List

Bedtime Classics introduce classic works of fiction to little literary scholars through character-driven narratives and colorful illustration. Designed to be the perfect one minute bedtime story (or five minutes--if you're begged to read it over and over), so parents can feel good about exposing their children to some of the most iconic pieces of literature, while building their child's bookshelf with these trendy editions!

When a tornado hits her small Kansas town, Dorothy is swept away to Oz To find her way back home, she follows the yellow brick road to The Emerald City and picks up a scarecrow, a tinman, and a cowardly lion, on their way to seek help from the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

After its twin doesn’t come back from the wash, Blue Sock decides it wants to explore the great big world outside its drawer. Just like you, there are so many things a sock can do when given the chance to try something new!

It’s summer vacation for the students of Astronaut Academy, and Maribelle Mellonbelly is throwing the best party ever on Beach Planet? Yes! But tensions heat up fast when Hakata Soy’s arch rival, Rick Raven, arrives. And soon the whole planet is heating up—with a giant volcano threatening to blow its top!

Unless they can work together save the planet, the students of Astronaut Academy will be
toast. But can they put aside their differences in time to turn the tides?

No matter where they live, all children gaze at the blue sky, bask in the warmth of the golden sun, dig in the rich dirt, and watch clouds grow soft and rosy at end of day. Through the eyes of one inquisitive and thoughtful young narrator, young readers explore the idea of perspective, and come to realize that all of us, everywhere, share the colors of the world. The gentle, poetic text and gorgeous collaged illustrations make this just right to say goodnight.

The rain hasn't stopped for a week, and the twelve guests of the Blue Vein Tavern are trapped by flooded roads and the rising Skidwrack River. Among them are a ship's captain, tattooed twins, a musician, and a young girl traveling on her own. To pass the time, they begin to tell stories--each a different type of folklore--that eventually reveal more about their own secrets than they intended.

As the rain continues to pour down--an uncanny, unnatural amount of rain--the guests begin to realize that the entire city is in danger, and not just from the flood. But they have only their stories, and one another, to save them. Will it be enough?

Bell has spent his whole life - all eleven years of it - on Mars. But he's still just a regular kid - he loves cats, any kind of cake, and is curious about the secrets the adults in the US colony are keeping. Like, why don't have contact with anyone on the other Mars colonies? Why are they so isolated? When a virus breaks out and the grown-ups all fall ill, Bell and the other children are the only ones who can help. It's up to Bell - a regular kid in a very different world - to uncover the truth and save his family ... and possibly unite an entire planet.
 

Embark on an exciting journey through the most interesting and important festivals, celebrations, and holidays enjoyed by people around the world. Stunning original illustrations and fascinating facts will inspire and inform children about cultures and religions from the countries of the world.

In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life's questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her family's fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest for the ultimate answer.

In a snow-covered land where monsters rule the icy tundra, only song weavers hold the power to control these vicious giants. But for centuries song weavers have been the subject of suspicion--how can those who hold so much power be trusted?

Ever since his parents were lost on a pathfinding expedition, Ash has spent his life as an outcast. As a budding song weaver, his village marked him as a potential threat, even though all he wants to do is protect them. Eager to find his place in the world, he and his cantankerous yeti caretaker seek passage on the Frostheart: a ship-like sleigh whose mission is to explore faraway lands.

Follow a girl on an elaborate flight of fancy in a wondrously illustrated, wordless picture book about self-determination — and unexpected friendship.

A lonely girl draws a magic door on her bedroom wall and through it escapes into a world where wonder, adventure, and danger abound. Red marker in hand, she creates a boat, a balloon, and a flying carpet that carry her on a spectacular journey toward an uncertain destiny. When she is captured by a sinister emperor, only an act of tremendous courage and kindness can set her free. 

Astrid is training to go to space! But as she builds her shuttle, cooks astronaut food, and practices floating in zero gravity, Dad tells Astrid that the ship's construction is too dangerous, she's too little to cook alone, and she's not allowed to flood the bathroom. That night, when Astrid dreams she's an astronaut, the challenges she encounters are overwhelming. Astrid realizes she isn't as ready as she thought. Back on Earth, Astrid turns to her loving and supportive Dad, who helps Astrid continue her astronaut training.

This Yet finds a way, even when you don't,And, Yet knows you will, when you think you won't.
Each of us, from the day we're born, is accompanied by a special companion--the Yet. Can't tie your shoes? Yet! Can't ride a bike? Yet! Can't play the bassoon? Don't worry, Yet is there to help you out.
 

In the dazzling conclusion to the Greystone Secrets series from New York Times bestselling author Margaret Peterson Haddix, the Greystones and their doubles, the Gustanos, must team up to save the alternate world--before both worlds are lost. All secrets are revealed in this page-turning, suspenseful story that shows the importance of teamwork, telling your story, and taking action when it matters most.

As book three of the Greystone Secrets series opens, the Greystone kids have their mother back from the evil alternate world, and so does their friend Natalie. But no one believes the danger is past.

When Iris's elevator button-pushing is disrupted by a new member of the family, she's pretty put out.
That is, until the sudden appearance of a mysterious new button opens up entire realms of possibility, places where she can escape and explore on her own. But when it becomes a question between going it alone or letting someone else tag along, Iris finds that sharing a discovery with the people you love can be the most wonderful experience of all.
 

Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello, and Michelangelo love battling bad guys . . . until an unstoppable force emerges from deep beneath New York City. Have the Turtles finally met their match? This Step 3 Step into Reading leveled reader is perfect for children ages 5 to 7 who like Nickelodeon's Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
 For children who are ready to read on their own.

Someone is knocking over the trash cans in the city. It’s up to the PJ Masks to find out who it is and help clean up, but Catboy is disgusted by the smelly trash and doesn’t want to help. Eventually Catboy learns that, just like being a hero, saving the Earth takes teamwork!

It's science fair time at Metropolis High, and the DC Super Hero Girls are very excited--except for Zee Zatara. Magic is her life, and science seems so dull in comparison. When she tries to help her friends with their projects, things keep going wrong. Is her magic causing their science to go haywire?

In this fourth installment of the Super Hero Adventures early chapter book series, Spider-Man is joined by none other than Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel! Girl power comes to town to help Spider-Man defeat a new villain in the super cute, super accessible, Super Hero Adventures art style!

Meowza! Max was just getting used to being a SECRET SUPER HERO when his and his best friend Mindy's evil look-alikes show up in Kittyopolis! And what's worse, they're determined to take over the world's donut supply--and Max and Mindy are getting blamed! Can Max and Mindy work together to save the day--and the donuts?! Find out in Max Meow Book 2: Donuts and Danger! A deliciously funny, action-packed new series that's so good you'll want seconds! Bonus! Includes How to Draw Mindy AND Max Meow's SECRET Donut Scavenger hunt!

Meet a secret superhero with CAT-ITUDE--Max Meow, Cat Crusader--in this purr-fectly awesome, hiss-sterically funny new graphic novel series!

Max is just a regular cat in Kittyopolis, trying to make it big as a podcaster UNTIL he accidentally takes a bite of an RADIOACTIVE SPACE MEATBALL at his best friend, scientist Mindy's, SECRET LAB. Then before you can say MEOWZA, Max becomes...(drum roll!)...The CAT CRUSADER! Being a super hero is fun (Super strength? Check! Flying? YES!!!)--but not if you get so cocky, you forget your best friend! Will Max learn to listen? Will he and Mindy make up? And together, can Max and Mindy save Kittyopolis from the evil Agent M and BIG BOSS?! Find out in Max Meow: Cat Crusader-a laugh out loud, furr-ociously funny, action-packed new series filled with so many twists, turns, and terrific jokes it makes bad guys FLEA and kids cheer with glee! BONUS: Includes how to draw Max Meow!

In order to be a real superhero, you have to follow some important rules:

Rule #1: A superhero must ALWAYS respond to a call for help.

Rule #2: Saving the day is messy. But everyone understands.

In this handy guide, Captain Magma and his trusty sidekick, Lava Boy, take young readers on an adventure to learn all ten rules of being a good superhero.

It all started with a peanut butter cup . . .which leads Ben Braver to a secret school for kids with super abilities.

Ben has never had any special powers—and maybe never will. But could this be his chance to become the superhero he's always dreamed of?

In this first installment of the Super Turbo graphic novel series, the classroom pets of Sunnyview Elementary band together to form a Superpet Superhero League to fight the crime that is all around them! Can they defeat the evil rat pack threatening their school?

Turbo the hamster is the official classroom pet of Classroom C at Sunnyview Elementary…and he has a top secret identity as Super Turbo, crime-fighting superhero! He can’t believe it when he finds out he’s not the only superpet in town (or in school)! As he meets fellow superpets, such as Angelina the guinea pig (a.k.a. Wonder Pig) and Frank the rabbit (a.k.a. Boss Bunny), he also encounters a super VILLAIN: a rat who goes by the name of Whiskerface. Can Turbo and the Superpet Superhero League save the school from Whiskerface and his rat pack?

After defeating the Big Bad Wolf, the Three Little Superpigs spend their days fighting crime and enjoying their newfound fame. But one day, the Big Bad Wolf escapes from prison and plunges Fairyland into fear. Our curly-tailed friends soon discover that bricks are missing all over town. The Superpigs return to their homes to solve the mystery when they realize it has all been a trap! Join our new superheroes as they escape from the evil clutches of the Big Bad Wolf and save Fairyland in this first Superpigs adventure. Readers will huff and puff and laugh and laugh.

Sometimes weird things happen to people. Ask Jake. He could tell you about the night he and his friends saw a strange light in the sky that seemed to be heading right for them. That was the night five normal kids learned that humanity is under a silent attack -- and were given the power to fight back. Now Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, and Marco can transform into some of the most dangerous creatures on Earth. And they must use that power to outsmart an evil greater than anything the world has ever seen.

What do young superheroes do when they've blundered and bungled? They don't get mad; they get SMART! This fun follow-up to Even Superheroes Have Bad Days teaches kids another humorous lesson in overcoming adversity.

Even superheroes sometimes slip up and err. And when that happens, do they say, "It's not FAIR?" or give up in despair? NO! "Ashamed Superheroes who goofed up somehow . . . First STOP . . . then CONSIDER what's best to do now." Whether they've nabbed the wrong guy by mistake or bashed into a planet while zooming through space, all superheroes 'fess up their mess-up, get on with their day, and keep on saving the world in the most super way!

Introduce the young reader in your life to the inimitable, expectation-destroying, glass ceiling-shattering, world-saving female Super Heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from Captain Marvel and Shuri to Gamora, Black Widow, Nebula, and more, in this beautifully-illustrated picture book aimed at the young reader set. Fans of all ages will be thrilled by this adventure that celebrates the strength, intelligence, and ingenuity of the women who are vital to MCU's best stories, distilled into a child-friendly package.

Mia Macarooney is a regular eight-year-old girl who finds out that she’s A SUPERHERO! Her life literally goes from totally ordinary to totally super when she’s invited to attend the afterschool Program for In-Training Superheroes a.k.a. THE PITS! And the crazy thing is, in a weird meant-to-be sort of way, all of this news somehow feels super right. Because all her life, Mia thought she was just super klutz...but it turns out, she’s just SUPER! So now, it’s up to Mia to balance her regular everyday life and maintain her secret identity as she learns how to be the world’s newest superhero!
 

In the second installment of the Super Turbo graphic novel series, Turbo and the Superpet Superhero League face off with a gang of flying ninja squirrels!
This graphic novel adaptation of the Super Turbo chapter book features fun, bright, full-color panels that bring the story to life better than ever before—but with all the same humor and action that readers have come to expect from Super Turbo!

Some can talk. Some like to climb. They are all our friends! What do you know about pets? With this book, you can become an expert!  Now they can feel like real pros with this exciting nonfiction series for beginning readers. Kids will be hooked on the thrilling real-world topics and big, bright photos. Each book features simple sentences and sight words that children can practice reading. Then, with support, kids can dig deeper into the extra facts, Q&As, and fun challenges. 

Kids can have fun keeping up with our quickly changing world with this animal almanac, packed with incredible photos, tons of fun facts, adventures with National Geographic Explorers, crafts, activities, and fascinating features about animals, science, nature, technology, conservation, and more. The 2022 edition features a new Kids vs. Plastic chapter, packed with ideas on how you can reduce your plastic waste. There's a whole chapter full of fun and games, including activities, jokes, and comics. Practical reference material, including fast facts and maps of every country, is fully updated. Homework help on key topics is sprinkled throughout the book.

Super Facts for Super Kids is a fun, fresh take on animal nonfiction for beginning readers.  Alligators and crocodiles are strong enough to bite through bone, but did you know that they can’t chew their food? Readers will love learning about what makes alligators and crocodiles “super,” as well as how to tell the two animals apart. The backmatter discusses the conservation success story of the previously endangered American alligator.

Discover Chesapeake Bay takes readers to the water's edge, where they will learn about the bay's atmosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. These four very different systems create a unique environment in and around Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States. Readers will experience 200 miles of shoreline teeming with more than 3,600 species of animals and plants. Colorful maps, diagrams, and photos provide a close-up view of Chesapeake Bay. Book is aligned to curriculum standards and includes sidebar, activity, glossary, index, and additional resources.

What makes the great white shark (one of) the greatest fish in the sea? FIN-d out in this hilarious fish-out-of-water story that's perfect for Shark Week and all year-round!

"Hi! I am Great White Shark, and if you get this book, you'll read all about ME--the greatest shark in the sea!"

"Not so fast! Greenland Shark here, and as the oldest shark in this book, that makes me the greatest."

"Did someone say 'fast'? I'm Mako Shark, and I'm the fastest shark in this book! Eat my bubbles!"

"Wow, I'm Hammerhead Shark. You don't need my special eyes to see that there are lots of great sharks in this book. Sink your teeth into it now!"
 

Did you know that sharks can be as small as a banana, or bigger than a bus? Or that whale sharks have more than 3,000 teeth? Did you know that giant squids have eyes the size of dinner plates? Or that clownfish are protected by snot armor Find out all this and more, in this comprehensive, hilarious underwater deep dive from Mike Lowery.

This sweet true story stars a tiny, orphaned elephant who was given another chance.

When Chhouk, an Asian elephant calf, was found, he was alone, underweight, and had a severe foot injury. Conservationist Nick Marx of Wildlife Alliance rescued the baby elephant. With help from the Cambodian Forestry Administration, the Cambodian School of Prosthetics and Orthotics, and an elephant named Lucky, Nick nursed Chhouk back to health and made him an artificial foot. One of the first animals to ever be fitted with a prosthetic.  This true animal rescue story will satisfy animal lovers and capture the hearts of both young readers and their parents.

In this beautifully illustrated guide, discover fascinating and unusual information about animals from all around the world. A delightfully quirky system of organization introduces the reader to the superlatives of the animal kingdom, from "super predators" to "expert architects." A must-have encyclopedia for any animal enthusiast!

Head to the river, where a frolicsome bunch of otters plays all year round in a nonfiction story sprinkled with facts -- and loaded with fun.  Follow the otters through the seasons as they chase one another, slide down a mudbank, jump in a pile of leaves, and learn to swim. Even while catching fish for their dinner or grooming themselves in the snow, otters love to play.

We all have a certain creature that makes our skin scrawl and give us the ‘heebie jeebies’.  There are creatures big and small all over the world that make us squirm and wriggle in our seats just at the mere thought of them.  But what did these animals ever do to deserve such a bad reputation? Most of the time it’s humans that have labelled them ugly, dangerous and downright gross. But it’s one false acquisition too many for these little guys. They’ve had enough of being called scary, slimy, nasty and ewwy. They’re here to dispel these false acquisitions and set the record straight once and for all!

Just how big is a crocodile? What about a tiger, or the world's largest spider? Can you imagine a tongue that is two feet long or an eye that is bigger than your head? Sometimes facts and figures don't tell the whole story. In this visually stunning book, seeing is believing!

Birds around the world have so many amazing kinds of beaks! There are short beaks and long beaks, straight beaks and curved beaks, flat beaks and even spoon-shaped beaks. But what do all of these beaks do?  Discover how beaks of different shapes and sizes are adapted to help birds sip nectar, make nests, battle for mates, and more!

Why do animals play?

With thoughtful text and sweetly realistic watercolor art, the book explores the importance of play in the animal kingdom. Learn about how play teaches animals to defend themselves and survive in the wild. More adorably, learn about how animals make friends—and also forgive.
 

While on a field trip to the zoo, Buzz and Fly Guy discover the world is filled with weird and unusual animals! There's plenty for the best friends to explore.

Dash! Hide! Splash! Ride! Exuberant text celebrates all the different ways animals play, from rhinos taking mud baths and parrots somersaulting through the air to kangaroos boxing and dolphins diving through the surf. Additional text explains how playing benefits animals. Fascinating back matter gives more information about the featured animals in the book and encourages readers to make time to play every day!

Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer.

So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world forty years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage.

Alongside her Ministry colleagues and a familiar person from her past, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city—or face the possibility he could be exactly who he seems...

Immigrant. Socialite. Magician.

Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.

But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

Nghi Vo’s debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, a hero, the Chosen One, was born . . . and so begins every fairy tale ever told.

This is not that fairy tale.

There is a Chosen One, but he is unlike any One who has ever been Chosened.

And there is a faraway kingdom, but you have never been to a magical world quite like the land of Pell.

There, a plucky farm boy will find more than he's bargained for on his quest to awaken the sleeping princess in her cursed tower. First there's the Dark Lord, who wishes for the boy's untimely death . . . and also very fine cheese. Then there's a bard without a song in her heart but with a very adorable and fuzzy tail, an assassin who fears not the night but is terrified of chickens, and a mighty fighter more frightened of her sword than of her chain-mail bikini. This journey will lead to sinister umlauts, a trash-talking goat, the Dread Necromancer Steve, and a strange and wondrous journey to the most peculiar "happily ever after" that ever once-upon-a-timed.

As a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Hetty Rhodes helped usher dozens of people North with her wits and magic. Now that the Civil War is over, Hetty and her husband Benjy have settled in Philadelphia, solving murders and mysteries that the white authorities won't touch. When they find one of their friends slain in an alley, Hetty and Benjy bury the body and set off to find answers. But the secrets and intricate lies of the elites of Black Philadelphia only serve to dredge up more questions. To solve this mystery, they will have to face ugly truths all around them, including the ones about each other.

In this vibrant and original novel, Nicole Glover joins a roster of contemporary writers within fantasy, such as Victor LaValle and Zen Cho, who use speculative fiction to delve into important historical and cultural threads.

Chloe Neill brings her trademark wit and wild sense of adventure to a stunning seafaring fantasy starring a dauntless heroine in a world of magic and treachery.

Kit Brightling, rescued as a foundling and raised in a home for talented girls, has worked hard to rise through the ranks of the Isles' Crown Command and become one of the few female captains in Queen Charlotte's fleet. Her ship is small, but she's fast--in part because of Kit's magical affinity to the sea. But the waters become perilous when the queen sends Kit on a special mission with a partner she never asked for.

Rian Grant, Viscount Queenscliffe, may be a veteran of the Continental war, but Kit doesn't know him or his motives--and she's dealt with one too many members of the Beau Monde. But Kit has her orders, and the queen has commanded they journey to a dangerous pirate quay and rescue a spy who's been gathering intelligence on the exiled emperor of Gallia.

Kit can lead her ship and clever crew on her own, but with the fate of queen and country at stake, Kit and Rian must learn to trust each other, or else the Isles will fall....

The Stone in the Skull, the first volume in her new trilogy, takes readers over the dangerous mountain passes of the Steles of the Sky and south into the Lotus Kingdoms.

The Gage is a brass automaton created by a wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being. His wizard is long dead, and he works as a mercenary. He is carrying a message from the most powerful sorcerer of Messaline to the Rajni of the Lotus Kingdom. With him is The Dead Man, a bitter survivor of the body guard of the deposed Uthman Caliphate, protecting the message and the Gage. They are friends, of a peculiar sort.

They are walking into a dynastic war between the rulers of the shattered bits of a once great Empire.

William Goldman's modern fantasy classic is a simple, exceptional story about quests--for riches, revenge, power, and, of course, true love--that's thrilling and timeless.

Anyone who lived through the 1980s may find it impossible--inconceivable, even--to equate The Princess Bride with anything other than the sweet, celluloid romance of Westley and Buttercup, but the film is only a fraction of the ingenious storytelling you'll find in these pages. Rich in character and satire, the novel is set in 1941 and framed cleverly as an "abridged" retelling of a centuries-old tale set in the fabled country of Florin that's home to "Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passions."

With the heart of an Atwood tale and the visuals of a classic Asian period drama, Nghi Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a tightly and lushly written narrative about empire, storytelling, and the anger of women.

A young royal from the far north, is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.

Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.

At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She's a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.

An enchanting debut historical fantasy starring a young woman with an incredible natural talent for sorcery. Onna Gebowa is determined to become a great wizard. She can write the parameters of a spell faster than any of the young men in her village school. But despite her incredible abilities, she's denied a place at the nation's premier arcane academy. Undaunted, she sails to the bustling city-state of Hexos, hoping to find a place at a university where they don't think there's anything untoward about providing a woman with a magical education... Tsira is a troll who never quite fit into her clan, despite being the leader's daughter. She decides to strike out on her own and look for work in a human city, but on her way she stumbles upon a body of a half-dead human soldier in the snow. As she slowly nurses him back to health, an unlikely bond forms between them, one that is soon tested when an unknown mage makes an attempt on Tsira's life. Far away in Hexos, the newly arrived Onna is also drawn into a mysterious, magical attack on a troll. Trolls have lived alongside--and been revered by--humans for generations, but now it appears they're being targeted by a sinister sorcery. And Onna and Tsira both begin to devote their considerable abilities into figuring out how to stop the deaths before their homeland is torn apart.

In an effort to keep all forms of magic at bay, Jared, 17, has quit drugs and drinking. But his troubles are not over: now he's being stalked by David, his mom's ex--a preppy, khaki-wearing psycho with a proclivity for rib-breaking. And his mother, Maggie, a living, breathing badass as well as a witch, can't protect him like she used to because he's moved away from Kitimat to Vancouver for school.
Even though he's got a year of sobriety under his belt (no thanks to his enabling, ever-partying mom), Jared also struggles with the temptation of drinking. And he's got to get his grades up, find a job that doesn't involve weed cookies, and somehow live peacefully with his Aunt Mave, who has been estranged from the family ever since she tried to "rescue" him as a baby from his mother. An indigenous activist and writer, Mave smothers him with pet names and hugs, but she is blind to the real dangers that lurk around them--the spirits and supernatural activity that fill her apartment.
As the son of a Trickster, Jared is a magnet for magic, whether he hates it or not--he sees ghosts, he sees the monster moving underneath his Aunt Georgina's skin, he sees the creature that comes out of his bedroom wall and creepily wants to suck his toes. He also still hears the Trickster in his head, and other voices too. When the David situation becomes a crisis, Jared can't ignore his true nature any longer.

A young girl discovers a portal to a land filled with centaurs and unicorns in Seanan McGuire's Across the Green Grass Fields, a standalone tale in the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Wayward Children series.

“Welcome to the Hooflands. We’re happy to have you, even if you being here means something’s coming.”

Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated, of late.

When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to "Be Sure" before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies, and other magical equines—a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes.

But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem...
 

A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one—least of all himself—in the process.

An intense, psychological novel about one doctor's suspense-filled quest to unlock the mind of a suspected political assassin: his twenty-year old son.

As a rheumatologist, Dr. Paul Allen's specialty is diagnosing patients other doctors have given up on. His son, Daniel Allen has always been a good kid but, as a child of divorce, he is also something of a drifter. Which may be why, at the age of nineteen, he quietly drops out of Vassar and begins an aimless journey across the United States, shedding his former skin and eventually even changing his name. One night, Paul is home with his family when a televised news report announces that the Democratic candidate for president has been shot, and Daniel is the lead suspect. Convinced of his son’s innocence Paul begins to trace his sons steps to see where Daniel, or perhaps Paul, went wrong, beginning a harrowing journey--about the responsibilities of being a parent and the capacity for unconditional love in the face of an unthinkable situation—that keeps one guessing until the very end.

For the September 2016 issue of GQ, Michael Chabon wrote a piece about accompanying his son Abraham Chabon, then thirteen, to Paris Men’s Fashion Week. Possessed with a precocious sense of style, Abe was in his element chatting with designers he idolized and turning a critical eye to the freshest runway looks of the season; Chabon Sr., whose interest in clothing stops at “thrift-shopping for vintage western shirts or Hermès neckties,” sat idly by, staving off yawns and fighting the impulse that the whole thing was a massive waste of time. Despite his own indifference, however, what gradually emerged as Chabon ferried his son to and from fashion shows was a deep respect for his son’s passion. The piece quickly became a viral sensation.

With the GQ story as its centerpiece, and featuring six additional essays plus an introduction, Pops illuminates the meaning, magic, and mysteries of fatherhood as only Michael Chabon can.

In Dirt, Bill Buford--author of the best-selling, now-classic, Heat--moves his attention from Italian cuisine to the food of France. Baffled by the language, determined that he can master the art of French cooking--or at least get to the bottom of why it is so revered--Buford begins what will become a five-year odyssey by shadowing the revered French chef Michel Richard in Washington, D.C. He soon realizes, however, that a stage in France is necessary, and so he goes--this time with his wife and three-year-old twin sons in tow--to Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France. Studying at l'Institut Bocuse, cooking at the storied, Michelin-starred Mère Brazier, Buford becomes a man obsessed--to prove that French cooking actually derives from the Italian, to prove himself on the line, to prove that he is worthy of these gastronomic secrets. With his signature humor, sense of adventure, and masterful ability to immerse himself in his surroundings, Bill Buford has written what is sure to be the food-lover's book of the year.

In the tradition of Into the Wild comes an instant classic of outdoor literature, a riveting work of uncommon depth: The Adventurer's Son is Roman Dial's extraordinary account of his two-year quest to unravel the mystery of his son's disappearance in the jungles of Costa Rica.

In the predawn hours of July 10, 2014, the twenty-seven-year-old son of preeminent Alaskan scientist and National Geographic Explorer Roman Dial, walked alone into Corcovado National Park, an untracked rainforest along Costa Rica's remote Pacific Coast that shelters miners, poachers, and drug smugglers. He carried a light backpack and machete. Before he left, Cody Roman Dial emailed his father: "I am not sure how long it will take me, but I'm planning on doing 4 days in the jungle and a day to walk out. I'll be bounded by a trail to the west and the coast everywhere else, so it should be difficult to get lost forever."

They were the last words Dial received from his son.

As soon as he realized Cody Roman's return date had passed, Dial set off for Costa Rica. As he trekked through the dense jungle, interviewing locals and searching for clues--the authorities suspected murder--the desperate father was forced to confront the deepest questions about himself and his own role in the events. Roman had raised his son to be fearless, to be at home in earth's wildest places, travelling together through rugged Alaska to remote Borneo and Bhutan. Was he responsible for his son's fate? Or, as he hoped, was Cody Roman safe and using his wilderness skills on a solo adventure from which he would emerge at any moment?

Part detective story set in the most beautiful yet dangerous reaches of the planet, The Adventurer's Son emerges as a far deeper tale of discovery--a journey to understand the truth about those we love the most.

Emmeline lives an enchanted childhood on a remote island with her father, who teaches her about the natural world through her senses. What he won’t explain are the mysterious scents stored in the drawers that line the walls of their cabin, or the origin of the machine that creates them. As Emmeline grows, however, so too does her curiosity, until one day the unforeseen happens, and Emmeline is vaulted out into the real world--a place of love, betrayal, ambition, and revenge. To understand her past, Emmeline must unlock the clues to her identity, a quest that challenges the limits of her heart and imagination.

Lyrical and immersive, The Scent Keeper explores the provocative beauty of scent, the way it can reveal hidden truths, lead us to the person we seek, and even help us find our way back home.

Samuel Hawley isn’t like the other fathers in Olympus, Massachusetts. A loner who spent years living on the run, he raised his beloved daughter, Loo, on the road, moving from motel to motel, always watching his back. Now that Loo’s a teenager, Hawley wants only to give her a normal life. In his late wife’s hometown, he finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at the local high school.

Growing more and more curious about the mother she never knew, Loo begins to investigate. Soon, everywhere she turns, she encounters the mysteries of her parents’ lives before she was born. This hidden past is made all the more real by the twelve scars her father carries on his body. Each scar is from a bullet Hawley took over the course of his criminal career. Each is a memory: of another place on the map, another thrilling close call, another moment of love lost and found. As Loo uncovers a history that’s darker than she could have known, the demons of her father’s past spill over into the present—and together both Hawley and Loo must face a reckoning yet to come.

From the best-selling author of 'The Lost', a moving memoir about a father, a son and the lessons of a lifetime.

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic twines an ongoing reading of the most popular and beloved works of literature, Homer's Odyssey - with its irresistible tales of travel and adventure, and its eternal themes of transformed identities and climactic recognitions--around a personal journey of modern family life.

This intimate narrative is a father-son story: an account of a year-long reading of the poem that Mendelsohn undertakes with his ailing father, first in the classroom, then on their travels around the Mediterranean in the footsteps of Odysseus. How the ancient tale effects its own unexpected recognitions and transformations in the relationship between father and son, and eventually, in the enduring questions that they faced once he fell ill and began to die, becomes a moving adventure of both the real and the metaphorical.

Exploring the old poem, about long journeys and long marriages and long estrangements and about wanting to go home, An Odyssey illuminates some remarkable and unexpected similarities between the past of our forefathers and the present of our own fathers.

A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to Arkady Martine's genre-reinventing, Hugo Award-winning debut, A Memory Called Empire.

An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options.

In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass—still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire—face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity.

Their failure will guarantee millions of deaths in an endless war. Their success might prevent Teixcalaan’s destruction—and allow the empire to continue its rapacious expansion.

Or it might create something far stranger . . .

Things My Son Needs to Know About the World collects the personal dispatches from the front lines of one of the most daunting experiences any man can experience: fatherhood.

As he conveys his profound awe at experiencing all the “firsts” that fill him with wonder and catch him completely unprepared, Fredrik Backman doesn’t shy away from revealing his own false steps and fatherly flaws, tackling issues both great and small, from masculinity and mid-life crises to practical jokes and poop.

In between the sleep-deprived lows and wonderful highs, Backman takes a step back to share the true story of falling in love with a woman who is his complete opposite, and learning to live a life that revolves around the people you care about unconditionally. Alternating between humorous side notes and longer essays offering his son advice as he grows up and ventures out into the world, Backman relays the big and small lessons in life, including:

-How to find the team you belong to
-Why airports explain everything about religion and war
-The reason starting a band is crucial to cultivating and keeping friendships
-How to beat Monkey Island 3
-Why, sometimes, a dad might hold onto his son’s hand just a little too tight

This is an irresistible and insightful collection, perfect for new parents and fans of Backman’s “unparalleled understanding of human nature” (Shelf Awareness). As he eloquently reminds us, “You can be whatever you want to be, but that’s nowhere near as important as knowing that you can be exactly who you are.”

Nina Browning is living the good life after marrying into Nashville’s elite. More recently, her husband made a fortune selling his tech business, and their adored son has been accepted to Princeton. 

Yet sometimes the middle-class small-town girl in Nina wonders if she’s strayed from the person she once was.

Tom Volpe is a single dad working multiple jobs while struggling to raise his headstrong daughter, Lyla. His road has been lonely, long, and hard, but he finally starts to relax after Lyla earns a scholarship to Windsor Academy, Nashville’s most prestigious private school.

Amid so much wealth and privilege, Lyla doesn’t always fit in—and her overprotective father doesn’t help—but in most ways, she’s a typical teenaged girl, happy and thriving.

Then, one photograph, snapped in a drunken moment at a party, changes everything. As the image spreads like wildfire, the Windsor community is instantly polarized, buzzing with controversy and assigning blame.

At the heart of the lies and scandal, Tom, Nina, and Lyla are forced together—all questioning their closest relationships, asking themselves who they really are, and searching for the courage to live a life of true meaning.

Long before she was the acclaimed author of a groundbreaking book about women and men, praised by Oliver Sacks for having "a novelist's ear for the way people speak," Deborah Tannen was a girl who adored her father. Though he was often absent during her childhood, she was profoundly influenced by his gift for writing and storytelling. As she grew up and he grew older, she spent countless hours recording conversations with her father for the account of his life she had promised him she'd write. But when he hands Tannen journals he kept in his youth, and she discovers letters he saved from a woman he might have married instead of her mother, she is forced to rethink her assumptions about her father's life and her parents' marriage.

In this memoir, Tannen embarks on the poignant, yet perilous, quest to piece together the puzzle of her father's life. Beginning with his astonishingly vivid memories of the Hasidic community in Warsaw, where he was born in 1908, she traces his journey: from arriving in New York City in 1920 to quitting high school at fourteen to support his mother and sister, through a vast array of jobs, including prison guard and gun-toting alcohol tax inspector, to eventually establishing the largest workers' compensation law practice in New York and running for Congress. As Tannen comes to better understand her father's--and her own--relationship to Judaism, she uncovers aspects of his life she would never have imagined.

Finding My Father is a memoir of Eli Tannen's life and the ways in which it reflects the near century that he lived. Even more than that, it's an unflinching account of a daughter's struggle to see her father clearly, to know him more deeply, and to find a more truthful story about her family and herself.

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

A coming-of-age novel—a heady union of Before Sunrise and Beautiful Ruins—about a father and his teenage son who are forced to spend two sleepless nights exploring the city of Marseilles, a journey of unexpected adventure and profound discovery that helps them come to truly know each other.

Antonio is eighteen years old and on the cusp of adulthood. His father, a brilliant mathematician, hasn’t played a large part in his life since divorcing Antonio’s mother but when Antonio is diagnosed with epilepsy, they travel to Marseille to visit a doctor who may hold the hope for an effective treatment. It is there, in a foreign city, under strained circumstances, that they will get to know each other and connect for the first time.

A beautiful, gritty, and charming port city where French old-world charm meets modern bohemia, father and son stroll the streets sharing strained small talk. But as the hours pass and day gives way to night, the two find themselves caught in a series of caffeine-imbued adventures involving unexpected people (and unforeseen trysts) that connect father and son for the first time. As the two discuss poetry, family, sex, math, death, and dreams, their experience becomes a mesmerizing 48-hour microcosm of a lifetime relationship. Both learn much about illusions and regret, about talent and redemption, and, most of all, about love. 

Elegant, warm, and tender, set against the vivid backdrop of 1980s Marseille and its beautiful calanques—a series of cliffs and bays on the city’s outskirts—Three O’Clock in the Morning is a bewitching coming-of-age story imbued with nostalgia and a revelatory exploration of time and fate, youth and adulthood. 

Translated from the Italian by Howard Curtis

On the eve of Evangeline’s wedding, on the shore of Winter Island, a dead whale is trapped in the harbor, the groom may be lost at sea, and Evie’s mostly absent mother has shown up out of the blue. From there, in this mesmerizing, provocative debut, the narrative flows back and forth through time as Evie reckons with her complicated upbringing in this lush, wild land off the coast of Southern California. 

Evie grew up with her well-meaning but negligent father, surviving on the money he made dealing the island’s world-famous strain of weed, Winter Wonderland. Although her father raised her with a deep respect for the elements, the sea, and the creatures living within it, he also left her to parent herself. With wit, love, and bracing flashes of anger, Creatures probes the complexities of love and abandonment, guilt and forgiveness, betrayal and grief—and the ways in which our childhoods can threaten our ability to love if we are not brave enough to conquer the past. 

Lyrical, darkly funny, and ultimately cathartic, Creatures exerts a pull as strong as the tides.

There are hundreds of books on parenting, and with good reason--becoming a parent is scary, difficult, and life-changing. But when it comes to books about parenting identity, rather than the nuts and bolts of raising children, nearly all are about what it's like to be a mother.

Drawing on research in sociology, economics, philosophy, gender studies, and the author's own experiences, Father Figure sets out to fill that gap. It's an exploration of the psychology of fatherhood from an archetypal perspective as well as a cultural history that challenges familiar assumptions about the origins of so-called traditional parenting roles. What paradoxes and contradictions are inherent in our common understanding of dads? Might it be time to rethink some aspects of fatherhood?

Gender norms are changing, and old economic models are facing disruption. As a result, parenthood and family life are undergoing an existential transformation. And yet, the narratives and images of dads available to us are wholly inadequate for this transition. Victorian and Industrial Age tropes about fathers not only dominate the media, but also contour most people's lived experience. Father Figure offers a badly needed update to our collective understanding of fatherhood--and masculinity in general. It teaches dads how to embrace the joys of fathering while guiding them toward an image of manliness for the modern world.

Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met--a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972." His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.

In Priestdaddy, Lockwood interweaves emblematic moments from her childhood and adolescence--from an ill-fated family hunting trip and an abortion clinic sit-in where her father was arrested to her involvement in a cultlike Catholic youth group--with scenes that chronicle the eight-month adventure she and her husband had in her parents' household after a decade of living on their own. Lockwood details her education of a seminarian who is also living at the rectory, tries to explain Catholicism to her husband, who is mystified by its bloodthirstiness and arcane laws, and encounters a mysterious substance on a hotel bed with her mother.

Lockwood pivots from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the deeply serious, exploring issues of belief, belonging, and personhood. Priestdaddy is an entertaining, unforgettable portrait of a deeply odd religious upbringing, and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of family and tradition.

Tyler and I inch toward the Green Room, in line with blow-dried TV anchors and stuffy columnists. He's practicing his handshake and hello: "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President. It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President. It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President." When the couple in front of us steps forward for their picture, my teenager with sky-blue eyes and a soft heart looks up at me and says, "I hope I don't let you down, Dad." What kind of father raises a son to worry about embarrassing his dad? I want to tell Tyler not to worry, that he'd never let me down. That there's nothing wrong with being different. That I actually am proud of what makes him special. But we are next in line to meet the president of the United States in a room filled with fellow strivers, and all I can think about is the real possibility that Tyler might embarrass himself. Or, God forbid, me.

LOVE THAT BOY is a uniquely personal story about the causes and costs of outsized parental expectations. What we want for our children--popularity, normalcy, achievement, genius--and what they truly need--grit, empathy, character--are explored by National Journal's Ron Fournier, who weaves his extraordinary journey to acceptance around the latest research on childhood development and stories of other loving-but-struggling parents.

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality—the black Chinese restaurant.

Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens—on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles—the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident—the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins—he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

The ocean is home to many myths,
But some are deadly...
Seven years ago the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a mockumentary bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a tragedy.
Now a new crew has been assembled. But this time they're not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life's work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost.
Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves.
But the secrets of the deep come with a price.

 

The compelling, hidden story of Cathy Williams, a former slave and the only woman to ever serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers.

“Here’s the first thing you need to know about Miss Cathy Williams: I am the daughter of a daughter of a queen and my mama never let me forget it.”

Though born into bondage on a “miserable tobacco farm” in Little Dixie, Missouri, Cathy Williams was never allowed to consider herself a slave. According to her mother, she was a captive, destined by her noble warrior blood to escape the enemy. Her chance at freedom presents itself with the arrival of Union general Phillip Henry “Smash ‘em Up” Sheridan, the outcast of West Point who takes the rawboned, prideful young woman into service. At war’s end, having tasted freedom, Cathy refuses to return to servitude and makes the monumental decision to disguise herself as a man and join the Army’s legendary Buffalo Soldiers.

Alone now in the ultimate man’s world, Cathy must fight not only for her survival and freedom, but she also vows to never give up on finding her mother, her little sister, and the love of the only man strong enough to win her heart. Inspired by the stunning, true story of Private Williams, this American heroine comes to vivid life in a sweeping and magnificent tale about one woman’s fight for freedom, respect and independence.

Poignant, irreverent, and hilarious: a memoir about survival and self-discovery, by an indomitable woman who never loses sight of what matters most.

It's the summer of 2005, and Mardi Jo Link's dream of living the simple life has unraveled into debt, heartbreak, and perpetually ragged cuticles. She and her husband of nineteen years have just called it quits, leaving her with serious cash-flow problems and a looming divorce. More broke than ever, Link makes a seemingly impossible resolution: to hang on to her century-old farmhouse in northern Michigan and continue to raise her three boys on well water and wood chopping and dirt. Armed with an unfailing sense of humor and three resolute accomplices, Link confronts blizzards and foxes, learns about Zen divorce and the best way to butcher a hog, dominates a zucchini-growing contest and wins a year's supply of local bread, masters the art of bargain cooking, wrangles rampaging poultry, and withstands any blow to her pride in order to preserve the life she wants.

With an infectious optimism that would put Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to shame and a deep appreciation of the natural world, Link tells the story of how, over the course of one long year, she holds on to her sons, saves the farm from foreclosure, and finds her way back to a life of richness and meaning on the land she loves.

Neal Bascomb, New York Times best-selling author, delivers the spellbinding story of the downed Allied airmen who masterminded the remarkably courageous--and ingenious--breakout from Germany's most devilish POW camp

In the winter trenches and flak-filled skies of World War I, soldiers and pilots alike might avoid death, only to find themselves imprisoned in Germany's archipelago of POW camps, often in abominable conditions. The most infamous was Holzminden, a land-locked Alcatraz of sorts that housed the most troublesome, escape-prone prisoners. Its commandant was a boorish, hate-filled tyrant named Karl Niemeyer who swore that none should ever leave.

Desperate to break out of "Hellminden" and return to the fight, a group of Allied prisoners led by ace pilot (and former Army sapper) David Gray hatch an elaborate escape plan. Their plot demands a risky feat of engineering as well as a bevy of disguises, forged documents, fake walls, and steely resolve. Once beyond the watch towers and round-the-clock patrols, Gray and almost a dozen of his half-starved fellow prisoners must then make a heroic 150 mile dash through enemy-occupied territory towards free Holland.

Drawing on never-before-seen memoirs and letters, Neal Bascomb brings this narrative to cinematic life, amid the twilight of the British Empire and the darkest, most savage hours of the fight against Germany. At turns tragic, funny, inspirational, and nail-biting suspenseful, this is the little-known story of the biggest POW breakout of the Great War.

In 2004, Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in a tiny, stark space in Manhattan's East Village. Its young chef-owner, David Chang, worked the line, serving ramen and pork buns to a mix of fellow restaurant cooks and confused diners whose idea of ramen was instant noodles in Styrofoam cups. It would have been impossible to know it at the time--and certainly Chang would have bet against himself--but he, who had failed at almost every endeavor in his life, was about to become one of the most influential chefs of his generation, driven by the question, "What if the underground could become the mainstream?"

Chang grew up the youngest son of a deeply religious Korean American family in Virginia. Graduating college aimless and depressed, he fled the States for Japan, hoping to find some sense of belonging. While teaching English in a backwater town, he experienced the highs of his first full-blown manic episode, and began to think that the cooking and sharing of food could give him both purpose and agency in his life.

Full of grace, candor, grit, and humor, Eat a Peach chronicles Chang's switchback path. He lays bare his mistakes and wonders about his extraordinary luck as he recounts the improbable series of events that led him to the top of his profession. He wrestles with his lifelong feelings of otherness and inadequacy, explores the mental illness that almost killed him, and finds hope in the shared value of deliciousness. Along the way, Chang gives us a penetrating look at restaurant life, in which he balances his deep love for the kitchen with unflinching honesty about the industry's history of brutishness and its uncertain future.

It's 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and fifteen-year-old Justine grows up in a family of tough, complicated, and loyal women presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny. After Justine's father abandoned the family, Lula became a devout member of the Holiness Church - a community that Justine at times finds stifling and terrifying. But Justine does her best as a devoted daughter until an act of violence sends her on a different path forever.

Crooked Hallelujah tells the stories of Justine--a mixed-blood Cherokee woman-- and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma's Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn't easy, and Reney feels unmoored from her family in Indian Country. Against the vivid backdrop of the Red River, we see their struggle to survive in a world--of unreliable men and near-Biblical natural forces, like wildfires and tornados--intent on stripping away their connections to one another and their very ideas of home.

In lush and empathic prose, Kelli Jo Ford depicts what this family of proud, stubborn, Cherokee women sacrifices for those they love, amid larger forces of history, religion, class, and culture. This is a big-hearted and ambitious novel of the powerful bonds between mothers and daughters by an exquisite and rare new talent.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of when Dick Proenneke first broke ground and made his mark in the Alaskan wilds in 1968, this bestselling memoir features an all-new foreword by Nick Offerman plus color photographs not seen in print for over 20 years.

To live in a pristine land unchanged by man...to roam a wilderness through which few other humans have passed...to choose an idyllic site, cut trees, and build a log cabin...to be a self-sufficient craftsman, making what is needed from materials available...to be not at odds with the world, but content with one's own thoughts and company...

Thousands have had such dreams, but Dick Proenneke lived them. He found a place, built a cabin, and stayed to become part of the country. One Man's Wilderness is a simple account of the day-to-day explorations and activities he carried out alone, and the constant chain of nature's events that kept him company. From Dick's journals, and with firsthand knowledge of his subject and the setting, Sam Keith has woven a tribute to a man who carved his masterpiece out of the beyond.

Newly married and established in her career as an award-winning newspaper journalist, Maggie Downs quits her job, sells her belongings, and embarks on the solo trip of a lifetime: Her mother's.

As a child, Maggie Downs often doubted that she would ever possess the courage to visit the destinations her mother dreamed of one day seeing. "You are braver than you think," her mother always insisted. That statement would guide her as, over the course of one year, Downs backpacked through seventeen countries―visiting all the places her mother, struck with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, could not visit herself―encountering some of the world's most striking locales while confronting the slow loss of her mother. Interweaving travelogue with family memories, Braver Than You Think takes the reader hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, white-water rafting on the Nile, volunteering at a monkey sanctuary in Bolivia, praying at an ashram in India, and fleeing the Arab Spring in Egypt.

By embarking on an international journey, Downs learned to make every moment count―traveling around the globe and home again, losing a parent while discovering the world. Perfect for fans of adventure memoirs like Wild and Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, Braver Than You Think explores grief and loss with tenderness, clarity, and humor, and offers a truly incredible roadmap to coping with the unimaginable.

Bea's five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away. The smog and pollution of the City--an over-populated, over-built metropolis where most of the population lives--is destroying her lungs. But what can Bea do? No one leaves the City anymore, because there is nowhere else to go. But across the country lies the Wilderness State, the last swath of open, protected land left. Here forests and desert plains are inhabited solely by wildlife. People are forbidden. Until now.

Bea, Agnes, and eighteen others volunteer to live in the Wilderness State as part of a study to see if humans can co-exist with nature. Can they be part of the wilderness and not destroy it? Living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, this new community wanders through the grand country, trying to adhere to the strict rules laid down by the Rangers, whose job it is to remind them they must Leave No Trace. As the group slowly learns to live and survive on the unpredictable and often dangerous land, its members battle for power and control and betray and save each other. The farther they roam, the closer they come to their animal soul.

To her dismay, Bea discovers that, in fleeing to the Wilderness State to save Agnes, she is losing her in a different way. Agnes is growing wilder and closer to the land, while Bea cannot shake her urban past. As she and Agnes grow further apart, the bonds between mother and daughter are tested in surprising and heartbreaking ways.

Yet just as these modern nomads come to think of the Wilderness State as home, its future is threatened when the Government discovers a new use for the land. Now the migrants must choose to stay and fight for their place in the wilderness, their home, or trust the Rangers and their promises of a better tomorrow elsewhere.

In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor's advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men's dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. Annie had little idea what to expect beyond her rural crossroads; she didn't even have a map. But she did have her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness.

Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, rode straight into a world transformed by the rapid construction of modern highways. Between 1954 and 1956, they pushed through blizzards, forded rivers, climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder as cars whipped by them at terrifying speeds. Annie rode more than four thousand miles, through America's big cities and small towns. Along the way, she met ordinary people and celebrities--from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan) to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx. She received many offers--a permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher. In a decade when car ownership nearly tripled, when television's influence was expanding fast, when homeowners began locking their doors, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world.

The dramatic inside story of the historic flights that launched SpaceX--and Elon Musk--from a shaky startup into the world's leading-edge rocket company

SpaceX has enjoyed a miraculous decade. Less than 20 years after its founding, it boasts the largest constellation of commercial satellites in orbit, has pioneered reusable rockets, and in 2020 became the first private company to launch human beings into orbit. Half a century after the space race it is private companies, led by SpaceX, standing alongside NASA pushing forward into the cosmos, and laying the foundation for our exploration of other worlds.

But before it became one of the most powerful players in the aerospace industry, SpaceX was a fledgling startup, scrambling to develop a single workable rocket before the money ran dry. The engineering challenge was immense; numerous other private companies had failed similar attempts. And even if SpaceX succeeded, they would then have to compete for government contracts with titans such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who had tens of thousands of employees and tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue. SpaceX had fewer than 200 employees and the relative pittance of $100 million in the bank.

In Liftoff, Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, takes readers inside the wild early days that made SpaceX. Focusing on the company's first four launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, he charts the bumpy journey from scrappy underdog to aerospace pioneer. We travel from company headquarters in El Segundo, to the isolated Texas ranchland where they performed engine tests, to Kwajalein, the tiny atoll in the Pacific where SpaceX launched the Falcon 1. Berger has reported on SpaceX for more than a decade, enjoying unparalleled journalistic access to the company's inner workings. Liftoff is the culmination of these efforts, drawing upon exclusive interviews with dozens of former and current engineers, designers, mechanics, and executives, including Elon Musk. The enigmatic Musk, who founded the company with the dream of one day settling Mars, is the fuel that propels the book, with his daring vision for the future of space.

Filled with never-before-told stories of SpaceX's turbulent beginning, Liftoff is a saga of cosmic proportions.

Twelve-year old Karin is blindfolded and dropped into the Hoge Veluwe National Forest with three other children. With nothing but a few basic supplies and emergency food, the children are tasked with working together to navigate one of the Netherlands' most beautiful and wild locations and return to where their families are anxiously waiting.

Karin quickly finds herself at odds with two of the older teens, and suddenly looks up to see that the other children have vanished. As Karin struggles against the elements to find her way back, she soon realizes that something far more sinister lurks in the woods.

Grace, Karin's mother and an American married to a Dutch husband, has been nervous about this practice from the start. At first she tells herself the space is good for her daughter, but as the hours begin to tick by and the children fail to arrive at their designated campsite, she becomes certain something has gone horribly wrong.

As Karin fights for survival, and Grace hastens to find her daughter, the night culminates in the reveal of a deadly secret--and a shocking confrontation--that will push each of them to her edge.

Between the years of 1830 and 1927, as the last generation of blacks born into slavery was reaching maturity, a small group of industrious, tenacious, and daring men and women broke new ground to attain the highest levels of financial success.

Mary Ellen Pleasant, used her Gold Rush wealth to further the cause of abolitionist John Brown. Robert Reed Church, became the largest landowner in Tennessee. Hannah Elias, the mistress of a New York City millionaire, used the land her lover gave her to build an empire in Harlem. Orphan and self-taught chemist Annie Turnbo-Malone, developed the first national brand of hair care products. Mississippi school teacher O. W. Gurley, developed a piece of Tulsa, Oklahoma, into a “town” for wealthy black professionals and craftsmen that would become known as “the Black Wall Street.” Although Madam C. J Walker was given the title of America’s first female black millionaire, she was not. She was the first, however, to flaunt and openly claim her wealth—a dangerous and revolutionary act.

Nearly all the unforgettable personalities in this amazing collection were often attacked, demonized, or swindled out of their wealth. Black Fortunes illuminates as never before the birth of the black business titan.

Drama, Adventure, and Family Struggles Abound as Three Generations Head West on the Oregon Trail

When Tabitha Brown's son makes the fateful decision to leave Missouri and strike out for Oregon, she refuses to be left behind. Despite her son's concerns, Tabitha hires her own wagon to join the party. Along with her reluctant daughter and her ever-hopeful granddaughter, the intrepid Tabitha has her misgivings. But family ties are stronger than fear.

The trials they face along the way will severely test Tabitha's faith, courage, and ability to hope. With her family's survival on the line, she must make the ultimate sacrifice, plunging deeper into the wilderness to seek aid. What she couldn't know was how this frightening journey would impact how she understood her own life--and the greater part she had to play in history.

With her signature attention to detail and epic style, New York Times bestselling author Jane Kirkpatrick invites readers to travel the deadly and enticing Oregon Trail. Based on actual events, This Road We Traveled will inspire the pioneer in all of us.

WELCOME TO THE U.S.S. MONTGOMERY. When a separatist attack kills the adults on board a colony ship in deep space, the on-board A.I. VALARIE must help the ship's children survive the perils of space. But as they are pursued by dangerous forces, can Valerie become more than what she was programmed to be - a savior to these children?

William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where magic ruled and modern science was mystery. It was also a land withered by drought and hunger. But William had read about windmills, and he dreamed of building one that would bring to his small village a set of luxuries that only 2 percent of Malawians could enjoy: electricity and running water. His neighbors called him misala—crazy—but William refused to let go of his dreams. With a small pile of once-forgotten science textbooks; some scrap metal, tractor parts, and bicycle halves; and an armory of curiosity and determination, he embarked on a daring plan to forge an unlikely contraption and small miracle that would change the lives around him.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a remarkable true story about human inventiveness and its power to overcome crippling adversity. It will inspire anyone who doubts the power of one individual's ability to change his community and better the lives of those around him.

When Asad Hussein was growing up in the world’s largest refugee camp, nearly every aspect of life revolved around getting to America—a distant land where anything was possible. Thousands of displaced families like his were whisked away to the United States in the mid-2000s, leaving the dusty encampment in northeastern Kenya for new lives in suburban America. When Asad was nine, his older sister Maryan was resettled in Arizona, but Asad, his parents, and his other siblings were left behind. In the years they waited to join her, Asad found refuge in dog-eared novels donated by American charities, many of them written by immigrants who had come to the United States from poor and war-torn countries. Maryan nourished his dreams of someday writing such novels, but it would be another fourteen years before he set foot in America.

The story of Asad, Maryan, and their family’s escape from Dadaab refugee camp is one of perseverance in the face of overwhelming adversity. It is also a story of happenstance, of long odds and impossibly good luck, and of uncommon generosity. In a world where too many young men are forced to make dangerous sea crossings in search of work, are recruited into extremist groups, and die at the hands of brutal security forces, Asad not only made it to the United States to join Maryan, but won a scholarship to study literature at Princeton—the first person born in Dadaab ever admitted to the prestigious university.

Beyond the Sand and Sea is an extraordinary and inspiring book for anyone searching for pinpricks of light in the darkness. Meticulously reported over three years, it reveals the strength of a family of Somali refugees who never lost faith in America—and exposes the broken refugee resettlement system that kept that family trapped for more than two decades and has turned millions into permanent exiles.

Skinny House-A Memoir of Family is a story of perseverance in the face of ruin and a glimpse into the past of the inventive, remarkable people who gracefully 'made it' despite overwhelming societal and financial hurdles. It is a granddaughter's story about the grandfather she never met. After digging through boxes of family memorabilia, the author weaves the legacy of Nathan Seely, one of the first African American homebuilders in Westchester County, New York. Nathan, an ambitious carpenter, establishes the Seely Bros. Construction Company in 1923 for the purpose of "building homes for colored people." He has everything a man could want...a beautiful wife, smart children and a custom-built house in the Village of Mamaroneck, along the picturesque Long Island Sound.

Nathan's success is short lived when The Great Depression roars through America, leaving him bankrupt and threatening to make his family homeless. Desperate to keep his family together, Nathan has to come up with a plan to rebuild his life. He will have to do it, literally, brick by brick.

Nathan's 10-ft-wide, 3-story skinny home, built in 1932, still stands in Mamaroneck. Newspaper articles have focused on the architectural details of the famous house or the donated land upon which it is built, however the intimate story about the family who lived in the house has never been told. The author poses some intriguing questions for all of us. What do we really know about the lives, dreams and aspirations of our ancestors? How do the decisions our grandparents and parents made influence our lives? What are our roles as legacy makers?

Some of them were children then, and are still alive to tell what happened to them and their families. How they survived. What they lost--and how you keep on living, despite it all.

Jessica Bab Bonde has, based on survivor's stories, written an important book. Peter Bergting's art makes the book accessible, despite its difficult subject.

Using first-person point of view allows the stories to get under your skin as survivors describe their persecutions in the Ghetto, the de-humanization and the starvation in the concentration camps, and the industrial-scale mass murder taking place in the extermination camps.
 

In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.

From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals—personal and political, self-inflicted and those done by others—that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women. A haunting meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America’s most tangled, honest, human roots.

Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry.

This companion anthology features each poem and poet from the project--including Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, and Layli Long Soldier, among others--to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. The chosen poems reflect on the theme of place and displacement and circle the touchpoints of visibility, persistence, resistance, and acknowledgment. Each poem showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, "that heritage is a living thing, and there can be no heritage without land and the relationships that outline our kinship." In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than five hundred living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering.

From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, the story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip--a gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, white water, and violence

Wynn and Jack have been best friends since freshman orientation, bonded by their shared love of mountains, books, and fishing. Wynn is a gentle giant, a Vermont kid never happier than when his feet are in the water. Jack is more rugged, raised on a ranch in Colorado where sleeping under the stars and cooking on a fire came as naturally to him as breathing.

When they decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddling and picking blueberries, and nights of stargazing and reading paperback Westerns. But a wildfire making its way across the forest adds unexpected urgency to the journey. When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one. But: The next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the man they heard? And, if he is, where is the woman? From this charged beginning, master storyteller Peter Heller unspools a headlong, heart-pounding story of desperate wilderness survival.

Margo Fletcher, eight months pregnant, is traveling by train from Chicago to Spokane, her childhood home. While passing through an isolated portion of the Rockies in blizzard conditions, the train unexpectedly brakes. Up ahead, deadly snow from a massive avalanche plummets down the mountain. Despite the conductor's order for the passengers to stay seated, former Army Ranger Nick Eliot insists that survival depends on moving to the back of the train. Only Margo believes him. They take refuge in the last train car, which Nick heroically uncouples in time to avoid the avalanche. The rest of the train is hurled down the mountainside and is soon lost forever in a blanket of snow. Margo and Nick, the sole survivors, are stranded in the snowstorm without food, water, or heat. Rescuers might not arrive for days.

When the weather turns violent again, the pair must flee the shelter of the passenger car and run for their lives into the wilderness. They must fend off the deadly cold as well as predatory wild animals foraging for food. Eventually, Nick leads Margo to shelter in a watchtower atop a mountain. There, we learn that both Margo and Nick have secrets that have brought them together and threaten to destroy them.

Cover Your Tracks is a chilling story of love and hate, the devastating power of nature, and the will to survive.

The powerful and affirming story of a father's journey with his teenage daughter to the far reaches of Alaska

Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to only a handful of people, is a harsh and lonely place. So when James Campbell's cousin Heimo Korth asked him to spend a summer building a cabin in the rugged Interior, Campbell hesitated about inviting his fifteen-year-old daughter, Aidan, to join him: Would she be able to withstand clouds of mosquitoes, the threat of grizzlies, bathing in an ice-cold river, and hours of grueling labor peeling and hauling logs?

But once there, Aidan embraced the wild. She even agreed to return a few months later to help the Korths work their traplines and hunt for caribou and moose. Despite windchills of 50 degrees below zero, father and daughter ventured out daily to track, hunt, and trap. Under the supervision of Edna, Heimo's Yupik Eskimo wife, Aidan grew more confident in the woods.

Campbell knew that in traditional Eskimo cultures, some daughters earned a rite of passage usually reserved for young men. So he decided to take Aidan back to Alaska one final time before she left home. It would be their third and most ambitious trip, backpacking over Alaska's Brooks Range to the headwaters of the mighty Hulahula River, where they would assemble a folding canoe and paddle to the Arctic Ocean. The journey would test them, and their relationship, in one of the planet's most remote places: a land of wolves, musk oxen, Dall sheep, golden eagles, and polar bears.

At turns poignant and humorous, Braving It is an ode to America's disappearing wilderness and a profound meditation on what it means for a child to grow up--and a parent to finally, fully let go.

Nineteen-year-old Avery Delacorte loves the water. Growing up in Brookline, Massachusetts, she took swim lessons at her community pool and captained the local team; in high school, she raced across bays and sprawling North American lakes. Now a sophomore on her university's nationally ranked team, she struggles under the weight of new expectations but life is otherwise pretty good. Perfect, really.

That all changes when Avery's red-eye home for Thanksgiving makes a ditch landing in a mountain lake in the Colorado Rockies. She is one of only five survivors, which includes three little boys and Colin Shea, who happens to be her teammate. Colin is also the only person in Avery's college life who challenged her to swim her own events, to be her own person--something she refused to do. Instead she's avoided him since the first day of freshman year. But now, faced with sub-zero temperatures, minimal supplies, and the dangers of a forbidding nowhere, Avery and Colin must rely on each other in ways they never could've imagined.

In the wilderness, the concept of survival is clear-cut. Simple. In the real world, it's anything but.

Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. Written in illegal English-instead of French-the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he's determined to find the writer. The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire's Royal Navy. In the process, Joe will remake history, and himself.

From bestselling author Natasha Pulley, The Kingdoms is an epic, wildly original novel that bends genre as easily as it twists time.