Books
For five years, eve burton has hosted Poetry Evenings at Quince Orchard Libraryin Gaithersburg, MD, where she works as a librarian, encouraging participants to read, write, and enjoy poetry together. Writing in different forms and styles, on themes as varied as climate change, kindness, pie, and what poets do, our poets have experienced the joy of personal expression and the opportunity to improve their craft in a friendly, supportive environment. Echoes Through the Stacks is a collection of some of our poets’ finest work.
Two estranged best friends find that their long-abandoned treasure hunt might be the key to a fresh start—for both their futures and their feelings, from USA Today bestselling author Sarah Adler.
Last week, Nina Hunnicutt was a professor about to move into a gorgeous new apartment with her long-term boyfriend. Now, she’s single, unemployed, and living with her parents. Even more surprising is the fact that Quentin Bell, her childhood neighbor (and okay, fine, crush), is also back in town—and wants to resume the treasure hunt that ended their friendship almost two decades ago.
Hoping the reward promised to whoever finds the rumored riches left behind by the town’s eccentric turn-of-the-century seltzer magnate will help her get her life back on track, Nina agrees. Granted, last time the search resulted in a broken heart and seventeen years of silence. But Nina’s older and wiser now. Surely things will be different?
Except, Quentin is also older and wiser…not to mention distractingly handsome. As they resume their hunt, Nina and Quentin begin to rediscover all the things they once loved best about each other. But unlike the treasure, the secrets that left them empty-handed the first time refuse to stay buried. If there’s any hope of finding what they’re looking for—and for a future together—Nina and Quentin will have to be brave enough to excavate their past as well.
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
“Alameddine is a writer with a boundless imagination.”—NPR
From the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction comes a tragicomic love story set in Lebanon, a modern saga of family, memory, and the unbreakable attachment of a son and his mother
In a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and “the neighborhood homosexual,” Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son’s desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja’s work life and love life, boundaries be damned.
When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn’t be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget.
Told in Raja’s irresistible and wickedly funny voice, the novel dances across six decades to tell the unforgettable story of a singular life and its absurdities—a tale of mistakes, self-discovery, trauma, and maybe even forgiveness. Above all, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) is a wildly unique and sparkling celebration of love.
The gripping fourth book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Supernatural Investigations series that began with Amari and the Night Brothers!
Perfect for fans of Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and Nevermoor.
In the wake of the extreme losses to the Bureau during the war with Dylan Van Helsing and the magicians, Amari has stepped back from being a Junior Agent to spend the school year as a normal kid. But as she prepares to graduate eighth grade, she’s faced with a decision: Return to the Bureau and join the elite new Junior Special Agent Program, or retire for good—which would mean safety, but also losing her memories of the supernatural world.
But soon she finds that she may not have a choice. A deadly new curse is threatening both the supernatural and mortal worlds as, beneath their skin, people are slowly becoming machines—and losing their very humanity. And it’s somehow related to the First Magician.
Hundreds of cases have been cropping up, with no cure in sight. And when the curse hits someone close to Amari, it’s up to her to get to the bottom of this deadly mystery—even if it means trusting an old enemy.
Unique in its scope, Convergence: Poetry on the Environmental Impacts of War, offers a vital perspective that has rarely been considered: war’s destruction of the more than human environment. Arranged more or less chronologically, 90 poems and their contextual notes by 61 contemporary poets bring into vivid focus the eco-injustice of military damages in 37 nations on 6 continents and on the moon. Framed by a cogent introduction and a pair of forewords, one on poetry, the other on science, and accompanied by a tally of environmental costs and a set of thought-provoking discussion and writing prompts, this groundbreaking anthology will rouse readers to confront intolerable devastation, yet also to envision restoration of the natural world.
Explore the realities of life behind and beyond bars through a collection of compelling, first-hand stories
In Breaking Chains, Building Futures: Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence, activist and endocrinologist Dr. Stanley Andrisse brings together a profoundly moving collection of first-hand accounts from individuals impacted by various lengths of incarceration. This powerful book sheds light on the struggles, triumphs, and enduring hope of people navigating life under the weight of harsh prison sentences and the daunting challenges of reentry.
Through these authentic stories, you’ll witness the raw humanity of life behind bars and the determination of those striving to reclaim their futures. Meet inspiring individuals like:
- Oswald Newbold, sentenced to life at 20 after growing up with teenage parents battling addiction.
- William Freeman, who spent over two decades serving a life without parole sentence.
- Desiree Riley, a Black mother whose story highlights the intersection of race, gender, and parental incarceration.
Dr. Andrisse also shares his personal journey from incarceration to becoming a scientist and leading Prison to Professionals (P2P), a nonprofit empowering justice-impacted individuals to pursue higher education and redefine success. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the human impact of criminal sentencing and incarceration. Breaking Chains, Building Futures is more than a chronicle of hardship―it’s a testament to courage, resilience, and the unyielding pursuit of a better tomorrow.
Rewrite the rules of the game in the next installment of this hilarious and epic illustrated series about a middle schooler whose gaming fantasies become his reality.
“My favorite new fantasy series.”
—Max Brallier, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Last Kids on Earth series
After the universe-altering events of his last adventure, Ben Whitlock is trapped in an endless magical nap, and nobody across the realms knows how to wake him. But that won’t keep his loyal quest party from trying their hardest. Merv searches the seemingly endless House of Reflection for a cure, while Niara, Agnes and Drake return to Lux, where it all began, to find answers from their ultimate enemy (although they have so many these days, it’s hard to keep track).
Meanwhile, Ben is stuck with the Spellbinder who first got him into this mess in a mind-bending dream world…and it appears his mind is the one that’s bent. Can he escape before it finally breaks? Fighting their way back to one another, the party must face their greatest desires and their greatest fears. But when you play with magic, the rules are always being rewritten…and nothing is as it seems.
From the best-selling author of the Jumbies series comes
another Afro-Caribbean–inspired story, about three cousins who are called on to use their moko (protector) magic when stolen art goes on the rampage.
Twelve-year-old Misty and her two cousins, Aidan and Brooke, are mokos—protector spirits—who recently combined their magic to save Brooklyn’s carnival celebration. Now they’re excited about Uncle Andrew’s upcoming art exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. He has chosen to create a piece centered around a Benin Bronze, one of several artworks that were looted from Nigeria in 1897, and the cousins are treated to a private tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to help him choose it.
When Misty views the bronzes for the first time, she is transported into a long-ago memory of an oba (king) who was stern and angry. And that’s just the beginning of the trouble. Once the selected bronze is delivered from the Met, the Brooklyn Museum is overrun with dust bunnies that attack people. A mysterious force controlling the dust begins to pull innocent victims into artworks and trap them inside. The cousins are going to need a lot of help—BIG help—to defeat this fearsome foe.
Tracey Baptiste, the author of the popular Jumbies series, has once again used her special brand of magic to concoct a wildly imaginative adventure as thought-provoking as it is thrilling.
From award-winning creators, Derrick Barnes, Frank Morrison, and Dr. Christian Gregory comes the true story of comedian and activist Dick Gregory’s remarkable Food Run of 1976.
1 man. 1,011 hours. 3,200 miles. 7 million steps.
What would you do?
In April of 1976, Dick Gregory sets off on a Herculean and grueling two-and-a-half month run. His goal: to raise awareness about the epidemic of poverty and hunger in America.
Sleeping in motels and consuming nothing but fruit juices, vitamins and water, he runs from Los Angeles to New York City. And in each city, he stops to speak the truth about injustice. About the plight of the penniless. About the hopeless.
Lyrical text, stunning art, and compelling backmatter come together to ask you—yes you—what would you do if you had a wild idea to stand up for something you believe in? Find out how far Dick Gregory’s belief in feeding the hungry took him in this unforgettable story of an incredible journey that still reverberates today.
Two feuding co-stars in a Jane Austen film adaptation accidentally travel back in time to the Regency Era in this delightfully clever and riotously funny debut
Tess Bright just scored her dream role starring in an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. It’s not just the role of a lifetime, but it’s also her last chance to prove herself as a serious actress (no easy feat after being fired from her last TV gig) and more importantly, it’s her opportunity to honor her mom, who was the biggest fan of Jane Austen ever. But one thing is standing in Tess’s way―well, one very tall, annoyingly handsome person, actually: Hugh Balfour.
A serious British method actor, Hugh wants nothing to do with Tess (whose Teen Choice Awards somehow don’t quite compare to his BAFTA nominations). Hugh is a type-A, no-nonsense, Royal Academy prodigy, whereas Tess is big-hearted, a little reckless, and admittedly, kind of a mess. But the film needs chemistry―and Tess’s career depends on it.
Sparks fly, but not in the way Tess hoped, when an electrical accident sends the two feuding co-stars back in time to Jane Austen’s era. 200 years in the past with only each other to rely on, Tess and Hugh need to ad-lib their way through the Regency period in order to make it back home, and hopefully not screw up history along the way. But if a certain someone looks particularly dashing in those 19th century breeches…well, Tess won’t be complaining.
A wickedly funny, delightfully charming story, The Austen Affair is a tribute to Jane Austen, second chances, and love across the space-time continuum.
A heartbreaking, empowering and often hilarious debut memoir about a mother’s all-consuming love, a son’s perilous quest to discover the world beyond the front door and the unregulated homeschool system that impacts millions like him
Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school, certain that his teachers were “stifling his creativity.” Hungry for more time with her boy who was growing up too quickly, she began to instruct Stefan in the family’s living room. Beyond his formal lessons in math, however, Stefan was largely left to his own devices and his mother’s erratic whims, such as her project to recapture her twelve-year-old son’s early years by bleaching his hair and putting him on a crawling regimen.
Years before homeschooling would become a massive nationwide movement, at a time when it had just become legal in his home state of Texas, Stefan vanished into that unseen space and into his mother’s increasingly eccentric theories and projects. But when, after five years away from the outside world, Stefan reentered the public school system in Plano as a freshman, he was in for a jarring awakening.
At once a novelistic portrait of mother and son, and an illuminating window into an overlooked corner of the American education system, Homeschooled is a moving, funny and ultimately inspiring story of a son’s battle for a life of his own choosing, and the wages of a mother’s insatiable love.
A football book full of on the field action perfect for middle grade readers.
In football, most touchdowns are scored in two ways. First, give the ball to a player and let him run. Second, the quarterback throws the ball to a receiver who takes it in for the score. Leo wants to be a wide receiver—the player that catches passes and scores touchdowns.
But his coach isn’t so sure that the position is right for Leo. He must figure out how to help his team in other ways by learning other ways to score. In Special Teams, Leo’s team is counting on him to know his strengths and make the right play.
kelly catharine bradley is a mother and poet. she wrote “a gift” after the sudden death of her son, Baeley Aubrey Thackston. Created in the six months after Baeley died, “a gift” is an opus on grief that seeks a lost soul, and offers the glimmer of candlelight. “a gift” comes from a mother’s stunned grief and her effort to remain on earth while conjuring love and hope in and for another realm.
Kitty must get a job to buy a new video game in this brand new graphic novel adventure by New York Times-bestselling creator Nick Bruel, for fans of DOG MAN and INVESTIGATORS.
Kitty wants the newest, coolest video game, Hyper Crazed Feral Alley Cat Mayhem 3. She wants it badly enough she’s considering the worst…getting a job. It will take dedication, a bit of trickery, and plenty of hi-jinks. Will Kitty be able to stay focused enough to get her video game, and maybe even get the job done?
Find out in this hilarious full-color addition to the bestselling Bad Kitty series!
For five years, eve burton has hosted Poetry Evenings at Quince Orchard Libraryin Gaithersburg, MD, where she works as a librarian, encouraging participants to read, write, and enjoy poetry together. Writing in different forms and styles, on themes as varied as climate change, kindness, pie, and what poets do, our poets have experienced the joy of personal expression and the opportunity to improve their craft in a friendly, supportive environment. Echoes Through the Stacks is a collection of some of our poets’ finest work.
“Powerful, moving, and well-written.” -Greg Fields, National Book Award nominated author of The Bright Freight of Memory
When Dahlia, the courageous daughter of an Ecuadorian embassy official, sees how Germany is changing as Adolf Hitler’s reign takes hold, she knows she must act.
Her best friend, Werner, and his family have been ostracized and endangered, and she can’t stand to see them suffer. With a new identity, Werner hesitantly finds a new beginning as part of the Aviles family back in Ecuador.
He and Dahlia must balance the typical growing pains of youth with the distance in culture and geography for Werner.
Based on true accounts from Holocaust survivors, THE CENTER OF THE EARTH gives a heartwarming yet heartwrenching firsthand look at what it means to be a family.
It’s summer, and Josie and Abe’s family just moved to a new town. They each have secrets . . . one of which involves caring for a bearded dragon.
For fans of Out of My Mind, comes a heartfelt novel for kids ages 10 and up about sibling relationships, family struggles, disability, and getting what you want.
12-year-old Josie Sherman, an animal lover and aspiring vet, rescues a bearded dragon lizard. But her family’s strict no-pets rule forces Josie to hide the lizard, Zuzu, in her bedroom.
Abe, Josie’s 15-year-old brother, is a huge Orioles fan, and has plans of his own. Abe lives with Prader-Willi syndrome, which restricts his independence. What secret risks will Abe take to reach his goals?
Told in alternating points of view, The Zuzu Secret explores the challenge of balancing independence with deception. Josie and Abe both have things to learn about being truthful with themselves and with the people they love.
The Subtle Art of Folding Space, is the exhilarating debut science fiction novel from Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author John Chu channels unhinged physics, generational trauma, and the comfort of really good dim sum. This isn’t your usual jaunt through quantum physics.
Most Ancipated Books of 2026―Esquire
Best New Science Fiction of 2026― New Scientist
Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Look Forward To In 2026―Literary Hub
Most Anticipated Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of 2026―Book Riot
Ellie’s universe―and this one―is falling apart. Her ailing mother is in a coma; her sister, Chris, accuses her of being insufficiently Chinese between assassination attempts; and a shadowy cabal of engineers is trying to hijack the skunkworks, the machinery that keeps the physics of each universe working the way it’s supposed to.
Daniel, Ellie’s cousin, has found an illicit device in the skunkworks―one that keeps Ellie’s comatose mother alive while also creating destabilizing bugs in the physics of this universe. It’s not a good day.
If she can confront her mother’s legacy and overcome her family’s generational trauma, she just might find a way to preserve the skunkworks and reconcile with her sister…but digging into her family’s past is thornier than it seems, and the secrets she uncovers will force Ellie to choose between her family and the universe itself.
A 2025 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee
“This captivating story is an ode to book lovers!”—Woman’s World
A mysterious book with a legacy spanning from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day unites three women—and their secrets—in this unforgettable novel from New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton.
London, 2024: American expat Margo Reynolds is renowned for her talent at sourcing rare antiques for her clients, but she’s never had a request quite like this one. She’s been hired to find a mysterious book published over a century ago. With a single copy left in existence, it has a storied past shrouded in secrecy—and her client isn’t the only person determined to procure it at any cost.
Havana, 1966: Librarian Pilar Castillo has devoted her life to books, and in the chaotic days following her husband’s unjust imprisonment by Fidel Castro, reading is her only source of solace. So when a neighbor fleeing Cuba asks her to return a valuable book to its rightful owner, Pilar will risk everything to protect the literary work entrusted to her care. It’s a dangerous mission that reveals to her the power of one book to change a life.
Boston, 1900: For Cuban school teacher and aspiring author Eva Fuentes, traveling from Havana to Harvard to study for the summer is the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s a whirlwind adventure that leaves her little time to write, but a moonlit encounter with an enigmatic stranger changes everything. The story that pours out of her is one of forbidden love, secrets, and lies… and though Eva cannot yet see it, the book will be a danger and salvation for the lives it touches.
A Barnes & Noble Best History Book of 2025
Four men in a lifeboat. Two weeks without food. One impossible choice that would reshape the boundaries between survival and murder. “A perfect enunciation of the classic philosophical conundrum: can you sacrifice one innocent life to save many?” (Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi)
On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from England on what should have been an uneventful voyage. When their vessel sank in the Atlantic, Captain Thomas Dudley and his crew found themselves adrift in a tiny lifeboat. As days turned to weeks, they faced an unthinkable choice: starve to death or resort to cannibalism.
Their decision to sacrifice the youngest—17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker—ignited a firestorm of controversy upon their rescue. Instead of being hailed as heroes and survivors, Dudley and his crew found themselves at the center of Regina v. Dudley and Stephens, a landmark murder trial that would establish the legal precedent that necessity cannot justify murder—a principle that continues to shape Anglo-American law today.
In Captain’s Dinner, acclaimed journalist, Pulitzer Prize juror, and New York Times bestselling author Adam Cohen masterfully depicts both the harrowing weeks at sea and the sensational trial that followed. “Is killing one innocent person justified if it saves the lives of three others? Cohen’s answer—in this riveting account—reads like a thriller” (former U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken). Through this Victorian tragedy, Cohen reveals an enduring conflict between primal instincts and moral principles. This book will “make you think long and hard about what you might do to survive” (Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania).
Perfect for readers of David Grann’s The Wager and Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea, this pulse-pounding true story has become a real-life example of one of life’s greatest moral dilemmas. “Thoroughly researched and impeccably argued” (Martel). Rich with narrative detail and real-life courtroom twists, “brilliant and profound,” (bestselling author Amy Chua), Captain’s Dinner strikes at the heart of a question that haunts us all: When does survival justify murder?
“Like Bookish People, the novel sparkles with kooky details plucked from literary culture. A comedy of errors that gets it just right.” —Kirkus
An unexpected catastrophe of literary proportions . . .
Aspirant, bookish, and close to broke, 26-year-old Clemi steps into her dream job at a prestigious literary nonprofit and finds herself in the bull’s eye of a financial, legal, and existential calamity. The executive director has disappeared, leaving behind an inscrutable cat to which she is highly allergic. Meanwhile, the bank accounts have been overdrawn, the FBI is asking questions, and she has three days to pull off the annual fundraising gala, a glamorous affair filled with famous writers and local literati.
On the upside, she will get to meet her all-time favorite writer, who has won the award. Clemi has read and reread her novels, pouring over her every word. But her interactions with the author and her eight-year-old son, as well as with the nonprofit’s Board Members, leave her wondering whether certain writers are better on the page than in person.
All the while, Clemi is trying to sort out her own life: her current boyfriend is, like every boyfriend before him, a pompous poseur, and the clock is running on her apartment-sitting gig. She finds herself wondering what all the goings-on in this dysfunctional, scandal-plagued nonprofit have to do with literature. And if it’s time to let go of her literary aspirations and apply to law school.
In the week in which this madcap story unfolds, USA TODAY bestselling author Susan Coll weaves together a charmingly witty and warm comedy of manners that offers a peek behind the literary curtain–one that anyone who’s ever been a little bit uncertain of what the future might hold can relate to.
SCHNEIDER FAMILY BOOK AWARD WINNER ● For Fans of the I Survived series and The War That Saved My Life, this gripping middle grade novel is set during one of the most dangerous storms in American history.
It’s been four years since rain fell on the Oklahoma panhandle and the closeness between the Stanton twins has dried up as much as the land. Howe Stanton has been practicing running away and longs for the family to quit this land of dust where only troubles grow. Despite the scoliosis that causes Joanna Stanton near-constant pain, she isn’t ready to give up like her brother. But when Daddy leaves the family behind to find work in California, saving the farm from ruin falls on Howe’s unwilling and Joanna’s uneven shoulders.
To pay the mortgage, Joanna takes a job at the local hospital and discovers purpose in helping others. Howe finds unexpected joy in caring for his father’s horse and escapes in a borrowed book.
But then a tragedy in town reveals the dust’s deadly dangers. With the worst storm of the Dust Bowl bearing down on their home, Howe and Joanna must put aside their differences and work together, or everyone and everything they love will be lost to the dust.
A mother- and daughter-in-law. To move on, one of them will have to move out in a hopeful and hilarious novel about widowhood and family friction by the bestselling author of Don’t Forget to Write.
It’s 1963, two years since Barbara Feldman’s husband died. Raising two kids, she’s finally emerging from her cocoon of grief. Not yet a butterfly, but she’s anxious to spread her wings.
Then one day her mother-in-law, Ruth, shows up on her doorstep with five suitcases, expecting a room of her own with a suitable mattress. Abrasive and stuck in her ways yet well meaning, Mother Ruth arrives without warning to help with the children. How can Barbara say no to a woman who is not only a widow herself but also a grieving mother? As Ruth’s prickly visit turns from days to weeks to what seems like forever, Barbara realizes Ruth has got to go. But Barbara has an ingenious plan: introduce Ruth to some fine gentlemen and marry her off as fast as she can.
Soon enough, something tells Barbara that Ruth is trying to do the same for her. At least they’re finding common ground―helping each other to move forward. Even if it is in the most unpredictable ways two totally different women ever imagined.
From bestselling author Katie Cotugno and illustrator Amy Jindra Hodgson comes a charming new chapter-book series about a plucky seven-year-old who can see things other people miss, perfect for fans of Ivy & Bean
For two hours every day, seven-year-old Penelope Positano wears an eye patch. Her eye muscles don’t quite match, and wearing the patch on her strong eye helps her less-strong eye catch up. And whenever she wears her eye patch, Penelope notices things that other people overlook.
The Positanos are getting a dog, and it’s Penelope’s job to find the perfect pup for her family. Her mom thinks they should pick the most obedient dog, and her dad wants the dog that likes his music the best, but Penelope’s not sure. Her best friend Gus said she would know which dog was meant to be hers, but the more Penelope looks, the more she worries that her dog isn’t out there.
It’s only with the encouragement of her grandma—and the help of her trusty eye patch—that Penelope realizes the perfect dog might be closer than she thinks.
Unique in its scope, Convergence: Poetry on the Environmental Impacts of War, offers a vital perspective that has rarely been considered: war’s destruction of the more than human environment. Arranged more or less chronologically, 90 poems and their contextual notes by 61 contemporary poets bring into vivid focus the eco-injustice of military damages in 37 nations on 6 continents and on the moon. Framed by a cogent introduction and a pair of forewords, one on poetry, the other on science, and accompanied by a tally of environmental costs and a set of thought-provoking discussion and writing prompts, this groundbreaking anthology will rouse readers to confront intolerable devastation, yet also to envision restoration of the natural world.
In 1846 Yorkshire, the Brontë sisters— Charlotte, Anne, and Emily— navigate precarious lives marked by heartbreak and struggle. Charlotte faces rejection from the man she loves, while their blind father and troubled brother add to their burdens. Despite their immense talent, no one will publish their poetry or novels. Amidst this turmoil, Emily encounters a charming shepherd during her solitary walks on the moors, yet he remains unseen by anyone else. After Emily’ s untimely death, Charlotte— now a successful author with Jane Eyre— stumbles upon hidden letters and a mysterious map. As she stands on the brink of her own marriage, Charlotte is determined to uncover the truth about her sister’ s secret relationship. The Man in the Stone Cottage is a poignant exploration of sisterly bonds and the complexities of perception, asking whether what feels real to one person can truly be real to another.
The true story of the Black Hills gold rush settlement once described as “the most diabolical town on earth” and of its most colorful cast of characters, from Wild Bill Hickok to Calamity Jane to Al Swearingen and Sheriff Seth Bullock.
“In these pungent pages, you can smell the whiskey, the gunsmoke, the horse lather, the gold dust, and the mining chemicals . . . A fine non-fiction narrative that’s as alluring as its subject.” —Hampton Sides
“If you thought HBO’s television series of the same name was hyperbolic, buckle in . . . The TV characters were all real and they’re all here . . . Milch’s Deadwood is Shakespearean; Cozzens’s is all verifiable fact, yet it loses nothing in the straighter telling . . . [A] fast-paced and unbelievable-if-it-weren’t-true story.” –Carl Hoffman, The Washington Post
Sifting through layers and layers of myth and legend—from nineteenth-century dime novels like Deadwood Dick, to HBO prestige dramas to the casino billboards outside of present-day Deadwood—Peter Cozzens unveils the true face of Deadwood, South Dakota, the storied mining town that sprang up in early 1876 and came raining down in ashes only three years later, destined to become food for the imagination and a nostalgic landmark that now brings in more than two and a half million visitors each year.
That Western romance, we’re reminded by Cozzens—the prizewinning author of The Earth Is Weeping—retains its allure only as long as we willfully ignore the town’s foundational sins. Built on land brazenly stolen from the Lakotas, Deadwood was not merely a place where outlaws lurked, like Tombstone or Dodge City, but was itself an outlaw enterprise, not part of any U.S. territory or subject to U.S. laws or governance. This gave rise to the gunslinging, stagecoach robbing, whiskey guzzling, rampant prostitution, and gambling Deadwood is known for. But it also bred a self-reliance and a spirit of cooperation unique on the frontier, and made it an exceptionally welcoming place for Black Americans and Chinese immigrants at a time of deep-seated discrimination.
The first book to tell this complex story in full, Deadwood reveals how one frontier town came to embody the best and worst of the West—a relic of humanity’s eternal quest to create order from chaos, a greater good from individual greed, and security from violence.
“A delightful mystery that keeps you guessing until the final page. With a twisty plot, big laughs, and an irresistible narrator, it’s a winner in every sense.” ―JAMES PONTI, New York Times bestselling author of City Spies and The Sherlock Society
Ria Bailey finds herself in quite a fix, and it’s all because of a strange treasure that turns up in the mail one fateful day. It might be a ruby, and it just might hold the key to some troubling developments in her life. Most importantly, if she and her besties Miracle Owusu and Annie Hernandez can trace the significance and stay one step ahead of the mysterious strangers tracking their moves through the Metropolitan Museum of Art and out into the city streets of New York, then just maybe Ria can turn things around for herself.
Sayantani DasGupta returns in rare form with a brand new story that’s part love letter to the Metropolitan Museum and New York City immigrant families, part twisting and turning heist, and completely an examination of where art belongs, who gets to keep it, and what it means to be on display.
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
“An amazing piece of work . . . This is not just a series of newly reported anecdotes and pieces of information. It is a remarkable thesis about how Trump effectively broke the Justice Department in his first term by bullying it.” —Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show
From Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, a shocking investigation of unparalleled depth into the subversion of the Justice Department over the last decade, culminating in President Donald Trump upending this cornerstone of democracy and threatening America’s rule of law as we have long known it
Throughout his first administration, Trump did more than any other president to politicize the nation’s top law enforcement agency, pressuring appointees to shield him, to target his enemies, and even to help him cling to power after his 2020 election defeat. The department, pressed into a defensive crouch, has never fully recovered.
Injustice exposes not only the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the department at every turn but also how delays in investigating Trump’s effort to overturn the will of voters under Attorney General Merrick Garland helped prevent the country from holding Trump accountable and enabled his return to power. With never-before-told accounts, Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis take readers inside as prosecutors convulsed over Trump’s disdain for the rule of law, and FBI agents, the department’s storied investigators, at times retreated in fear. They take you to the rooms where Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team set off on an all-but-impossible race to investigate Trump for absconding with classified documents and waging an assault on democracy—and inside his prosecution’s heroic and fateful choices that ultimately backfired.
With a plethora of sources deeply embedded in the ranks of three presidencies, Leonnig and Davis reveal the daily war secretly waged for the soul of the department, how it has been shredded by propaganda and partisanship, and how—if the United States hopes to live on with its same form of government—Trump’s war with the Justice Department will mark a turning point from which it will be hard to recover. Injustice is the jaw-dropping account of partisans and enablers undoing democracy, heroes still battling to preserve a nation governed by laws, and a call to action for those who believe in liberty and justice for all.
From acclaimed and #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah Dessen comes a romantic coming-of-age novel about an unassuming girl who learns to stand on her own while falling in love during a life-changing summer.
Finley has always felt most comfortable in someone else’s shadow. Fortunately, she’s got Colin, her magnetic boyfriend, who sweeps her along for activities, friendships, and future plans. Then she goes on a last-minute trip with her distant mom to a family vacation house that Finley didn’t know existed and is now about to be sold.
Her mom was estranged from her own parents and siblings since leaving home for college, and it’s a novelty for Finley to see her aunts and cousins. There’s also the handful of teens who work at the Egg, her aunt’s diner, and make up a found family of their own—including undeniably handsome guitarist Ben.
Then her relationship with Colin goes into freefall, and Finley’s roadmap for life after high school is gone. She has no choice but to live, for the first time, without plans. The longer Finley stays, the closer she gets to the truth about why her mother stayed away—and why she’s brought Finley here now.
And the closer she grows to new friends at the Egg, the more she starts to fall for charmingly awkward, soulful Ben and to realize how much of herself she’s been missing. By the end of the summer, nothing will be the same—for this community or for Finley herself.
Named one of The New York Times’s 100 Notable Books of 2025
The riveting hidden history of Claire McCardell, the most influential fashion designer you’ve never heard of.
Claire McCardell forever changed fashion—and most importantly, the lives of women. She shattered cultural norms around women’s clothes, and today much of what we wear traces back to her ingenious, rebellious mind. McCardell invented ballet flats and mix-and-match separates, and she introduced wrap dresses, hoodies, leggings, denim, and more into womenswear. She tossed out corsets in favor of a comfortably elegant look and insisted on pockets, even as male designers didn’t see a need for them. She made zippers easy to reach because a woman “may live alone and like it,” McCardell once wrote, “but you may regret it if you wrench your arm trying to zip a back zipper into place.”
After World War II, McCardell fought the severe, hyper-feminized silhouette championed by male designers, like Christian Dior. Dior claimed that he wanted to “save women from nature.” McCardell, by contrast, wanted to set women free. Claire McCardell became, as the young journalist Betty Friedan called her in 1955, “The Gal Who Defied Dior.”
Filled with personal drama and industry secrets, this story reveals how Claire McCardell built an empire at a time when women rarely made the upper echelons of business. At its core, hers is a story about our right to choose how we dress—and our right to choose how we live.
Amazon Best Book of the Month • Indie Next Pick • Junior Library Guild Selection • New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
★ “Expert worldbuilding with a rip-roaring plot.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review
★ “Reminiscent of The Golden Compass.” ―Booklist, starred review
★ “Fans of The Princess Bride and Terry Pratchett’s work will devour this series opener.” ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Impossible Creatures meets The Mysterious Benedict Society in this epic, fast-paced upper-middle grade fantasy full of dragon-like creatures, heroic hijinks, battle-forged friendships, and sharp humor.
Aerimanders are extinct. Or so the government would have you think. Centuries ago, the Kingdom of Glaucus decreed the destruction of these dangerous, dragon-like creatures whose deadly flame could level entire cities and upend world orders.
But when twelve-year-old Eva Alexander, a wealthy chemistry student in the city of Porttown, walks into a fashionable department store and walks out (accidentally) with the world’s last aerimander egg, everything changes. Suddenly, Eva is the target of unwanted attention―including from the Thieves’ Union, a mysterious organization with a rebellious streak and fingers in every pie in Porttown. The Union orders its youngest member, the orphaned dairy delivery boy Dusty St. Ichabod, to steal the egg from Eva. Which is far easier said than done.
When Eva and Dusty meet one autumn night under extraordinary circumstances, an epic game of cat and mouse unfolds across the Kingdom. Initially at odds, the unlikely pair must come together to navigate a maze of sinister crime syndicates, elite boarding schools, and an incredibly slow getaway pony named Gourd―all while fighting to keep the egg out of the hands of power-hungry Eoin Parnassus, Director of Kingdom Secrets. As the duo races against time, their fates and that of the whole world are at stake. Because there’s one question no one dares to ask: What happens when the egg hatches?
The Last Ember is the first installment in an action-packed fantasy adventure about a powerful creature, those who seek to exploit it, and those who are willing to protect it at all costs.
In time for the 250th Anniversary of the birth of the United States comes a sweeping, intimate portrayal of Abigail Adams—wife of one president and mother to another—whose wit, willpower, and wisdom helped shape the fledgling republic. A stunning historical novel with modern-day implications from the New York Times bestselling authors of America’s First Daughter and My Dear Hamilton.
In the heart of revolutionary Boston, Abigail Adams raises her children amid riots, blockades, and the outbreak of war. While her husband, John Adams, rises from country lawyer to nation-builder, often away for years at a time, Abigail builds her own independence—managing their farm, making lucrative investments, amassing savings, battling plague and loss, and defending their home. Unafraid to speak her mind, she famously offers fearless political counsel, urging John to “remember the ladies” in the new government. Through it all, she becomes his most trusted confidante and indispensable ally.
When peace is secured, Abigail steps onto the world stage—exchanging ideas with Thomas Jefferson in the French countryside, navigating court life as the wife of the Minister to Great Britain, and presiding over the parlor politics of the early American republic in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Even after her husband’s presidential administration, she continues battling political foes and working behind the scenes to advance her family, secure independence for the women in her life, and ensure a better life for the next generation of Americans.
From war-torn streets to the chandeliered halls of power, A Founding Mother is the unforgettable story of a woman ahead of her time—one whose voice, vision, and valor still resonate powerfully today.
In this richly atmospheric, dark academia debut novel, a young woman with a secretive past will risk everything—including her life—to fit in.
Belles never tell…
It’s 1951 at the secluded Bellerton College, and Deena Williams is an outsider doing her best to blend in with her wealthy and perfectly groomed peers. Infamous for its strict rules as much as its prestige, attending Bellerton could give Deena the comfortable life she’s always dreamed of.
She quickly forms an alliance with the five other freshmen on her floor, and soon they are singled out by the president’s wife as the most promising girls of their class, who anoints them: The Belles. They walk the college’s halls in menacing unison, matching velvet ribbons in their hair. But no sisterhood comes without secrets, and the Belles are no exception. Playing cruel pranks on their dormitory housemother and embarking on boundary-shattering night games, the Belles test the limits of the campus rules.
But as Deena begins to piece together the sinister history of Bellerton, her own past threatens to come to light, forcing her to make a dangerous choice. A chilling and seductive coming-of-age story, The Belles is an excavation of the dark side of girlhood, the intricacies of privilege, and the unbridled desire to belong at any cost.
A FanFiAddict Most Anticipated Title!
Game of Thrones meets The Truman Show in this epic tale of a Hollywood-owned fantasy world where nothing is quite as it seems to the people who live and die at the studio’s whim.
A land filled with magic and dragons and wizards and warriors.
Thousands of people live and work within its borders, fearful of their enemies and loyal to their king.
The classic fantasy world of The Malicarn has been brought to life on the big screen in a series of phenomenally successful blockbuster movies, almost entirely populated by characters in total belief that their sham fantasy lives are real.
A fan-favorite actor finds himself doubting the studio’s work, but this franchise has an almost unstoppable momentum, and bringing freedom to a population that already believes itself to be free won’t be as easy as he thinks.
Using a mixture of poetic forms varying in subject, shape, style, and size, purl reimagines timeless myths from Homer’s Odyssey. Stitched from classical translations, this poignant collection from Michele Evans, resurrects feminine forces from ancient Greek mythology and relocates them in modern portraits and landscapes, pastoral and urban. Invoking Phillis Wheatley Peters as her muse, Evans amplifies a chorus of the marginalized: queens and maidens, mothers and daughters, wives and mistresses, goddesses and slaves, “muffled voices rarely heard.”
A boy discovers magic ― along with a hidden darkness ― in his town in this propulsive and heartfelt middle grade novel perfect for fans of PET and THE LOST LIBRARY.
Twelve-year-old Marcus Pennrider feels far from magical. He’s trying his best to balance school, a part-time job, and looking after his little sister. On top of that, his aunt has moved in with them to be their new caretaker.
But one day, Marcus discovers a secret magic flows through the streets of Grand Park ― magic that can make money out of thin air, or control the weather ― and everything seems to start changing for the better. Marcus even catches the attention of Mr. O, local corner store owner and beloved leader in the community, who takes Marcus under his wing and teaches him how to use magic.
As Marcus delves into the strange world of Divination, he becomes entrenched in a rigorous magical training program…and discovers that Mr. O may not be who he seems. It’ll be up to Marcus to decide who his true family is, and that perhaps the real magic of Grand Park lies much closer to home.
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Word Freak, a vibrant, lively, and illuminating journey through the exotic world of Merriam-Webster, dictionaries, and language, at a time of rapid-fire change in the way we create, consume, define, and use words
Words are the currency of culture—and never more than today. From selfie to doomscrolling to rizz, our hyper-connected digital world coins and spreads new words with lightning speed and locks them into mainstream consciousness with unprecedented influence. Journalist and bestselling author Stefan Fatsis embedded as a lexicographer-in-training at America’s most famous dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster, to learn how words get into the dictionary, where they come from, who decides what they mean, and how we write and think about them. As he recounts in Unabridged, he discovered the history and fascinating subculture of the dictionary and of those who curate and revere “one of the most basic features of our collective humanity.”
Fatsis reveals the little-known story of how the brothers George and Charles Merriam acquired Noah Webster’s original American dictionary and reshaped the business of language forever. Merriam-Webster became America’s most successful and enduring compendium of words, withstanding intense competition and cultural controversies—only to be threatened by the power of Google and artificial intelligence today.
Delving into Merriam’s legendary archives and parsing its arcane rules, Fatsis learns the painstaking precision required for writing good definitions. He examines how the dictionary has handled the most explosive slurs and the revolutionary change in pronouns. He votes on the annual Word of the Year, travels to the legendary Oxford English Dictionary, and visits the world’s greatest private dictionary collection in a Greenwich Village apartment stuffed with more than 20,000 books. Fatsis demonstrates how words are weaponized in our polarized political culture—from liberal to woke to DEI—and, in a time of insurrections and pandemics, how they can be a literal matter of life and death. Along the way, he manages to write a few definitions that crack the code and are enshrined in the pixelated dictionary.
“I fell in love with the dictionary on my eleventh birthday,” Fatsis writes about the full-color college lexicon he received on that day. “The dictionary projects permanence, but the language is Jell-O, slippery and mutable and forever collapsing on itself.” Unabridged takes readers to the heart of an industry in flux, celebrating as it does the sheer thrill and wonder of words.
A new, genre–defying volume that explores family, marriage, motherhood, place, and coming of age with singular wit and emotional clarity.
What can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In The Irish Goodbye, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the small moments that shape a life, whether moving or perplexing or troubling or gladdening, in the process dignifying the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother, and daughter, documenting a brush with an old flame or the devastating death of her sister in crystalline, precise sentences.
The longer essays concern Fennelly’s relationships―with a beloved mother-in-law, a decades-long friendship between five former college roommates, an artist who paints a series of nude portraits in Fennelly’s town, for which she poses. Interspersed between these longer memoirs are sections of flash nonfiction, a form Fennelly innovated in the genre-defying Heating & Cooling. With dazzling verve and wit, they capture the interstitial interactions―encounters with strangers, quirky observations, unexpected flights of fancy―that make up a richly lived life.
The Irish Goodbye offers a rare pleasure: intimacy. With emotional clarity and nimble prose, Fennelly invites readers to share her affirming worldview―one in which even our smallest interactions are rife with possibility.
Behind the gates of Camp David—where presidents find solitude, forge diplomacy, and shape history in absolute secrecy.
The Presidential Retreat Camp David is shrouded in mystery, and rightfully so. The hidden retreat atop the Catoctin Mountains is the one place the President, First Family, and invited guests can gather in absolute secrecy for relaxation, rejuvenation, and world-changing decisions. Because of this dedication to privacy, and a desire to maintain the mystery and exclusivity of the last bastion of solitude for the President, few comprehensive accounts exist detailing the storied history of Camp David and the role the “Spirit of Camp David” plays in world affairs.
Presidential Seclusion provides an exclusive account of the mysterious and storied retreat. Extensively researched from Presidential Archives as well as from the pages of Presidential memoirs, this non-partisan, informative account weaves exclusive stories into a tapestry revealing the importance of Camp David on diplomacy and world history. Written by the former Camp David Historian, this personalized tour of the exclusive retreat makes tree-shrouded trails, majestic vistas, and rooms where history happened over the last 80 years accessible to everyone. As you read, the “Spirit of Camp David” is revealed to infuse everyone who works and visits the President’s private mountain retreat, mainly how Camp David personally affected its primary guests, the fifteen First Families fortunate to call the private retreat a second home.
The poet’s supreme lyrical triumph. These poems are undoubtedly quite powerful. All poems reveal an impressive vitality or mental power of the poet. The value of these poems for all readers is perennial. We find here an immense variety of poems. Most important from the literary point of view, the style of the poet has a richness of effect that creates an enduring fascination.
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2025 • An adrenaline-fueled thriller about a disgraced comedian-turned-politician who takes on the role of a lifetime: infiltrating a corrupt Eastern European country to spy on their brutal dictator
Hal Knight, a comedian and movie star-turned politician, is no stranger to controversy. But after an embarrassing and humiliating encounter on set, Knight resigns from Congress, quits social media, and disappears to the tiny Caribbean island of Vieques to drink dirty martinis and nurse his wounds. Shortly after his arrival, he is approached by a trio of CIA operatives hoping to recruit him to infiltrate the power structure of Bolrovia—a hostile, Eastern European country whose despotic president, Nikolai Horvatz, happens to be a longtime fan of Knight’s adolescent male humor. Knowing that Horvatz plans to invite the disgraced star for an official visit, the CIA coaxes Knight to accept. Skeptical, but with little to lose, Knight accepts the challenge, sensing this might be his one chance to do something worthwhile, even if no one else ever finds out.
Upon arrival as President Horvatz’s guest of honor, Knight confronts his ultimate acting challenge. What begins as an assignment to keep his eyes and ears open quickly turns into a life-or-death battle of wits, with consequences reaching all the way to Washington. With Pariah, Dan Fesperman has crafted a heart-pounding thriller about espionage, entertainment, and one man’s pursuit of redemption.
From the bestselling author of Parents Weekend, comes one of the most anticipated thrillers of the year.
Today became an anniversary they would never celebrate.
One fateful night in 1992, Jules and Quinn’s lives are changed and intertwined forever. Quinn Riley, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, is arrested after he innocently tries to break up a fight but ends up nearly killing someone. Jules Delaney, high school royalty, survives an attack by the elusive and terrifying May Day Killer―a predator who strikes every May 1st in small Midwestern towns.
A year later, Jules is struggling with trauma and guilt, tormented by the question: Why was I spared? Quinn is newly released from juvenile detention and returns home to fresh heartbreak: the unsolved murder of his mother.
Over the next decade, their lives are revisited on a single day each year, May 1st. As secrets unravel and the paths of Quinn and Jules converge, two mysteries edge closer to the truth. All the while, the May Day Killer is still out there―and the clock is racing toward another anniversary.
Twisty, high-concept, and emotionally charged, this novel is an utterly compelling story of the hunt for a serial killer. But it’s also a heartfelt―and heartrending―novel about fate, innocence lost, and two souls who find that sometimes being broken is the only way for the light to get in. The Anniversary reaffirms Finlay as one of the leading thriller writers today.
From the three-time Coretta Scott King Honor winning author of The Skin I’m In comes a poignant story about a southern girl far from home at an elite girls boarding school in the north, who must find the courage to be herself and to dream of a brighter future, set against the backdrop of the great migration in South Philly.
Hattie Mae hails from Seed County, North Carolina. She knows hard work: milking cows, plucking chickens, minding the garden. Her hands are made for manual labor—her feet for dirt—that is according to Lisa and some of the other girls at Miss Abigail’s School for Exceptional Young Ladies in Philadelphia. Hattie could never be a doctor or a scientist or anyone worthy cause she’s a hick from the south.
Hattie is afraid they might be right. She sticks out like a sore thumb from the way she dresses to the way she eats to the way she carries herself. Hattie has more in common with the hundreds of Black folks pouring into the city looking for better opportunities away from Jim Crow’s south. She doesn’t belong and doubts that she ever will.
A moving coming-of-age story about finding the courage to be yourself and chasing a better life, lifting other folks up with you along the way.
In this first epic romantasy in the Best of #BookTok Shattered Crown trilogy perfect for fans of Throne of Glass and The Serpent & the Wings of Night, brutal trials bring together a grieving fae warrior with shadow magic and a human knight out for revenge. Featuring bonus chapters, a book club guide, and a Q&A with the author!
For centuries, humans and the magical races of Arcanis have been bitter enemies. Their only hope for lasting peace lies in the Arcane Crucible, a brutal series of trials that demands sacrifice every twenty-five years.
Elyria Lightbreaker, once a celebrated fae war hero, is a shadow of her former self. When the man she loved was lost to last year’s Crucible, Elyria lost herself too—but now that his sister has stepped forward as a contender, she must rise to protect another person she loves from meeting the same fate. Which means entering the very nightmare she abhors and fighting like hell to get them both out alive.
Cedric Thorne, humankind’s would-be champion, has lived only for vengeance. To him, Elyria is the enemy who stole everything: his family; his peace; his past, present, and future. But the Crucible doesn’t care about grudges. To survive, Cedric and Elyria must fight side by side, even as their determination to win burns hotter than the desire they can’t deny.
Dark magic. Betrayal. A slow-burn love that could ignite the world. In the Arcane Crucible, enemies could become lovers…or destroy each other before the trials are through.
Instant USA Today Bestseller
Who killed the Black Dahlia? In this eye-opening shocker, an award-winning producer, true-crime researcher, and Hollywood insider finally solves the greatest – and most gruesome – murder mystery of the twentieth century just before its 80th anniversary.
In January 1947, the bisected body of Elizabeth Short, completely drained of blood, was discovered in an undeveloped lot in Los Angeles. Its gruesome mutilations led to a firestorm of publicity, city-wide panic, and an unprecedented number of investigative paths led by the LAPD—all dead ends. The Black Dahlia murder remained an unsolved mystery for over seventy years.
Six years earlier and sixteen hundred miles away, another woman’s life had ended in a similarly horrific manner. Leila Welsh was an ambitious, educated, popular, and socially connected beauty. Though raised modestly on a prairie farm, she was heiress to her Kansas City family’s status and wealth. On a winter morning in 1941, Leila’s butchered body was found in her bedroom bearing the marks of unspeakable trauma.
One victim faded into obscurity. The other became notorious. Both had in common a killer whose sadistic mind was a labyrinth of dark secrets.
Eli Frankel reveals for the first time a key fact about the Black Dahlia crime scene, never before shared with the public, that leads inexorably to the stunning identification of a criminal who was at the same time amateurish and fiendish, skilled and lucky, sophisticated and brutish. Drawing on newly discovered documents, law enforcement files, interviews with the last surviving participants, the victims’ own letters, trial transcripts, military records, and more, this epic true-crime saga puts together the missing pieces of a legendary puzzle.
In Sisters in Death, the Black Dahlia cold case is finally closed.
When a bottle containing a mysterious map washes ashore, Team Unihorn (and Woolly!) are on the case! This is the fourth and final installment of this chapter book graphic novel series perfect for fans of Dog Man and Narwhal and Jelly.
Team Unihorn and Woolly have saved Burlap Beach not once, not twice, but three times. Now it’s time for them to bask in the sun and enjoy some good ‘ole fashioned R&R. And that’s exactly what they get—until their cooler accidentally tips over and they discover a map inside a bottle! Where could it lead? Forgotten ruins? Buried treasure? A notable landmark??
Determined to solve mystery, Team Unihorn (and Woolly!) set off to find what’s out there—but the most priceless treasure might be closer than they think.
Max Meow—the superhero with cat-itude and his best friend, Mindy (aka Science Kitty!) are back in the sixth volume of this action packed, laugh-out-loud funny graphic novel series that Kirkus Reviews called “catnip for fans of Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man.”
Kittyopolis is in chaos! Pancakes are turning monstrous and FLIPPING out. Mindy’s inventing in her sleep! And a bunch of Max’s old foes are organizing themselves into a Legion of Nasty to put our favorite feline on PERMANENT PAWSE.
Luckily, Max’s pal Rex Rocket, Cosmic Weiner Dog, is here to help. But will their combined efforts be enough to clean up such a massive mess?! Will Agent M be able to stay a good guy and resist joining the Legion of Nasty?! Will breakfast ever be the same?! Stay strong, heroes– Kittyopolis needs you more than ever!
“Max Meow’s super heroics will have kids meow-ling with laughter!” —John Patrick Green, creator of the InvestiGators
Winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award, In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls is Majda Gama’s first full-length poetry collection.
In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls vividly chronicles girlhood, womanhood, personhood, humanhood, the passage of time, the indelibility of history, and the grief and joy of being in this world and on this earth. It’s a beautifully midlife book, with all the wisdom and none of the clichés. Majda Gama looks back to her 1980s childhood in oil-boom Jidda and Reagan-era Northern Virginia, to her 1990s young adulthood in a now-gone punk-rock Washington, D.C., and other cities, and to the echoes of history in Ba’albek and the Emirati desert. On every page, we witness a life lived and observed in brave detail. This collection is a treasure.
–Eman Quotah, Arab American Book Award-winning author of Bride of the Sea
If you could craft a poetry collection combining a rock n’ roll soundtrack to a young girl’s coming of age in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and 1980s with the underground punk scenes of Washington D.C. and New York City in the 1980s/90s, it would be this book. Majda Gama lyrically elegizes a life through the specificity of music and place, where each “city is a song,” where even a beachy landscape unfolds to “the falsetto of the latest Wham single.” Qur’anic verses and classical Arabic literature are weaved seamlessly with Joan Jett and Television lyrics; marbled courtyards give way to black leather jackets and pet rats. Gama anthologizes times and places that are no more and hard to imagine ever were, given that “now there is a sameness / to every dark corner we will gather in.” There is at once a sense of loss and of freedom in the state of being “born untethered” and yet not immune to geopolitics, intimate and global. In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls is a fresh and moving debut from a writer who has lived multiple lives and gifts us its poignant and rhythmic sojourn.
–Sahar Muradi, author of OCTOBERS, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the 2022 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry
From the “cataracts of Gods” to the tiny bones scattered throughout this book, Majda Gama’s poetics exerts pressure at the spaces of resistance, the cartilage between ribs, the held breaths between stanzas, the lacunae of childhood. Mining the poetics of between and barely, the poet traces the spaces between the familial self (coming from Saudi/KSA) and the american self across reflective and self-reflexive surfaces. The anthropological reverberations made me think of Michael Taussig’s statement that “the shortest way between two points, between violence and its analysis, is the long way round, tracing the edge sideways like the crab scuttling.” Riding the sidereal and the sideways edge into wonder and terror, Gama’s In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls undid me completely.
–Alina Ştefănescu, author of Dor and My Heresies
Gama sketches her family’s origins as she drafts her own maps of the self: the influence of Punk, the hold of Bronze Age artifacts on the imagination. In her poetry, stories are alive and must be kept alive; their little boxes must have holes for breathing. Collecting with a humbled apprehension, she gathers story after story in this reliquary, each a sacred artifact.
–David Keplinger, author of Ice and The World to Come
The only woman in Forbes’ Greatest Business Stories of All Time and the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange, Mary Kay Ash has a life story that reads like a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel
Growing up in Depression-era Texas, Mary Kathlyn Wagner is a dutiful daughter and diligent student with ambition aplenty and no place to use it. Married at sixteen, she is a grandmother at thirty-four. When she is not cooking or cleaning or taking care of the kids, she peddles cleaning products to other housewives. The work has no salary and no security but she sticks with it, sure that direct selling will make her dreams come true.
In 1963, after she has been divorced three times and widowed twice, she sets up her own company, selling second chance and self-invention for the price of a skin care showcase. Soon millions know her as the little lady in the big wig who gives away pink Cadillacs. From its unpromising start in a 500-square-foot Dallas storefront, Mary Kay Inc. grows into a global phenomenon with 3.5 million reps in over 35 countries. She becomes the most famous saleswoman in the world. Maybe the most famous ever.
Based on fifteen years of research, Selling Opportunity gives us a page-turning rags-to-riches story set against the background of direct selling in all its overstated, over-the-top glory. Here, for the first time, is the definitive history of a peculiarly American industry and a mid-century mindset that ennobled extreme self-reliance, sticking to your guns, and blind faith in the American dream.
Finalist for The Marfield Prize, National Award for Arts Writing, 2025
Spotlighting the years during WWII when Henri Matisse and his family defiantly refused to evacuate Nazi-occupied France, this groundbreaking book illuminates the previously untold history of their passionate roles in the Resistance and the prodigious, revolutionary work the artist produced in the face of fascism, violence, and hate.
For readers of Jeffrey H. Jackson’s Paper Bullets, Martin Dugard’s Taking Paris, Julie Orringer’s The Flight Portfolio, and Picasso’s War by Hugh Eakin – from the acclaimed author of The Confidante.
In 1940, with the Nazis sweeping through France, Henri Matisse found himself at a personal and artistic crossroads. His 42-year marriage had ended, he was gravely ill, and after decades at the forefront of modern art, he was beset by doubt. As scores of famous figures escaped the country, Matisse took refuge in Nice, with his companion, Lydia Delectorskaya. By defiantly remaining, Matisse was a source of inspiration for his nation.
While enemy agents and Resistance fighters played cat-and-mouse in the alleyways of Nice, Matisse’s son, Jean, engaged in sabotage efforts with the Allies. In Paris, under the swastika, Matisse’s estranged wife, Amélie, worked for the Communist underground. His beloved daughter, Marguerite, active in the French Resistance, was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, sentenced to Ravensbruck concentration camp—and miraculously escaped when her train was halted by Allied bombs. His younger, son, Pierre helped Jewish artists escape to New York; even his teenaged grandson risked his life by defying the Germans and their Vichy collaborators.
Amidst this chaos, Matisse responded to the dark days of war by inventing a dazzling new paper technique that led to some of his most iconic pieces, including The Fall of Icarus, his profile of Charles De Gaulle, Monsieur Loyal, and his groundbreaking cut-out book, Jazz. His wartime works were acts of resistance, subtly patriotic and daringly new.
Drawing on intimate letters and a multitude of other sources, Christopher C. Gorham illuminates this momentous stage of Matisse’s life as never before, revealing an artist on a journey of reinvention, wrenching meaning from the suffering of war, and holding up the light of human imagination against the torch of fascism to create some of the most exciting work of his career, of the 20th century, and in the history of art.
An ambitious memoir in essays by beloved bestselling author Reyna Grande that illuminates the hidden cost of the American Dream and the complex journey of healing that follows survival.
Reyna Grande has spent her career powerfully capturing the raw reality of life across borders. Her memoirs laid bare the trauma of family separation and celebrated her journey to become a college graduate and a writer. Now, in Migrant Heart, she offers her most probing and intimate work yet, turning her gaze inward to expose the scars left by migration and the ongoing work of stitching herself back together.
Grande unflinchingly interrogates how living between two nations, two languages, and two identities has shaped the woman, mother, and writer she has become. In this collection, she confronts the deepest questions of the immigrant experience: How do we bridge the two worlds we live in? What does it cost you to lose your language? How do we turn pain into power? And when traumatic memories threaten to define us, how can telling our story help us heal while honoring our boundaries?
Migrant Heart is a powerful testament to Grande’s role as a storyteller and cultural witness. It is an essential, moving read that continues to expand what we understand about the United States and the complex people who cross and live within its borders. It is a book for anyone seeking to understand the true price of belonging and the enduring power of finding one’s voice.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “captivating villain origin story” (People Book of the Week) reimagining one of the most iconic monsters in Greek mythology as a provocative and powerful young heroine
This hardcover edition features a premium dust jacket with foil and a gorgeous custom-stamped case!
“Ayana Gray brings her fresh, dynamic storytelling to one of the most monstered, maligned, and misunderstood women of Greek myth, imagining all the girls that Medusa was and could have been.”—Jennifer Saint, bestselling author of Ariadne
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Meddy has spent her whole life as a footnote in someone else’s story. Out of place next to her beautiful, immortal sisters and her parents—both gods, albeit minor ones—she dreams of leaving her family’s island for a life of adventure. So when she catches the eye of the goddess Athena, who invites her to train as an esteemed priestess in her temple, Meddy leaps at the chance to see the world beyond her home.
In the colorful market streets of Athens and the clandestine chambers of the temple, Meddy flourishes in her role as Athena’s favored acolyte, getting her first tastes of purpose and power. But when she is noticed by another Olympian, Poseidon, the course of Meddy’s promising future is suddenly and irrevocably altered.
When her locs are transformed into snakes as punishment for a crime she did not commit, Medusa must embrace a new identity—not as a victim, but as a vigilante—and with it, the chance to write her own story as mortal, martyr, and myth.
Exploding with rage, heartbreak, and love, I, Medusa portrays a young woman caught in the crosscurrents between her heart’s deepest desires and the cruel, careless games the Olympian gods play.
“When I’m faced with a Pilkey fan looking to branch out, this graphic novel is the first book I reach for… If eight books aren’t enough, the spinoff series, Agents of S.U.I.T., continues the fun.” ―The New York Times
More than four million copies in print!
InvestiGators fans, get ready to dive into the fourth volume of Agents of S.U.I.T. with the weirdest mystery yet!
Someone has stolen the Notorious P.I.G. food truck, and with it, Piggy Smalls’s special BBQ sauce! But before Bongo and Marsha can solve the case, they need to solve the problems they’re having with each other. To help them realize what a great team they truly are, General Inspector decides to split them up. He assigns Marsha to work with Cilantro on a super-secret pilot program, and Bongo to work with Sven on a not so-secret reality competition: “Sew You Think You Can Sew!”
But here’s the rub: This season includes a chef challenge, and underground sources say Piggy Smalls’s notorious sauce was stolen to help one of the contestants win!
In this poignant, magical tale by the acclaimed author of Eventown, two girls find themselves dropped into each other’s world—and must face down dragons they’ve only imagined.
Auden “Denny” Greene is happiest with her friend Runa, creating stories set in their imaginary land of Sorrowfeld, where princesses rule and cursed dragons are a constant danger. But now that they are turning twelve, Runa seems ready to give up on the magic of Sorrowfeld just when Denny needs it the most…
Princess Auden is the last remaining princess of Sorrowfeld—and on her twelfth birthday, she will be expected to vanquish the dragons that took her family. Only, when a swarm attacks her birthday celebration, all she can do is run…
But suddenly. Auden is in Denny’s world. And Denny is in Auden’s.
The two Audens have switched places. No one but them has any idea. And now, each girl must come into her own power in order to fight the other’s dragons.
The magical beasts of Impossible Creatures meet the body-swap of Freaky Friday, set in a world as fantastical as Wicked’s Oz!
The Sky Will Hold is a meditation on life: life inside a second marriage, life in middle age, life as a stepparent. It’s a close look at desire and addiction, at love and loss, at learning how to let go while still holding on to what is necessary. Elizabeth Hazen doesn’t back away from sticky topics, we see the inner workings of blended families, parenting a nearly-grown child, and living in an aging body with all the freedoms and pitfalls it can bring. This collection is a mantra of survival and love and continuing to move forward and always, always, believing the sky will hold, even when all signs point to the opposite.
***
Elizabeth Hazen’s new book is full of wise musings on being in the middle of things. Not least middle age: in the clever “Real Estate for the Blended Family (Or What I Learned from Zillow)” she considers a real-estate ad for a light-filled house with “square/footage enough to hold all our misgivings.” Hazen’s sensibility has the square footage to hold moments of anxiety and hope, often within the same poem. As she says, “I’ve tried to learn to want things/ as they are.” She has a keen eye-lipsticks in a drawer are “little tubes like shotgun shells”-and a fresh sense of humor: “Yesterday a groundhog waddled across/the yard while I tried to understand/ What to wear now that I’m not young.” This is a poet who helps us live with ambiguity, and with the “thickening green/ of passing time.”
Mary Jo Salter, author of The Surveyors
Elizabeth Hazen’s third collection astutely surveys the embers that have gone quiet, fires burning within, and what a person considers setting newly ablaze. “For years I waited for a sign-directive/or disaster-to dictate what came next, but time//is patient, has nowhere to be,” says the speaker of “Woman at Forty-five.” Compassionate and wry, the personal narratives of The Sky Will Hold also turn their attention to formal pleasures: expansive gloses, an unforgettable sestina, and a masterclass in shaping stanzas. This book is a powerful, quietly startling interrogation of the midlife landscape.
Sandra Beasley, author of Made to Explode: Poems
Into a world of “edge and threat,” Elizabeth Hazen’s The Sky Will Hold delivers redeeming loveliness. Grateful attention to life’s small magics, such as a pebble offered by a crow and a lover combing his fingers through a horse’s mane, suffuse the collection. Love poems in a range of forms-for spouse, children, a dying father-manifest kindness and beauty. Love of self comes hardest, given the masks women feel pressure to wear. Hazen’s poetry, however, “makes teeth” instead of falsely smiling, integrating a welter of feelings into a whole more true than sweet, because it is also lovely to claim ourselves “without apology.”
Lesley Wheeler, author of Mycocosmic
Elizabeth Hazen’s The Sky Will Hold sees straight through to the bone-whether navigating blended family dynamics, middle-age awakenings, or the tender, fraught terrain of mothering a nearly-grown son. Hazen’s lines are taut as a held breath, each word carrying weight without excess, each image landing with startling accuracy. Here is a poet who knows how to look-at landscapes, at marriages, at the self-and who trusts her readers enough to show us exactly what she sees. The Sky Will Hold solidifies Hazen as a poet of remarkable formal control and emotional courage, capable of holding contradiction and complexity in perfect, devastating balance. Charlotte Pence, author of Code and Many Small Fires
A woman must confront the evil that has been terrorizing her street since she was a child in this gripping haunted house novel from the national bestselling author of The House That Horror Built and Good Girls Don’t Die.
On an otherwise ordinary street in Chicago, there is a house. An abandoned house where, once upon a time, terrible things happened. The children who live on this block are told by their parents to stay away from that house. But of course, children don’t listen. Children think it’s fun to be scared, to dare each other to go inside.
Jessie Campanelli did what many older sisters do and dared her little brother Paul. But unlike all the other kids who went inside that abandoned house, Paul didn’t return. His two friends, Jake and Richie, said that the house ate Paul. Of course adults didn’t believe that. Adults never believe what kids say. They thought someone kidnapped Paul, or otherwise hurt him. They thought Paul had disappeared in a way that was ordinary, explainable.
The disappearance of her little brother broke Jessie’s family apart in ways that would never be repaired. Jessie grew up, had a child of her own, kept living on the same street where the house that ate her brother sat, crouched and waiting. And darkness seemed to spread out from that house, a darkness that was alive—alive and hungry.
For fans of The Lost Apothecary, a gripping dual-timeline novel about the mysterious death of an indomitable female papyrologist during an archaeological dig in the early 1900s and an aspiring young female researcher’s present-day quest to find out who killed her.
An ill-fated dig. An ancient city believed to be cursed. And a century-old mystery at the heart of it all.
Egypt, 1903: When renowned papyrologist Helen Gardiner arrives at an excavation site in the ancient city of Calliopolis, she learns that she has been given the job because her predecessor has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. One of the only women on the dig, Helen—tasked with restoring and cataloguing the thousands of papyrus fragments recovered at the site—soon discovers that there’s more to Calliopolis than meets the eye. The archaeologists on the dig, mostly men, all have not only their own towering egos, but their own agendas, including secrets they might kill to protect.
Toronto, 2019: Archivist Maddie Sloan is at a dead end: she feels like her academic career is stalled, and she’s still healing from her recent breakup with her former partner, Ben. To make matters worse, Ben still works with Maddie’s father, a famous archaeologist, and with whom Maddie has had a major falling out. It feels like her father has chosen Ben over her.
When famous TV archaeologist Peter Bahar arrives at the Toronto Archaeological Museum to verify the provenance of objects from their Egyptian collection believed to be from Calliopolis, Maddie jumps at the opportunity. After all, she has her own ties to the Cursed City of Calliopolis through her grandmother, Iris, who worked at the site. As Maddie and Peter begin digging into the objects and circumstances surrounding the excavation, they learn that two papyrologists seem to have abruptly disappeared from the dig without explanation. Suddenly, a search for provenance becomes a quest to uncover a history shrouded in secrets and lies—and a murder that has been covered up for more than a century.
A New York Times bestseller!
With bold imagery and an ear tuned to the music of Homer’s epic poem, award-winning graphic artist Gareth Hinds reinterprets the ancient classic as it’s never been told before. A New York Times bestseller, now in a sumptuous collectible edition with new cover design, gold foil, and painted edges.
“Gareth Hinds brings The Odyssey to life in a masterful blend of art and storytelling. Vivid and exciting, this graphic novel is a worthy new interpretation of Homer’s epic.” —Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series
Fresh from his triumphs in the Trojan War, Odysseus, king of Ithaca, wants nothing more than to return home to his family. Instead, he offends the sea god, Poseidon, who dooms him to years of shipwreck and wandering. Battling man-eating monsters, violent storms, and the supernatural seductions of sirens and sorceresses, Odysseus will need all his strength and cunning—and a little help from Mount Olympus—to make his way home and seize his kingdom from the schemers who seek to wed his queen and usurp his throne. Gareth Hinds masterfully reinterprets a story of heroism, adventure, and high action that has been told and retold for more than 2,500 years—though never quite like this.
*An Instant New York Times Bestseller*
We Were Liars meets The Raven Boys in this warped reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray about dark revenge, twisted desire, and the sinister secrets lurking behind the walls of an elite boarding school.
“A darkly delicious spiral where each page makes you crave more.” ―CG Drews, author of Don’t Let The Forest In
“A stunningly lush, utterly compelling, darkly beautiful debut!” ―Ginny Myers Sain, New York Times bestselling author of Dark and Shallow Lies
Seventeen-year-old Marin James has always lived in the shadow of the exclusive Huntsworth Academy. And when her cousin is found dead on school property, Marin knows exactly who’s to blame: Adrian Hargraves and Henry Wu, the enigmatic yet dangerously alluring leaders of the school’s social elite.
Seeking justice, Marin poses as a student and infiltrates Huntsworth, only to find herself drawn to her new life―and to the two broken boys she once vowed to destroy.
When Marin uncovers an otherworldly secret the boys are hiding within Huntsworth’s ivied gates, the lines between right and wrong, love and hate, and nightmare and reality begin to crumble―and nothing is as it seems.
Welcome to Huntsworth Academy.
A National Bestseller
An Indie Next & LibraryReads Pick for June
A June 2025 Book of the Month Selection
A Town & Country Best New Romance Novel
“The Summer We Ran is a perfectly nostalgic story of love, loss, and secrets that refuse to stay buried. It’s exactly what I hope for in a summertime read.”
—Annabel Monaghan, author of Same Time Next Summer
Does your past define your destiny? Told through multiple perspectives, rich with emotion and immersive dual timelines, The Summer We Ran weaves together a story of lost love, devastating secrets, shocking sabotage, and the painstaking decision two people must make in order to fulfill the futures they each desire.
In the summer of 1996, Tess Murphy’s mom gave her two rules to abide by: keep quiet and stay out of trouble. Her mother landed a new job as a cook at an affluent Virginia estate and didn’t want anything to risk the opportunity, least of all her outspoken teenage daughter. What no one saw coming was Tess falling deeply in love with the boy next door, high-society Grant Alexander.
Over a few wondrous and heat-filled months, Tess and Grant’s love blooms so ferociously it feels utterly impossible that anything can keep them apart, until tragedy strikes.
Now, more than two decades after their epic teenage romance, Tess and Grant are both running for governor of Virginia, and secrets from that summer threaten to shatter their families, their political futures, and the memory of the first love that shaped their lives.
In this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The House of Eve, one American woman’s vision in post WWII Germany will tie together three people in an unexpected way.
Ethel Gathers, the proud wife of an American Officer, is living in Occupied Germany in the 1950s. After discovering a local orphanage filled with the abandoned mixed-race children of German women and Black American GI’s, Ethel feels compelled to help find these children homes.
Philadelphia born Ozzie Phillips volunteers for the recently desegregated army in 1948, eager to make his mark in the world. While serving in Manheim, Germany, he meets a local woman, Jelka, and the two embark on a relationship that will impact their lives forever.
In 1965 Maryland, Sophia Clark is given an opportunity to attend a prestigious all white boarding school and escape her heartless parents. While at the school, she discovers a secret that upends her world and sends her on a quest to unravel her own identity.
Toggling between the lives of these three individuals, Keeper of Lost Children explores how one woman’s vision will change the course of countless lives, and demonstrates that love in its myriad of forms—familial, parental, and forbidden, even love of self—can be transcendent.
From the author of American Eden—finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and more—comes a sweeping, richly researched biography of Frederic Church, the great 19th-century American artist whose stunning paintings of remote lands and seas thrilled American audiences and put the young republic on the map of world culture—published on Church’s bicentennial.
“They came to see the world.”
New York, spring 1859. Outside Frederic Church’s Tenth Street studio, men and women amassed by the thousands hoping for a glimpse of his magnificent Heart of the Andes: a painting whose sublime, ‘near supernatural’ rendering of the vast Andean landscape encountered on the artist’s recent travels introduced thousands of Americans to the fierce, majestic beauty of the far-flung wildernesses of the globe.
Frederic Church brought the world to America, and America into the world. Cementing the United States as a cultural and artistic force a full century before America’s Abstract Impressionists rose to prominence, Church’s bold paintings composed odes in color, shadow, and light to natural places near and far: the lush jungles of South America and immense icebergs of Newfoundland where he journeyed as a young man; the Syrian deserts and ancient, ruined cities where he and his wife traveled following the devastating loss of their two young children; the verdant, luminous valley around the Hudson where Church first studied painting and where he returned and established his estate, Olana, whose landscape itself became a work of art. Deeply influenced by the work of Alexander von Humboldt, Church conjured a vision of the natural world as a place of communion with creation.
Church charted, across the latter half of the 19th century, a career that both inhabited and gave shape to the artistic, cultural, and political crosscurrents of his day. Through a close examination of Church’s letters, sketches, paintings, and diaries, and traveling in Church’s footsteps to Egypt, the Andes, Petra, Jamaica, and Jerusalem, Johnson traces the path not only of one man’s life, but of a country swept up in an era of vast and vertiginous change. Church worked and lived in New York in the city’s formative years. He was a founder of its first great museum, the Met, and in paintings, not in words, he conveyed his passion for the exquisite natural beauty of the United States, but also for a Union free of slavery. He gave Americans visions of the majesty of their own new country and of the wonders of worlds only to be seen in paintings by this astonishing adventurer and artist. Church was a master artist and innovator, turning landscape painting into a portrait of a nation, and in the process, putting American art on the map of the world. Glorious Country is a book, Johnson writes, “about how we see and what we save.”
At remote Rockhaven University, the shocking death of student Brantley Simms beneath the bell tower shatters the campus, a place that once felt safeguarded by local angels. A year later, Leah Gavin, who knew Brantley under strained circumstances, becomes study partners with his former roommate from a rival fraternity and begins to unravel the mystery surrounding Brantley’ s death. Her questions lead her back to Brantley’ s fraternity and her own closest friends, and from there into secret societies and the darker side of her beloved college. As Leah develops feelings for one boy, she finds herself entangled in a complicated relationship with another, who harbors his own suspicions about the tragedy. Caught between two people she cares for— three if she includes the one who is gone— Leah must confront the unsettling truths she discovers while continuing to navigate her own precarious life as a student. Angels at the Gate offers a poignant exploration of college life to the beat of a 1980s mixtape, set in an unusually insular environment permeated by misogyny and sexual repression.
The “remarkable” (Dr. Jane Goodall) story of a beagle’s past, and the future of animal research
When journalist Melanie D.G. Kaplan adopted her beagle Hammy, all she knew was that he had spent nearly four years in a research lab. Curious to know more about this gentle creature’s past, as well as the broader world of animal research, Kaplan—with Hammy in tow—embarks on a quest for answers. How did Hammy end up in a research facility? Why are we still using millions of animals a year in experiments? What have we learned from them? Is there another way?
In Lab Dog, Kaplan investigates the breeding and use of beagles for biomedical research, drug and product testing, and education. She takes readers on a journey, peeking behind laboratory doors and visiting with researchers, activists, ethicists, veterinarians, lawmakers, and innovators. Along the way, she finds thoughtful and caring humans on all sides of the debate, explores promising developments in nonanimal testing, and discovers puzzle pieces from Hammy’s past. Equal parts journalism and love story, Lab Dog offers a nuanced view on our relationship with a species that we both love and exploit, and a reason to hope for a better future for all.
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The must-read new book from Jonathan Karl, the author of New York Times bestsellers Tired of Winning, Betrayal, and Front Row at the Trump Show
In Retribution, Jonathan Karl’s unparalleled access brings us behind closed doors deep inside the White House and presidential campaigns, revealing the extraordinary moments that ended one man’s presidency and brought another back to power.
This is a story of unprecedented political plot twists, showing what happened behind the scenes as political fortunes fell and rose again, and as a new team coalesced around President Trump with the goal of creating an entirely new world order. From President Biden’s shocking withdrawal and Vice President Harris’s historic run, to the multiple assassination attempts on President Trump, his election, and the changes he has brought to every corner of the country, this book reveals in surprising new detail how we got here, and what we can expect from American politics in the years to come.
Historical horror maven Alma Katsu turns her talents to the modern world for the first time, in this terrifying tale about an all-powerful family with an ancient evil under its thumb.
“If you liked Succession but think it would have been a lot more fun with a 1,000 year old demon, then Alma Katsu’s Fiend has got you covered.” —Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
Imagine if the Sackler family had a demon at their beck and call.
The Berisha family runs one of the largest import-export companies in the world, and they’ve always been lucky. Their rivals suffer strokes. Inconvenient buildings catch on fire. Earthquakes swallow up manufacturing plants, destroying harmful evidence. Things always seem to work out for the Berishas. They’re blessed.
At least that is what Zef, the patriarch, has always told his three children. And each of them knows their place in the family—Dardan, as the only male heir, must prepare to take over as keeper of the Berisha secrets, Maris’s most powerful contribution, much to her dismay, will be to marry strategically, and Nora’s job, as the youngest, is to just stay out of the way. But when things stop going as planned, and the family blessing starts looking more like a curse, the Berishas begin to splinter, each hatching their own secret scheme. They didn’t get to be one of the richest families in the world without spilling a little blood, but this time, it might be their own.
Bet you can’t read the whole thing without laughing! These animal jokes will have you rolling on the floor laughing!
Why was the baby snake upset?
Because someone took his rattle.
What did the fast food worker say when the frog ordered a hamburger?
“Do you want flies with that?”
Get ready to BARK out loud with these hilarious animal jokes from author and expert funny man Alan Katz! Including knock-knock jokes and puns for all situations, The Funniest Animal Joke Book Ever has it all! It even includes activities and fill-in sections to write your own jokes!
Odyssey Award for Audiobook Excellence Winner
Poet, writer, and hip-hop educator Tony Keith Jr. makes his debut with a powerful YA memoir in verse, tracing his journey from being a closeted gay Black teen battling poverty, racism, and homophobia to becoming an openly gay first-generation college student who finds freedom in poetry. Perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, George M. Johnson, and Jacqueline Woodson.
Tony dreams about life after high school, where his poetic voice can find freedom on the stage and page. But the Boogeyman has been following Tony since he was six years old. First, the Boogeyman was after his Blackness, but Tony has learned It knows more than that: Tony wants to be the first in his family to attend college, but there’s no path to follow. He also has feelings for boys, desires that don’t align with the script he thinks is set for him and his girlfriend, Blu.
Despite a supportive network of family and friends, Tony doesn’t breathe a word to anyone about his feelings. As he grapples with his sexuality and moves from high school to college, he struggles with loneliness while finding solace in gay chat rooms and writing poetry. But how do you find your poetic voice when you are hiding the most important parts of yourself? And how do you escape the Boogeyman when it’s lurking inside you?
Twelve-year-old Zuzu Santos doesn’t want a robot. She and her best friends, otherwise known as “the Valleycats,” would rather explore Bright Valley on their own. But then Zuzu meets Snap, a know-it-all guardian robot with a limited battery life and an abundance of hope. A gripping, stand-alone, thematically rich survival story by two-time Newbery Medalist Erin Entrada Kelly, for fans of The Wild Robot and A Rover’s Story.
Bright Valley Subsidized Camp #5 is not a perfect place to live. It’s dusty, there are no trees to provide respite from the beating sun, the trailers are falling apart, and the water supply is heavily rationed. But to twelve-year-old Zuzu Santos and her three best friends, Bright Valley is home.
When Zuzu’s dad loses his job at Lockwood, the corporation that controls everything from rations to education, he isn’t given money or food or water as severance, but a dated, first-generation robot. They do not provide a working charging station. Zuzu names the robot Snap, and he soon becomes part of the Bright Valley family. But Snap’s battery is dwindling every day, and though Snap is prepared for his inevitable reset, Zuzu isn’t. She would do whatever it takes to keep Snap alive. The problem is, Snap would do the same for Zuzu and her friends, no matter the cost.
Erin Entrada Kelly tells a moving story of friendship and family, rich with themes and characters that will resonate with readers. The Second Life of Snap is a futuristic book for middle graders that is grounded, full of heart and humor, and unforgettable. An excellent choice for fans of The Wild Robot, A Rover’s Story, and Erin Entrada Kelly’s own We Dream of Space.
WINNER OF THE THREE MILE HARBOR PRESS POETRY PRIZE
Elizabeth Knapp is the poet we need in these dark and troubled times. With wit, wisdom, and deep feeling, the poems in Causa Sui speak directly to the madness of the moment. Knapp draws on an astonishing diversity of sources, from pop culture and political tracts to Western philosophy and Greek myth, creating deftly wrought poems that provide a way of understanding, enduring, and responding to the mayhem.
“Causa Sui” is a collection that engages deeply with poetic tradition but, more importantly, hungers for a reality better than the one we have at hand. “Sometimes I want to take // the world between my hands & shake it / really hard,” admits the speaker of one poem, “& sometimes I want to read // it like I would a favorite novel, slowly, / over a season.” Elizabeth Knapp has unerring instincts for how to carve a line, whether from intimate memory, reflections on pop culture, or the raw clay of ChatGPT. This is a bold, potent book written in time—a record of anger, a marker of the will to endure, and a celebration of wit and its power to instigate.
—Sandra Beasley, author of “Made to Explode”
With burnished lyricism and uncanny wisdom, the poems in Causa Sui ask what it means to make art at this post-pandemic, post-insurrection moment in history, calling upon pop culture as well as Western philosophy, Greek mythology, and the reality of active shooter drills. The humor in this book is both arch and necessary; we find ourselves in a dark time and place in which Americans devise “new & inventive ways of / killing each other,” then “hide / the evidence” before “set[ting] the forest on fire.” Causa Sui will give you the courage to reenter and reclaim this broken world. The songs we keep sustain us, Knapp says: they “open themselves & take flight.”
—James Allen Hall, author of Romantic Comedy
Furious, sorrowful, and hilarious, Causa Sui is a full-throated lamentation for the America of our dreams. It speaks directly to our present moment, where “we’re always on the cusp / of catastrophe…simmering on the stove of history.” Knapp draws on all the material of our “simmering” world—Britney Spears, the Ancient Greeks, Project 2025, assorted philosophers and poets, ChatGPT—to craft glittering sonnets, erasures, couplets, and found poems. She takes the measure of our current reality—“This is how we do it in America, big fat clouds / like blank checks over our heads, our SUVs //parked in the driveway like slumbering gods”—asking, “how can we / save ourselves from ourselves when / we’re holding both the gun & the target?” Darkly funny, sharply self-aware, yet deeply felt, these poems are essential reading for anyone stunned and stumbling through our times.
—Kirun Kapur, author of Women in the Waiting Room
Elizabeth Knapp is the author of two previous poetry collections, Requiem with an Amulet in Its Beak (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2019), winner of the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize, and The Spite House (C&R Press, 2011), winner of the De Novo Poetry Prize. She is the founding director of the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing at Hood College and lives in Maryland with her family.
From New York Times best-selling author Michelle Knudsen comes a pitch-perfect fantasy about adolescent girlhood—navigating friendship and trust, owning your gifts, and becoming the hero of your own story.
Eleven-year-old Bevvy spends her time avoiding other kids, playing with her neighbor’s kittens, and escaping into her fantasy novels. When new girl Cat arrives at school, Bevvy thinks she may finally have found a friend, until Cat provokes Bevvy’s worst tormentor and leaves her alone to deal with the consequences. Later, on Bevvy’s doorstep, Cat’s apology is cut short when a car with dark windows rolls up. Bolting into a nearby wood with Bevvy in tow, Cat proceeds to open a hole, in the air, just in time. Bevvy knows magic when she sees it, the kind in books, but the world the girls escape to—teeming with unicorns, sorcerers, and dragons—is shockingly, exhilaratingly real. It’s a world at war. Those who wield wild magic, in tune with nature, are pitted against dark sorcerers. As Bevvy’s role in the struggle grows, and her confidence with it, can she trust Cat to support her? Can she trust herself not to run? An acclaimed author builds a breathtaking and emotionally resonant world where magic and monsters are real and friendship and risk go hand in hand.
Tread Upon—by turns tender and furious, and wholly original—attempts to depict the various scales upon which climate change unfolds around us.
Bold, incisive, and wholly original, Christopher Kondrich’s Tread Upon explores the social, political, religious, and economic drivers behind the chronic devaluation of the living world. In this book-length sequence, in which each section unravels a word or phrase of the prefatory poem, Tread Upon sprawls from suburbia to the Southern Ocean, from the Cape Fear River to the phones in our hands. Kondrich juxtaposes the intimate with the epic, integrating climate research and reporting to dismantle narratives of anthropocentrism and our individual responsibility amid corporate misinformation. What is the price of our (in)actions and who must pay the cost? In this world where “even one blade is a place,” the sequence reveals that the violence done to the living world is violence done to ourselves.
An historical novel inspired by the experiences of the author’s own family after the Holocaust, a sweeping saga about survival, loss, love, and the reverberating effects of war
In 2018, Zoe Rosenzweig is reeling after the loss of her beloved grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. She becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened to her family during the war.
Vienna, 1946: Chana Rosenzweig has endured the horrors of war to find herself, her mother, and her younger brother finally free in Vienna. But freedom doesn’t look like they’d imagined it would, as they struggle to make a living and stay safe.
Despite the danger, Chana sneaks out most nights to return to the hotel kitchen where she works as a dishwasher, using the quiet nighttime hours to bake her late father’s recipes. Soon, Chana finds herself caught in a dangerous love triangle, torn between the black-market dealer who has offered marriage and protection, and the apprentice baker who shares her passions. How will Chana balance her love of baking against her family’s need for security?
The Lost Baker of Vienna affirms the unbreakable bonds of family, shining a light on the courageous spirit of WWII refugees as they battle to survive the overwhelming hardships of a world torn apart.
Do you have what it takes to be a superhero? Just grab the included marker and start drawing—there are crooks to be caught!
Gadzooks! Dr. Dreadful is causing chaos all over town. Quick—pick up the dry-erase marker that comes with this book and put your drawing skills to work. This superhero needs help blocking an army of robot mice, getting some babies back their stolen candy, and cleaning up a playground. It’s up to YOU to complete the book. Once you’re done, just wipe off the pages and test your drawing prowess again. From David LaRochelle, Geisel Award–winning author of See the Cat and its sequels, comes a clever, interactive adventure tailor-made for creative kids, enthusiastic doodlers, and anyone who’s ever dreamed of being a superhero.
“Make Jane Commissioner… Leavy has a voice demanding to be heard—and Major League Baseball should listen.”— THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
A New York Times bestselling biographer and lifelong baseball devotee takes readers on an epic journey through the game that baseball has become— a heartfelt manifesto that’s perfect for lovers of the sport.
Jane Leavy has always loved baseball. Her grandmother lived one long, loud foul ball away from Yankee Stadium—the same grandmother who took young Jane to Saks Fifth Avenue and bought her her first baseball glove. It’s no coincidence that Leavy was covering the game she loved for the Washington Post by the late 1970s. As a pioneering female sportswriter, she eventually turned her talent to books, penning three of the all-time best baseball biographies about three of the all-time best players: Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle, and Babe Ruth. But when she went searching for a fourth biographical subject, she realized that baseball had faltered. The Moneyball era of the last two decades obsessed over data and slowed the game down to a crawl, often at the expense of thrills, skills, and surprise. Major League Baseball has begun to address issues too long ignored, yet the questions linger: how much have these efforts helped to improve the game and reassert its place in American culture?
Leavy takes a whirlwind tour of the country seeking answers to these questions, talking with luminaries like Joe Torre, Dave Roberts, Jim Palmer, Dusty Baker, and more. What Leavy uncovers is not only what’s wrong with baseball—and how to fix it—but also what’s right with baseball, and how it illuminates characters, tells stories, and fires up the imagination of those who love it and everyone who could discover it anew.
Part elegy to a friend who died by suicide, part love poem to a friend who continues to survive, Her Dark Everything is a collection that will pull you through the darkest depths until you feel the light against your skin. It will make you grieve for those who have lost the battle against the beast that is depression while simultaneously making you grateful for those who stay and fight. In equal measures dark and light, soft and sharp, Her Dark Everything will roost in your heart permanently.
***
If you blend radiance with darkness, hope with death then hope again, and tie them into a gorgeous friendship knot, you’ll glimpse the brilliance of Courtney LeBlanc’s Her Dark Everything. This collection, an elegy to her friend Paula and a love poem to her best friend Virginia, is nothing short of breathtaking. Few poets make me eagerly await their next book, but LeBlanc’s edgy, funny, fierce, fearless, and engaging voice always delivers. LeBlanc’s lines cut deep and resonate long after the page is turned: I know 2 women who have died by suicide + the year isn’t over and I’m trying to write about joy, trying / to find honey in the words, trying / to lick it from my fingertips and let / it be enough. Her Dark Everything is a masterclass in balancing raw vulnerability with poignant celebration. This is a gorgeous and meaningful collection of poems that you won’t be able to put down-and won’t want to. Her Dark Everything is a testament to poetry’s power to heal, transform, and find light and beauty even in the darkest times.
Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Dialogues with Rising Tides
In her fourth, full-length poetry collection, Her Dark Everything, Courtney LeBlanc approaches grief, friendship & what it means to be human with tenderness and candor. These revelatory poems include experimental forms and traditional elegies, all characterized by universal, timeless questions about what it means to be human in a world that often annihilates us. What if we had been able to save a friend lost to suicide? What if we “demanded more” of life? What if the pills went “unswallowed?” These poems confront loss and survival, yes-but they also ask us to consider whether we are making the most of our own lives in the time that we have-and if not, why not?
Joan Kwon Glass, author of Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms and Night Swim
Her Dark Everything is the masterful fourth collection Courtney LeBlanc brings to readers in a poignant exploration of grief and self-acceptance, weaving enormous loss with the broader theme of embracing one’s inner darkness. LeBlanc’s poetry captures the raw, visceral experience of mourning a friend gone tragically too soon, using everyday objects like poetry workshops and black nail polish, and moments as powerful symbols of memory, nostalgia, and emotion. Her language is both delicate and fierce, as she paints lyrical scenes for readers into the intimate process of grappling with sorrow and seeking brightness in the midst of despair. Courtney LeBlanc’s collection is a testament to the power of poetry to heal and transform, and ultimately, provides the blueprint on hope. Bree Bailey, author of Wailing on Whisper Street
Megan Leonard’s sparkling poetry collection Larkspur Queen opens with the Castle Queen exclaiming, “[Y]ou don’t know what my cells have endured / in this life or in another / unless you sit and listen / to me tell it.” What follows are six, awe-making sections of lyrical narratives that transport the reader to lands just unfamiliar enough to set the world we know off-kilter and make it new. Leonard weaves personal and universal tales taking her inspiration from the Lais of Marie de France, a collection of 12th century narrative romantic poems. “This is the magic,” Leonard writes, and readers will eagerly embrace the women of these stories: the Castle Queen, The Queen of Small Things, the Forest Queen, The Princess and the Falcon, the Spider Queen, and the Larkspur Queen. “Calling them by their names makes them friends,” the poet might say, and the reader comes to know each subject intimately brought to life in verse. “I will never leave you, we will find a way. . .” says the Larkspur Queen to her ghost daughter; Leonard’s writing holds this promise.
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
“An amazing piece of work . . . This is not just a series of newly reported anecdotes and pieces of information. It is a remarkable thesis about how Trump effectively broke the Justice Department in his first term by bullying it.” —Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show
From Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, a shocking investigation of unparalleled depth into the subversion of the Justice Department over the last decade, culminating in President Donald Trump upending this cornerstone of democracy and threatening America’s rule of law as we have long known it
Throughout his first administration, Trump did more than any other president to politicize the nation’s top law enforcement agency, pressuring appointees to shield him, to target his enemies, and even to help him cling to power after his 2020 election defeat. The department, pressed into a defensive crouch, has never fully recovered.
Injustice exposes not only the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the department at every turn but also how delays in investigating Trump’s effort to overturn the will of voters under Attorney General Merrick Garland helped prevent the country from holding Trump accountable and enabled his return to power. With never-before-told accounts, Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis take readers inside as prosecutors convulsed over Trump’s disdain for the rule of law, and FBI agents, the department’s storied investigators, at times retreated in fear. They take you to the rooms where Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team set off on an all-but-impossible race to investigate Trump for absconding with classified documents and waging an assault on democracy—and inside his prosecution’s heroic and fateful choices that ultimately backfired.
With a plethora of sources deeply embedded in the ranks of three presidencies, Leonnig and Davis reveal the daily war secretly waged for the soul of the department, how it has been shredded by propaganda and partisanship, and how—if the United States hopes to live on with its same form of government—Trump’s war with the Justice Department will mark a turning point from which it will be hard to recover. Injustice is the jaw-dropping account of partisans and enablers undoing democracy, heroes still battling to preserve a nation governed by laws, and a call to action for those who believe in liberty and justice for all.
Finalist for the 2024 National Poetry Series, Spoke is a 2025 selection for The Word Works’ Hilary Tham Capital Collection.
Arden Levine’s debut full-length collection, Spoke, follows a woman cycling across the precarious terrain of heredity and legacy against the traffic of early trauma and grief. Part elegy for a parent lost young, part coming-of-age story-in-verse, part Generation X cultural inventory, Levine navigates accidents, sorrow, and urban landscapes with wit, cheek, and an excellent mix-tape.
—
Spoke creates a tender and forensic taxonomy, as surprising as it is capacious. These aren’t just poems—they’re access points to a complex personal chronicle and, more importantly, they are invitations to dialogue. Spoke offers beautiful revolutions of language and, within each turn, a revelation. – Sandra Beasley, author of Made to Explode (W.W. Norton)
The voice in Spoke is a savvy speaker’s riff on what hard-won wisdom looks like: raw and well-read, astute and lacerated, compassionate and sardonic, with a keen edge of laugh-out-loud sophistication. Levine is fully in control of the language she has learned to wield against the common but wily forces that beset us all. – Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., author of Salient (New Directions)
In their terse and truthful way, these poems reveal the living music of father/daughter relationships, guilt, grief, and deep, abiding love. Spoke shifts forms, breaks genres, and quotes pop tunes to tease out, tear up, and temper a woman’s emotional journey. What a ride. Join her. – Patricia Spears Jones, author of The Beloved Community (Copper Canyon Press)
SEVEN STARRED REVIEWS * NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK * INDIE NEXT PICK * KIRKUS BEST BOOK * BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK * BOSTON GLOBE BEST BOOK * HORN BOOK FANFARE * SHELF AWARENESS BEST BOOK * SCBWI GOLDEN KITE AWARD FINALIST
“Utterly beautiful, playfully fun, and, above all, breathtaking.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Mr. Lies has set a new standard for ingenuity” —Wall Street Journal
With lush paintings and intricately constructed 3-D artwork, bestselling and Caldecott Honor–winning author-illustrator Brian Lies introduces a sleepy kitten whose afternoon nap transforms into an epic journey through art, time, and history. Perfect for fans of They All Saw a Cat, Museum Trip, and Jumanji. Includes a note from the author about how the illustrations were created.
In the warm, late afternoon sunlight, a girl sits on the couch reading a book. Her kitten dozes nearby. But when Kitten notices a mouse and dives after it through a framed poster on the wall, an epic chase through time, art, and history ensues. Is it a dream? That’s up to the reader to decide, but for the kitten, every leap and bound is full of suspense and makes for a masterpiece.
Caldecott Honor–winning andNew York Times bestsellingauthor-illustrator Brian Lies creates a truly unique picture book journey that invites young readers through the galleries of an art museum as well as through time, space, and history. As the cat and mouse leap from one page to the next, they are portrayed in the style of masterful artworks from history—an ancient Egyptian relief, an illuminated manuscript, a stained-glass window, a ceramic dog—each painstakingly and lovingly re-created in its original media by Brian Lies. When the sly mouse gets away, Kitten finds himself lost and alone. Will art help him find his way home?
This visual showstopper by an award-winning and bestselling picture book creator offers readers a page-turning cat and mouse chase, an introduction to famous works of art throughout history, an epic adventure story, and a homecoming. Backmatter includes information about how each of the illustrations in the book was created, notes on the original artworks featured in the book, and an afterword inviting young readers to make, create, and build things.
For fans of S.A. Chakraborty, Robin Hobb, and Martha Wells’s Witch King, a page-turning standalone fantasy of necromancy and magical mayhem from Jenn Lyons, the acclaimed author of The Ruin of Kings.
Centuries ago, necromancy almost destroyed the world. That’s how history remembers it.
History remembers it wrong.
Mathaiik has trained all his life to join the sacred order of the Idallik Knights, charged with defending their world from the forces of necromancy. Only vestiges of that cursed magic remain, nothing like the fabled days of the Grim Lords, the undead wizards who once nearly destroyed the world.
But when an even stranger kind of monster begins to wake, the Knights quickly prove powerless to stop them. Whole forests are coming alive and devouring anyone so foolish as to trespass, as if the land itself has turned upon humanity.
It’s a good thing, then, that the Grim Lords were never truly destroyed. One of their number sleeps below the Knights’ very fortress. And when an army of twisted tree monsters attacks the young initiates in his charge, Math decides to do the unthinkable: he wakes her up.
This is only the beginning of his problems. Because said necromancer, Kaiataris, knows something history has forgotten. The threat of this wild magic is part of a cycle that has repeated countless times–life after death, chaos after order. And if she and Math can’t find a new way to balance the scales, this won’t just be the end of the world as they know it, but the end of all life, everywhere.
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Not If I Can Help It, a story about reaching across time to find the support you need against bullies, bad friends, and antisemitism.
Mason lives in 2023. His parents have just split up, and there’s a guy at school who won’t get off his case. As part of an assignment, he writes a letter to Albert Einstein and it ends up getting a little too personal. He throws the letter into his closet…
…and the next day he gets a letter back from a girl named Talia, who lives in 1987. She has problems of her own, including classmates who make jokes because she’s Jewish. She thought her friends would have her back. But it ends up the only person she really has to talk to is… a random boy from the future?
In the tradition of such beloved novels as When You Reach Me and Save Me a Seat, Carolyn Mackler has written a funny, all-too-relatable story about finding the friend you need… even if that friends happens to live in another year.
Voted one of the Best Books of 2023 by the New York Public Library, Cynthia Manick’s poetry collection personifies love of self and culture through fresh observations and bitter truths voiced with breathtaking lyricism.
No Sweet Without Brine is both a soulful and celebratory collection that summons sticky sweet memories with an acrid aftertaste of deep thought. Satisfying moments are captured in odes to Idris Elba’s dulcet tones on a meditation app and the satisfaction of half-priced Entenmann’s poundcake; in childlike observations of parental Black love, the coveted female form on Jet Magazine covers, and the desire for Zamunda to be a real place full of Black joy. The sour taps into an analysis of reclusiveness, silencing catcalls from men on the street, and detailed recipes and advice to the Black girls forced to endow themselves with armor against the world.
Cynthia Manick’s latest is a playlist of everyday life, introverted thoughts, familial bonds, and social commentary. In piercing language, she traces the circle of life for a narrator who dares to exist between youthful remembrances and adulthood realities. Each poem in No Sweet Without Brine is a reminder that a hint of sorrow makes the celebration and recognition of the glory of Blackness in all ways, and through all people, that much sweeter.
From award-winning historian Leonard S. Marcus, Earthrise is a unique middle-grade nonfiction book about the astonishing photograph taken during the Apollo 8 mission that forever shifted the way we view ourselves and our planet.
Gazing out the window of the Apollo 8 spacecraft on Christmas Eve, 1968, NASA astronaut Bill Anders grabbed his camera and snapped the iconic color photo of our planet rising over the lunar horizon. Not long after the crew’s safe return, NASA developed Anders’s film and released “Earthrise” to the world. It soon became one of the most viewed and consequential photographs in all of human history, inspiring the first Earth Day in 1970 and boosting the global environmental movement. In the decades since, this incredible photograph of our small yet beautiful, familiar yet strange, “blue marble” has moved billions to rethink their understanding of our home planet, and even their very idea of “home.”
A companion to Marcus’s acclaimed Mr. Lincoln Sits for His Portrait―a unique biography of America’s sixteenth president centered around one famous 1864 photo―Earthrise uses the same technique of exploring a key moment in US history through the lens of an iconic photograph. This rocket-paced, compact, and highly accessible nonfiction book includes a trove of black-and-white images and related materials throughout.
An atmospheric speculative suspense novel following a mysterious society offering its members the chance to relive the death of another person—and the self-destructive woman determined to uncover its secrets
This ambitious, genre-bending debut is perfect for fans of time-travel fiction including Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library and Gareth Brown’s The Book of Doors
For twenty years, Greta Davenport has lived with the guilt of surviving the accident that killed her parents. She’s tested the limits of her own mortality ever since, but little gives her the dopamine rush she craves. Not until the night she almost drunkenly crashes her car into a tree, and a peculiar blank card slides under her front door—an invitation to the Found Object Society. What she discovers there is beyond comprehension: an opulent, subterranean playground filled with aisles of objects from different eras and regions of the world. Pick an object and go on a voyage to relive the final moments of the person who died holding it, along with an unparalleled, irreplicable high. Greta’s hooked, but she can’t quiet her questions about the society and its enigmatic creators, the answers to which have implications far beyond her growing dependence on the voyages. Death is addictive, and what she uncovers will put her entire life into question.
A fever dream of a novel with episodic, time-traveling chapters told from multiple points of view, The Found Object Society examines the depraved whims of the ultrarich and the breadth of unresolved trauma—all while asking how grief and the choices we make in its aftermath can change the course of our lives. Michelle Maryk’s wholly original and ambitious debut opens an impeccably wrought speculative world of greed, power, and destiny.
A movie censor murdered, a leading lady vanished—the glamour, romance, and intrigue of the beginnings of Bollywood come to vivid life in the thrilling new installment of the Perveen Mistry historical mystery series.
India, 1922: Perveen Mistry, the only female lawyer in Bombay, has secured her biggest client yet: Champa Films, a movie studio run by director Subhas Ghoshal and his wife, Rochana, the biggest name in Indian cinema. In the public eye, Rochana is notorious for her beauty and her daring stunts—behind the scenes, she has recently left the studio in Calcutta that made her famous, and the studio owner is enraged by what he claims is a breach of contract. Rochana needs Perveen’s legal help to extricate Champa Films from the impending controversy.
To study Rochana’s glamorous world, Perveen attends a special screening and brings her film fanatic best friend, Alice Hobson-Jones. But in the aftermath of the event, one of the guests is found dead, and to make matters worse, Rochana has disappeared.
To protect her clients, Perveen begins to investigate the developing murder case, peeling back the glitz to reveal a salacious web of blackmail, deceit, and romantic affairs. For the first time in their friendship, Alice seems to be keeping a secret from Perveen. Is she hiding key information about the night of the murder? Will Perveen be able to detangle the truth from lies while protecting herself—and her closest friend?
A blizzard. An oath. A war outside and within.
By the winter of 1916, World War I has ravaged the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Eighteen-year-old Renata Zamoyska, Polish countess and doctor-in-training, has lost everything to the Russian occupation: her family, her home, her fiancé. But with the Russians in retreat and the Germans now in charge, life isn’t much easier. Wounded soldiers keep arriving from the front, Renia’s house remains in ruins, and the scars of the occupation linger.
When two Polish deserters from the Russian army turn up on her doorstep just before a fierce blizzard, Renia finds herself trapped in her own home alongside people she’s long considered enemies. Cut off from the outside world while the storm rages, Renia must fight to survive, grapple with her wartime scars, and decide what justice, freedom, and healing look like for her.
America’s Future: poetry and prose in response to tomorrow features 164 bold, thought-provoking writers including an opening speech, published here for the first time, by Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland; poetry by master poet E. Ethelbert Miller in collaboration with Miho Kinnas, essays by Marvin Kalb and Bethanne Patrick, and short stories by Mary Kay Zuravleff, Kathleen Wheaton, and more. The anthology arrives at an urgent moment in our nation’s history, when many are anxiously questioning: What are the possibilities for the future? Some pieces turn to our past, reckoning with the wounds we still carry in today’s scars before questioning the future. Others turn their gaze forward, imagining the ways hope and reinvention can carve new paths.
What happens when a sporty foster kid from the suburbs meets her glamorous birth mom in the big city? This slice-of-life novel is perfect for fans of Judy Blume and Wendy Mass.
Brady Mason couldn’t care less about fashion. She likes what she knows: baseball, comfortable clothes, and pork roll with egg and cheese. When Brady’s friends notice that she looks strangely like fashion editor Elena Lavigne, they start the rumor that Brady is Elena’s long-lost daughter. They’ll make a few TikTok videos, get some fun buzz online about their similarities, and that will be the end of it.
But when a DNA test confirms that Brady is Elena’s long-lost daughter, she’s summoned to Manhattan to live with her. The only problem: Elena’s high-fashion life clashes with Brady’s tomboy antics, and Elena doesn’t know how to be a mother any more than Brady knows how to be a daughter. But the more time passes, the more Brady sees what they have in common, and she starts wondering…if she and Elena are both searching for a family, could the two of them be the right fit?
Balancing humor and heart, here is a winning story of hard-fought growth and found family.
Perfect for fans of Hilo!
Created by real-life astronaut Leland Melvin!
The action-packed space adventure continues!
The team of kids-turned-astronauts are back again and this time they are heading farther than any kid has traveled before…to the moon!
But ever since Steven got back from being injured and going through physical therapy, his friends are acting a little strange. They are extra courteous to him, almost tripping over themselves to help, and stuttering over the wrong words. They mean well but Steven just wants to be treated like a regular member of the team. Plus the moon is an unstable environment, and when moonquakes keep shaking things up, the lives of the entire team are danger. It’ll be up to the kids to trust each other’s wits, capabilities and strengths in order to get through the crisis and get each other home safely.
Crafted by the visionary minds of astronaut Leland Melvin, Joe Caramagna, and Alison Acton, dive into this riveting space odyssey, where the vastness of space tests the bounds of friendship and courage.
“An incisive study that illuminates the myriad complexities of chronic illness.”―Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
“Movingly spotlights the struggles of chronically ill patients.”―Publishers Weekly
A moving cultural history of disability―and a powerful call to action to change how our medical system and society supports those with complex chronic conditions
From lupus to Lyme, invisible illness is often dismissed by everyone but the sufferers. Why does the medical establishment continually insist that, when symptoms are hard to explain, they are probably just in your head?
Inspired by her work with long COVID patients, medical anthropologist Emily Mendenhall traces the story of complex chronic conditions to show why both research and practice fail so many. Mendenhall points out disconnects between the reality of chronic disease―which typically involves multiple intersecting problems resulting in unique, individualized illness―and the assumptions of medical providers, who behave as though chronic diseases have uniform effects for everyone. And while invisible illnesses have historically been associated with white middle-class women, being believed that you are sick is even more difficult for patients whose social identities and lived experiences may not align with dominant medical thought. Weaving together cultural history with intimate interviews, Invisible Illness upholds the experiences of those living with complex illness to expose the failures of the American healthcare system―and how we can do better.
Chloe Yelena Miller’s Perforated offers us intimate, confiding poems that ask us to lean closer. “Can you keep a secret?” the poems say. This is a book of lost friendships and lost loves, the world an “Ever rotating exhibit of light and dark,” the regrets we have decades later over “what can go wrong / without the right words.” Throughout, the speaker-always a mother who fears the future-worries about English vocabulary and newly learned Italian phrases, as if learning language might teach us to mourn more easily this difficult present or help us to find, at last, a place we might call home.
A Jewish girl preparing for her upcoming bat mitzvah tries to keep a secret—along with one of her sister’s—in this beautiful coming-of-age contemporary novel that explores change, grief, and the complexities of sibling relationships.
Twelve-year-old Becky has great expectations placed upon her. Not only does she need to be as perfect as her older brother and sister, but her upcoming bat mitzvah needs to be perfect, too. She is the rabbi’s daughter, after all. The trouble is, Becky’s intentions often lead her astray. At least when she plays the flute, she feels like the best version of herself. Until playing the flute causes Becky to do something not so perfect: keep a secret from her parents.
Then Becky discovers that Sara, her “perfect” sister, has an even bigger secret. One that could turn the family upside down. The sisters couldn’t be more ready to keep each other’s secret safe…until the excitement turns to guilt, and Becky is forced to make an impossible choice.
When secrets are shared and choices are made, doing the right thing can feel so wrong. And Becky will learn that actions, no matter how well intended, always have consequences.
For fans of Jasmine Warga and Starfish, an Iranian American girl navigates complicated relationships with her mother, her best friend, and her body image in this unflinching and ultimately uplifting middle-grade debut.
Sometimes Yasmin feels like her body isn’t hers. And it’s not just because puberty has mounted a full-on alien invasion, or that emigrating from Iran a year-and-a-half ago has meant one change after another. It’s also because her mother constantly pushes her to lose weight, like sewing Yasmin a beautiful blue dress for Persian New Year that is too tight on purpose.
At school, it doesn’t help that Yasmin’s best friend, Carmen, is petite and close to her own mother, or that popular-girl Zoe always has a mean comment to spare. Yasmin is sure her crush, Jack, won’t ever like her the way she is, either.
With the pressure to fit in closing in on all sides, Yasmin starts taking desperate measures. But if being thin is supposed to make her happier, then why does losing weight feel like losing parts of herself, too?
From debut author Rebecca Morrison comes The Blue Dress, a heart-rending, funny, and hopeful book inspired by her own life, relatable to anyone who has ever needed to break away from someone else’s vision of how they should look in order to embrace their true self.
Longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Finalist for the Willie Morris Awards for Southern Fiction
One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2025
One of USA Today’s 15 Books You Should Read This Summer
One of Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Hot New Summer Reads
One of People‘s Most Anticipated Summer Books
One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025
A Late Show Book Club pick
The riveting new novel by the author of the 2021 National Book Award winner and bestseller Hell of a Book
People Like Us is Jason Mott’s electric new novel. It is not memoir, yet it has deeply personal connections to Jason’s life. And while rooted in reality, it explodes with dreamlike experiences that pull a reader in and don’t let go, from the ability to time travel to sightings of sea monsters and peacocks, and feelings of love and memory so real they hurt.
In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds.
People Like Us is wickedly funny and achingly sad all at once. It is an utter triumph bursting with larger-than-life characters who deliver a very real take on our world. This book contains characters experiencing deep loss and longing; it also is buoyed by riotous humor and characters who share the deepest love. It is the newest creation of a writer whose work amazes, delivering something utterly new yet instantly recognizable as a Jason Mott novel.
Finishing the novel will leave you absolutely breathless and, at the same time, utterly filled with joy for life, changed forever by characters who are people like us.
From award-winning historian Megan Kate Nelson, an epic account of the creation of the American West in the 19th century, shattering the traditional frontier myth that has dominated popular American culture.
The Westerners tells two richly detailed and interwoven stories. The first reveals the captivating lives of women and men moving through the American West—Indigenous peoples, Black Americans, Mexican Americans, and Canadian and Asian immigrants—in the 19th century. The second tracks the attempts of many Americans to erase these westerners from history, through a frontier myth that lionized individualism and conquest and celebrated white settlers traveling west in search of prosperity.
Nelson’s vivid, eye-opening account centers on seven extraordinary individuals whose lives capture the true history of the frontier: Sacajawea, not just Lewis and Clark’s guide but an explorer who forged her own path; Jim Beckwourth, a biracial fur trader whose sharp cultural insight made him indispensable; María Gertrudis Barceló, a Hispana gambling saloon owner who broke every stereotype to become the wealthiest woman in Santa Fe; Ovando Hollister, a gold miner, soldier, and newspaper man who championed Western expansion; Little Wolf, a Northern Cheyenne chief whose courageous leadership secured his people’s future; Canadian immigrant Ella Watson, who strove to become a ranch woman in a male-dominated world; and the defiant Polly Bemis, a Chinese immigrant who carved out a life in Idaho despite federal expulsion efforts.
Nelson roots this bold new history of the American West in the deep research and gripping storytelling that have garnered her critical acclaim. Highlighting the perseverance and ingenuity of the communities that have otherwise been forgotten or erased from history, The Westerners challenges us to reimagine who we are and where we came from.
Award-winning author G. Neri reflects on a childhood cross-country road trip with his family, sharing the wonder of America’s most famous landmarks, the best (and worst) of its history, and the remarkable diversity of its people.
The year is 1976, and America is throwing its biggest birthday party ever—its bicentennial. What better way to celebrate than with an eight-thousand-mile road trip? In this vibrant follow-up to his travelogue, My Antarctica: True Adventures in the Land of Mummified Seals, Space Robots, and So Much More,author G. Neri recalls his family’s real-life journey in a station wagon crossing twenty-six states in seven weeks, from California to Washington, DC, with only the aid of paper maps and transistor radios rather than smartphones and GPS. Young Greg is entranced by the variety of accents, strange foods, natural wonders, and historical attractions, from the Grand Canyon to the Statue of Liberty. He meets Civil War reenactors at Gettysburg, protesters in Philadelphia, pioneer wagon riders in Valley Forge, and his own rambunctious Texan cousins. And he glimpses the darker side of traveling as a family of color, pondering whether “We the People” includes people like him. Engaging text, sidebars, photos, and dynamic illustrations by Corban Wilkin create a personal snapshot of this extraordinary moment in US history, when a weary, post-Vietnam nation embraced the spirit of celebration. Back matter includes an author’s note, history and travel facts, and recommended reading.
A sentimental advertising creative and a blunt, no-nonsense bar owner find a second chance at love while binge-watching iconic holiday movies in this poignant and heartwarming romance, from the author of Charm City Rocks and All Together Now.
“Norman weaves nostalgic references to modern holiday classics . . . throughout this comforting romance.”—The Washington Post (Noteworthy Books of the Month)
The new year had barely begun when Grace White and Henry Adler both lost their spouses. Now, nearly a year later, the first holiday season since their “Great and Terrible Sadnesses” approaches. Although their mothers scheme to matchmake the two surviving spouses, it’s clear that neither is ready to date again. Yet no one understands what they are going through better than each other, and a delicate friendship is born.
When Henry sees an ad for a Christmas movie marathon—once an annual tradition for him and his wife—Grace offers to watch some films with him, despite her aversion to a few of his picks. Her two young kids, Ian and Bella, also join in whenever possible—bedtimes permitting, of course.
With each movie, Grace and Henry’s shared grief eases as they start to see a life beyond the sadness. But as they draw closer, other romantic possibilities leave them uncertain about their future together. Is their bond merely the result of loneliness and shared circumstances, or have they found something that’s worth taking a shot at . . . again?
From the New York Times bestselling author of Charlie Hustle and Fly Girls comes one of America’s greatest sports stories: the improbable rise of Larry Bird and the Indiana State Sycamores.
In the fall 1974, Larry Bird—one of the greatest players to ever pick up a basketball—was lost, and in danger of slipping away.
He had dropped out of Indiana University, spurning legendary Hoosiers head coach Bobby Knight. He returned home to French Lick, a tiny town in the second poorest county in Indiana, and he got a job hauling trash.
It could have ended right there for Bird, were it not for two men: Bob King, an old coach with bad knees, and Bill Hodges, a man who knew what it was like to be poor and overlooked. In the spring of 1975, during one of the darkest chapters of Bird’s life, King and Hodges convinced Bird to leave French Lick and play basketball at Indiana State University, a college that couldn’t even fill its arena, much less compete with Bobby Knight. Then, while no one was watching, King and Hodges built a team of players around Bird who were just like him: they were castoffs and leftovers, ready to work.
Four years later, in March 1979, this unheralded team would put together one of the greatest seasons in American sports history. By the time it was over, more than 50 million people would tune in to watch the Indiana State Sycamores play in the NCAA finals against Magic Johnson and Michigan State.
What happened that night would change college basketball and the NBA. Perhaps more importantly, it would change the members of this hardscrabble team, binding them together forever. In some ways, their one shining moment would never end.
Drawing on exclusive, in-depth interviews with players, coaches, and staffers, New York Times bestselling author and PEN American award–winning biographer Keith O’Brien offers a stirring account of the mighty Indiana State Sycamores. With its unforgettable ensemble cast, Heartland is more than just a sports book. It’s the story of a group of young men who achieved the greatest feat of all: immortality.
A gripping fable of imperial collapse that illuminates the crises of our times.
George Packer’s bestselling nonfiction work exploring American life has won many prizes, including the National Book Award. With The Emergency, he returns to fiction, bringing us a visionary novel that goes to the nerve center of what it means to live in a time of fracture and upheaval.
An empire has collapsed from boredom and loss of faith in itself. In the Emergency that follows, youth rebellions of urban Burghers and rural Yeomen embrace radical new ideas of humanity. Doctor Hugo Rustin, chief surgeon at the Imperial College Hospital, is increasingly estranged from his city and his family―from his wife, Annabelle, who finds fulfillment in their changed community; and especially from his teenage daughter, Selva, who has turned against her father’s values. When an incident at the hospital leads to Rustin’s disgrace, he seeks redemption in a quixotic and dangerous journey into the countryside, with Selva as his companion, just as the conflict between Burghers and Yeomen is reaching a crisis.
The Crown meets The West Wing in this illuminating history that chronicles the largely unknown story of Queen Elizabeth II’s relationship with thirteen American presidents, from Harry S. Truman to Donald J. Trump. With that, she changed the world.
No American or foreign leader has met with as many sitting presidents as Queen Elizabeth II. Her Royal Majesty’s seventy-year reign witnessed the highs and lows of the close and crucial alliance between the U.S. and the U.K., from the Suez crisis to Brexit.
Following the advice of her mentor, Winston Churchill, to “stay close to the Americans,” Queen Elizabeth played an unexpected role behind the scenes that has never been thoroughly explored. In The Queen and Her Presidents, veteran political reporter Susan Page goes beyond the image of a staid monarch in colorful hats to reveal a skilled strategist, who, like many powerful women, was routinely underestimated and discounted.
Page also shows the impact American presidents had on the monarch as she developed from a shy, anxious princess to a powerful and persuasive global leader, and analyzes both the reach and the limits of the “soft power” she wielded. These accounts of the Queen’s deft diplomacy provide candid and telling assessments of her partners in the Oval Office as well.
Page shares fascinating true stories and details, including:
- Going beyond rumors and speculation, the reality of the relationship between Donald Trump and Queen Elizabeth – and Trump’s own surprising comments about the monarch whose approval he coveted.
- The unexpected and genuine connection between the Queen and Barack Obama, and her surprising admission to him, and how each ranked the other as among the most impressive leaders of their lifetimes.
- Her influential friendship with Ronald Reagan during the Cold War, a bond built on their shared love of horses—and their conflict with Britain’s then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
- How Richard Nixon sought the Queen’s help during Watergate—and even wanted to make her a relative.
- Elizabeth’s hand-in-glove cooperation with John F. Kennedy and the distance from his successor, Lyndon Johnson, the only president who declined to meet with her in office.
- The almost paternal role played by Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, offering support and advice as the young monarch assumed the crown in the wake of her beloved father’s death.
Eye-opening and compelling, featuring an 8-page color photo insert, The Queen and Her Presidents is a remarkable chronicle of a legendary contemporary monarch and the American presidents who helped shape who helped shape her—and were shaped by her.
For five years, eve burton has hosted Poetry Evenings at Quince Orchard Libraryin Gaithersburg, MD, where she works as a librarian, encouraging participants to read, write, and enjoy poetry together. Writing in different forms and styles, on themes as varied as climate change, kindness, pie, and what poets do, our poets have experienced the joy of personal expression and the opportunity to improve their craft in a friendly, supportive environment. Echoes Through the Stacks is a collection of some of our poets’ finest work.
Exploring themes of community and gratitude, Newbery Medalist Linda Sue Park captures the diverse voices of a lively classroom discussion in a thought-provoking story told through linked poems: Love that Dog meets Seedfolks!
The assignment: If you could give someone special in your life a present—just one gift—who would you choose, and what would it be? Discuss. Certain students know their answers right away. A few find their answers more slowly. And while some responses spark lively conversation, others are revealed only in the privacy of journal pages. But all of the choices are as heartfelt as they are unexpected.
In accessible verse that highlights transformative moments of connection, Linda Sue Park celebrates the ways—big and small, obvious and unanticipated—our lives are enriched by the people we encounter. Robert Sae-Heng contributes black-and-white art to this eloquent stand-alone read that is also a welcomed companion to the popular The One Thing You’d Save.
At the suggestion of his girlfriend, June, Peter Ash rides to the aid of an investigative reporter who may have stumbled on a story more explosive than even he can handle in this propulsive new thriller from the bestselling and award-winning series.
Katelyn Thorsen, known as KT to her friends and enemies, is an independent journalist who receives a very specific death threat. Fortunately, Peter Ash has arrived in town to protect KT at the request of his girlfriend, June Cassidy. From the moment of his arrival, he’s thrown into a maelstrom of violence trying to protect KT and her daughter and discover the source of the death threat.
Even after June and Peter’s best friend Lewis arrive in Seattle to help, this challenge may be too much for them – with enormous consequences should they fail.
Steeped in the myths we spin about self, family, and nation, the poems of All the Possible Bodies attend to the complexities of violence in America, racial justice, and the intersection of personal and national identity.
Pollock’s third collection is an emotionally candid and intimate portrait of our varied identities as Americans: the ways we treat one another, the value we assign to each others’ lives, and the persistent internal conflict that tugs between our desires and greater duty.
With clarity of storytelling, musicality of lyric, and crisp language and image, these poems ask: How do we make peace with our hypocrisy and complicity in a social order that harms us all? Can and should we? Singular in its telling and universal in feeling, All the Possible Bodies seeks to answer these questions through its examination of the complicated emotional and spiritual states characteristic of contemporary American life.
In the fourth installment of the award-winning, critically acclaimed Lightfall series, Bea, Cad, and their friends continue their quest to restore light on their dark world. Perfect for fans of Amulet and Avatar, this next book dives deeper into the magical world of Irpa, where ancient secrets and adventures abound.
After surviving a shipwreck on the Fuerre Sea, Cad washes ashore on the shores of Pellidyr. There, he searches for Lorgon, the Water Spirit, but instead finds the other spirits of Irpa who question if their planet can be saved. One of them offers to help Cad and transports him to A Place Between, a strange liminal realm between the living and the dead, where Cad works to uncover the reason Lorgon summoned them to Pellidyr in the first place.
Meanwhile, Bea awakens within the walls of the capital city. While Pellidyr’s leader has heard the tales of Bea’s derring-do and believes her to be a hero with all the answers, she’s never felt more uncertain about the future. What she does know is that she can’t accomplish anything without her crew. When Bea’s escape plan also brings her to A Place Between, she makes a shocking discovery that changes her understanding of everything that came before her…and what could soon follow.
From award-winning author Lori Rader-Day, Wreck Your Heart is an engaging, “wisecracking and wonderful” crime novel with a big heart, about a country and midwestern singer out to catch her big break before family―or murder―wrecks everything.
Dahlia “Doll” Devine had the kind of hardscrabble beginning that could launch a thousand broken-hearted country songs, but now she’s the star of her own stage at McPhee’s Tavern. As part of Chicago’s―yes, Chicago’s―country music scene, Dahlia is an up-and-coming singer in spangles and boots of classic country tunes. Up and coming, that is, until her boyfriend Joey up and went, taking the rent money with him.
So Dahlia is back to square one, relying on Alex McPhee―again. Alex helped her out of a bad situation when she was a kid living rough with her mother. Now he’s part landlord, part band booster, all-around rescuer. It’s just that Dahlia wishes she didn’t keep giving him reasons to have to do it.
Just as Dahlia suspects she’s scraped rock bottom, the mother she hasn’t spoken to in twenty years shows up with something to say. The next morning, a distraught young woman arrives at the bar, asking after her missing mother―Dahlia’s mother, too, even if the missing suburban PTA mom the girl describes sounds pretty different from the one who let Dahlia down all those years ago.
Though no one is using the word sister any time soon, Dahlia lets herself be drawn into reuniting the family that might have been hers. But when a body is discovered outside McPhee’s Tavern, the crime threatens not just the place Dahlia has made into a home, but everything she’s believed about her past, her dreams for the future, and the people she was just, maybe, beginning to let into her heart.
In this heartbreakingly beautiful book, Steven Ratiner constructs a seamles fabric of grief, weaving threads of memory, keen observation of the natural world, variations on religious tradition,and an active awareness of language.Among the book’s smaller pleasures are complex metaphors,varied syntax, and constant attention to the word: the poet is “marred by, married to this compulsive/ language and cannot shut it(shout it) out even in this house of silence.” Which is fortunate for us who follow him as he moves from the personal before of witnessing illness and dementia, through a spiritually -deepened and globally-expanded exploration of death itself, to an after that finds solace in “love’s continuance, grief’s temporary reprieve,” as well as the more permanent gift of art. Steven Ratiner has been championing other poets for many years. This gorgeous collection of his own fine work is long overdue.–Martha Collins author of Casualty Reports (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Firefighting vehicles and other heroic trucks join forces to battle a fire and make sure everyone is safe and sound in this exciting addition to the New York Times bestselling Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site series.
When powerful winds knock over electric lines and start a dangerous fire, there’s a big job to do. Thankfully, help is on the way! Fire Engine, Foam Truck, Water Tender, and the rest of the mighty fire crew join forces with the classic Construction Site friends to save the day. Working through the night, they put out the flames, clean up the mess, and focus on what matters most—keeping everyone safe.
Sherri Duskey Rinker’s lively, rhyming text and AG Ford’s vibrant illustrations bring this team of heroic firefighters to life. Little construction fans will love watching trucks, both familiar and new, work together as a team to save the construction site.
Bunny Baxter thinks nothing could be worse than starting seventh grade at a school where she knows no one. But after her first day, she realizes things can actually get much worse.
If Bunny Baxter were an insect, she’d have so many ways to slip through seventh grade unnoticed. But she’s tall instead of tiny, has flaming red Medusa hair instead of camouflage, and she suffers from social anxiety, which makes it hard to be part of a swarm. Worst of all, she’s been redistricted to a new middle school away from her best friend who she could always hide behind when her anxiety got the best of her.
The first day at E.D. Britt Middle School does not go well. Bunny trips on the steps, falls into the cutest boy in the school, and causes a kid domino pile-up. At lunch, she unintentionally causes an uproar in the cafeteria, which lands her and another girl in the principal’s office. Bunny decides there is only one option: to get expelled so she can transfer to the school her best friend attends.
Praise for Unicorn Boy:
“an upbeat blend of magic and character growth.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review
“With the humor of Meggie Ramm’s Batcat and the layered hero’s journey of Ben Hatke’s Things in the Basement, this is a true hero of a tale.” –School Library Journal, starred review
“Gentle through-lines emphasize the value of devoted friendship and the joy of understanding oneself through storytelling.” –Kirkus
In the second exciting installment of this magical adventure, our hero Unicorn Boy sets out in search of deep mystical knowledge: how to fit in at a sleep-over, how to handle everyone seeming cooler than you are, and what’s up with this whole unicorn thing? Perfect for readers of Narwhal and Jelly, Grumpy Unicorn, and InvestiGators.
Brian Reyes always felt a bit different―even before growing a unicorn horn, discovering a talking muffin, and swallowing the ruler of the Underworld to save his BFF. So when he receives a mysterious invitation for a Unicorn-Only Sleepover, Brian wonders if these fellow magical creatures might help him make sense of his increasingly odd world. Held in an enchanted castle in the clouds, not everything at this glitzy, glamorous party is as it seems, and Brian will have to fend off increasing social anxiety, ignore the negative feelings in his gut, and stay true to himself if he’s going to survive the night!
With a wave of his magic pen, Dave Roman has created a cast of charming oddballs reckoning with normal, every day problems―you know, things like heroic destinies and the fate of all magic in the universe.
Did you know that a piece of cloth from the Wright Brothers’ Flyer has traveled to the moon, and Mars?
With NASA photos and playful illustrations throughout, here is an incredible slice of hidden history and an introduction to the science of air and space for all ages.
★ “A flight of fancy—and facts—sure to set aspiring scientists’ imaginations soaring.”—Kirkus, starred review
One day in 1903 the Wright brothers entered a department store in Ohio to buy a bolt of fabric. The plain muslin cloth was most often used to make underwear. As it happens, the Wright brothers were about to wrap the simple cloth around the ribs of a mechanical ‘wing’ and dramatically change the world. Sixty-six years later, in 1969, Neil Armstrongtook a big leap onto the moon. With him was a swatch of the exact fabric the bicycle mechanics had purchased in 1903. Fifty-two years after that, in 2021, a remote-controlled car-sized explorer landed on Mars. Attached to the underside of a cable was a tiny piece of very old cloth—cloth that had almost become underwear. Almost Underwear is the story of that incredible piece of fabric, and the historic ‘firsts’ it stitches together.
Junior Library Guild Selection
Kirkus Best of Picture Books 2024
ALSC Notable Children’s Book
Kentucky Bluegrass Award Nominee for Grades 3-5
Orange Blossom Nonfiction Award
★ “Readers with stars (and planets) in their eyes will be fascinated by this little-known swatch of detail from the story of our space program.”—Booklist, starred review
★”A delight from takeoff to landing.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
A fun, high-stakes true crime story story set in the Wild West, featuring spot art and comics throughout. Perfect for fans of MONA LISA VANISHES!
“Steve Sheinkin is more than an author―he’s a time traveler whose deep research and fabulous writing whisk readers on thrilling rides through history. Kids will be transfixed by this unbelievable-but-true story of Gilded Age diamond hunters, swindlers, and train robbers. It is one of my absolute favorites!” ―Lauren Tarshis, bestselling author of the I SURVIVED series
Late one night two travel-weary miners, Philip Arnold and John Slack, show up at a businessman’s office in San Francisco. The miners seem nervous. They’ve got something that needs to be locked in a safe overnight. What is it? Well, that really has to stay secret, but it’s…
DIAMONDS! And lots of them.
Had these two miners just discovered America’s first diamond mine? Well, this is the Gold Rush era after all. Plenty of people are striking it rich. Anything is possible.
When word of the find hits the streets, diamond fever sweeps the country. Wealthy investors are desperate to elbow Arnold and Slack aside and seize control―but can they persuade the miners to reveal the location of their bonanza? At the same time, thousands of prospectors fan out across the mountains and deserts of the West―will one of them find the site before greedy bankers grab everything for themselves?
In this page-turning, high-stakes western adventure, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Steve Sheinkin tells the true story of the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872, a rollicking tale of heists and hijinks, scams and scoundrels―and the last-minute triumph of a most unlikely hero.
J.D. Smith sagely examines and savagely excavates life of “the innocent and the contrite” in his seventh book of poetry, The Place That Is Coming to Us. His work begs the question: What type of world are we creating? From poems about “Sea Jellies” and “Canine,” to places like “Panajachel” and “At Finzel Swamp, or “Questions on Toads,” Smith’s gaze is far reaching, keenly observant, and honest. In the poem, “Apology in Siege,” the poet would “still like to imagine some god / would help, but” he observes, “that line looks broken/like the water, the gas and electricity.” With intellect, dry humor, and wit, Smith strips the world back, making visible that which the reader may overlook. Herein lies this book’s beauty and necessity. Somehow, Smith remains hopeful in the face of a questionable future. Living, the poet seems to say, is “To watch the animals / as more than travelers across a field of vision, / more than objects spotted in a vehicle’s window…” Even if connections in this world are illusions, dream of them, dream of more.
“This portrait of a young man caring for his mother is a rare combination of boldface intrigue and profound emotion.” —Oprah Daily, The Best Fall Books of 2025
“Come for the riveting father-son mystery, stay for the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory.” —Kirkus (starred review)
A son returns home to his dying mother to discover the astonishing truth of his origins and the secrets of a woman whose life and wisdom he is only beginning to understand
When Evan, twenty-six, is suddenly called home from his life abroad to the secluded farmhouse where he was raised by his mother, June, there is so much he does not yet know. He doesn’t know his mother is dying. He still doesn’t know the identity of his biological father or the elusive story of his mother’s creatively intense, emotionally turbulent romance with Bob Dylan, whom Evan reveres as an artist and whom strangers have long insisted he resembles. He doesn’t know the secrets of his mother’s life before he was born or what drove her to leave New York City for a completely different existence.
In this deeply moving debut novel, Sam Sussman writes one of the most tender and intimate mother-son relationships of our era. Caring for his mother as her illness worsens, and as she begins to tell him truths he has waited so long to hear, Evan comes to understand the startling gift this extraordinary woman has bequeathed him.
Inspired by the author’s own uncertain celebrity paternity, Boy from the North Country is an emotionally searing meditation on the most essential human themes: loss, healing, memory, and the redemptive power of love.
An ordinary girl’s longing to return to the way things were sets off a chain of events that lands her and her best friend in the Underwild in this second book in the New York Times bestselling middle grade fantasy series The Underwild—perfect for fans of Greenwild and Rick Riordan.
The best ways Anya knows how to cope with the struggles life throws her way is to keep her head down, stay invisible, and stick close to her best friend, Lizzie. Lizzie has been Anya’s rock since second grade. Together, they pretend the world away. But when Lizzie moves out of state, Anya is left adrift and desperately lonely.
One day, Anya follows a strange girl home from school and is shocked to see her go into the home of the woman who everyone in town swears is a witch. As Anya spies on the pair, she realizes the woman really does have magic—including a set of magical keys that can deliver you anywhere you want to go…keys that could reunite Anya with Lizzie. Anya has seen all she needs to; as soon as she has the chance, she steals the keys.
But magic always has a price. The keys do bring Anya to Lizzie, but then the girls are transported to the dark and chaotic world of the Underwild. Before long, Lizzie is snatched away by a terrible creature! Now wracked with guilt and paralyzed by fear, Anya has no choice but to trust the girl from school, Senka, when she unexpectedly shows up and offers to help. But can Anya find the bravery locked away deep inside herself in time to rescue her friend?
A story about self-discovery, grief, and destiny that begs the question: How do you keep going when your world has stopped spinning?
When Sydney Michaels stops for breakfast in order to put off scholastic ruin a little longer, she never expected to―quite literally―bump into cute-boy stranger, Marcus Burke.
When Marcus invites her to have breakfast with him instead of going to class, she can’t ignore the urge to get to know him better―or the fact that this charming new acquaintance seems just as interested in her.
After a magical day together in their hometown of New York City, Sydney is finally willing to believe that maybe―just maybe―after years of loss and heartache, she’s finally reached the good part.
But when it comes time to say goodbye, as they linger in a crosswalk, something happens. An accident? Sydney isn’t sure―all she knows is that, after screeching tires, blinding headlights, and a moment of searing pain, she opens her eyes and is back in her bed. On September 24–the morning of her big exam―again.
CAPITAL QUEER: A PRIDE CELEBRATION FROM WASHINGTON WRITERS’ PUBLISHING HOUSE showcases bold, queer voices from DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Featuring a mix of well-known, emerging, and new writers, this collection honors the LGBTQ+ experience through poetry, fiction, and essay. With themes of love, resilience, identity, and liberation, these powerful works speak to the heart of what it means to live authentically and creatively. CAPITAL QUEER is both a celebration of queer literature and a testament to the power of storytelling to connect and transform across generations and communities.
A woman ends up pregnant after a casual fling, but the father’s girlfriend has much more sinister intentions in this plot-driven suspense debut.
A modern spin on Fatal Attraction meets The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, perfect for fans of The Last Mrs. Parrish.
Still recovering from a devastating breakup, 34-year-old Savannah Mitchell has finally managed to put her life back together when she gets the shock of her life—after a brief fling with a man named Max, she is pregnant.
When she gets in touch to tell him, he reveals that he’s just gotten back together with his ex, Madison, and he will need time to break it to her. Surprisingly, Madison isn’t upset—in fact, she’s excited, and wants to help.
Max insists Madison has the best of intentions, but Savannah finds her efforts—popping by uninvited, demanding lifestyle changes, and pretty much trying to take over the pregnancy—anything but helpful. When Savannah finally stands up for herself, Madison’s treatment of her goes from casually cruel to downright dangerous.
All Savannah wanted to do was form a friendly co-parenting relationship with the father of her child—but his new girlfriend obviously has much more sinister plans in mind.
She has no plans to co-parent at all.
An absorbing speculative Queer romance, set in a town that uses technology to prevent hate speech and bullying. From the LAMBDA Award-winning author of The Grief Keeper.
When seventeen-year-old Sebastian agrees to come to New Gault to care for his absent and abusive mother after her cancer diagnosis, he is not prepared for the strange new community that awaits him or the distressing state he finds his mother in. He tries to help, but despite being ill, her tongue is as sharp as ever, finding all Sebas’s tender places. But he promised his Abuela he’d try to make this work.
Unfortunately trying also means attending TECH, New Gault’s high school. His first day, he’s assigned to enthusiastic TECH student ambassador, Lu, who introduces him to all TECH can offer—a safe space, free from bullying. But all this safety and technology comes with a catch—not only do you have to watch what you say, but you have to stay within a strict word limit. Sebas declines. To him New Gault feels more like the Stepford Wives than freedom.
For Lu, who suffers from anxiety and has a history of being bullied, TECH is a lifeline somewhere they can be safe. They can’t understand why Sebas would refuse. When Sebas rejects TECH, it feels as if he’s rejecting Lu.
But when Sebas learns if he doesn’t accept the TECH phone and abide by the rules, his mother will be denied cancer treatment, he changes his tune. Slowly, Lu and Sebas form a friendship that morphs into something more, but the closer they get, the more Sebas challenges Lu’s beliefs about TECH and what it means to be safe. Meanwhile, Sebas contemplates how to forgive his dying mother for being no mother at all.
This thought-provoking, tender love story examines what we’re willing to give up to feel safe as two broken teens navigate emotional trauma and discover what blooms may come from the ashes.
The forgotten heroes of Chosin—how Task Force Faith fought against impossible odds and a legacy of unfair shame.
On the 75th anniversary of the legendary Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Steve Vogel tells the little-known story of the Army soldiers who gave all during the Korean War’s most consequential battles and then were denigrated for their sacrifice. A Task Force Called Faith delivers a fresh perspective on Chosin, where 150,000 Chinese soldiers trapped 20,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers in the frozen mountains of North Korea in November and December of 1950. For seven decades, the Marines who successfully broke out from Chosin have been justly hailed as heroes, but the Army soldiers who fought alongside them have been reviled as cowards. In A Task Force Called Faith, Steve Vogel sets the record straight. What he’s learned is the culmination of twenty-five years of digging into the story, first as a reporter for The Washington Post and now as a leading military historian.
At Chosin, an Army force of 2,300 soldiers—a unit known as Task Force Faith—was positioned on the east side of the reservoir to protect the Marines’ flank but was overwhelmed by a Chinese force eight times its size. Fighting with little ammunition, support or food in temperatures that plunged to 35 degrees below zero, more than 80 percent of the Army soldiers were killed, captured, or wounded. After the battle, they were falsely accused of throwing down their weapons and feigning wounds. As Vogel documents, their brave fight through four days and five nights bought time for the Marines on the west side to consolidate and fight their way out. The Army survivors and their families have long sought to clear their names of those terrible charges and reclaim the honor they won at the frozen lake.
A Task Force Called Faith tells their story. Vogel carries the narrative to the present day, as the remains of many of the hundreds of soldiers still missing in action at Chosin continue to be identified and returned to their families.
During a time of growing tension and uncertainty in the relationship between the U.S. and China, A Task Force Called Faith provides an original, deeply researched look at the brutal, undeclared war the two countries fought 75 years ago. Chosin was the moment the Cold War turned into a savage and exceedingly hot conflict, leaving behind an uneasy standoff that looms ever larger with a nuclear-armed North Korea.
“This book! It stole my heart, broke my heart, and warmed my heart. Chase and Finnegan have the kind of friendship we all need.” ―Barbara O’Connor, New York Times bestselling author of Wish
From the Newbery Honor-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Rover’s Story comes the moving story of a cheetah who forms a friendship with a rescue dog―a bond that will change their lives forever. Perfect for fans of Katherine Applegate and Rosanne Parry.
Finnegan is a rescue dog with a broken heart.
Chase is an anxious cheetah cub, newly orphaned.
The two animals couldn’t be more different. But one day, they are brought together for the unlikeliest of reasons: Finnegan must help Chase gain the confidence she needs to perform as part of an educational program for children at a zoo.
Finnegan and Chase have each suffered losses and have trouble trusting. Yet somehow, they are just what the other needs. But if Finnegan isn’t able to help Chase overcome her fears, he won’t just be letting Chase down―he could be risking his new home as well.
Inspired by true stories from zoos across the country, award-winning author Jasmine Warga creates a deeply moving tale about how the power of friendship can transcend anything―even species.
“Utterly transporting. This book is all heart, and masterfully imagines the internal lives of two unlikely animal friends.” ―Eliot Schrefer, author of Endangered, a National Book Award Finalist
“Jasmine Warga’s brilliant and heartfelt storytelling made my heart soar. While spending time with Chase and Finnegan, words like friendship, family, connection, love, light, and joy kept racing through my mind. Most of all, the story filled me with HOPE!” ―John Schu, librarian and New York Times best-selling author of Louder Than Hunger
“Meet your new favorite animal story. Profoundly moving and vibrating with heart―this book will sit comfortably among the greats. Chase and Finnegan will stay with me for a long time. I loved it.” ―Tae Keller, Newbery Medal-winning author of When You Trap a Tiger
With dozens of major awards between them, a revered poet and a versatile artist pool their mastery to sing the praises of an undersea wonder.
A graceful bundle of nerves three times as ancient as the dinosaurs, the jellyfish is no fish but a spineless invertebrate without brain, heart, blood, or bones. Inside glass tanks in crowded aquariums, jellies hold visitors rapt with their slow-motion water ballet. Most of the world’s nearly four thousand species emit an otherworldly light, glowing red, yellow, violet, or blue in the underwater dark. Fifty species boast deadly venom, including pink meanies with boa-like tentacles, box jellies with two-dozen eyes apiece, and deadliest of all, cubozoans the size of human thumbnails. Coretta Scott King Award–winning author Carole Boston Weatherford brings poetry and playfulness to natural science as she shares her fascination with a singular creature. Fourteen wildly divergent poems—by turns dramatic and serene—pulse with life. From spreads of shimmering bioluminescence to graphic panels, stylish artwork blends poetry with science and fact with folklore and myth to form the ideal introduction to the “immortal” and mysterious jellyfish.
Rumors about the Knox and its influence have swirled through Boston for centuries. While some believe the secret society is merely an elite social club, others are convinced it hides something more sinister…
Vivian Lawrence was born into old-money Boston, but when her family fortune vanishes so does her carefully curated life. Desperate, she turns to an old family legend that ties her to the Knox and its inheritance, seeking a way into the exclusive secret society. She doesn’t expect that entry to come in the form of Peter, a Knox insider with movie star good looks and just enough roughness to his charm to make Vivian weak in the knees for the first time in her life.
Far from Boston’s glittering elite is newcomer Taylor Adams, a young nurse eager to leave her humble past behind. When the effortlessly glamorous Vivian lands in her ER after a suspicious fall, Taylor is instantly captivated. But then Vivian abruptly disappears without a trace, sending Taylor on a search for answers that pulls her into the Knox itself—as their new employee.
The further Taylor ventures into the Knox’s world of unimaginable wealth and dark history, the more the mystery surrounding Vivian deepens. As Taylor will soon discover, more so than money or status, secrets are this society’s true currency.
Something Big tells the story of the infamous Brown’s Chicken massacre, a brutal case that captivated Chicagoland after remaining unsolved for nearly a decade.
Customers know Brown’s Chicken for its crispy buttermilk fried chicken and flaky biscuits. The Illinois-based franchise has a reputation for delicious but simple comfort food. But through no fault of its own, the words “Brown’s Chicken” are also synonymous with one fateful night in January of 1993.
“A Real Hometown” is the trite but apt motto of Palatine, Illinois, a quaint middle-class suburb west of Chicago. On a snowy Friday evening, the staff and owners of the city’s local Brown’s Chicken franchise were closing up when two final customers arrived just past 9 p.m. As the night drew on and the employees hadn’t returned home, the families of the owners and workers began to worry, prompting police to investigate. When they entered the dark building, police were shocked to find seven bodies stacked in the restaurant’s freezer and fridge. The killers, of course, were long gone. In the months that followed, the horrendous story rocked Chicagoland and the case remained unsolved for nine years.
The Brown’s Chicken massacre is one of the most infamous cases in Illinois history, yet it is often misremembered. In Something Big, Patrick Wohl gives a new account of the story, taking readers behind the scenes and sharing the perspective of the people who lived it.
A young artist discovers a place to express themselves and the joy of an art community in this evanescent picture book.
Kengi drew.
Fast, busy, everywhere their hands could reach and feet could travel.
On the front steps, inside the fridge, across the bathroom mirror, atop the cafeteria tables, even on the roll of toilet paper. Kengi’s parents are frustrated, and their principal tells them they need to stop. But Ms. Beatriz tells Kengi there’s somewhere in the neighborhood that they should visit.
When Kengi arrives at Mural Island, they discover a place where people can paint safely, freely, and joyfully. So Kengi does. But they’re not the only one painting each day, and soon Kengi recognizes that their art doesn’t have to be permanent to be monumental.
With an electric, eye-catching new style from acclaimed picture book creator Katie Yamasaki, Mural Island celebrates art, expression, and the communities that cherish both.
Let the Great World Spin meets The White Lotus when three passengers from wildly different backgrounds board a cruise ship bound for Bermuda shortly after 9/11 and learn en route that they can’t outrun their regrets about the risks not taken.
It’s Sunday, September 16, 2001. Franny and her husband have traded in their elegant Park Avenue co-op for a suite on board the Sonata, a once-glittering cruise ship with a complicated history now long past its prime. Though they’re not “cruise people,” Franny is determined to host the trip as planned because it’s her mother’s seventieth birthday, or chilsun, a major rite of passage celebrated by Korean families. But as her husband keeps pointing out, Franny and her mother aren’t close, and it is surreal—even wrong—to be on a cruise as the death toll from the attacks on 9/11 continues to rise.
Also on board is Doug, an aging actor and former star of Starlight Voyages, the hit Love Boat–style television series famously filmed on the Sonata. With few professional prospects, a now sober Doug has reluctantly joined his former castmates on a reunion cruise for fans of the show, but he dreads the dark specter of his past misdeeds. Meanwhile, Lucy, the only Black female graduate student in her department at MIT, has uncharacteristically accepted an invitation to join her roommate on the cruise during the height of recruitment season. Lucy’s impulsive decision reflects her growing ambivalence about the tech companies that are trying to hire her, including a new one with a strange-sounding name, Google.
All the World Can Hold beautifully explores how we balance our needs and our wants, as well as the regrets we live with and the chances to set them right. And though it’s not a 9/11 novel, it does remind us that while the great world spins, the interpersonal dramas don’t cease, even as more dire ones play out in the larger world.