army Corps, who made the dangerous voyage to Europe to ensure American servicemen received word from their loved ones during World War II.

Grace Steele and Eliza Jones may be from completely different backgrounds, but when it comes to the army, specifically the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), they are both starting from the same level. Not only will they be among the first class of female officers the army has even seen, they are also the first Black women allowed to serve.

As these courageous women help to form the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, they are dealing with more than just army bureaucracy--everyone is determined to see this experiment fail. For two northern women, learning to navigate their way through the segregated army may be tougher than boot camp. Grace and Eliza know that there is no room for error; they must be more perfect than everyone else.

When they finally make it overseas, to England and then France, Grace and Eliza will at last be able to do their parts for the country they love, whatever the risk to themselves.

Based on the true story of the 6888th Postal Battalion (the Six Triple Eight), Sisters in Arms explores the untold story of what life was like for the only all-Black, female U.S. battalion to be deployed overseas during World War II.

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All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge.

Doerr's "stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors" (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer "whose sentences never fail to thrill" (Los Angeles Times).

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Little Fires Everywhere

Celeste Ng

The #1 New York Times bestseller!

“Witty, wise, and tender. It's a marvel.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning

“To say I love this book is an understatement. It’s a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection. It moved me to tears.” —Reese Witherspoon

From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Our Missing Hearts comes a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides.  Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Named a Best Book of the Year by: People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, Goodreads, Library Reads, Book of the Month, Paste, Kirkus Reviews, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and many more...

Perfect for book clubs! Visit celesteng.com for discussion guides and more.

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The Henna Artist

Alka Joshi

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK

"Captivated me from the first chapter to the final page."--Reese Witherspoon

Vivid and compelling in its portrait of one woman's struggle for fulfillment in a society pivoting between the traditional and the modern, The Henna Artist opens a door into a world that is at once lush and fascinating, stark and cruel.

Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist--and confidante--to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own...

Known for her original designs and sage advice, Lakshmi must tread carefully to avoid the jealous gossips who could ruin her reputation and her livelihood. As she pursues her dream of an independent life, she is startled one day when she is confronted by her husband, who has tracked her down these many years later with a high-spirited young girl in tow--a sister Lakshmi never knew she had. Suddenly the caution that she has carefully cultivated as protection is threatened. Still she perseveres, applying her talents and lifting up those that surround her as she does.

"Eloquent and moving...Joshi masterfully balances a yearning for self-discovery with the need for familial love."--Publishers Weekly

Look for The Secret Keeper of Jaipur from New York Times bestselling author Alka Joshi!

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Ask Again, Yes

Mary Beth Keane

The triumphant New York Times Bestseller * The Tonight Show Summer Reads Pick *

Named one of the best books of the year by People, Vogue, Parade, NPR, and Elle

“This is one beautiful book. I was wowed by Keane’s writing and narrative skill—and by what she knows about trouble.” —Stephen King

How much can a family forgive?

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie NYPD cops, are neighbors in the suburbs. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come.

In Mary Beth Keane's extraordinary novel, a lifelong friendship and love blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next thirty years. Heartbreaking and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes is a gorgeous and generous portrait of the daily intimacies of marriage and the power of forgiveness.

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Morningside Heights

Joshua Henkin

A tender, powerful, and big-hearted novel about love in the face of loss, from the award-winning author of The World Without You and Matrimony

When Ohio-born Pru Steiner arrives in New York in 1976 after graduating from Yale, she follows in a long tradition of young people determined to take the city by storm. But when she falls in love with Spence Robin, her hotshot young Shakespeare professor, her life takes a turn she couldn't have anticipated.

Thirty years later, something is wrong with Spence. The Great Man can't concentrate; he falls asleep reading The New York Review of Books. With their daughter Sarah away at medical school, Pru must struggle on her own. One day, feeling particularly isolated, Pru meets a man, and the possibility of new romance blooms. Meanwhile, Spence's estranged son from his first marriage has come back into their lives. Arlo, a wealthy entrepreneur who invests in biotech, may be his father's last, best hope.

Morningside Heights is a sweeping and compassionate novel about a marriage surviving hardship. It's about the love between women and men and children and parents, about the things we give up in the face of adversity, about what endures when life turns out differently from what we thought we signed up for.

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Mom & Me & Mom

Maya Angelou

 

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A moving memoir about the legendary author’s relationship with her own mother.

Emma Watson’s Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick!

The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother.

For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence—a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them.

Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, Mom & Me & Mom explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights.

Praise for Mom & Me & Mom

Mom & Me & Mom is delivered with Angelou’s trademark good humor and fierce optimism. If any resentments linger between these lines, if lives are partially revealed without all the bitter details exposed, well, that is part of Angelou’s forgiving design. As an account of reconciliation, this little book is just revealing enough, and pretty irresistible.”The Washington Post

“Moving . . . a remarkable portrait of two courageous souls.”People

“[The] latest, and most potent, of her serial autobiographies . . . [a] tough-minded, tenderhearted addition to Angelou’s spectacular canon.”Elle

“Mesmerizing . . . Angelou has a way with words that can still dazzle us, and with her mother as a subject, Angelou has a near-perfect muse and mystery woman.”Essence

 

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This Close to Okay

Leesa Cross-Smith

A powerful, vibrant novel about the life-changing weekend shared between two strangers, from the award-winning writer Roxane Gay calls "a consummate storyteller."​

On a rainy October night in Kentucky, recently divorced therapist Tallie Clark is on her way home from work when she spots a man precariously standing at the edge of a bridge. Without a second thought, Tallie pulls over and jumps out of the car into the pouring rain. She convinces the man to join her for a cup of coffee, and he eventually agrees to come back to her house, where he finally shares his name: Emmett.

Over the course of the emotionally charged weekend that follows, Tallie makes it her mission to provide a safe space for Emmett, though she hesitates to confess that this is also her day job. What she doesn't realize is that Emmett isn't the only one who needs healing--and they both are harboring secrets.

Alternating between Tallie and Emmett's perspectives as they inch closer to the truth of what brought Emmett to the bridge's edge--as well as the hard truths Tallie has been grappling with since her marriage ended--This Close to Okay is an uplifting, cathartic story about chance encounters, hope found in unlikely moments, and the subtle magic of human connection.

​Longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award
Longlisted for the Goodreads Choice Awards
Book of the Month December Pick
Good Housekeeping Book Club February Pick
Marie Claire Book Club March Pick
Most Anticipated by Elle, Today (according to Goodreads), The Millions, She Reads, and Real Simple
Recommended by Refinery29, Shondaland, Oprah Daily, Washington Post, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Electric Literature, Bookriot, Parade, Harper's Bazaar, and more

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The Authenticity Project

Clare Pooley

A WASHINGTON POST "FEEL-GOOD BOOK guaranteed to lift your spirits"

"A warm, charming tale about the rewards of revealing oneself, warts and all."
--People

The story of a solitary green notebook that brings together six strangers and leads to unexpected friendship, and even love

Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with each other. But what if they were? And so he writes--in a plain, green journal--the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves--and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café.

The Authenticity Project's cast of characters--including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends--is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life. It's a story about being brave and putting your real self forward--and finding out that it's not as scary as it seems. In fact, it looks a lot like happiness.

The Authenticity Project is just the tonic for our times that readers are clamoring for--and one they will take to their hearts and read with unabashed pleasure.

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High Five Discipline

Candice W. Jones

When confronting the challenge of disciplining their children, moms and dads often default to the ways their own parents disciplined them, sometimes with harmful results. In High Five Discipline, mom and practicing pediatrician Dr. Candice Jones shows parents a better way. Dr. Jones coaches parents to understand their child's developmental stages and their own motivations to create a family discipline plan that manages misbehavior and encourages good behavior. Her advice is packed with developmentally appropriate strategies to tame tantrums, stop sibling squabbles, and reward better behavior to create a calmer, more harmonious home.

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Good Inside

Becky Kennedy

"This book is for any parent who has ever struggled under the substantial weight of caregiving--which is to say, all of us. Good Inside is not only a wise and practical guide to raising resilient, emotionally healthy kids, it's also a supportive resource for overwhelmed parents who need more compassion and less stress. Dr. Becky is the smart, thoughtful, in-the-trenches parenting expert we've been waiting for!"--Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space

Dr. Becky Kennedy, wildly popular parenting expert and creator of @drbeckyatgoodinside, shares her groundbreaking approach to raising kids and offers practical strategies for parenting in a way that feels good.

Over the past several years, Dr. Becky Kennedy--known to her followers as "Dr. Becky"--has been sparking a parenting revolution. Millions of parents, tired of following advice that either doesn't work or simply doesn't feel good, have embraced Dr. Becky's empowering and effective approach, a model that prioritizes connecting with our kids over correcting them.

Parents have long been sold a model of childrearing that simply doesn't work. From reward charts to time outs, many popular parenting approaches are based on shaping behavior, not raising humans. These techniques don't build the skills kids need for life, or account for their complex emotional needs. Add to that parents' complicated relationships with their own upbringings, and it's easy to see why so many caretakers feel lost, burned out, and worried they're failing their kids. In Good Inside, Dr. Becky shares her parenting philosophy, complete with actionable strategies, that will help parents move from uncertainty and self-blame to confidence and sturdy leadership.

Offering perspective-shifting parenting principles and troubleshooting for specific scenarios--including sibling rivalry, separation anxiety, tantrums, and more--Good Inside is a comprehensive resource for a generation of parents looking for a new way to raise their kids while still setting them up for a lifetime of self-regulation, confidence, and resilience.

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Emotionally Resilient Tweens and Teens

Kim John Payne

Essential reading for parents of grade schoolers through teens experiencing bullying, social exclusion, and teasing—with uplifting stories from young adults who have navigated those experiences and triumphed.

The tween and teen years are rife with intense social challenges in school, friendships, sports, and other activities where instances of teasing, bullying, social exclusion and marginalization are unfortunately all too common. Social media has only made this behavior easier and more insidious. But when kids ages 9 and up can be coached by a parent to respond effectively, manage their emotions in social situations, and recognize their own self-worth, they can reclaim a sense of their own power and develop skills like resilience, social and emotional intelligence and compassion for life.

Kim John Payne, a leading education consultant and parenting expert, and Luis Fernando Llosa, a writer and longtime sports coach, offer guidance and practical advice to parents, along with ten inspirational stories in the voice of young adults who have navigated bullying, teasing and social exclusion—and triumphed. The Emotionally Resilient Child gives tweens and teens the tools to address the problem themselves and develop mastery over the situation—rather than having parents step in and try to "fix" things. This book also gives parents vital proactive strategies to help build strong family relationships, trust and connection, so that kids can be better prepared for the inevitable social challenges life brings.

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Building Happier Kids

Hansa Bhargava

Between the frantic pace of pre-pandemic life and the isolation and screen-time overload of 2020, many kids are suffering from stress and other mental health issues. In Building Happier Kids, pediatrician Hansa Bhargava helps parents understand the impact of stress and shares concrete steps parents can take to reduce the pressure on their children and teens and increase their health and happiness. Dr. Bhargava prescribes taking a step back from today's non-stop pace and focusing on the basics of healthy eating, quality sleep, and unscheduled free time. Extracurricular commitments, homework, and ever-present electronic devices can make this seem easier said than done, but Dr. Bhargava offers realistic, balanced advice that will help prioritize health and restore the happiness of childhood.

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Brain-Body Parenting

Mona Delahooke

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

From a leading child psychologist comes this groundbreaking new understanding of children's behavior, offering insight and strategies to support both parents and children.

Nominated for Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Adam Grant, and Daniel H. Pink's Next Big Idea Club

Over her decades as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Mona Delahooke has routinely counseled distraught parents who struggle to manage their children's challenging, sometimes oppositional behaviors. These families are understandably focused on correcting or improving a child's lack of compliance, emotional outbursts, tantrums, and other "out of control" behavior. But, as she has shared with these families, a perspective shift is needed. Behavior, no matter how challenging, is not the problem but a symptom; a clue about what is happening in a child's unique physiologic makeup.

In Brain-Body Parenting, Dr. Delahooke offers a radical new approach to parenting based on her clinical experience as well as the most recent research in neuroscience and child psychology. Instead of a "top-down" approach to behavior that focuses on the thinking brain, she calls for a "bottom-up" approach that considers the essential role of the entire nervous system, which produces children's feelings and behaviors.

When we begin to understand the biology beneath the behavior, suggests Dr. Delahooke, we give our children the resources they need to grow and thrive--and we give ourselves the gift of a happier, more connected relationship with them. Brain-Body Parenting empowers parents with tools to help their children develop self-regulation skills while also encouraging parental self-care, which is crucial for parents to have the capacity to provide the essential "co-regulation" children need. When parents shift from trying to secure compliance to supporting connection and balance in the body and mind, they unlock a deeper understanding of their child, encouraging calmer behavior, more harmonious family dynamics, and increased resilience.

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Anything But My Phone, Mom!

Roni Cohen-Sandler

Practical advice for raising authentic, self-reliant teenage girls in the age of the Internet from the experienced clinical psychologist Dr. Roni Cohen-Sandler

It may feel as though your preteen or teenage daughter is growing up in a different universe than you did. Between smartphones, social media, and cyberbullying, the world is changing. Technology is transforming how girls identify themselves, learn, develop social skills, and communicate with the people around them. Many mothers feel as though they are venturing into alien territory, with no idea how to navigate these unprecedented situations. But the good news is that regardless of your technological skill, you are still the best person to guide your daughter through all the chaos of adolescence.

In Anything But My Phone, Mom! Dr. Roni Cohen-Sandler shows mothers how to handle the modern challenges of parenting teenage girls, drawing upon dozens of interviews with teenagers and their mothers, decades of clinical experience, and her own experience raising a daughter. With clear, practical advice, she provides insights and strategies for how you can better understand your daughter and what she's going through, maintain a close and loving relationship with her, keep her safe, and help her become a resilient, capable, confident, and healthy young woman.

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The Killing Code

Ellie Marney

A historical mystery about a girl who risks everything to track down a vicious serial killer, for fans of The Enigma Game and Last Night at the Telegraph Club.

Virginia, 1943: World War II is raging in Europe and on the Pacific front when Kit Sutherland is recruited to help the war effort as a codebreaker at Arlington Hall, a former girls' college now serving as the site of a secret US Signal Intelligence facility. But Kit is soon involved in another kind of fight: government girls are being brutally murdered in Washington DC, and when Kit stumbles onto a bloody homicide scene, she is drawn into the hunt for the killer.

To find the man responsible for the gruesome murders and bring him to justice, Kit joins forces with other female codebreakers at Arlington Hall--gossip queen Dottie Crockford, sharp-tongued intelligence maven Moya Kershaw, and cleverly resourceful Violet DuLac from the segregated codebreaking unit. But as the girls begin to work together and develop friendships--and romance--that they never expected, two things begin to come clear: the murderer they're hunting is closing in on them...and Kit is hiding a dangerous secret.

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The Girl in the Castle

James Patterson

Beloved #1 bestselling author James Patterson delivers a thrilling novel about a teen caught between two worlds and the truths that could set her free--or trap her forever.

My name is Hannah Dory and I need you to believe me

NOW: Hannah Doe is brought to Belman Psych, kicking and screaming, told she is suffering from hallucinations and delusions.

1347: Hannah Dory and her village are starving to death in a brutal winter. Hannah seeks out food and salvation in the baron's castle. If she is caught stealing, she will surely hang.

NOW: Hannah knows the truth: she is Hannah Doe and Hannah Dory, and she must return to the past before it's too late to save her sister. Can Jordan, the Abnormal-Psych student who seems to truly care, be the one to finally help her?

Jordan isn't sure what to believe, and Hannah has even bigger problems: if she doesn't make it back, her sister will die, but if she keeps going back, she might never escape.

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I'm the Girl

Courtney Summers

This is Courtney Summers doing what she does better than anybody--revealing truths beneath the surface of what we think we know. I'm the Girl captures the glittering allure of beauty as power and the insatiable need of the powerful to possess beautiful things.--Angeline Boulley, #1 New York Times bestselling and Printz Award-winning author of Firekeeper's Daughter

Scorchingly smart and on point, Courtney Summers' latest novel advances her even more fearlessly into the conversation about female autonomy, sexuality, and the damage wrought when young women try to win in a system rigged against them. Taut, unfiltered and unapologetically emotional, I'm the Girl digs in its nails and doesn't let go.--Paula McLain, author of When the Stars Go Dark and The Paris Wife

The new groundbreaking queer thriller from New York Times bestselling and Edgar-award Winning author Courtney Summers

When sixteen-year-old Georgia Avis discovers the dead body of thirteen-year-old Ashley James, she teams up with Ashley's older sister, Nora, to find and bring the killer to justice before he strikes again. But their investigation throws Georgia into a world of unimaginable privilege and wealth, without conscience or consequence, and as Ashley's killer closes in, Georgia will discover when money, power and beauty rule, it might not be a matter of who is guilty--but who is guiltiest.

A spiritual successor to the breakout hit Sadie, I'm the Girl is a masterfully written, bold, and unflinching account of how one young woman feels in her body as she struggles to navigate a deadly and predatory power structure while asking readers one question: if this is the way the world is, do you accept it?

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The Epic Story of Every Living Thing

Deb Caletti

From the award-winning author of Honey, Baby, Sweetheart comes a gorgeous and fiercely feminist young adult novel. When a teen travels to Hawaii to track down her sperm donor father, she discovers the truth about him, about the sunken shipwreck that's become his obsession, and most of all about herself.

Harper Proulx has lived her whole life with unanswered questions about her anonymous sperm donor father. She's convinced that without knowing him, she can't know herself. When a chance Instagram post connects Harper to a half sibling, that connection yields many more and ultimately leads Harper to uncover her father's identity.

So, fresh from a painful breakup and still reeling with anxiety that reached a lifetime high during the pandemic, Harper joins her newfound half siblings on a voyage to Hawaii to face their father. The events of that summer, and the man they discover--a charismatic deep-sea diver obsessed with solving the mystery of a fragile sunken shipwreck--will force Harper to face some even bigger questions: Who is she? Is she her DNA, her experiences, her successes, her failures? Is she the things she loves--or the things she hates? Who she is in dark times? Who she might become after them?

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As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

Zoulfa Katouh

A love letter to Syria and its people, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow is a speculative novel set amid the Syrian Revolution, burning with the fires of hope, love, and possibility. Perfect for fans of The Book Thief and Salt to the Sea.

Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student when the cries for freedom broke out in Syria. She still had her parents and her big brother; she still had her home. She had a normal teenager's life.

Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors daily. Secretly, though, she is desperate to find a way out of her beloved country before her sister-in-law, Layla, gives birth. So desperate, that she has manifested a physical embodiment of her fear in the form of her imagined companion, Khawf, who haunts her every move in an effort to keep her safe.

But even with Khawf pressing her to leave, Salama is torn between her loyalty to her country and her conviction to survive. Salama must contend with bullets and bombs, military assaults, and her shifting sense of morality before she might finally breathe free. And when she crosses paths with the boy she was supposed to meet one fateful day, she starts to doubt her resolve in leaving home at all.

Soon, Salama must learn to see the events around her for what they truly are--not a war, but a revolution--and decide how she, too, will cry for Syria's freedom.

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The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen

Isaac Blum

The Chosen meets Adam Silvera in this irreverent and timely story of worlds colliding in friendship, betrayal, and hatred.

Hoodie Rosen's life isn't that bad. Sure, his entire Orthodox Jewish community has just picked up and moved to the quiet, mostly non-Jewish town of Tregaron, but Hoodie's world hasn't changed that much. He's got basketball to play, studies to avoid, and a supermarket full of delicious kosher snacks to eat. The people of Tregaron aren't happy that so many Orthodox Jews are moving in at once, but that's not Hoodie's problem.

That is, until he meets and falls for Anna-Marie Diaz-O'Leary--who happens to be the daughter of the obstinate mayor trying to keep Hoodie's community out of the town. And things only get more complicated when Tregaron is struck by a series of antisemitic crimes that quickly escalate to deadly violence.

As his community turns on him for siding with the enemy, Hoodie finds himself caught between his first love and the only world he's ever known.

Isaac Blum delivers a wry, witty debut novel about a deeply important and timely subject, in a story of hatred and betrayal--and the friendships we find in the most unexpected places.

Praise for The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen

"A deeply authentic story about the terror and glory of encountering the outside world without sacrificing who you are--and who you want to be. It's touching, tragic, and as Jewish as your Bubbe's cholent." -Gavriel Savit, New York Times bestselling author of Anna and the Swallow Man

"Blum gives the common but often-dismissed spiritual journey of many teens the respect it deserves in this witty, profound look at cross-cultural friendship, courageous honesty, and how a willingness to truly see and love our neighbors can change an entire community." -Vesper Stamper, National Book Award-nominated author of What the Night Sings

"A refreshingly human look at the day-to-day nuances of Orthodox Judaism and the terror of modern antisemitism. I laughed, I gasped, I craved kosher Starburst. Two thumbs up from this nice Jewish girl!" -Tyler Feder, Sydney Taylor Award-winning author of Dancing at the Pity Party

"Bold, brave, and brutally honest, it holds a permanent piece of my heart." -Dahlia Adler, author of Cool for the Summer

Isaac Blum has the rare talent of telling searing, visceral truths in a witty, funny, punchy way . . . The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen is a vital voice in Jewish YA canon. -Katherine Locke, Sydney Taylor Honor author of The Girl with the Red Balloon

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The Ballad of Never After

Stephanie Garber

Stephanie Garber's The Ballad of Never After is the fiercely-anticipated sequel to the #1 New York Times bestseller Once Upon a Broken Heart, starring Evangeline Fox and the Prince of Hearts on a new journey of magic, mystery, and heartbreak

Not every love is meant to be.

After Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, betrays her, Evangeline Fox swears she'll never trust him again. Now that she’s discovered her own magic, Evangeline believes she can use it to restore the chance at happily ever after that Jacks stole away.

But when a new terrifying curse is revealed, Evangeline finds herself entering into a tenuous partnership with the Prince of Hearts again. Only this time, the rules have changed. Jacks isn’t the only force Evangeline needs to be wary of. In fact, he might be the only one she can trust, despite her desire to despise him.

Instead of a love spell wreaking havoc on Evangeline’s life, a murderous spell has been cast. To break it, Evangeline and Jacks will have to do battle with old friends, new foes, and a magic that plays with heads and hearts. Evangeline has always trusted her heart, but this time she’s not sure she can. . . .

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Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade

Nancy Springer

Enola Holmes, Sherlock's much younger, and feistier, sister, returns in an adventure of a confused young Baronet's daughter who is on the run from her father's devious schemes in Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade.

Enola Holmes, the much younger sister of Sherlock, is now living independently in London and working as a scientific perditorian (a finder of persons and things). But that is not the normal lot of young women in Victorian England. They are under the near absolute control of their nearest male relative until adulthood. Such is the case of Enola's friend, Lady Cecily Alastair. Twice before Enola has rescued Lady Cecily from unpleasant designs of her caddish father, Sir Eustace Alastair, Baronet. And when Enola is brusquely turned away at the door of the Alastair home it soon becomes apparent that Lady Cecily once again needs her help.

Affecting a bold escape, Enola takes Lady Cecily to her secret office only to be quickly found by the person hired by Lady Cecily's mother to find the missing girl - Sherlock Holmes himself. But the girl has already disappeared again, now loose on her own in the unforgiving city of London.

Even worse, Lady Cecily has a secret that few know. She has dual personalities - one, which is left-handed, is independent and competent; the other, which is right-handed, is meek and mild. Now Enola must find Lady Cecily again - before one of her personalities gets her into more trouble than she can handle and before Sherlock can find her and return her to her father. Once again, for Enola, the game is afoot.

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Almost There (a Twisted Tale)

Farrah Rochon

The 13th installment in the New York Times best-selling series asks: What if Tiana made a deal that changed everything?

Sometimes, life in the Big Easy is tough. No one knows that better than Tiana, though she also believes that hard work can go a long way. But when the notorious Dr. Facilier backs her into a corner, she has no other choice but to accept an offer that will alter the course of her life in an instant.

Soon Tiana finds herself in a new reality where all her deepest desires are realized--she finally gets her restaurant, her friends are safe and sound, and most miraculous of all, her beloved father is still alive. She's got everything she's ever wanted. . . .

But after a while, her hometown grows increasingly eerie, with new threats cropping up from unlikely places. Navigating through this strange new New Orleans, Tiana must work alongside Naveen and Charlotte to set things right--or risk losing everything she holds dear.

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Raising the Horseman

Serena Valentino

From the New York Times best-selling author of Disney's Villains series comes a ghostly new stand-alone novel that reimagines The Legend of Sleepy Hollow through the eyes of a modern teen.

The two-hundredth anniversary of the Headless Horseman's legendary haunting of Sleepy Hollow is approaching, but Kat van Tassel wants nothing to do with the town's superstitious celebrations. As a descendant of the original Katrina van Tassel, Kat knows she's expected to fulfill her ancestor's legacy by someday marrying her longtime boyfriend Brandon and running the prestigious family estate. But Kat dreams of a life outside Sleepy Hollow.

Then Kat meets Isadora, a new girl in town who challenges Kat to reexamine those expectations, opens her eyes to the possibility that ghosts are real, and makes her question who she truly wants to be . . . and be with.

When Kat is given the original Katrina's diary, a new legend begins to take shape, one that weaves together the past and the present in eerie ways. Can Kat uncover a two-hundred-year-old secret, and trace its shocking reverberations in her own life, in time to protect what she truly loves?

Fans of Serena Valentino will delight in this supernatural coming-of-age tale that finally gives the women of Sleepy Hollow a chance to tell their side of the story.

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The Weight of Blood

Tiffany D. Jackson

New York Times bestselling author Tiffany D. Jackson ramps up the horror and tackles America's history and legacy of racism in this suspenseful YA novel following a biracial teenager as her Georgia high school hosts its first integrated prom. A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection!

When Springville residents--at least the ones still alive--are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation . . . Maddy did it.

An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she's dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father, Thomas Washington.

After a viral bullying video pulls back the curtain on Springville High's racist roots, student leaders come up with a plan to change their image: host the school's first integrated prom as a show of unity. The popular white class president convinces her Black superstar quarterback boyfriend to ask Maddy to be his date, leaving Maddy wondering if it's possible to have a normal life.

But some of her classmates aren't done with her just yet. And what they don't know is that Maddy still has another secret . . . one that will cost them all their lives.

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The Sunbearer Trials

Aiden Thomas

Welcome to The Sunbearer Trials, where teen semidioses compete in a series of challenges with the highest of stakes, in this electric new Mexican-inspired fantasy from Aiden Thomas, the New York Times bestselling author of Cemetery Boys.

“Only the most powerful and honorable semidioses get chosen. I’m just a Jade. I’m not a real hero.”

As each new decade begins, the Sun’s power must be replenished so that Sol can keep traveling along the sky and keep the chaotic Obsidian gods at bay. Sol selects ten of the most worthy semidioses to compete in the Sunbearer Trials. The winner carries light and life to all the temples of Reino del Sol, but the loser has the greatest honor of all—they will be sacrificed to Sol, their body melted down to refuel the Sun Stones, protecting the world for another ten years.

Teo, a seventeen-year-old Jade semidiós and the trans son of the goddess of birds, isn't worried about the Trials . . . at least, not for himself. His best friend, Niya is a Gold semidiós and a shoo-in for the Trials, and while he trusts her abilities, the odds of becoming the sacrifice is one-in-ten.

But then, for the first time in over a century, the impossible happens. Sol chooses not one, but two Jade competitors. Teo, and Xio, the thirteen-year-old child of the god of bad luck. Now they must compete in five trials against Gold opponents who are more powerful and better trained. Worst of all, Teo’s annoyingly handsome ex-best friend and famous semidiós Hero, Aurelio is favored to win. Teo is determined to get himself and his friends through the trials unscathed—for fame, glory, and their own survival.

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Coven

Jennifer Dugan

In this queer, paranormal YA graphic novel debut from the author of Some Girls Do and the illustrator of Wonder Woman: Warbringer, a young witch races to solve the grisly supernatural murders of her coven members before the killer strikes again.

[This] gorgeously illustrated tale mashes together murder mystery and witchcraft. --Nerdist

Emsy has always lived in sunny California, and she'd much rather spend her days surfing with her friends or hanging out with her girlfriend than honing her powers as a fire elemental. But when members of her family's coven back east are murdered under mysterious circumstances that can only be the result of powerful witchcraft, her family must suddenly return to dreary upstate New York. There, Emsy will have to master her neglected craft in order to find the killer . . . before her family becomes their next target.

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Monsters Born and Made

Tanvi Berwah

LIMITED PRINT RUN: EXCLUSIVE FIRST EDITION. The first printing includes an exclusive designed case! Available only while stock lasts.

*A Book Riot Must-Read South Asian Book of 2022*

*A BuzzFeed Highly Anticipated YA Book of Summer 2022*

She grew up battling the monsters that live in the black seas, but it couldn't prepare her to face the cunning cruelty of the ruling elite.

Perfect for fans of The Hunger Games and These Violent Delights, this South Asian-inspired fantasy is a gripping debut about the power of the elite, the price of glory, and one girl's chance to change it all.

Sixteen-year-old Koral and her older brother Emrik risk their lives each day to capture the monstrous maristags that live in the black seas around their island. They have to, or else their family will starve.

In an oceanic world swarming with vicious beasts, the Landers--the ruling elite, have indentured Koral's family to provide the maristags for the Glory Race, a deadly chariot tournament reserved for the upper class. The winning contender receives gold and glory. The others--if they're lucky--survive.

When the last maristag of the year escapes and Koral has no new maristag to sell, her family's financial situation takes a turn for the worse and they can't afford medicine for her chronically ill little sister. Koral's only choice is to do what no one in the world has ever dared: cheat her way into the Glory Race.

But every step of the way is unpredictable as Koral races against competitors--including her ex-boyfriend--who have trained for this their whole lives and who have no intention of letting a low-caste girl steal their glory. As a rebellion rises and rogues attack Koral to try and force her to drop out, she must choose--her life or her sister's--before the whole island burns.

Perfect for fans of:

  • Dystopian Fantasy
  • Sea Monsters
  • Exes-to-Rivals-to-?
  • Golden Boy x Pariah
  • Deadly Competition
  • Rebellion
  • Angsty Teenagers
  • Fans of Chloe Gong
  • Female Friendship

Praise for Monsters Born and Made

An exhilarating race of willpower and defiance, set on an utterly unique world filled with glorious monsters. --Xiran Jay Zhao, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Iron Widow

Monsters Born and Made takes well-beloved YA tropes and turns them on their heads, creating an action-packed rallying cry against oppression and a riveting tale of one girl's desperation to survive no matter the odds. --Roseanne A. Brown, New York Times bestselling author of A Song of Wraiths and Ruin

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Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix

Anna-Marie McLemore

Stonewall Honor recipient and two-time National Book Award Longlist selectee Anna-Marie McLemore weaves an intoxicating tale of glamor and heartache in Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, part of the Remixed Classics series.

New York City, 1922.
Nicolás Caraveo, a 17-year-old transgender boy from Wisconsin, has no interest in the city’s glamor. Going to New York is all about establishing himself as a young professional, which could set up his future—and his life as a man—and benefit his family.

Nick rents a small house in West Egg from his 18-year-old cousin, Daisy Fabrega, who lives in fashionable East Egg near her wealthy fiancé, Tom—and Nick is shocked to find that his cousin now goes by Daisy Fay, has erased all signs of her Latine heritage, and now passes seamlessly as white.

Nick’s neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious young man named Jay Gatsby, whose castle-like mansion is the stage for parties so extravagant that they both dazzle and terrify Nick. At one of these parties, Nick learns that the spectacle is all meant to impress a girl from Jay’s past—Daisy. And he learns something else: Jay is also transgender.

As Nick is pulled deeper into the glittery culture of decadence, he spends more time with Jay, aiming to help his new friend reconnect with his lost love. But Nick's feelings grow more complicated when he finds himself falling hard for Jay's openness, idealism, and unfounded faith in the American Dream.

Praise for Self-Made Boys:

"Anna-Marie McLemore cracks the Gatsby story wide open, breathing fresh life into these familiar characters with wisdom, honesty, and real tenderness. An all-time favorite—I was completely transported." —Becky Albertalli, New York Times-bestselling author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

"Tenderly written and achingly romantic, Anna-Marie McLemore has crafted a romance for the ages. Their Latinx lens provides more nuance and depth to the classic story. With a breath of fresh life, Self-Made Boys shows us how queer love has flourished in quiet corners across history." —Aiden Thomas, New York Times-bestselling author of Cemetery Boys

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The Last Kids on Earth and the Forbidden Fortress

Max Brallier

The highly-anticipated eighth book in the #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling series, with over 10 million copies in print!

Picking up after Quint and Dirk's Hero Quest, the Last Kids are happily reunited--but quickly faced with a monstrous new mission. Inside an other-dimensional fortress, the evil Thrull, alongside a vile new villain, is carrying out a sinister plan. Jack, Quint, June and Dirk must make their own plans to infiltrate the stronghold before Thrull gets any closer to completing the mysterious Tower, a structure that could ultimately spell doom for this dimension.

 

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Starlet Rivals

Puneet Bhandal

Twelve-year-old Bela has always dreamed about becoming a famous Bollywood star, and now the opportunity might finally be within her grasp.

When a reality TV show gives her the chance to dance in front of the nation, she knows that she is performing for a place at the most prestigious stage school in Mumbai.

Can Bela win the Dance Starz competition to score a place at the Bollywood Academy and move one step closer to her dreams of stardom? And will child star Monica, the most "in" girl at school, see her as a friend or a rival?

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Kitten Around

Reese Eschmann

All the awwws of animal adoption stories are combined with sugary sweetness in this new, fun-filled chapter book series about a cat café!

Every home needs a cat!

Kira Parker lives above The Purrfect Cup, the cat café that her family owns and runs. But this weekend, Mama and Dad are taking a "much needed vacation," which means that Granny is coming to visit! Mama puts Granny in charge, but Kira's got so many GREAT IDEAS to make her cat friends and customers happy. So when Granny gives her the okay to take control, it's Kira's moment to make The Purrfect Cup extra purrfect.

But between a new, overly-energetic cat and a line of customers that never seems to end, running the café is harder than it looks! Will Kira be able to run everything smoothly . . . or will this weekend be a total cat-astrophe?

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The World of Emily Windsnap: Shona Finds Her Voice

Liz Kessler

With her best friend's help, can mermaid Shona get up the nerve to share her singing talents at school? A new reader for younger fans based on the New York Times best-selling Emily Windsnap novels.

Emily Windsnap's best friend, Shona Silkfin, is a mermaid who loves to sing . . . but only when she is by herself. So when Shiprock School announces a talent show whose winner will have the honor of meeting King Neptune, everyone is excited to perform--except Shona, who is too nervous to sign up. But when Emily overhears her friend singing, she's amazed by Shona's beautiful voice. With Emily's encouragement, Shona decides to enter the talent show--and when she anxiously takes the stage, Shona knows that her best friend is cheering her on, giving her the courage to sing loud and proud in front of everyone, even the King of the Oceans. Based on the New York Times best-selling series by Liz Kessler, this underwater adventure offers a sweet story about a confidence-bolstering friendship to new readers.

 

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The Hayley Mysteries: the Missing Jewels

Hayley LeBlanc

The next book in an exciting new middle grade mystery series from actress, artist, and YouTube star Hayley LeBlanc!

In Hayley Mysteries: The Missing Jewels, Hayley is the lead in a Nancy Drew like kids TV show, and when strange things happen around the studio, she and her friends become real-life sleuths. Now Hayley needs help finding a jewel thief in this action-filled and adventurous story. Plus, get a behind-the-scenes look at what it's like to be an actress IRL!

Things are going great for Hayley on the set of the mystery showSadie Solves It. But one day, things start disappearing from the studio--expensive jewelry used on the show, and even earrings from someone's purse! Who's the thief stalking Silver Screen Studios?

Hayley doesn't want to get involved... after all, she only plays a detective on TV. But then one of the stolen items is found in her trailer, and her favorite makeup artist, Vee, is blamed for the theft! With the help of her two best friends and co-stars, Hayley begins to investigate. Can they find the real thief before Vee is fired for good?

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The Mythics #1: Marina and the Kraken

Lauren Magaziner

From Case Closed author Lauren Magaziner and artist Mirelle Ortega comes the first book in a new highly illustrated middle grade fantasy series. Full of action, adventure, and friendship, a team of five girls must stop a powerful villain by finding their mythical familiars.

It's Pairing Day in Terrafamiliar! Marina has been waiting for this moment--anxiously--for as long as she can remember. Because today's the day she gets to bond with her animal familiar for life, like every other ten-year-old in the land.

Except after the ceremony ends, Marina doesn't have one. And she's not alone . . . four other girls also didn't get their animal companions. The leaders of Terrafamiliar realize something special is happening: Marina and the other four girls--Kit, Ember, Pippa, and Hailey--are called Mythics

In times of unrest, the Mythics must earn their Mythies--mythical beasts--in quests of courage. But danger lurks everywhere as there are others seeking this mysterious power. And only the Mythics can save Terrafamiliar!

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Spy School Project X

Stuart Gibbs

In the tenth book in the New York Times bestselling Spy School series, Ben Ripley races against time and across state lines—by car, train, boat, and plane—to avoid his new cyber enemies and track down Murray Hill.

Ben Ripley’s longtime nemesis, Murray Hill, has put a price on Ben’s head and accused him of being at the center of a conspiracy on the internet. Now Ben finds himself in his greatest danger yet, on the run from both assassins and conspiracy theorists.

Ben must find Murray before his machinations catch up to Ben—but with so much at stake, even some of Ben’s most trusted friends might not be at the top of their game, leaving Ben to be tested like never before.

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The Interplanetary Expedition of Mars Patel

Sheela Chari

Mars is on Mars! But as techie colonists and scrappy rebels clash, can Mars and his friends survive long enough to discover the planet's dark secrets? Based on Season 2 of the Peabody Award-winning podcast.

Six months ago, Mars Patel boarded a spaceship to travel to Oliver Pruitt's colony on the planet Mars, and now he's finally there. The journey gave Mars lots of time to bond with his copilots, but Mars and his new friends soon discover that Pruitt's colonists aren't the only people living on the inhospitable planet. A splinter group, led by the mysterious Fang, are desperate to go back to Earth--and they don't care who they hurt in the process. Amid the slick subterranean colony filled with rules and giant, terrifying tardigrades who poop a lot, Mars searches for answers about Oliver Pruitt's supposed plans--and the real reason the eccentric billionaire has been so invested in him all this time. Featuring thrilling technology, a diverse cast, and a gripping plot, this extraterrestrial adventure, a follow-up to The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel, is also based on the popular and award-winning podcast.

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Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie Thief

Matthew Swanson

Justice is sweet when a school bully gets a taste of his own medicine. A hilarious new Cookie Chronicles adventure that middle-school readers who love Wimpy Kid and Dog Man will gobble up with gusto.

Impossible to resist." --Lincoln Peirce, New York Times bestselling author of Big Nate.

When Ben's fortune cookie tells him that the best things in life are free, he believes he can get anything he wants without paying for it--as long as it's the best. But Ben's dreams of free cookies and fancy scooters are quickly dashed when schoolyard bully Flegg McEggars steals his fortune.

Ben will stop at nothing to get his fortune back, but bringing the thief to justice will be no easy feat. He has to lawyer up, gather witnesses, and present his case to the fifth graders in Kid Court. Along the way, Ben learns that crime comes in many forms and the real villains are not always the people we first suspect.

From the husband-and-wife, author-and-illustrator duo that brought you Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie of Doom comes a tale of truth, justice, and the pursuit of cookies.

 

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The Polter-Ghost Problem

Betsy Uhrig

Three best friends discover a haunted orphanage and get swept up in ghoulish shenanigans in this laugh-out-loud, spooky middle grade adventure for fans of Best Nerds Forever and the Fear Street series.

One haunted orphanage + two types of ghosts + three freaked-out friends = plenty of trouble.

Best friends Aldo, Pen, and Jasper are braced for a boring summer. And equally dull summer journal writing assignments.That is, until they see a slightly transparent boy with a bad haircut appear by the soccer field and then disappear into the woods beyond. The boys follow him and discover the long-abandoned Grauche Orphanage for Orphans, a house in the woods that is most definitely haunted.

But the ghosts are not the problem. They have been trapped at the orphanage by a cranky poltergeist who erupts into violent tantrums if they put even a spectral toe across the property line. The ghosts ask the boys to help free them—but who is the angry poltergeist and what does it want? To solve the mystery, the trio must investigate the orphanage’s dark past, evade Aldo’s ghastly older brother, borrow a skeptical librarian, and duck lots of flying furniture, all while failing to agree on almost anything. Can they defeat the evil entity and rescue the ghosts before their parents catch on and ground them for eternity?

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Stories to Keep You Alive Despite Vampires

Ben Acker

This fourth wall–breaking middle grade collection of spooky, scary, and spoopy stories for fans of Lemony Snicket and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark might just help you survive the night in a house full of vampires.

If you are reading this book, then you must be trapped in that spooky house with those vampires. Sorry about that.

But! You might just make it out if you manage to tell them one scary story each night in accordance with standard vampire rules. Don’t know any scary stories? Good thing you found this book! Every tale in this tome is true…more or less (more more than less).

You get a little bit of everything in this monster mash: from hitchhiking phantoms to women in white, a carnivore beast that loves a good vacation to a haunted mannequin with a bug problem, killer phones, concerned werewolves, you name it. Everything you need to keep those vampires on the edge of their seats—and well away from your neck.

But beware…don’t get too comfortable. Names have power, and if you whisper about too many things in the dark, they might just hear you.

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Aven Green Music Machine

Dusti Bowling

Aven Green, the remarkable heroine of Dusti Bowling's Life of a Cactus series, marches to her own beat in this hilarious, upbeat, and unforgettable chapter book.

"Bowling's beloved "Life of a Cactus" protagonist returns in a new series of chapter books that capture her life as third grader. . . . Young readers will laugh aloud at Aven's funny reactions . . . [and] they will be intrigued by the practical skills she has perfected. . . . This chapter book companion to Bowling's well-loved middle-grade series is a recommended purchase."--School Library Journal (Starred review)

Third-grader Aven Green is a real professional musician! She just needs to choose what instrument to play. When she decides to try the piano, Aven is disappointed when she can't master Mozart in one whole day. To pick up Aven's beat, her parents take her for a four-hour drive to see someone just like her play the guitar. With new inspiration and a special gift from her great-grandma, Aven is ready to take on the school talent show. Will she be ready in time? Or will she blow her big chance?

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The Daredevils

Rob Buyea

Readers on the cusp of adolescence will find much to love in this middle grade novel from the author of the beloved MR. TERUPT series that follows three kids who come to realize that letting go of childhood means boldly taking risks to face the future while learning from the past.

Loretta and her twin brother, Waylon, are headed to middle school. Loretta has always been quick with her fists and her wits. Since Waylon is on the small side, Loretta doesn't let anyone mess with him. But now she worries he won't survive without her by his side. Her secret plan: bulk him up with muscle over the summer. Little does she know that Waylon has a plan of his own. He'll show his sister he can take care of himself.

As each puts their strategy in motion, Loretta and Waylon spend the summer going into the woods behind their house, even sneaking there in the dead of night. That's where they first encounter Louie, who is about their age but noticeably bigger. Louie is homeschooled, he explains when Loretta gives him the third degree. Loretta, Waylon, and Louie soon fall into a comfortable friendship and continue their nightly forest adventures. When they unearth a mysterious box, the past collides with the present, propelling the trio on a quest that will forever change their lives.

Rob Buyea's spirited dual narrative drives this funny, touching brother-sister story, where even the best-laid plans sometimes backfire and feelings may get bruised, but family and friends always count. Letting go of childhood means boldly taking risks to face the future while learning from the past.

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The Infamous Ratsos Live! in Concert!

Kara LaReau

Ralphie is excited to sing and dance with his friends--until Chad makes fun of them for being "girly." Can everyone learn to be true to themselves?

When Louie and Ralphie Ratso see their friends singing and dancing in the run-down band shell in the Big City Park, Louie gets one of his big ideas. They'll put on a concert to raise money to improve the park! But as Ralphie, Tiny, Velma, and Millicent plan a repertoire by the Critter Kidz, their favorite pop group, featuring costumes full of glitter and sequins, Chad Badgerton teases and says they look "girly"--making Ralphie self-conscious about being in the group. Why is being girly a bad thing? Then Tiny, their lead singer, loses his voice, and the gang worries that the concert won't happen at all--until Ralphie and Louie discover that Chad has a secret fan stash of his own. Can Ralphie muster enough confidence to help Chad find his? Fans of the Ratsos as well as readers new to the series will be tickled and heartened by this latest adventure.

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Costume Parade

Stephanie Calmenson

From authors Stephanie Calmenson and Magic School Bus author Joanna Cole comes the fourth adventure of Allie and Amy, two friends who help a new friend in this silly, fun-to-read Aladdin QUIX chapter book that’s perfect for emerging readers!

Best, best friends Amy and Allie do absolutely everything together. It’s almost Halloween and this dynamic duo are sure they will win the costume party prize, but when they see a little friend in need, they must decide whether to help him or get to their party on time.

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That's My Sweater!

Jessika von Innerebner

An outrageously funny sibling rivalry story with a hand-me-down twist

Olivia loves her favorite sweater. I mean, she really really loves it. So when her mom decides it's time to hand it down to Olivia's baby brother, Olivia vows that she will not rest until she and her beloved sweater are reunited.

In her riotously funny new picture book, Kevin the Unicorn creator Jessika von Innerebner puts an oh-so-satisfying spin on an age-old conflict that is bound to delight siblings of all stripes.

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The Worst Teddy Ever

Marcelo Verdad

Meet Noa and the worst Teddy EVER in this sweet, funny debut about the unrecognized heroes in our lives, for fans of Mac Barnett and Christian Robinson. A Spanish edition, El peor Teddy del mundo, is also available for purchase.

Noa LOVES Teddy. But Teddy is ALWAYS tired! Why is Teddy always too sleepy to play with Noa during the day? It turns out that Teddy has a good reason, and Noa is in the dark about what's happening behind the scenes at night...when Teddy works tirelessly to protect his little boy from a colorful ensemble of unwelcome nighttime visitors!

At once laugh-out-loud funny and endearing, Marcelo Verdad's outstanding debut picture book explores how expectations don't always allow us to see others for who they truly are, and how sometimes what we want isn't always what we need.

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Well Done, Mommy Penguin

Chris Haughton

With his vibrant, stylish art and spot-on visual storytelling, Chris Haughton turns to Antarctica for an irresistible ode to family bonds and awesome moms.

"She'll be back soon, won't she?"
"She sure will," says Daddy Penguin.

The sky may be dark over icy waters, but Mommy Penguin is off to catch some fish for dinner. As Daddy and Little Penguin watch in suspense, Mommy swims, jumps, and climbs up a slippery slope, barely avoiding a plunge back into the sea. Well done! There's just one more hurdle to overcome, past some grumpy, just-awakened seals, before she returns to her anxiously waiting family. With a nod to the fascinating nature of penguin parenting, this boldly illustrated adventure from the creator of Little Owl Lost and Oh No, George! will have little ones happily on the edge of their seats as they root for Mommy Penguin.

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This Book Is Not a Present

Max Greenfield

A hilarious picture book companion to I Don't Want to Read This Book by actor Max Greenfield.

We all know kids who carry a book everywhere they go. Kids who can't stop reading, even if it's long after bedtime. Kids who love nothing more than sitting quietly in the corner, turning page after page...

This book is a love letter to all the other kids. The ones who wouldn't dream of asking for a book as a present. The ones who unwrap the box hoping to find anything--a dog, a skateboard, even socks--besides a book.

Packed with clever, fourth-wall-breaking gags from Max Greenfield (New Girl) and eye-popping art from New York Times bestselling illustrator Mike Lowery, this ideal read-aloud may not wag its tail or come with wheels, but it's sure to have even the most reluctant bibliophiles laughing all the way to the end.

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The Arnold Lobel Book of Mother Goose

Arnold Lobel

A stunning and picture book reissue of the “brilliant” (The New York Times Book Review) classic Mother Goose collection of over 300 rhymes illustrated by Caldecott Medal winner Arnold Lobel.

This treasury of 302 timeless rhymes includes both favorite and less familiar verses that are the foundation of any child’s language development, such as “This little pig went to market” and “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.” In a starred review, School Library Journal said this gorgeous collection was “brimming over with energy…distinguished by abundant humor and a rich variety of moods and styles.”

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Rainbow Fish and the Storyteller

Marcus Pfister

A sparkling book about tall tales!

When Rainbow Fish meets a new friend, Humbert, he isn’t sure what to think. Humbert tells all kinds of strange stories: Somewhere at the bottom of the ocean there’s a plug!

There’s a blue whale living near here . . . and he’s going to eat up all of our food.

But before Rainbow Fish and his friends panic, they realize that Humbert just likes to make up tall tales. Rainbow Fish and his friends soon come up with an idea that might make them all happy—even Humbert.

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Daisy's Bedtime

Dianne Bates

A familiar bedtime story about a girl who can't sleep, not even when mom and dad do everything they can to help her. For sleepyheads ages 4 years and up.

 

Daisy can't sleep! Mommy read her a story and Daddy sung her a lullaby, but nothing helps. Daddy encourages Daisy to think of something lovely. Then she'll fall asleep. Will it work?

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Ruffles and the Teeny, Tiny Kittens

David Melling

Join Ruffles as he faces the trials and tribulations of preschool life in this bright picture book series from award-winning author and illustrator David Melling.

As Ruffles learns about the world around him, he discovers there are lots of things he likes . . . and some things he doesn't! He loves scratching, digging, and chewing, but he does not like the teeny, tiny kittens. No, no, no, no, NO! They pounce and purr and snore and chase and poop! Worst of all, they want to play with Ruffles's blue blanket, and Ruffles doesn't want to share. But the teeny, tiny kittens don't understand, and there's trouble when the blue blanket is accidentally ripped. Luckily, Ruffles's new feline friends show him how sharing together is the very best way to make friends and play.

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I Am Picky

Kristen Tracy

A laugh-out-loud picture book about a self-proclaimed picky eater of a raccoon—perfect for human picky eaters!

Don’t look at this raccoon and think she’ll eat just anything. Oh, no. She is picky! She’s been choosy forever—and listen, it’s a tough life. It’s not as though the perfect snacks just fall from the sky (except when they do). You’ve got to work to find the sourest milk, the crunchiest bumblebees, and the most delicious trash. Snacking while picky is a real challenge sometimes...but you never know where you’ll find the tastiest treats to try!

From children's author Kristen Tracy and rising star illustrator Erin Kraan, I AM PICKY is sure to delight even the choosiest of eaters—and readers.

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Scaredy Squirrel Visits the Doctor

Melanie Watt

Scaredy Squirrel is exactly the character children need today--a little bit anxious, a lot adorable, and totally lovable. They will laugh along in this new picture book as Scaredy learns to brave the doctor for his regular check-up!

Scaredy exercises, eats healthy foods, and stays very, very safe. But even healthy squirrels need to get a regular check up! Going to the vet can be scaaary, especially if you're Scaredy.

As young listeners see Scaredy face his fears in the silliest of ways, they gain perspective and courage, empowering them to tackle their own worries with a big smile.

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Fall Frolic in the City

Cathy Goldberg Fishman

A fall frolic in the city.
What do I see?
One pile of red leaves
Under a tree.



Frolic through the city in the fall and experience the sights, sounds, colors, and smells of the multitude of different holidays we celebrate this season. From Rosh Hashanah to Halloween and Día de Muertos, everyone has a reason to celebrate. With simple rhymes, a counting pattern, and stunning papercraft art reminiscent of Ezra Jack Keats, this diverse board book is the perfect introduction to autumn and the cultural melting pot that makes the city so special.

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Where's the Fire Truck?

Nosy Crow

Five beautifully illustrated spreads show a series of vehicles that include a police car, an ambulance, a helicopter, and a fire truck all hiding behind bright felt flaps. With a mirror on the final page, this is the perfect book to share with very little ones.

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Chomp! Chomp! I'm a Shark!

Jo Lodge

Dive under the sea with this interactive first introduction to sharks, a chunky board book with sliding tabs!

 

Discover a first introduction to sharks, in this super sturdy, chunky board book with sliding tabs. Little ones will delight at the exciting tabs that make the sharks swim and move on every spread, from the swish of the tiger shark's stripy tail to the chomp of the great white shark's mouth. A nonfiction fact on every spread presents additional learning opportunities for your little one. Combining simple vocabulary with bright and colorful illustrations, direct action words, light nonfiction, and captivating novelty, this board book is sure to delight and excite as it withstands reading again and again.

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Help-A-Lot Shabbat

Nancy Cote

There's so much to do before Shabbat starts!

It's time to get ready for Shabbat and this brother-sister team are more than eager to help. Once the sun starts to set and the Shabbat chores are finished, it's time to set the table. The fresh challah begs to be nibbled and--oops--there goes the wine. All two-legged and four-legged friends are welcome for Shabbat dinner. As night descends on the city, the home is cozy and aglow with the special light of Shabbat.

 

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Adurable: This Pup Is Stuck!

Bob Shea

These cute pups are in big trucks and ready to dig! Book two of this original board book series is perfect for toddlers with big building dreams.

Dig Doug, Puddles, and Cheddar are ready for a big day at puppy school. Today they have an extra big project--using their construction trucks to dig a swimming pool! Dig Doug is so happy because Dig Doug LOVES to dig. But when he digs a bit too deep, his puppy friends must figure out a plan to save him.

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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?

Challenged to prove herself, Monique decides to take the unique route of asking Evelyn which of her seven husbands was her true love.

Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ‘80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love.

-Colleen

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