Library Closure

The Chesapeake City Branch Library will be temporarily closed for updates from Monday, December 1, 2025, through Saturday, January 3, 2026. The Branch will reopen on Monday, January 5, and will be open 6 days per week. For assistance during the closure, please call (410) 996-5600 or email ask@cecilcountylibrary.org.

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Book Lists

Atmosphere

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars.

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The Story She Left Behind

Patti Callahan Henry

In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington’s magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, vanishes off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her disappearance leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beloved mother.

By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. When a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother’s lost language. Clara is skeptical. Compelled by the tragedy of her mother’s disappearance, she crosses the Atlantic with Wynnie only to arrive during one of London’s most deadly natural disasters—the Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in peril, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jameson’s family retreat nestled in the Lake District. It is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind.

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Annapolis Goes to War

Craig L. Symonds

America's preeminent naval historian offers a history of the Second World War based on the experiences of the young officers--fresh out of the United States Naval Academy--who served on its front lines.

They arrived in Annapolis as teenagers the year Hitler re-occupied the Rhineland and graduated as young men the week the British Army evacuated Dunkirk. Annapolis Goes to War tells the story of their four transformative years at the Naval Academy, and then four more annealing years in the cauldron of war. More than a hundred of them were on duty in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Ten of them died that day-seven remain entombed in the USS Arizona still. Over the next four years, these former Midshipmen participated in virtually every significant engagement in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay, from North Africa to Normandy. They were at the front edge of the war in battleships, carriers, destroyers, submarines, and airplanes, and led Marine Corps units ashore. Some experienced the war as prisoners of the Japanese. Fifty-six of them died in the Second World War, the greatest wartime loss any service academy ever experienced.

Taking readers into and through the lives of these young men in wartime, Craig Symonds offers a poignant and powerful story of adjustment, growth, pain, loss, and eventually triumph. Using their diaries, memoirs, and letters, he evokes unforgettably their trials and bonds, their loss of innocence and their discovery of the meaning of sacrifice. Annapolis Goes to War is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the experience of fighting the bloodiest war in human history.

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Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Grady Hendrix

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, frightened, and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by the adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid . . . and it’s usually paid in blood.

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Sisters in the Wind

Angeline Boulley

Ever since Lucy Smith’s father died five years ago, “home” has been more of an idea than a place. She knows being on the run is better than anything waiting for her as a “ward of the state”. But when the sharp-eyed and kind Mr. Jameson with an interest in her case comes looking for her, Lucy wonders if hiding from her past will ever truly keep her safe.

Five years in the foster system has taught her to be cautious and smart. But she wants to believe Mr. Jameson and his “friend-not-friend”, a tall and fierce-looking woman who say they want to look after her. They also tell Lucy the truth her father hid from her: She is Ojibwe; she has – had – a sister, and more siblings, a grandmother who’d look after her and a home where she would be loved.

But Lucy is being followed. The past has destroyed any chance at safety she had. Will the secrets she's hiding swallow her whole and take away any hope for the future she always dreamed of?

When the past comes for revenge, it’s fight or flight.

Angeline Boulley's award-winning canon of books puts compelling characters and fast-paced action at the center of narratives rich in historical context. Read Firekeeper's Daughter; Warrior Girl Unearthed; and the soon-to-be-released Sisters of the Wind in any order; but like the world itself, there are echoes within each for the other stories.

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Splinter Effect

Andrew Ludington

In Splinter Effect, an action-packed debut by Andrew Ludington, time traveling archaeologist Rabbit Ward maneuvers through the past to recover a long-lost, precious menorah hidden in ancient Rome.

Smithsonian archaeologist Rabbit Ward travels through time on sponsored expeditions to the past to secure precious artifacts moments before they are lost to history. Although exceptional at his job, Rabbit is not without faults. In a spectacular failure twenty years ago, he lost both the menorah of the second temple and his hot-headed mentee, Aaron. So, when new evidence reveals the menorah’s reappearance in 6th century Constantinople, Rabbit seizes the chance for redemption.

But from the moment he arrives in the past, things start to go wrong. Rabbit quickly finds out that his prime competition, an unlicensed and annoyingly appealing “stringer” named Helen, is also in Constantinople hunting the menorah. And that’s only the beginning. The oppressed Jewish population of the city is primed for revolution, Constantinople’s leading gang seems to have it out for Rabbit personally, and someone local is interested enough in the menorah to kill for it.

As the past closes in on him and his previous failures compound, will Rabbit be able to recover the menorah before it's once again lost in time? With new and old dangers alike hiding behind every corner, time might just be up for Rabbit’s redemption—and possibly his life.

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The Correspondent

Virginia Evans

“Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. . . . Isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.

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Culpability

Bruce Holsinger

When the Cassidy-Shaws' autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver's seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident.

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie's future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei's odd behavior tugs at Noah's suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident--suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet's teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI. 

Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.

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Happy Land

Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, due to a mysterious estrangement between her mother and grandmother, she’s determined to learn the truth while she still can.

But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen. 

It sounds like the makings of a fairy tale—royalty among a community of freed people. But the more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family’s secrets are wrapped up in these hills. Because this land is their legacy, and it will be up to her to protect it before it, like so much else, is stolen away.

Inspired by true events, Happy Land is a transporting multi-generational novel about the stories that shape us and the dazzling courage it takes to dream.

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Junie

Erin Crosby Eckstine

Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie.

When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests’ coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more. Yet as long-held truths begin to crumble, she realizes Bellereine is harboring dark and horrifying secrets that can no longer be ignored.

With time ticking down, Junie begins to push against the harsh current that has controlled her entire life. As she grapples with an increasingly unfamiliar world in which she has little control, she is forced to ask herself: When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind?

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Strange Houses

Uketsu

From the bestselling author of the wildly inventive Strange Pictures and a phenomenon in Japan--unnatural layouts, trap doors, windowless rooms-- a sinister conspiracy is concealed within a house's warped and unsettling floor plans

When a writer fascinated by the macabre is approached by an acquaintance, he finds himself investigating an eerie house for sale in Tokyo. At first, with its bright and spacious interior, it seems the perfect first home. But upon closer inspection, the building's floor plans reveal a mysterious "dead space" hidden between its walls. Seeking a second opinion, the writer shares the floor plans with his friend Kurihara, an architect, only to discover more unnerving details throughout.

What is the true purpose behind the house's disturbing design? And what happened to the former owners who disappeared without a trace? When a body suddenly appears and a young woman reaches out about a second house, it soon becomes clear that the writer and his friend may be in over their heads. Structured around a series of chilling floorplans, with Strange Houses, mystery-horror YouTube sensation Uketsu casts readers in the role of detective, inviting them to help map out the truth hidden within these puzzling floor plans . . . and the terrifying plot behind it all.

 

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The Love Haters

Katherine Center

Katie Vaughn has been burned by love in the past—now she may be lighting her career on fire. She has two choices: wait to get laid off from her job as a video producer or, at her coworker Cole’s request, take a career-making gig profiling Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West. The catch? Katie’s not exactly qualified. She can’t swim—but pretends that she can. 

Plus, Cole and Hutch are brothers. And they don’t get along. Next stop: paradise! But paradise is messier than it seems. As Katie gets entangled with Hutch (the most scientifically good-looking man she has ever seen . . . but maybe a bit of a love hater), along with his colorful aunt Rue and his rescue Great Dane, she gets trapped in a lie. Or two. 

Swim lessons, helicopter flights, conga lines, drinking contests, hurricanes, and stolen kisses ensue—along with chances to tell the truth, to face old fears, and to be truly brave at last.

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The Missing Half

Ashley Flowers

Nicole “Nic” Monroe is in a rut. At twenty-four, she lives alone in a dinky apartment in her hometown of Mishawaka, Indiana, she’s just gotten a DWI, and she works the same dead-end job she’s been working since high school, a job she only has because her boss is a family friend and feels sorry for her. Everyone has felt sorry for her for the last seven years—since the day her older sister, Kasey, vanished without a trace.

On the night Kasey went missing, her car was found over a hundred miles from home. The driver’s door was open and her purse was untouched in the seat next to it. The only real clue in her disappearance was Jules Connor, another young woman from the same area who disappeared in the same way, two weeks earlier. But with so little for the police to go on, both cases eventually went cold.

Nic wants nothing more than to move on from her sister’s disappearance and the state it’s left her in. But then one day, Jules’s sister, Jenna Connor, walks into Nic’s life and offers her something she hasn’t felt in a long time: hope. What follows is a gripping tale of two sisters who will do anything to find their missing halves, even if it means destroying everything they’ve ever known.

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Good Spirits

B K. Borison

He's the Ghost of Christmas Past. She's not exactly Scrooge.


Ghost of Christmas Past Nolan Callahan intends to spend this holiday haunting like every other--get in, get out, return to his otherwise aimless existence as a ghost awaiting the afterlife. But when he's faced with Harriet York, the sweetest assignment he's ever had, he suddenly finds himself wishing for a future.


Harriet York has no idea why she's being haunted. She's a good person--or, at least, she tries to be. A people pleaser to her core, she always does what's expected of her. But as she and Nolan begin to examine her past, they discover there are threads that bind them together-- and realize there might be more to moving on than expected.


With the deadline of Christmas Eve fast approaching, will they find the key to their futures in each other's pasts? Or will they stay firmly in the present, indulging in their unexpected, spirited connection?


Filled with magic, mayhem, and cozy holiday charm, this swoony romance is B.K. Borison's best yet!
 

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The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah

Jean Meltzer

Can these exes rekindle their love this Hanukkah?

Evelyn Schwartz has the perfect Hanukkah planned: eight jam-packed days producing the live-action televised musical of A Christmas Carol. Who needs family when you've got long hours, impossible deadlines, and your dream job? That is, until an accident on set lands her in the medical bay with one of her chronic migraines, and she's shocked to find her ex-husband, David Adler, filling in for the usual studio doctor.

It's been two years since David walked away from Evelyn and their life in Manhattan, and his ex-wife is still the same workaholic who puts her career before everything else--especially her health. But when Evelyn begins hallucinating "ghosts" tied to her past heartbreaks, and every single one leads to David, he finds himself spending much more time with her than he anticipated. And denying the still-smoldering chemistry between them becomes impossible.

As Evelyn revisits her ghosts of Hanukkah past, she and David both begin to wonder if they can have a Hanukkah future. But with a high-stakes production ramping up the pressure on Evelyn, and troublesome spirits forcing them both to confront their most difficult shared memories, it might just take a Hanukkah miracle for these two exes to light the flame on their second-chance at love.

 

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The Goldens

Lauren Wilson

A delicious, intoxicating debut thriller about a young woman who is swept into a glamorous world of fascinating influencers, glittering parties—and possibly murder.

Chloe has always dreamed of becoming a bestselling writer. Then she meets Clara Holland, a prominent influencer, socialite, and model. Clara is enigmatic, dazzling, gorgeous. And at last, ordinary Chloe has something to write about.

Bonding instantly, Chloe moves into Clara’s grand family estate. They spend long afternoons together, writing Clara’s memoir, polishing social media posts, and planning sumptuous, decadent parties: fairy lights in the orangery, themed cocktails, sequined backdrops, roaring bonfires. But as Clara opens her home to more girls who want to live like her and inspire one another, the media calls them a cult.

As life becomes more claustrophobic, Chloe begins to hear unsettling rumors about Clara. When a girl goes missing after a spectacular New Year’s Eve party, the rumors take on a sinister new meaning. If she can’t escape Clara’s influence, everything Chloe holds dear may be in danger.

Dark, gut-wrenching, and simmering with danger and atmosphere, The Goldens is about to be your newest obsession.

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A Christmas Witness

Charles Todd

Inspector Ian Rutledge investigates a possible attempted murder in this seasonal mystery novella from New York Times bestseller Charles Todd.

December 1921: Being single and a new Chief, Inspector Rutledge of Scotland Yard gets the short straw at Christmastime and is called upon by Chief Superintendent Markum to go to the Kentish home of a lord recovering from an attempt on his life. In bed with a concussion, the man is convinced someone is trying to kill him after he claims he was struck by the hoof of a running horse whose rider never stopped to check on him.

Struggling with his own demons from the war and misgivings about helping a man who, as a colonel, oversaw the suffering of those on the frontlines from afar, Rutledge undertakes an uneasy investigation. And as the winter holiday approaches, he becomes increasingly convinced that nothing is as it seems...

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Merry & Chic

Kathryn O’Shea-Evans

A dazzling deck-the-halls guide to creating your most spectacular holiday ever—complete with recipes, show-stopping Christmas décor and chic DIY ideas for gifts galore.

“In this amusing and useful guide, journalist O’Shea-Evans (Alpine Style) shows how to amp up the holiday spirit in one’s home....This brings the cheer.”—Publishers Weekly

Welcome to the merriest, most stylish guide to holiday joy ever made. This dazzling book has it all—including recipes (some from iconic people, such as Abraham Lincoln’s gingerbread recipe and Jackie Kennedy’s Polet a l’Estragon); decor advice (all decadent-looking but easily achievable, thanks to input from designers); monthly to-do list calendars for your sanity; playlists of unexpected holiday jams for different types of events (from cocktail parties to lingering candlelight suppers); and DIY gift ideas that will actually be adored.

Let the festivities begin!

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Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon

Matthew Norman

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.
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?

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The Nightmare Before Kissmas

Sara Raasch

Red, White & Royal Blue meets The Nightmare Before Christmas in a sexy, quirky rom-com where the golden-hearted Prince of Christmas falls for the totally off-limits Prince of Halloween.

Nicholas “Coal” Claus used to love Christmas. Until his father, the reigning Santa, turned the holiday into a PR façade. Coal will do anything to escape the spectacle, including getting tangled in a drunken, supremely hot make-out session with a beautiful man behind a seedy bar one night.

But the heir to Christmas is soon commanded to do his duty: he will marry his best friend, Iris, the Easter Princess and his brother’s not-so-secret crush. A situation that has disaster written all over it.

Things go from bad to worse when a rival arrives to challenge Coal for the princess’s hand...and Coal comes face-to-face with his mysterious behind-the-bar hottie: Hex, the Prince of Halloween.

It’s a fake competition between two holiday princes who can’t keep their hands off each other over a marriage of convenience that no one wants. And it all leads to one of the sweetest, sexiest, messiest, most delightfully unforgettable love stories of the year.

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A Kwanzaa Keepsake and Cookbook

Jessica B. Harris

From the award-winning author of High on the Hog—inspiration for the “energetic, emotional, and deeply nuanced” (The New York Times) Netflix series of the same name—comes a new and updated edition of A Kwanzaa Keepsake, another important exploration of African American culture, food, and family, featuring recipes and stories to help this generation create unique holiday traditions.

Now with a new introduction by award-winning writer and iconic culinary historian Jessica B. Harris, a foreword by chef and television personality Carla Hall, revised recipes and stories, and a fresh new package, A Kwanzaa Keepsake offers proverbs, ceremonies, family projects, inspirational biographies, blessings, and of course, wonderful recipes. Structured around the seven days of Kwanzaa and the virtues each day represents, Harris shares a themed feast for each night, designed to reflect the principle of the day. Some of the menus include:

-Umoja (Unity), featuring dishes of multinational origin such as Seasoned Olives, Mechoui-Style Leg of Lamb with cumin, mint, and chili, and a classic Caribbean rum punch, and reminds readers of the union of all peoples of African descent.
-Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), composed of dishes from the African continent including Sweet Potato Fritters, Grilled Pepper Salad, and Piment Aimee, a hot sauce from one of the author’s friends.
-Kuumba (Creativity) is a healing supper and communal meal that opens the gates of remembrance through food. The repast is centered around a heritage recipe and includes others for Pickled Black-Eyed Peas, a fish dish from the the Ivory Coast, Spicy Cranberry Chutney, and a killer pecan pie with molasses whipped cream.

Interspersed throughout the book are spaces to record family memories, sayings, and recipes. Rich in culinary history, and a source of inspiration for treasuring and recording family traditions both old and new, A Kwanzaa Keepsake is a book to cherish, and one that families will turn to again and again.

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For the Rest of Us

Dahlia Adler

Fourteen acclaimed authors showcase the beautiful and diverse ways holidays are observed in this festive anthology. Keep the celebrations going all year long with this captivating and joyful read!

From Lunar New Year to Solstice, Día de Los Muertos to Juneteenth, and all the incredible days in between, it's clear that Americans don't just have one holiday. Edited by the esteemed Dahlia Adler and authored by creators who have lived these festive experiences firsthand, this joyful collection of stories shows that there isn't one way to experience a holiday.

With stories by:

Dahlia Adler, Sydney Taylor Honor winner of Going Bicoastal

Candace Buford, author of Good as Gold

A. R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy, authors of the Once & Future series

Preeti Chhibber, author of Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plot

Natasha Díaz, award-winning author of Color Me In

Kelly Loy Gilbert, Stonewall Book Award winning author of Picture Us in the Light

Kosoko Jackson, USA Today bestselling author of The Forest Demands Its Due

Aditi Khorana, award-winning author of Mirror in the Sky

Katherine Locke, award-winning author of This Rebel Heart

Abdi Nazemian, Stonewall Book Award-winning author of Only This Beautiful Moment

Laura Pohl, New York Times bestselling author of The Grimrose Girls

Sonora Reyes, Pura Belpré Honor winner of The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School

Karuna Riazi, contributor to The Grimoire of Grim Fates

 

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A Sea View Christmas

Julie Klassen

The holiday stirs up excitement as fondly remembered guests come to stay and acquaintances grow into more. . . . 

With a promise to her youngest sister, Sarah Summers declares that this year's Christmas at Sea View will exceed all expectations. But an upcoming trip to Scotland--and the prospect of becoming reacquainted with dashing widower Callum Henshall--blows a flurry of doubts into her mind. Sarah had discouraged his attentions before yet soon finds herself once again torn between attraction and duty as alluring thoughts of a second chance at love weave their way into her practical heart. 

Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Georgiana eagerly anticipates the exciting Christmas of her dreams after last year's dull, disappointing holiday filled with endless chores. She enjoys all the promised parties, music, and dancing, but is taken by surprise when young love comes knocking. Does the festive romance of a Sea View Christmas hold the key to a happily-ever-after for both sisters?

Spend the holiday season with the Summers sisters on the charming Devonshire coast, where family bonds are strengthened, love is rekindled, and Christmas joy abounds. 

Julie Klassen's heartwarming Christmas companion to the On Devonshire Shores series holds themes of friends to more, sisterhood bonds, and matchmaking that will fill you with holiday spirit. This novella can be read separately or along with the series and will appeal to fans of Jane Austen, English Regency romance, and Downtown Abbey.

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Christmas at the Women's Hotel

Daniel M. Lavery

New York Times bestselling author Daniel M. Lavery returns to the world of Women's Hotel in this delightful and heartwarming novella about one especially lively Christmastime at the Biedermeier.

Christmas at the Biedermeier Hotel means work. For much of the year, employment comes infrequently to Biedermeier residents. But during the Advent season, they're in high demand all over the city: as holiday window dressers, sales-girls at the card stores on Forty-Second Street, Broadway usherettes, assisting the Lincoln Center laundress at the Nutcracker, or working for Pinkerton as off-season security guards at the World's Fair.

Katherine explores the possibility of reconnecting with a younger sister moving to New York. Lucianne goes into business for herself, running a telephone-order, strictly Social Register male escort agency out of her room, while Mrs. Mossler attempts to solve the mystery of the Biedermeier's skyrocketing phone bill and frets over Christmas tips for the hotel's few remaining employees.

And while the three gem thieves who broke into the American Museum of Natural History have recently been apprehended, not all of the stolen jewels have been recovered--and Patricia and Carol have been behaving very strangely recently. Christmas is a season of wonder and mystery, after all.

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Merry Christmas, You Filthy Animal (Standard Edition)

Meghan Quinn

From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Meghan Quinn comes a brand new holiday rom-com with all the humor and heat her fans adore.

Nothing says I love you like trespassing, public humiliation, and a town-wide Christmas spectacle to win your crush back.

Atlas "Max" Maxheimer did not sign up for this. One minute, he's anxiously trying to keep his family's Christmas tree farm from imploding. The next? He's passed out in the snow after getting clocked by a suspiciously strong bottle of soda.

Enter Betty: new in town, full of holiday cheer, and helping her uncle open a rival tree farm next door. Max is convinced she's out to destroy everything Evergreen Farm stands for. Betty thinks Max might be one sleigh short of a winter parade.

Cue the holiday chaos.

Between blizzards, blown reputations, wildly misguided romantic plots, and one stolen ornament with a seriously tragic backstory, this small-town war turns into something far messier--and much more delicious--than either of them expected.

Tropes:

  • Holiday hijinks
  • Small-town laughs
  • Rivals to lovers

 

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The Wedding Witch

Erin Sterling

The New York Times bestselling author of The Ex Hex and The Kiss Curse brightens up the Winter Solstice with another delightfully spooky novel following Bowen Penhallow and the girl he feels strangely drawn to--especially when she becomes his only hope of salvation after a strong spell sends them to a Yuletide celebration... more than 50 years in the past.

Bowen Penhallow has always been a loner, studying dark and ancient magic on a mountaintop in Wales. He prefers it that way. But when his friend Colin--who happens to be a ghost--asks him to attend a Yuletide wedding at a grand estate deep in the Welsh countryside, Bowen reluctantly agrees.

Tamsyn Bligh is not a witch, but she makes her living off of them. As a procurer and seller of magical items, Tamsyn's business is not always above board, but she's been trying to fix that (mostly.) Bowen is an occasional customer--as well as the star of several of Tamsyn's dirtiest dreams--but she's been around enough witches to know that, as a human, getting involved with one is not the smartest idea. She's finagled an invite to the Witchy Wedding of the Century in the hopes of finally making a score big enough to retire. Just one priceless magical artifact from Tywyll House would set her up for life.

But Tamsyn isn't the only one sneaking about in Tywyll House, and the mix of a very strong spell combined with a wedding mishap transports Bowen and Tamsyn into Tywyll House's past, to the Yuletide Celebration of 1958. As Bowen and Tamsyn work together to get back to the present, they must also face off with the origins of Tywyll House's haunting, the suspicions of their fellow witches...oh, and the fact that somewhere between the mistletoe and the bonfire, they might be falling in love.

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Ladies in Waiting

Adriana Trigiani

Celebrate Jane Austen’s classic novels with this short story anthology starring forgotten characters as they experience their own happy endings. 

In honor of her 250th birthday, eight authors have come together with wildly imaginative reboots of the lives of several of Jane Austen’s minor characters. Written with plenty of love and wit, these clever stories star everyone from Pride and Prejudice’s snobbish Caroline Bingley to the modern descendant of Sense and Sensibility’s Eliza Williams and much more. Blurring genres and taking us across the oceans, Ladies in Waiting is a heartfelt celebration of Jane Austen and her timeless masterpieces.

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The Road That Made America

James Dodson

In the bestselling tradition of Rinker Buck’s The Oregon Trail and Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic, The Road That Made America is a lively, epic account of one of the greatest untold stories in our nation’s history—the eight-hundred-mile long Great Wagon Road that 18th-century American settlers forged from Philadelphia to Georgia that expanded the country dramatically in the decades before we ventured west.

Little known today, the Great Wagon Road was the primary road of frontier America: a mass migration route that stretched more than eight hundred miles from Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia. It opened the Southern frontier and wilderness east of the Appalachian Mountains to America’s first settlers, and later served as the gateway for the exploration of the American West. In the mid-1700s, waves of European colonists in search of land for new homes left Pennsylvania to settle in the colonial backcountry of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. More than one hundred thousand settlers made the arduous trek, those who would become the foundational generations of the world’s first true immigrant nation. In their newly formed village squares, democracy took root and bloomed. During the Revolutionary War, the road served as the key supply line to the American resistance in the western areas of the colonies, especially in the South.

Drawing on years of fieldwork and scholarship by an army of archeologists, academics, archivists, preservationists, and passionate history lovers, James Dodson sets out to follow the road’s original path from Philadelphia to Georgia. On his journey, he crosses six contiguous states and some of the most historic and hallowed landscapes of eastern America, touching many of the nation’s most sacred battlefields and burying grounds. Due to its strategic importance, military engagements were staged along the Great Wagon Road throughout North America’s three major wars, including the early days of the bloody French and Indian conflict and pivotal Revolutionary War encounters.

In time, the Great Wagon Road became America’s first technology highway, as growing roadside villages and towns and cities became, in effect, the first incubators of America’s early Industrial age. The people and ideas that traveled down the road shaped the character of the fledgling nation and helped define who we are today. Dodson’s ancestors on both sides took the Great Wagon Road to Maryland and North Carolina, respectively, giving him a personal stake in uncovering the road’s buried legacy. An illuminating and entertaining first-person history, The Road That Made America restores this long-forgotten route to its rightful place in our national story.

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Good Things

Samin Nosrat

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat—and one of America’s most beloved chefs and teachers—125 meticulously tested, flavor-forward, soul-nourishing recipes that bring joy and a sense of communion

With all the generosity of spirit that has endeared her to millions of fans, Samin Nosrat offers more than 125 of her favorite recipes—simply put, the things she most loves to cook for herself and for friends—and infuses them with all the beauty and care you would expect from the person Alice Waters called “America’s next great cooking teacher.” As Samin says, "Recipes, like rituals, endure because they’re passed down to us—whether by ancestors, neighbors, friends, strangers on the internet, or me to you. A written recipe is just a shimmering decoy for the true inheritance: the thread of connection that cooking it will unspool." 

Good Things is an essential, joyful guide to cooking and living, whether you’re looking for a comforting tomato soup to console a struggling friend, seeking a deeper sense of connection in your life, or hosting a dinner for ten in your too-small dining room. Here you’ll find go-to recipes for ricotta custard pancakes, a showstopping roast chicken burnished with saffron, a crunchy, tingly Calabrian chili crisp, super-chewy sky-high focaccia, and a decades-in-the-making, childhood-evoking yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Along the way, you’ll also find plenty of tips, techniques, and lessons, from how to buy olive oil (check the harvest date) to when to splurge (salad dressing is where you want to use your best ingredients) to the best uses for your pressure cooker (chicken stock and dulce de leche, naturally).

Good Things captures, with Samin’s trademark blend of warmth, creativity, and precision, what has made cooking such an important source of delight and comfort in her life.

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Annapolis Goes to War

Craig L. Symonds

America's preeminent naval historian offers a history of the Second World War based on the experiences of the young officers--fresh out of the United States Naval Academy--who served on its front lines.

They arrived in Annapolis as teenagers the year Hitler re-occupied the Rhineland and graduated as young men the week the British Army evacuated Dunkirk. Annapolis Goes to War tells the story of their four transformative years at the Naval Academy, and then four more annealing years in the cauldron of war. More than a hundred of them were on duty in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Ten of them died that day-seven remain entombed in the USS Arizona still. Over the next four years, these former Midshipmen participated in virtually every significant engagement in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay, from North Africa to Normandy. They were at the front edge of the war in battleships, carriers, destroyers, submarines, and airplanes, and led Marine Corps units ashore. Some experienced the war as prisoners of the Japanese. Fifty-six of them died in the Second World War, the greatest wartime loss any service academy ever experienced.

Taking readers into and through the lives of these young men in wartime, Craig Symonds offers a poignant and powerful story of adjustment, growth, pain, loss, and eventually triumph. Using their diaries, memoirs, and letters, he evokes unforgettably their trials and bonds, their loss of innocence and their discovery of the meaning of sacrifice. Annapolis Goes to War is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the experience of fighting the bloodiest war in human history.

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Detective Aunty

Uzma Jalaluddin

When her grown daughter is suspected of murder, a charming and tenacious widow digs into the case to unmask the real killer in this twisty, page-turning whodunnit--the first book in a cozy new detective series from the acclaimed author of Ayesha at Last.

After her husband's unexpected death eighteen months ago, Kausar Khan never thought she'd receive another phone call as heartbreaking--until her thirty-something daughter, Sana, phones to say that she's been arrested for killing the unpopular landlord of her clothing boutique. Determined to help her child, Kausar heads to Toronto for the first time in nearly twenty years.

Returning to the Golden Crescent suburb where she raised her children and where her daughter still lives, Kausar finds that the thriving neighborhood she remembered has changed. The murder of Sana's landlord is only the latest in a wave of local crimes which have gone unsolved.

And the facts of the case are troubling: Sana found the man dead in her shop at a suspiciously early hour, with a dagger from her windowfront display plunged in his chest. And Kausar--a woman with a keen sense of observation and deep wisdom honed by her years--senses there's more to the story than her daughter is telling.

With the help of some old friends and her plucky teenage granddaughter, Kausar digs into the investigation to uncover the truth. Because who better to pry answers from unwilling suspects than a meddlesome aunty? But even Kausar can't predict the secrets, lies, and betrayals she finds along the way...

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The American Revolution

Geoffrey C. Ward

From the award-winning historian and filmmakers of The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, The Roosevelts, and others: a richly illustrated, human-centered history of America’s founding struggle—expanding on the landmark, six-part PBS series to be aired in November 2025

“From a small spark kindled in America, a flame has arisen not to be extinguished.” —Thomas Paine

In defeating the British Empire and giving birth to a new nation, the American Revolution turned the world upside down. Thirteen colonies on the Atlantic coast rose in rebellion, won their independence, and established a new form of government that radically reshaped the continent and inspired independence movements and democratic reforms around the globe.

The American Revolution was at once a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war, fought by neighbors on American farms and between global powers an ocean or more away. In this sumptuous volume, historian Geoffrey C. Ward ably steers us through the international forces at play, telling the story not from the top down but from the bottom up—and through the eyes of not only our “Founding Fathers” but also those of ordinary soldiers, as well as underrepresented populations such as women, African Americans, Native Americans, and American Loyalists, asking who exactly was entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Enriched by guest essays from lauded historians such as Vincent Brown, Maya Jasanoff, Jane Kamensky, and Alan Taylor, and by an astonishing array of prints, drawings, paintings, texts, and pamphlets from the time period, as well as newly commissioned art and maps—and woven together with the words of Thomas Paine— The American Revolution reveals a nation still grappling with the questions that fueled its remarkable founding.

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Little Woodchucks

Nick Offerman

From New York Times bestselling author, Emmy-winning actor, and charismatically carnivorous woodworker Nick Offerman and his fellow champion creator Lee Buchanan (who is also not averse to delicious meats), an illustrated woodworking guide with projects for the whole family

Are you a parent or an otherwise amply sized Woodchuck interested in making projects with, or for, your kids? Or are you an aspiring small Woodchuck ready to get into some quality mischief that involves a hammer, nails, and your very own pocketknife? Well, do we have a guide for you!

Offerman Woodshop is opening its avuncular doors to woodworkers of all ages in the form of twelve brand-new, family-friendly undertakings perfect for kids, from beginner offerings like a handmade box kite to more challenging structures like a garden planter. 

All projects are achievable and fun and encourage eye contact, giggles, handshakes, and other old-fashioned familial engagements, while introducing young woodworkers-to-be to the satisfaction and good clean fun of hands-on crafting.

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The Second Story Bookshop

Denise Hunter

She inherits the bookshop of her dreams . . . But she has to run it with the ex she vowed never to speak with again. "Book lovers, book clubs, and anyone who's ever dreamed of owning a bookstore will adore this cleverly interwoven story" (Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Shelterwood). Full of fall vibes, The Second Story Bookshop is perfect for fans of Debbie Macomber and Gilmore Girls.

Shelby Thatcher adores working in the charming small-town bookshop her grandmother opened years ago. Since high school she's helped Gram turn the shop into a community hub for book lovers in the lakeside town of Grandville, NC. When her beloved grandma passes away, Shelby inherits the bookstore. But to her shock, Gram leaves half ownership to Gray Briggs, the man who broke Shelby's heart years ago.

Grandville residents have been vilifying Gray as long as he can remember. After graduating high school he couldn't skip town fast enough, even though it meant leaving the girl he'd fallen deeply in love with and alienating her family once and for all. Now he's back, the beneficiary of his elderly friend's will. Facing the town's animosity is difficult, but seeing Shelby again is sheer torture. No one could ever stir his heart the way she did.

As the adversaries are forced to work together, Gram's beyond-the-grave scheme is working--Shelby's old feelings for Gray begin to resurface. But the problems that destroyed their relationship before still remain, and a new one surfaces--one that threatens Gram's beloved bookshop. Is their love doomed to fail again, or will they find a way to make it work this time around

If you're looking for an enemies-to-lovers, second-chance romance set in a cozy lakeside bookshop brimming with healing, heart, and Southern charm, The Second Story Bookshop is your perfect, feel-good escape. Let Shelby and Gray's tender journey remind you that sometimes the path back to love starts at the front step of a bookstore.

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The Doorman

Chris Pavone

Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York’s cultural elite.

Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth has the perfect-looking everything, all except her husband, whom she’d quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where all the money comes from. But his wealth is immense, their prenup is iron-clad, and Emily can’t bring herself to leave him. Yet.

And downstairs in 2A, Julian Sonnenberg—who has carved himself a successful niche in the art world, and led a good half-century of a full and satisfying, cosmopolitan life—has just received a devastating phone call that does nothing at all to alleviate his sense that, probably for better and worse, he has aged out and he’s just not that useful to anyone any more.

Meanwhile, gathered in the Bohemia’s bowels, the building’s almost entirely Black and Hispanic, working-class staff is taking in the news that that just a few miles uptown, a Black man has been killed by the police, leading to a demonstration, a counterdemonstration, and a long night of violence across the tinderbox city.

As Chicky changes into his uniform for tonight’s shift, he finds himself breaking a cardinal rule of the job: tonight, he’ll be carrying a gun, bought only hours earlier, but before he knew of the pandemonium taking over the city. Chicky knows that there’s more going on in his patch of sidewalk in front of the Bohemia than anyone’s aware of. Tonight in the city, enemies will clash, loyalties will be tested, secrets will be revealed—and lives will be lost.

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Padma's All American

Padma Lakshmi

In this very personal book—the result of seven years of traveling and tasting, listening and observing for her award-winning Hulu show Taste the Nation—Padma Lakshmi compiles more than 100 recipes from the immigrant and Indigenous communities she visits, as well as many from her own family, showing us what really comprises American cuisine.

Padma’s All American is filled with mouth-watering recipes, adapted here for the home cook—along with profiles and stories from the people who inspired the dishes. It is a joyful book—a love letter to the people who create and evolve American cuisine every day and a road map to the foods that give America its vibrant palate, from one of our most essential culinarians.

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The Missing Pages

Alyson Richman

A ghost in a library. A story waiting to be told. The Missing Pages is a rich, lyrical novel that reminds us that books are as eternal as the soul.

1912: Harry Widener, a promising and passionate book collector, boards the Titanic holding tight to a priceless volume he's just purchased in London. After catastrophe strikes the ship, Harry's last known words are that he must return to his cabin to retrieve his latest treasure. Neither the young man nor the book are ever seen again. Honoring her son's memory, Harry's mother builds the Harry Widener Memorial Library at Harvard to house his extensive book collection and ensure his legacy.

Decades later, Violet Hutchins, a Harvard sophomore recovering from her own great loss, is working as a page at the Widener Library. When mysterious things begin happening at the library, Violet wonders if Harry Widener's ghost is trying to communicate with her, seeking Violet to uncover a long-buried secret that the ardent young Harry took with him to the grave. 

For fans of The Midnight Library and The Book Thief, bestselling author Alyson Richman has written a love story, a ghost story, and an elegy to the healing power of books.

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Raising Hare

Chloe Dalton

Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and bounded around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, more than two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.

In February 2021, Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare—a leveret—that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how difficult it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton’s house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, weasels, feral cats, raptors, or even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death.

Raising Hare chronicles their journey together while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore. We witness firsthand the joy at this extraordinary relationship between human and animal, which serves as a reminder that the best things, and most beautiful experiences, arise when we least expect them.

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Wreck

Catherine Newman

The acclaimed bestselling author of Sandwich is back with a wonderful novel, full of laughter and heart, about marriage, family, and what happens when life doesn't go as planned.

If you loved Rocky and her family on vacation on Cape Cod, wait until you join them at home two years later. (And if this is your first meeting with this crew, get ready to laugh and cry--and relate.)

Rocky, still anxious, nostalgic, and funny, is living in Western Massachusetts with her husband Nick and their daughter Willa, who's back home after college. Their son, Jamie, has taken a new job in New York, and Mort, Rocky's widowed father, has moved in.

It all couldn't be more ridiculously normal . . . until Rocky finds herself obsessed with a local accident that only tangentially affects them--and with a medical condition that, she hopes, won't affect them at all.

With her signature wit and wisdom, Catherine Newman explores the hidden rules of family, the heavy weight of uncertainty, and the gnarly fact that people--no matter how much you love them--are not always exactly who you want them to be.

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How to Art

Kate Bryan

What is art, where do I find it, and once I'm in front of it, what am I supposed to think about it? Kate Bryan is a self-confessed art addict who has worked with art for over twenty years. But before she studied art history at university, she'd visited a gallery just twice in her life and had no idea she was entering an elitist world. Now, she's on a mission to help everybody come to art.

Like playing or listening to music, or cooking and eating great food, reading or watching films, making art or looking at other people's deserves to be an enriching part of all our lives. How to Art provides a nifty way to ingest art on your own terms. From where it is to what it is, to tips on how to actually enjoy famous artworks like the Mona Lisa, to how to own art and make art at home, to vital advice for making a career as an artist and even how to make your dog more cultural, How to Art gives art to everyone--and makes it fun. Laced throughout with original artworks by the very down-to-earth artist David Shrigley.

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Isola: Reese's Book Club

Allegra Goodman

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes a unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island.

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.

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The Honeycrisp Orchard Inn

Valerie Bowman

For fans of the Lovelight series and The Pumpkin Spice Café, this cozy and sexy romance follows a young event planner who returns to her family's inn on an apple orchard to help run their Harvest Festival--only to find herself butting heads with the handsome son of the apple orchard's owners.

Ellie Lawson's city life was treating her just fine until a sour turn of events knocks her out in one fell swoop. Dumped by her boyfriend and fired from her event planning job, she is left with no choice but to return to her parents' idyllic inn, nestled within a picturesque Honeycrisp orchard on Long Island. Anticipating a quiet hiatus in the attic apartment, she is instead met with Aiden, the stubborn, attractive son of the orchard owner who is currently occupying her planned refuge.

Forced together by circumstance, they find themselves not only roommates but also coworkers, when they're put in charge by their parents of the orchard's vital Harvest Festival, a lifeline for both the struggling orchard and the inn. Amidst the enchanting disorder of small-town life, Ellie and Aiden grapple with their conflicting values, burgeoning feelings, and an electrifying tension.

As Ellie discovers the unexpected charm of the life she left behind and Aiden learns there's much more to Ellie than he'd first assumed, one fact remains: the future of the orchard and the inn depends on their unlikely collaboration.

Embark on a captivating journey of rediscovery, love, and the irreplaceable magic of small-town life.

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The Correspondent

Virginia Evans

“Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. . . . Isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.

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Heartwood (A Read with Jenna Pick)

Amity Gaige

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.

Heartwood is a “gem of a thousand facets—suspenseful, transporting, tender, and ultimately soul-mending,” (Megan Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning) that tells the story of a lost hiker’s odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character’s interior journey. The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found. At its core, Heartwood is an “unputdownable” (Real Simple) and redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love.

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Classical Mythology of the Constellations

Annette Giesecke

A retelling of the classic myths and timeless tales by bestselling author Annette Giesecke that underlie the 88 named constellations in the night sky--from Andromeda to Orion to Ursa Major.



Classical Mythology of the Constellations is a stargazer's guide to the wondrous stories of the gods, heroes, and monsters that populate the night sky. As long as humans have lived on Earth, they have gazed up at the starry sky with fascination and longing. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Sun, Moon, and Earth were gods. The stars beyond our Solar System, however, represented heroes, animals, and monsters that the gods placed in the sky after their death. These include the great hunter Orion and the scorpion who killed him with its sting, the beautiful maiden Callisto who was turned into a bear (Ursa Major) by the goddess Hera, Perseus, the slayer of Medusa, and many more.



In this beautifully designed work, stunningly illustrated by Jim Tierney, Giesecke tells the origin stories of the 48 constellations, first catalogued by the astronomer Ptolemy in the second century CE. A final section covers the names, locations, and brief descriptions of the remaining 40 constellations catalogued by astronomers in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, which are not named for Classical figures. 



Organized by hemisphere and celestial quadrant, the book also includes two illustrated star maps to help guide the reader to the location of each constellation, as well as 48 color plates throughout. 



















 

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American Soul

Anela Malik

Delve into foodways of the United States, including testimonies from more than 30 Black chefs, restaurateurs, historians and luminaries, as well as 40 historically-rooted recipes.

Equal parts historical exploration and cookbook, this rich narrative reveals the rich and indelible contributions of the Black diaspora in shaping the footprint of American cuisine.

This illuminating narrative from Anela Malik, the voice behind the popular Feed the Malik, tracks the development of American cuisine from the days of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to modern history. This captivating journey through the culinary history of the United States includes

 

  • Deep-rooted history from crop migration from West Africa to the chitlin' circuit of the Civil Rights Movement to the modern-day fried chicken sandwich craze.
  • Voices in food, with reflections and profiles of more than 30 Black chefs and culinary luminaries including Jessica B. Harris, Cheryl Day, and BJ Dennis.
  • Illustrated maps and more than 150 photographs illustrating the country's rich culinary past, regional foodways, historical rice growing regions, barbecue trends, and more
  • And 40 recipes from southern skillet cornbread and macaroni and cheese to jerk pork lumpia and blackberry cobbler.


With nuance and empathy, Anela reveals the unrecognized Black roots of some of the most iconic American food traditions and provides a deeper understanding of the profound yet hidden contributions of the Black community to American cuisine.

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The Reading Strategies Book

Jennifer Serravallo

Now with 30 strategies on Reading with Accuracy. Learn more. 

With hit books that support strategic reading through conferring, small groups, and assessment, Jen Serravallo gets emails almost daily asking, Isn't there a book of the strategies themselves? Now there is.

Strategies make the often invisible work of reading actionable and visible, Jen writes. In The Reading Strategies Book, she collects 300 strategies to share with readers in support of thirteen goals-everything from fluency to literary analysis. Each strategy is cross-linked to skills, genres, and Fountas & Pinnell reading levels to give you just-right teaching, just in time. With Jen's help you'll:

  • develop goals for every reader
  • give students step-by-step strategies for skilled reading
  • guide readers with prompts aligned to the strategies
  • adjust instruction to meet individual needs with Jen's Teaching Tips
  • craft demonstrations and explanations with her Lesson Language
  • learn more with Hat Tips to the work of influential teacher-authors.

Whether you use readers workshop, Daily 5/CAFE, guided reading, balanced reading, a core reading program, whole-class novels, or any other approach, The Reading Strategies Book will complement and extend your teaching. Rely on it to plan and implement goal-directed, differentiated instruction for individuals, small groups, and whole classes.

We offer strategies to readers to put the work in doable terms for those who are still practicing, writes Jen Serravallo. The goal is not that they can do the steps of the strategy but that they become more comfortable and competent with a new skill. With The Reading Strategies Book, you'll have ways to help your readers make progress every day.

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Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook

Jim Trelease

Recommended by "Dear Abby" upon its first publication in 1982, millions of parents and educators have turned to Jim Trelease's beloved classic for more than three decades to help countless children become avid readers through awakening their imaginations and improving their language skills. Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook, updated and revised by education specialist Cyndi Giorgis, discusses the benefits, the rewards, and the importance of reading aloud to children of a new generation. Supported by delightful anecdotes as well as the latest research, an updated treasury of book recommendations curated with an eye for diversity, Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook offers proven techniques and strategies for helping children of all backgrounds and abilities discover the pleasures of reading and setting them on the road to becoming lifelong readers.

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Reading for Our Lives

Maya Payne Smart

When her child went off to school, Maya Smart was shocked to discover that a good education in America is a long shot, in ways that few parents fully appreciate. Our current approach to literacy offers too little, too late, and attempting to play catch-up when our kids get to kindergarten can no longer be our default strategy. We have to start at the top. The brain architecture for reading develops rapidly during infancy, and early language experiences are critical to building it. That means parents’ work as children’s first teachers begins from day one too—and we need deeper knowledge to play our positions.

Reading for Our Lives challenges the bath-book-bed mantra and the idea that reading aloud to our kids is enough to ensure school readiness. Instead, it gives parents easy, immediate, and accessible ways to nurture language and literacy development from the start. Through personal stories, historical accounts, scholarly research, and practical tips, this book presents the life-and-death urgency of literacy, investigates inequity in reading achievement, and illuminates a path to a true, transformative education for all.

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Phonics from A to Z

Wiley Blevins

Leading phonics expert Wiley Blevins has updated his best-selling classic to include the latest in phonics instruction and the science of reading, as well as current research on handwriting and on phonemic awareness. This revised edition also offers ideas for maximizing your scope and sequence, practical tips for creating sound walls, a decodable text routine for building comprehension, strategies for differentiating during whole-group lessons while better targeting small-group work, and more.

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A Modern Parents' Guide to Nursery Rhymes

Jennifer Griffin

Once upon a time, every parent knew Little Jack Horner, Wee Willie Winkie, and Little Miss Muffet. Now you will, too, with this crash course on timeless pleasures of Mother Goose and beyond. It features more than 70 poems, lullabies, rounds, and riddles, from classics like “Hey Diddle Diddle,” to newer songs like “The Wheels on the Bus,” too wonderful non-English versus including “Pío, Pío, Pío,” the sweet yet dramatic Chilean ditty about chickens. Plus, exactly how to perform the intricate finger ballet known as “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Includes downloadable recordings.

 

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The Invisible Toolbox

Kim Jocelyn Dickson

Reading aloud to your children is essential. Longtime elementary school teacher Kim Jocelyn Dickson believes every child begins kindergarten with a lunchbox in one hand and an "invisible toolbox" in the other. In The Invisible Toolbox, Kim shares with parents the single most important thing they can do to foster their child's future learning potential and nurture the parent-child bond that is the foundation for a child's motivation to learn. She is convinced that the simple act of reading aloud has a far-reaching impact that few of us fully understand and that our recent, nearly universal saturation in technology has further clouded its importance.

In The Invisible Toolbox, parents, educators, and early literacy advocates will discover:

  • Ten priceless tools that will fill their child's toolbox when they read aloud to their child
  • Tools parents can give themselves to foster these gifts in their children
  • Practical tips for how and what to read aloud to children through their developmental stages
  • Do's and don'ts and recommended resources that round out all the practical tools a parent will need to prepare their child for kindergarten and beyond

Essential book for parents. In The Invisible Toolbox, Kim weaves her practical anecdotal experience as an educator and parent into the hard research of recent findings in neuroscience. She reminds us that the first years of life are critical in the formation and receptivity of the primary predictor of success in school--language skills--and that infants begin learning immediately at birth. She also teaches and inspires us to build our own toolboxes so that we can help our children build theirs.

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Yes! Your Child Can

Victoria Waller

Every child can succeed in school and life, but some children need more help than others. For over 40 years, internationally acclaimed reading specialist and student advocate Dr. Victoria E. Waller has helped children who have trouble reading, who can't sit still in class, who don't feel like they can participate--children whom teachers have all but given up on. In Yes! Your Child Can, Dr. Waller shares with parents, teachers, and therapists her proven techniques to create success for children with learning differences and draw out the singular genius within your child.

In compassionate, nontechnical, easy-to-understand language, Yes! Your Child Can gives step-by-step guidance on how to help your child achieve in school and build lifelong intellectual confidence. Drawing on the latest science and her own wide-ranging experience, Dr. Waller explains why it's important to pay attention to your first gut feeling that your child may need extra help and shows how to navigate testing, medication, and choosing a team to help your child.

Most importantly, Yes! Your Child Can shows you how to use your child's natural strengths and passions to build their academic, social, and personal confidence. Dr. Waller empowers parents to let their children follow their own interests, whether that's learning about sharks, reading to the dog, or building with Legos and writing about their creations. With Dr. Waller's help, learning can be motivating and fun. Dr. Waller's techniques are smart, caring, and effective with any child, no matter their current or past educational difficulties.

Respectful, compassionate, and offering real help, Yes! Your Child Can is the first book every parent of a child with learning differences should read.

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The Land of Sweet Forever

Harper Lee

From one of America's most beloved authors, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces, offering a fresh perspective on the remarkable literary mind of Harper Lee.

Harper Lee remains a landmark figure in the American canon - thanks to Scout, Jem, Atticus, and the other indelible characters in her Pulitzer-winning debut, To Kill a Mockingbird; as well as for the darker, late-'50s version of small-town Alabama that emerged in Go Set a Watchman, her only other novel, published in 2015 after its rediscovery. Less remembered, until now, however, is Harper Lee the dogged young writer, who crafted stories in hopes of magazine publication; Lee the lively New Yorker, Alabamian, and friend to Truman Capote; and the Lee who peppered the pages of McCall's and Vogue with thoughtful essays in the latter part of the twentieth century.

The Land of Sweet Forever combines Lee's early short fiction and later nonfiction in a volume offering an unprecedented look at the development of her inimitable voice. Covering territory from the Alabama schoolyards of Lee's youth to the luncheonettes and movie houses of midcentury Manhattan, The Land of Sweet Forever invites still-vital conversations about politics, equality, travel, love, fiction, art, the American South, and what it means to lead an engaged and creative life.

This collection comes with an introduction by Casey Cep, Harper Lee's appointed biographer, which provides illuminating background for our reading of these stories and connects them both to Lee's life and to her two novels.

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Midnight Timetable

Bora Chung

The acclaimed Korean horror and sci-fi writer's goosebump-inducing new book follows an employee on the night shift at the Institute. They soon learn why some employees don't last long at the center. The handkerchief in Room 302 once belonged to the late mother of two sons, whose rivalry imbues the handkerchief with undue power and unravels the lives of those who seek to possess it. Meanwhile a live-streaming, ghost-chasing employee steals a cursed sneaker down the hall, but later finds he can't escape its tread. The cat in Room 206 begins to reveal the crimes of its former family, wanting to understand its own path to the Institute's dimly lit halls. 
 

But Chung's haunted institute isn't just a chilling place to play. As in her astounding collections Cursed Bunny and Your Utopia, these violent allegories subtly excavate the horrors of animal cosmetic testing, "conversion therapy," domestic abuse, and late-stage capitalism. Equal parts bone-chilling, wryly funny, and deeply political, Midnight Timetable is a masterful work of literary horror from one of our time's greatest imaginations. 

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Ladies in Waiting

Adriana Trigiani

Celebrate Jane Austen’s classic novels with this short story anthology starring forgotten characters as they experience their own happy endings. 

In honor of her 250th birthday, eight authors have come together with wildly imaginative reboots of the lives of several of Jane Austen’s minor characters. Written with plenty of love and wit, these clever stories star everyone from Pride and Prejudice’s snobbish Caroline Bingley to the modern descendant of Sense and Sensibility’s Eliza Williams and much more. Blurring genres and taking us across the oceans, Ladies in Waiting is a heartfelt celebration of Jane Austen and her timeless masterpieces.

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Dead and Alive

Zadie Smith

In this eagerly awaited new collection, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects that have captured her attention in recent years.

She takes an exhilaratingly close look at artists Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kara Walker and Celia Paul. She invites us along to the movies, to see and to think about Tár, and to New York to reflect on the spontaneous moments that connect us. She takes us on a walk down Kilburn High Road in her beloved North-West London and welcomes us to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison. She considers changes of government on both sides of the Atlantic – and the meaning of "the commons" in all our lives.

Throughout this thrilling collection, Zadie Smith shows us once again her unrivalled ability to think through critically and humanely some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times.

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It Was the Way She Said It

Terry McMillan

Before Terry McMillan found success as a novelist in the early 1990s, she published provocative, boundary-pushing short stories, capturing the struggles and triumphs of Black life in America with vitality and honesty, from the workaday factory man’s malaise in “The End” to the cast-aside lover’s resolve in “Touching” to the elderly woman’s wiles in “Ma’Dear.” McMillan’s inimitable voice bravely explores the dark corners of human relationships with compassion, humor, and nuance. This collection also features five unpublished stories that reveal how she wrestled with controversial topics rarely addressed in short fiction, from domestic abuse in “Mama, Take Another Step” to extreme poverty in “Can’t Close My Eyes to It.” 

Whether she’s revealing life lessons, pontificating about aging, recalling her sources of inspiration, or laying bare the beginnings of her life as a writer, McMillan approaches every piece with enduring candor, wit, and fearlessness.

Devoted fans and new readers alike will be delighted to discover these treasures spanning McMillan’s long, groundbreaking career. Indeed, it wasn’t only what Terry McMillan has said that made her so beloved . . . it was the way she said it.

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History Matters

David McCullough

In this posthumous collection of thought-provoking essays—many never published before—Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and bestselling author David McCullough affirms the value of history, how we can be guided by its lessons, and the enduring legacy of American ideals.

History Matters brings together selected essays by beloved historian David McCullough, some published here for the first time, written at different points over the course of his long career but all focused on the subject of his lifelong passion: the importance of history in understanding our present and future. Edited by McCullough’s daughter, Dorie McCullough Lawson, and his longtime researcher, Michael Hill, History Matters is a tribute to a master historian and offers fresh insights into McCullough’s enduring interests and writing life. The book also features a foreword by Jon Meacham.

McCullough highlights the importance of character in political leaders, with Harry Truman and George Washington serving as exemplars of American values like optimism and determination. He shares his early influences, from the books he cherished in his youth to the people who mentored him. He also pays homage to those who inspired him, such as writer Paul Horgan and painter Thomas Eakins, illustrating the diverse influences on his writing as well as the influence of art.

Rich with McCullough’s signature grace, curiosity, and narrative gifts, these essays offer vital lessons in viewing history through the eyes of its participants, a perspective that McCullough believed was crucial to understanding the present as well as the past. History Matters is testament to McCullough’s legacy as one of the great storytellers of this nation’s history and of the lasting promise of American ideals.

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Skin and Bones

Paul Doiron

For the first time in print, Skin and Bones features a collection of eight gripping original short stories in the bestselling Mike Bowditch series—including one brand new, never-before-published story—from Edgar-award nominated author Paul Doiron.

In THE BEAR TRAP, legendary Maine woodsman and bush pilot Charley Stevens tries to convince young Mike of the dangers awaiting rookie game wardens.

RABID draws Mike into the story of a gruesome case involving a bat with rabies from his Charley Steven’s past (2019 Edgar award nominee for Best Short Story).

When a visiting hunter goes missing in the middle of a snowstorm, a young Charley Stevens sets off to rescue him—but begins to suspect the man may not want to be found in BACKTRACK.

In THE IMPOSTER, Mike is confronted with a baffling case of stolen identity when he discovers a dead body whose driver’s license claims he is none other than Mike Bowditch himself.

Mike tracks down a sinister prowler who turns a couple's dream vacation home into a nightmare in THE CARETAKER.

An investigation into the killing of a bald eagle in SKIN AND BONES unearths an old case of a missing young man whose physically abusive brother might have murdered him.

In SNAKEBIT, Mike must hunt down a killer who uses the unlikeliest of murder weapons: rattlesnakes.

(Brand New!) Mike suspects there’s more to a grisly murder-suicide than meets the eye in SHEEP’S CLOTHING.

Critically acclaimed for his brilliant crime novels, Paul Doiron proves he is also the master of short story in Skin and Bones.

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Wendell Berry: Port William Novels & Stories: The Postwar Years

Wendell Berry

Library of America continues its definitive edition of Wendell Berry's complete fiction, including the novels The Memory of Old Jack and Remembering and 23 brilliant and beautiful stories

In this second volume, Port William faces the disappearance of farms and farmers in the decades after World War II, while Andy Catlett resolves to remain in the Membership

Set along the banks of the Kentucky River in America’s heartland, fictional Port William, Kentucky, is an agrarian world is peopled with memorable and beloved characters collectively known as the Port William Membership. For more than 50 years, Wendell Berry has told Port William’s history from the Civil War to the present day, recapturing a time when farming, faith, and family were the anchors of community and the ligaments that bound one generation to the next.

Now Library of America continues its definitive edition, prepared in close consultation with the author and published for his 90th birthday, presenting the complete story of Port William for the first time in the order of narrative chronology.

This second volume contains 23 stories and 2 novels that span the years 1945 to 1978, as the town faces the forces of mechanization and the looming possibility of its own disappearance. As the generation that came of age after the Civil War disappears, the younger generation increasingly chooses to leave and not return; one of the only exceptions is Andy Catlett, who resolves to remain in and to maintain the Membership.

This definitive edition of Wendell Berry's complete fiction includes detailed notes, endpapers featuring a map of Port William and a Membership family tree, and a chronology of Berry's remarkable life and career.

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The End of the World As We Know It

Christopher Golden

Since its initial publication in 1978, The Stand has been considered Stephen King’s seminal masterpiece of apocalyptic fiction, with millions of copies sold and adapted twice for television. Although there are other extraordinary works exploring the unraveling of human society, none have been as influential as this iconic novel—generations of writers have been impacted by its dark yet ultimately hopeful vision of the end and new beginning of civilization, and its stunning array of characters.

Now for the first time, Stephen King has fully authorized a return to the harrowing world of The Stand through this original short story anthology as presented by award-winning authors and editors Christopher Golden and Brian Keene. Bringing together some of today’s greatest and most visionary writers, The End of the World As We Know It features unforgettable, all-new stories set during and after (and some perhaps long after) the events of The Stand—brilliant, terrifying, and painfully human tales that will resonate with readers everywhere as an essential companion to the classic, bestselling novel.

Featuring an introduction by Stephen King, a foreword by Christopher Golden, and an afterword by Brian Keene. Contributors include Wayne Brady and Maurice Broaddus, Poppy Z. Brite, Somer Canon, C. Robert Cargill, Nat Cassidy, V. Castro, Richard Chizmar, S. A. Cosby, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes, Meg Gardiner, Gabino Iglesias, Jonathan Janz, Alma Katsu, Caroline Kepnes, Michael Koryta, Sarah Langan, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, Josh Malerman, Ronald Malfi, Usman T. Malik, Premee Mohamed, Cynthia Pelayo, Hailey Piper, David J. Schow, Alex Segura, Bryan Smith, Paul Tremblay, Catherynne M. Valente, Bev Vincent, Catriona Ward, Chuck Wendig, Wrath James White, and Rio Youers.

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An Oral History of Atlantis

Ed Park

In “Machine City” a college student’s chance role in a friend’s movie blurs the line between his character and his true self. (Is he a robot?) In “Slide to Unlock” a man comes to terms with his life via the passwords he struggles to remember in extremis. (What’s his mom’s name backward?) And in “Weird Menace” a director and faded movie star gab about science fiction, bad costume choices, and lost loves on a commentary track for a B-film from the ’80s that neither remembers all that well.

In Ed Park’s utterly original collection, An Oral History of Atlantis, characters bemoan their fleeting youth, focus on their breathing, meet cute, break up, write book reviews, translate ancient glyphs, bid on stuff online, whale watch, and once in a while find solace in the sublime. Throughout, Park deploys his trademark wit to create a world both strikingly recognizable and delightfully other. Spanning a quarter century, these sixteen stories tell the absurd truth about our lives. They capture the moment when the present becomes the past—and are proof positive that Ed Park is one of the most imaginative and insightful writers working today.

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Save Me, Stranger

Erika Krouse

Erika Krouse's debut memoir, Tell Me Everything, was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “lyrical, jarring, propulsive,” and the Washington Post as “mesmerizing on every page.” Now, with an electrifying new collection of stories, Save Me, Stranger, she further cements her reputation as an essential voice.

From the coldest town on earth to a sex shop in Bangkok to a haunted bed-and-breakfast in the Rockies, we meet characters at hinge moments. A runaway fights for her future while driving an ice-cream truck in gang territory; a cleaning woman investigates the teenager who died in her stead; a terminal patient in Alaska discovers new life in helping others die. This collection explores the borderlands between humor and hurt, community and self, and hope and despair, redefining what it means to survive.

Scalpel-sharp, unsparingly funny, and achingly wise, Krouse's expansive stories build to unforgettable emotional catharses, as these men and women must decide how far they are willing to go to save one another—and themselves.

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The Man in Black

Elly Griffiths

From the internationally bestselling author of the Ruth Galloway Mysteries, an eclectic, thrilling collection of short stories, featuring many characters that readers have come to know and love.

Elly Griffiths has always written short stories to experiment with different voices and genres as well as to explore what some of her fictional creations such as Ruth Galloway, Harbinder Kaur, and Max Mephisto might have done outside of the novels. The Man in Black gathers these bite-sized tales all together in one splendid volume.

There are ghost stories, cozy mysteries, tales of psychological suspense, and poignant vignettes of love and loss.

In the title story, Ruth Galloway crosses paths with a mysterious man in a bookstore, setting in motion a rescue mission that hinges on the legends and lore of Norfolk.

Looking into the past, a young magician in 1920s Leeds wonders just what happened to his missing landlady in "Max Mephisto and the Disappearing Act."

In "Justice Jones and the Etherphone," a witty girl detective investigates the dire prediction of a fortune teller in dreary postwar London.

A flashback in time reveals Harbinder Kaur as a Detective Sergeant surviving her first day on the job at Shoreham DCI.

To celebrate the holidays, Ruth gets her very first Christmas tree, and her beloved cat narrates his own seasonal story in "Flint's Fireside Tale."

And readers can armchair travel with stories set on the Amalfi Coast, in Capri, and in Egypt as Ruth and DCI Nelson experience their very own version of Death on the Nile.

The Man in Black illustrates the breadth and variety of Elly Griffiths's talent for blood-chilling, page-turning stories all with her trademark humor and heart.

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Something to Look Forward To

Fannie Flagg

Fannie Flagg once said that what the world needs now is a good laugh. And that is what she gives us in these warmhearted, always surprising stories about people who are finding clever ways to deal with the curveballs life sometimes throws at us.

Velma in Kansas, a loving great-grandmother, struggles to bridge generational gaps with her family. We cheer for Helen, in Ithaca, New York, who takes an audacious course of action when her husband leaves her for a younger woman. In Bent Fork, Wyoming; in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; in Tucson, Arizona; and in towns and cities all across America, people figure out inventive ways to overcome obstacles to happiness. And in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Special Agent Frawley is studying the mysteries of being human from an original perspective.

With her imagination, humor, and great understanding of the human heart, Fannie Flagg holds a mirror up to the foibles, ingenuity, and imagination of people, inspiring us to laugh at the sometimes eccentric, sometimes brilliant ways people cope with, and ultimately prevail over, the challenges of modern life.

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Show Don't Tell

Curtis Sittenfeld

In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.

In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,” a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,” a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,” Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school.

Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.

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Atavists

Lydia Millet

The word atavism, coined by a botanist and popularized by a criminologist, refers to the resurfacing of a primitive evolutionary trait or urge in a modern being. This inventive collection from Lydia Millet offers overlapping tales of urges ranging from rage to jealousy to yearning--a fluent triumph of storytelling, rich in ideas and emotions both petty and grand.

The titular atavists include an underachieving, bewildered young bartender; a middle-aged mother convinced her gentle son-in-law is fixated on geriatric porn; a bodybuilder with an incel's fantasy life; an arrogant academic accused of plagiarism; and an empty-nester dad determined to host refugees in a tiny house in his backyard.

As they pick away at the splitting seams in American culture, Millet's characters shimmer with the sense of powerlessness we share in an era of mass overwhelm. A beautician in a waxing salon faces a sudden resurgence of grief in the midst of a bikini Brazilian; a couple sets up a camera to find out who's been slipping homophobic letters into their mailbox; a jilted urban planner stalks a man she met on a dating app.

In its rich warp and weft of humiliations and human error, Atavists returns to the trenchant, playful social commentary that made A Children's Bible a runaway hit. In these stories sharp observations of middle-class mores and sanctimony give way to moments of raw exposure and longing: Atavists performs an uncanny fictional magic, full of revelation but also hilarious, unpretentious, and warm.

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The Aviator and the Showman

Laurie Gwen Shapiro

In 1928, a young social worker and hobby pilot named Amelia Earhart arrived in the office of George Putnam, heir to the Putnam & Sons throne and hitmaker, on the hunt for the right woman for a secret flying mission across the Atlantic. A partnership—professional and soon otherwise—was born.

The Aviator and the Showman unveils the untold story of Amelia's decade-long marriage to George Putnam, offering an intimate exploration of their relationship and the pivotal role it played in her enduring legacy. Despite her outwardly modest and humble image, Amelia was fiercely driven and impossibly brave, a lifelong feminist and trailblazer in her personal and professional life. Putnam, the so-called “PT Barnum of publishing” was a bookselling visionary—but often pushed his authors to extreme lengths in the name of publicity, and no one bore that weight more than Amelia. Their ahead-of-its time partnership supported her grand ambitions—but also pressed her into more and more treacherous stunts to promote her books, influencing a certain recklessness up to and including her final flight. 

Earhart is a captivating figure to many, but the truth about her life is often overshadowed by myth and legend. In this cinematic new account, Laurie Gwen Shapiro emphasizes Earhart’s multifaceted human side, her struggles, and her authentic aspirations, the truths behind her brave pursuits and the compromises she made to fit into societal expectations. Drawing from a trove of new sources including undiscovered audio interviews, The Aviator and the Showman is a gripping and passionate tale of adventure, colorful characters, hubris, and a complex and a vivid portrait of a marriage that shaped the trajectory of an iconic life.

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Departure 37

Scott Carson

On a clear October day, the American skies empty after hundreds of pilots refuse to fly, triggering a complete ground stop as authorities seek to explain an act of baffling coordination that the pilots insist was anything but planned. The pilots received disturbing, middle-of-the-night calls from their mothers, and each mother had a simple and urgent request: do not fly today.

There are a few concerning elements to the calls. None of the mothers remember making them—and some of the mothers are dead.

While the nation’s military chiefs and artificial intelligence experts mobilize in search of answers, a sixteen-year-old girl named Charlie on the coast of Maine watches a strange, silvery balloon drift across the water and toward her home—a place she loathes. Her father’s dream of opening a craft brewery on an old airfield has been a disaster, and all she wants is an escape back to Brooklyn.

She’s about to get much more than that.

Her new home is ground zero for a story that begins at a remote naval base in Indiana during the winter of 1962, when a physicist named Martin Hazelton discovered something extraordinary—and deadly. All Hazelton wanted was time to seek an explanation, but pressure from both American and Russian actors forced him into a perilous race.

Moving between the two characters and timelines, Scott Carson deftly weaves Cold War espionage with contemporary terror in a story that explains why #1 New York Times bestseller Joe Hill has declared himself “a fan for life.”

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The Big Hop

David Rooney

In 1919, in Newfoundland, four teams of aviators came from Britain to compete in "the Big Hop": an audacious race to be the first to fly, nonstop, across the Atlantic Ocean. One pair of competitors was forced to abandon the journey halfway, and two pairs never made it into the air. Only one team, after a death-defying sixteen-hour flight, made it to Ireland.

Celebrated on both continents, the transatlantic contest offered a surge of inspiration--and a welcome distraction--to a public reeling from the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But the seven airmen who made the attempt were quickly forgotten, their achievement overshadowed by the solo Atlantic flights of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart years later. In The Big Hop, David Rooney grants the pioneering aviators of 1919 the spotlight they deserve. From Harry Hawker, the pilot who as a young man had watched Houdini fly over his native Australia, to the engineer Ted Brown, a US citizen who joined the Royal Flying Corps, Rooney traces the lives of the unassuming men who performed extraordinary acts in the sky.

Mining evocative first-person accounts and aviation archives, Rooney also follows the participants' journeys: learning to fly on flimsy airplanes made of timber struts and varnished fabric; surviving the bloodiest war that Europe had ever yet seen; and battling faulty coolant systems, severe storms, and extreme fatigue while attempting the Atlantic. Rooney transports readers to the world in which the great contest took place, and traces the rise of aviation to its daredevil peak in the early decades of the twentieth century. Recounting a deeply moving adventure, The Big Hop explores why flights like these matter, and why we take to the skies.

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Realm of Ice and Sky

Buddy Levy

Two-time National Outdoor Book Award-winning author Buddy Levy's thrilling narrative of polar exploration via airship―and the men who sacrificed everything to make history.

Arctic explorer and American visionary Walter Wellman pioneered both polar and trans-Atlantic airship aviation, making history’s first attempts at each. Yet, Wellman has been cast as a self-promoting egomaniac known mostly for his catastrophic failures. Instead he was a courageous innovator who pushed the boundaries of polar exploration and paved the way for the ultimate conquest of the North Pole—which would be achieved not by dogsled or airplane, but by airship.

In 1908–09, American explorers Dr. Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, in separate expeditions, both claimed they’d reached the North Pole first, but their claims were seriously questioned. There was enough doubt that Norwegian explorer extraordinaire Roald Amundsen—who’d made history and a name for himself by being the first to sail through the Northwest Passage and the first man to the South Pole—attempted to fly to the North Pole by airship. He would go in the Norge, designed by Italian aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile. The 350-foot Norge flew over the North Pole on May 12, 1926, and Amundsen was able to accurately record and verify their exact location. 

However, Nobile felt slighted by Amundsen. Two years later, Nobile returned, this time in the Italia, backed by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. This was an Italian enterprise, and Nobile intended to win back the global accolades and reputation he believed Amundsen had stripped from him. The journey ended in disaster, death, and accusations of cannibalism, launching one of the greatest rescue operations the world had ever seen.

Realm of Ice and Sky is the riveting tale of the men who first flew the most technologically advanced airships of their time to the top of the world, risking and even giving their lives for science, country, and polar immortality.

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Invisible Generals

Doug Melville

This amazing true story of America’s first Black generals, Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and Jr., a father and son who helped integrate the American military and created the Tuskegee Airmen, is “the book Black America needs in this moment” (Eboni K. Williams, lawyer and cohost of State of the Culture).

Red Tails, George Lucas’s celebration of America’s first Black flying squadron, the Tuskegee Airmen, should have been a moment of victory for Doug Melville. He expected to see his great-uncle Benjamin O. Davis Jr.—the squadron’s commander—immortalized on-screen for his selfless contributions to America. But as the film rolled, Doug was shocked when he realized that Ben Jr.’s name had been omitted and replaced by the fictional Colonel A. J. Bullard. And Ben’s father, Benjamin O. Davis Sr., America’s first Black general who helped integrate the military, was left out completely.

Dejected, Doug looked inward and realized that unless he worked to bring their inspirational story to light, it would remain hidden from the world just as it had been concealed from him.

In this “thoughtful, highly readable blend of family and military history” (Kirkus Reviews), Melville shares his quest to rediscover his family’s story across five generations, from post-Civil War America to modern day Asia and Europe. In life, the Davises were denied the recognition and compensation they’d earned, but through his journey, Melville uncovers something greater: that dedication and self-sacrifice can move proverbial mountains—even in a world determined to make you invisible.

Invisible Generals recounts the lives of a father and his son who always maintained their belief in the American dream. As the inheritor of their legacy, Melville retraces their steps, advocates for them to receive their long-overdue honors and unlocks the potential we all hold to retrieve powerful family stories lost to the past.

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Lady Flyer

Heather B. Moore

Based on a true story and set against the backdrop of WWII, a young woman's love of flying becomes an epic fight for identity and equality.

In the quiet town of Houghton, Michigan, sixteen-year-old Nancy Harkness discovers a passion that ignites her heart in ways she never expected. The arrival of barnstormer pilots brings more than just the thrill of their daring stunts; it brings the promise of adventure. Nancy vows she will be a pilot someday.

Years later, as the dark clouds of World War II gather on the horizon, Nancy's dreams take a new and daring turn. With unwavering determination, she envisions a squadron of female pilots. Yet, her path is far from clear. The male-dominated world of aviation pushes back, determined to keep women out of the skies.

But Nancy isn't alone in her quest for equality. Jackie Cochran, a formidable aviatrix and Nancy's rival, has her own dreams and ambitions for women in aviation. As they both navigate the turbulent skies of a nation at war, their destinies intertwine in a story of rivalry, respect, and competition.

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Sheepdogs

Elliot Ackerman

Skwerl and Cheese are down on their luck and about to find themselves tangled in the heist of their lives. Skwerl, once an elite member of the CIA's paramilitary unit, was cast out after a raid gone wrong in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz, a former Afghan pilot of legendary skill, now works the graveyard shift at a gas station.

Recruited into a shadowy network of "sheepdogs," they embark on a mission to repossess a multi-million-dollar private jet stranded on a remote African airfield. But as they wind through a labyrinth of lies and hidden agendas, they discover that nothing is as it seems. Their contact vanishes, their handler's motives are suspect, and the true source of their payday remains a mystery.

With the stakes skyrocketing and the women in their lives drawn into the fray, this unlikely spy duo find themselves deep in the underbelly of modern war and intelligence.

From the jungles of Kampala to the glitz of Marseille, they'll need to be as cunning as they are bold to survive in a game where the line between the hunters and the hunted is razor-thin.

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Spitfires

Becky Aikman

They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses-all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they were denied the opportunity to fly for their country when the United States entered the Second World War. But Great Britain, desperately fighting for survival, would let anyone-even Americans, even women-transport warplanes. Thus, twenty-five daring young aviators bolted for England in 1942, becoming the first American women to command military aircraft.

In a faraway land, these “spitfires” lived like women decades ahead of their time. Risking their lives in one of the deadliest jobs of the war, they ferried new, barely tested fighters and bombers to air bases and returned shot-up wrecks for repair, never knowing what might go wrong until they were high in the sky. Many ferry pilots died in crashes or made spectacular saves. It was exciting, often terrifying work. The pilots broke new ground off duty as well, shocking their hosts with thoroughly modern behavior. 

With cinematic sweep, Becky Aikman follows the stories of nine of the women who served, drawing on unpublished diaries, letters, and records, along with her own interviews, to bring these forgotten heroines fully to life. Spitfires is a vivid, richly detailed account of war, ambition, and a group of remarkable women whose lives were as unconventional as their dreams.

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Into Unknown Skies

David K. Randall

The unbelievable history of the 1924 race to circumnavigate the globe for the first time by air, a nail-biting contest that pitted underdog US pilots against their better-funded European rivals, created technology that changed aviation, and convinced America that its future was in the sky.

In the early 1920s, America's faith in aviation was in shambles. Twenty years after the Wright Brothers' first flight, most Americans believed airplanes were for delivering the mail or performing daredevil stunts in front of crowds. The dream of commercial air travel remained just that. Even the American military was a skeptic--rather than pay to bring its planes back from Europe following World War I, the War Department chose to burn most of them instead.

All that changed with a single race in 1924. It was not just any race, though--it was a race to become the first to circle the globe in an airplane, pitting a team of underdog American pilots against the best aviators in the world from England, Italy, Portugal, France, and Argentina. Rooted in the same daring spirit that pushed early twentieth-century explorers to attempt crossings of the Antarctic ice or locate the source of the Nile, this race was an adventure unlike anything the world had seen before. The obstacles were daunting--from experimental planes, to dangerous landings in uncharted territory, to the simple navigational gauges that could lead pilots hundreds of miles off course. Failure seemed all but guaranteed--the suspense less about who would win than how many would perish for the honor of being the first.

Now on the race's centennial, award-winning author David K. Randall tells the story of this riveting, long-forgotten race. Through larger-than-life characters, treacherous landings, disease, and ultimately triumph, Into Unknown Skies demonstrates how one race returned America to aviation greatness. A story of underdog teammates, bold exploration, and American ingenuity, Into Unknown Skies is an untold adventure tale showing the power of flight to bring the world together.

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Walking on Hidden Wings

Rachel Scott McDaniel

Geneva Ashcroft Hayes's marriage to a newspaper mogul might have been arranged, but the New York socialite is devastated when her husband's plane crashes a few short months after their nuptials. When the authorities suspect murder, Geneva sets out on a wild mission to find his killer--and to prove it wasn't her!
When mysterious notes surface pointing to Geneva's guilt in his death, they only strengthen her resolve. She has little to go on except for a detective friend's cryptic list of locations connected to her dead spouse. When the friend also disappears, she trades her sparkling gowns for coveralls and pilot goggles.
Armed with a new name and career as a wingwalker and barnstormer, she travels from town to town in hopes of unearthing clues and locating her missing friend. But Geneva discovers that her past may not belong to her . . . what she once believed as truth may be nothing more than lies and deception. 

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Katharine, the Wright Sister

Tracey Enerson Wood

She helped her brothers soar... but was the flight worth the fall?

It all started with two boys and a bicycle shop. Wilbur and Orville Wright, both unsuited to college and disinclined to leave home, jumped on the popular new fad of bicycle riding and opened a shop in Dayton, Ohio. Repairing and selling soon led to tinkering and building as the brothers offered improved models to their eager customers. Amid their success, a new dream began to take shape. Engineers across the world were puzzling over how to build a powered flying machine--and Wilbur and Orville wanted in on the challenge. But their younger sister, Katharine, knew they couldn't do it without her. The three siblings made a pact: the three of them would solve the problem of human flight.

As her brothers obsessed over blueprints and risked life and limb testing new models on the sand beaches of North Carolina, Katharine became the mastermind behind the scenes of their inventions. She sourced materials, managed communications, and kept Wilbur and Orville focused on their goal--even when it seemed hopeless. And in 1903, the Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight of humankind.

What followed was the kind of fame and fortune the Wrights had never imagined. The siblings traveled the world to demonstrate their invention, trained other pilots, and built new machines that could fly higher and farther. But at the height of their success, tragedy wrenched the Wright family apart... and forced Katharine to make an impossible choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

From internationally bestselling author Tracey Enerson Wood, Katharine, the Wright Sister is an unforgettable novel that shines a spotlight on one of the most important and overlooked women in history, and the sacrifices she made so that others might fly.

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The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line

Mari K. Eder

For fans of Radium Girls and history and WWII buffs, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line takes you inside the lives and experiences of 15 unknown women heroes from the Greatest Generation, the women who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen during WWII--in and out of uniform--for theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come.

From daring spies to audacious pilots, from innovative scientists to indomitable resistance fighters, these extraordinary women stepped out of line and into history, forever altering the world's landscape. This page-turning narrative, crafted with meticulous historical accuracy by retired U.S. Army Major General Mari K. Eder, provides a fresh perspective on the integral roles that women played during WWII.

  • Liane B. Russell fled Austria with nothing and later became a renowned U.S. scientist whose research on the effects of radiation on embryos made a difference to thousands of lives.
  • Gena Turgel was a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Bergen-Belsen and cared for the young Anne Frank, who was dying of typhus. Gena survived and went on to write a memoir and spent her life educating children about the Holocaust.
  • Ida and Louise Cook were British sisters who repeatedly smuggled out jewelry and furs and served as sponsors for refugees, and they also established temporary housing for immigrant families in London.

Whether you're a history enthusiast, a lover of powerful women's stories, or an avid reader of WWII nonfiction, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line is a must-read and a poignant testament to the forgotten women who stepped up when the world needed them most.

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Dark Vector

Ward Larsen

In the wilds of Siberia, a top-secret Russian fighter goes missing on a test flight. The Russian Air Force begins a search, oblivious to their error: they are looking in the wrong spot. The pilot, Colonel Maxim Primakov, has crash landed during an attempted defection.

The new chief of CIA clandestine operations, David Slaton, wants desperately to find him, but only one man is in a position to reach Primakov—Tru Miller, a rookie operator. Slaton plots a rescue deep inside Russia, not realizing that he will have to outfox the one other man who knows the truth. Victor Dubonin is a general in Russian intelligence. His search for Primakov is deeply personal—and if he doesn’t succeed it will cost him his life.

Soon a small group of Americans, including its top female test pilot, Kai Drake, find themselves hunted in the wilds of Russia. Their survival will depend on one thing—just how resourceful and lethal they can be.

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The Layover

Lacie Waldon

After ten years as a flight attendant, Ava Greene is poised to hang up her wings and finally put down roots. She's got one trip left before she bids her old life farewell, and she plans to enjoy every second of it. But then she discovers that former pilot Jack Stone--the absurdly gorgeous, ridiculously cocky man she's held a secret grudge against for years--is on her flight. And he has the nerve to flirt with her, as if he doesn't remember the role he played in the most humiliating night of her life. Good thing she never has to see him again after they land....

But when their plane encounters mechanical problems, what should have been a quick stop at the Belize airport suddenly becomes a weekend layover. Getting stuck on a three-hour flight with her nemesis was bad enough. Being stranded with him at a luxury resort in paradise? Even with the sultry breeze and white sand to distract her, it will take all the rum punch in the country to drown out his larger-than-life presence. 

Yet the more time Ava spends with him under the hot Caribbean sun, the more she begins to second-guess everything she thought she knew about him...and everything she thought she wanted from her life. And all too soon, she might have to choose between keeping her feet on the ground and her head in the clouds....

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Grit, Spit, and Never Quit

Rob Riggle

Comedian Rob Riggle's frank, funny, and inspirational memoir about how the lessons he learned while serving in the US Marines prepared him for life, especially when it came to pursuing his comedy dreams.

Before he graced movie screens in films like The Hangover and television in shows like The Daily Show, Rob Riggle served his country as a Marine for twenty-three years. He helped liberate an embassy in Liberia, served at a refugee camp in Albania before going into Kosovo, did search and rescue at Ground Zero, and was deployed to Afghanistan twice. He learned the hard way that you need to embrace the suck and never give up if you want to get anywhere in life. And those lessons came in handy, especially when he faced tough crowds as he tried to establish his comedy career. He's been heckled (by idiots), shot at (by bigger idiots), rejected for roles, and flopped more often than a European soccer player in the World Cup. But no matter what he was doing, every time Riggle wanted to throw in the towel, he channeled his inner Marine and kicked his ass in gear.

Grit, Spit, and Never Quit has action, tear‑jerker scenes, side‑splitting laughs, and plenty of bumper sticker moments. He's jumped out of planes, he's become one of the most recognizable comedians in the country--but at his core, Rob is a regular guy from Kansas with grit, spit, and the will to never quit.

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Devil Dogs

Saul David

Award-winning historian Saul David reveals the searing experience of the Devil Dogs of World War II and does for the U.S. Marines what Band of Brothers did for the 101st Airborne.

The “Devil Dogs” of King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines—part of the legendary 1st Marine Division—were among the first American soldiers to take the offensive in World World II—and also the last.

They landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in August 1942—the first US ground offensive of the war—and were present when Okinawa, Japan’s most southerly prefecture, finally fell to American troops after a bitter struggle in June 1945. In between they fought in the “Green Hell” of Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain, and across the coral wasteland of Peleliu in the Palau Islands, a campaign described by one King Company veteran as “thirty days of the meanest, around-the-clock slaughter that desperate men can inflict on each other.”

Ordinary men from very different backgrounds, and drawn from cities, towns, and settlements across America, the Devil Dogs were asked to do something extraordinary: take on the victorious Imperial Japanese Army, composed of some of the most effective, “utterly ruthless and treacherous” soldiers in world history—and defeat it. This is the story of how they did just that and, in the process, forged bonds of brotherhood that still survive today.

Remarkably, the company contained an unusually high number of talented writers, whose first-hand accounts and memoirs provide the color, emotion, and context for this extraordinary story. In Devil Dogs, award-winning historian Saul David sets the searing experience of the Devil Dogs into the broader context of the brutal war in the Pacific and does for the U.S. Marines what Band of Brothers did for the 101st Airborne.

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Great American Marine Corps Stories

Tom McCarthy

On November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress approved a resolution for the organization of the Corps, creating what would become the Marines, a heroic group of men and women who put their lives on the line in far-flung places around the globe.
 
Here are ten unforgettable stories on the courage of America’s finest fighting force. These visceral accounts have one thing in common: heroism in its purest form. You will find in this eminently readable collection stories of Marines at Belleau Wood in France during World War I, and on to breathtaking and heartbreaking action on Iwo Jima. Here also are Marines making a surprise amphibious landing at the strategic port of Inchon during the Korean War, besieged Marines at Khe Sanh in Vietnam under attack for six months, and unsung heroes in unknown battles from the First Gulf War to Marine snipers in Haiti, Somalia, and Afghanistan.
 
This riveting collection brings out in wrenching detail why Admiral Chester Nimitz described the Marines at the Battle of Iwo Jima thusly: “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.” Riveting and inspiring, Great American Marine Corps Stories is a must-read for historians, Marines, and lovers of adventure.
 

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A Dog Named Beautiful

Rob Kugler

An uplifting and unforgettable story of a US Marine, his extraordinary dog, and the road trip of a lifetime.

"A beautiful, beautiful book." — Jenna Bush Hager

When US Marine Rob Kugler returns from war he had given up not only a year of his life in service to his country, but he had also lost a brother in the fighting as well. Lost in grief, Rob finds solace and relief in the one thing that never fails to put a smile on his face: his chocolate lab Bella. Exceptionally friendly, and always with - you wouldn’t believe it - a smile on her face, Bella is the friend Rob needs, and they spend their days exploring nature and taking photos. 

But then Bella develops a limp in her front leg. It’s cancer, and the prognosis isn’t good. Rob has a choice, either to let Bella go now, or amputate her cancer riddled leg, and see what the next few months would bring.

For Rob, the choice is a no-brainer, and instead of waiting at home for the cancer to spread, Rob and Bella pack their bags and hit the road. Life is short, but the road ahead is long and winding, and as they criss-cross the country Rob and Bella meet remarkable, life-changing men and women who are quick to make friends with this incredible three-legged dog. A Dog Named Beautiful is a book full of inspiration, hope, love, tears, and laughs. Enjoy the journey.

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Sheepdogs

Elliot Ackerman

Skwerl and Cheese are down on their luck and about to find themselves tangled in the heist of their lives. Skwerl, once an elite member of the CIA's paramilitary unit, was cast out after a raid gone wrong in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz, a former Afghan pilot of legendary skill, now works the graveyard shift at a gas station.

Recruited into a shadowy network of "sheepdogs," they embark on a mission to repossess a multi-million-dollar private jet stranded on a remote African airfield. But as they wind through a labyrinth of lies and hidden agendas, they discover that nothing is as it seems. Their contact vanishes, their handler's motives are suspect, and the true source of their payday remains a mystery.

With the stakes skyrocketing and the women in their lives drawn into the fray, this unlikely spy duo find themselves deep in the underbelly of modern war and intelligence.

From the jungles of Kampala to the glitz of Marseille, they'll need to be as cunning as they are bold to survive in a game where the line between the hunters and the hunted is razor-thin.

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Silent Horizons

Chad Robichaux

He's gone behind enemy lines countless times before. But this time, he's going alone.

Foster Quinn is more than a former Force Recon Marine. He's a husband. A father. A faithful brother to his teammates. When one of them is killed during a high-risk operation to track down a dangerous arms dealer, Foster struggles to balance his roles as a dedicated family man and an elite warrior. Despite his inner demons--or maybe because of them--Foster can't walk away from his brothers.

Then he gets the chance to step in where his best friend left off, assuming a cover identity in Iran that will get him close to the arms dealer and pave the way for a critical mission. On his own in a new country, he must carefully choose who to trust. An Iranian taxi driver. An American hunter. A British oil executive. One wrong move could spell disaster. Not just for the mission, but for Foster.

The clock is ticking. A team of tier-one warriors is set to plummet through the night sky in enemy territory. They've trained for this. But their success hinges on just one man.

From former Force Recon Marine Chad Robichaux and Navy TOPGUN fighter pilot Jack Stewart comes the first book in a thrilling new series that gives readers a pulse-pounding glimpse into the clandestine side of special operations.

 

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Unremitting

Gregg Zoroya

From the former USA Today journalist and author of The Chosen Few, the untold story of The Battle of Ramadi, which led to a war that would last seven years, claim thousands of lives and evolve into a traumatic legacy for the US military and its veterans.

Their nickname was the Magnificent Bastards and they were warriors without a war. Kept stateside after 9/11 and left floating in the Pacific during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the thousand Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment were told they were bench-warmers as America sent troops into combat. But war was waiting. Iraq would explode in violence exactly one year after a U.S. led Coalition swept into Baghdad and the Magnificent Bastards would find themselves at the epicenter. When the battalion first arrived in the provincial capital of Ramadi, Iraq, in February of 2004, they were thrust into a savage battle where hundreds of insurgents organized a three-day offensive aimed at driving the Marines out of their city of 400,000.

In Unremitting, journalist Gregg Zoroya tells the fast-paced, dramatic, and meticulously-researched story of the battle that truly began the Iraq War. Capturing the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle, Zoroya explores this vital part of American military history and beyond, showing how Ramadi was not just a game-changer for the Iraq War, but also for the marines, sailors, and soldiers who fought it, the trauma remaining with survivors more than two decades later.

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Hometown Vendetta

Traci Hunter Abramson

Marine Captain Luke Steele and FBI Special Agent Amberlyn Reiner must work together to unravel a deadly conspiracy before time runs out while also navigating their undercover fake relationship that is becoming all too real. 

When a terrorist attack grips the nation, Luke Steele, a military aide to the president of the United States, is reassigned to track down the suspect because the alleged bomber was spotted wearing a state championship ring from Luke's hometown. Luke has desperately tried to forget his high school years, but he can't run from them now. Instead, he must face his most formidable assignment yet: leave his post by the president's side, return to Pine Falls, Virginia, and face every demon from his childhood--including every person and every thought that told him he wasn't worth anything. 

FBI Special Agent Amberlyn Reiner has spent years tracking domestic terrorism. When she catches a break that could pinpoint the key player in the antigovernment group responsible for dozens of needless deaths, she's willing to do whatever it takes to get the information she seeks--even if it means going undercover as Luke Steele's plus-one at his high school reunion. Though Amberlyn found Luke arrogant and aloof during their time together at Quantico, it doesn't take long for her to discover that there's much more to him than she realized. But even as the line between fact and fiction in their relationship blurs, the countdown to danger accelerates. Time is running out, and with the threat of another terrorist attack looming, the stakes are higher than ever. 

 

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Angels Against the Sun

James M. Fenelon

In the tradition of Band of Brothers, historian and former paratrooper James M. Fenelon offers a grunt’s-eye view of the 11th Airborne’s heroic campaign to liberate the Philippines in World War II. A soldier’s history at its best.

A Grunt’s-Eye View of Pacific Warfare

The Pacific theater of World War II pitted American fighting men against two merciless enemies: the relentless Japanese army and the combined forces of monsoons, swamps, mud, privation, and disease.

General Joseph Swing’s rowdy paratroopers of the 11th Airborne Division— nicknamed the “Angels”—fought in some of the war’s most dramatic campaigns, from bloody skirmishes in Leyte’s unforgiving rainforests to the ferocious battles on Luzon, including the hellish urban combat of Manila.

The Angels were trained as elite shock troops, but high American casualties often forced them into action as ground-pounding infantrymen. Surviving on airdropped supplies and reinforcements, the Angels fought their way across nearly impassable terrain, emerging as one of the most lethal units in the Pacific War. Their final task was the occupation of Japan, where they were the first American boots on the ground.

Angels Against the Sun is an unforgettable account of the liberation of the Philippines. In the tradition of Band of Brothers, historian and former paratrooper James M. Fenelon offers a grunt’s-eye view of the war. This is a soldier’s history at its best.

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Never Fall Again

Lynn H. Blackburn


Landry Hutton has spent three years rebuilding her life behind the secure gates of The Haven, an exclusive resort on the outskirts of Gossamer Falls, North Carolina. After serving as the artist-in-residence, Landry is finally ready to settle in permanently to give her daughter, Eliza, a safe home in which to grow up. 

Former Marine Callum Shaw always knew he would someday join his family's construction business in Gossamer Falls. He longs for a family of his own but has almost given up on that ever happening. The beautiful artist who has hired him to build her new house is funny, gifted, and everything Cal could ever want in a partner, but he vows to keep his distance. He's loved--and lost--someone like her before.

When Landry's pottery is destroyed in a suspicious fire, it becomes clear that Landry and Eliza are in grave danger--but from whom? Cal will have to risk his heart again if he has any hope of protecting them.

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76 Hours

Larry Alexander

The gripping historical novel of the invasion of Tarawa by US Marines in World War II, from bestselling author, journalist, and historian Larry Alexander.

The island of Tarawa, a tiny spit of sand out in the middle of the Pacific, teemed with five hundred pillboxes filled with artillery pieces and highly motivated Japanese soldiers. Their commanding officer encouraged his troops, saying, "It would take one million men one hundred years" to conquer Tarawa. They were convinced that the Americans would be slaughtered before they ever got ashore.

Private Pete "Hardball" Talbot was one of the US Marines tasked with taking the island. A cocky, tough street kid from Philadelphia, Pete joined up to escape his abusive father. In his mind, nothing the Japanese could throw at him could be as bad as what his father dished out. He was angry, and more than willing to take it out on the enemy. But once he climbed over the side and into the landing craft, and once the Japanese artillery and machine guns opened up in defense of the island, Pete knew this was going to be different. It would take all his training, and all his street smarts to stay alive while those around him got blown to bits.

Despite Japanese predictions, it took the United States Marines seventy-six hours to take Tarawa. It was a walk in the park ... if the park were in the middle of hell itself.

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Beverly Hills Spy

Ronald Drabkin

The untold story of the World War I hero who became a fixture of high society in Golden Age Hollywood--all while acting as a double agent for the Japanese Empire as it prepared to attack Pearl Harbor

Frederick Rutland's story is a rags-to-riches coup for the ages--a lower-class boy from England bootstraps his way up the ranks of the British military, becoming a World War I pilot, father of the modern aircraft carrier, cosmopolitan businessman, and Hollywood A-list insider. He oversaw this small empire from his mansion on the fabled Bird Streets of Beverly Hills. Snubbed for promotion in the Royal Air Force due to little more than jealousy and class politics, Rutland--to all appearances--continued to spin gold from straw, living an enviably lavish lifestyle that included butlers, wild parties, private clubs, and newswor-thy living . . .

. . . and it was all funded by the Japanese Empire.

Beverly Hills Spy reveals the story of Rutland's life of espi-onage on behalf of the Axis, selling secrets about fleet and aircraft design to the Japanese Imperial Navy that would be instrumental in its ability to attack Pearl Harbor, while col-lecting a salary ten times larger than the best-paid Japanese admirals. Based on recently declassified FBI files and until-now untranslated documents from Japanese intelligence, Ronald Drabkin brings the scope of this unforgettable tale into full focus for the first time. Rutland hides in plain sight, rubbing elbows with Amelia Earhart and hosting galas and fundraisers with superstars like Charlie Chaplin and Boris Karloff, while simultaneously passing information to Japan through spy networks across North and Central America. Countless opportunities to catch Rutland in the act are squandered by the FBI, British Intelligence, and US Naval

Intelligence alike as he uses his cunning and charm to mis-direct and cast shadows of doubt over his business dealings, allowing him to operate largely unfettered for years.

In the end, whether he fully intends to or not, Rutland sets in motion world events that are so monumental, their consequences are still being felt today.

Beverly Hills Spy is a masterpiece of research on spy craft, a shocking narrative about an unknown but pivotal figure in history, and brings new information to light that helps us understand how Pearl Harbor happened--and how it could have been prevented.

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Change of Plans

Dylan Newton

In this charming romantic comedy, a hometown hero comes to the rescue of a chef unexpectedly left to care for three little girls--who may end up saving him too.

When disaster strikes and chef Bryce Weatherford is given guardianship of her three young nieces, her life goes from cooking with fire...to controlling a dumpster fire. Five‑year‑old Addison refuses to remove her fairy wings, eight‑year‑old Cecily won't bathe, and tween June is majoring in belligerence. With all this chaos, Bryce jettisons hope for a life outside of managing her family and her new job.
 

It's been years since Ryker Matthews had his below‑the‑knee amputation, yet the phantom pain for his lost limb and Marine career haunts him. To cope, he focuses on his vehicle restoration business. He knows he's lucky to be alive. Yet, "lucky" feels more like "cursed" to his lonely heart. 

When Ryker literally sweeps Bryce off her feet in the grocery store's baby aisle, they both feel sparks. But falling in love would be one more curveball neither is ready to deal with... or is it exactly the change of plans they need? 

 

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"Night of the Clipper"

Vincent J. Walcek

"Night of the Clipper" is a ghostly story of mystery, action, suspense, and even budding romance centered in the small town of Elkton, Maryland. The date is December, 2013, and young Douglas Pledger and his family are newcomers to the neighborhood, after having moved to escape the bustle of the big city, and for his father, Rick Pledger, to begin a new law practice. For Douglas, confused and frustrated over having to leave his former home and friends, what should be a new beginning for this now-lonely ninth grader is just the beginning of strange and mysterious events that, initially, only he experiences. Douglas' sister Marcy, his father Rick and his mother Rachel become gravely concerned with his sudden change in behavior. It isn't until Douglas enlists the help of former firefighter, Dave Holt, Dave's dog Gretchen and Dr. Celeste Creeley from Villanova University that the truth surrounding Douglas' ghostly encounters becomes clear, after which the only question is, "What now?" Marcy, Rick and Rachel also become deeply involved as answers become known. For Dave Holt, a former fire fighter's haunted past is awakened as he and Douglas become close friends. For Dave's faithful dog, Gretchen, her uncanny instincts will help move the action in the most chilling ways as she helps guide the others to important clues. Celeste Creeley will be met with a realization she would never have anticipated before leaving her home in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania, to travel to Elkton at Dave Holt's invitation as the dynamic background story requires her presence there. Douglas' sister Marcy, father, Rick, and mother, Rachel, will make a shocking transition from disbelievers to unwilling participants in a bizarre series of events as the action unfolds. Elkton CID detective Ed Neevers is initially on the outside looking in as the actions of the other characters present an entirely different picture, where his law enforcement responsibilities require that he begin to investigate the strange goings on in the community. Will his investigation derail the efforts of the others? "Night of the Clipper" is a story that combines action, suspense, the supernatural, and the deeply compassionate, to provide the reader with many exciting facets, real places and true historical events that set the stage for this compelling story. So, strap yourselves in and follow Douglas and his family, Dave Holt, Gretchen the dog, Dr. Creeley and Detective Neevers as they all join together in a wild ride to resolve a 50-year old ghostly mystery. Enjoy "Night of the Clipper!"

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Small Town Horror

Ronald Malfi

Five childhood friends are forced to confront their own dark past as well as the curse placed upon them in this horror masterpiece from the bestselling author of Come with Me.

Maybe this is a ghost story…

Andrew Larimer has left his past behind. Rising up the ranks in a New York law firm, and with a heavily pregnant wife, he is settling into a new life far from Kingsport, the town in which he grew up. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he has no choice but to return home.

Coming home means returning to his late father’s house, which has seen better days. It means lying to his wife. But it also means reuniting with his friends: Eric, now the town’s deputy sheriff; Dale, a real-estate mogul living in the shadow of a failed career; his childhood sweetheart Tig who never could escape town; and poor Meach, whose ravings about a curse upon the group have driven him to drugs and alcohol. 

Together, the five friends will have to confront the memories—and the horror—of a night, years ago, that changed everything for them. 

Because Andrew and his friends have a secret. A thing they have kept to themselves for twenty years. Something no one else should know. But the past is not dead, and Kingsport is a town with secrets of its own.

One dark secret...

One small-town horror...

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These Things Linger

Dan Franklin

When Alex Wilson's estranged uncle unexpectedly dies, Alex realizes he would do just about anything to make peace with the man who had raised him as his own.

He'd even reach out to the dead.

But things more dangerous than ghosts haunt his uncle's broken down trailer and the nearly abandoned one-gas-station town of Fair Hill just beyond. Things that can devour the living and the dead alike, and are all too ready to answer his call.

Some parts of our past never really leave us. There are things that don't know how to die.

These things linger.

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Chasing the Boogeyman

Richard Chizmar

In the summer of 1988, the mutilated bodies of several missing girls begin to turn up in a small Maryland town. The grisly evidence leads police to the terrifying assumption that a serial killer is on the loose in the quiet suburb. But soon a rumor begins to spread that the evil stalking local teens is not entirely human. Law enforcement, as well as members of the FBI, are certain that the killer is a living, breathing madman—and he’s playing games with them. For a once peaceful community trapped in the depths of paranoia and suspicion, it feels like a nightmare that will never end.

Recent college graduate Richard Chizmar returns to his hometown just as a curfew is enacted and a neighborhood watch is formed. Amid preparing for his wedding and embarking on a writing career, he soon finds himself thrust into a real-life horror story. Inspired by the terrifying events, Richard writes a personal account of the serial killer’s reign of terror, unaware that these events will continue to haunt him for years to come.

A clever, terrifying, and heartrending work of metafiction, Chasing the Boogeyman is the ultimate marriage between horror fiction and true crime. Chizmar’s “dazzling work of fresh imagination and psychological insight” (Caroline Kepnes, New York Times bestselling author of You) is on full display in this truly unique novel that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.

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