Ask Maria Column
Are you obsessed with #BookTok sensation Iron Flame and don’t know what to read next? Maria has a few recommendations for you!
When two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection, they must face the depths of hell, in a war among gods, to seal their fate forever.
After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette.
To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish—into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle: for her brother, the fate of mankind, and love.
Shadow and Bone meets Lore in Rebecca Ross’s Divine Rivals, an epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy novel filled with hope and heartbreak, and the unparalleled power of love.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
Winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, a thought-provoking and enchanting debut about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves at the beginning of the civil rights movement in Alabama.
When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world.
At least, he’s not a beast all the time.
As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.
From bestselling author Sarah J. Maas comes a seductive, breathtaking book that blends romance, adventure, and faerie lore into an unforgettable read.
From Blood and Ash by Jennifer Armentrout
A Maiden…
Chosen from birth to usher in a new era, Poppy’s life has never been her own. The life of the Maiden is solitary. Never to be touched. Never to be looked upon. Never to be spoken to. Never to experience pleasure. Waiting for the day of her Ascension, she would rather be with the guards, fighting back the evil that took her family, than preparing to be found worthy by the gods. But the choice has never been hers.
A Duty…
The entire kingdom’s future rests on Poppy’s shoulders, something she’s not even quite sure she wants for herself. Because a Maiden has a heart. And a soul. And longing. And when Hawke, a golden-eyed guard honor bound to ensure her Ascension, enters her life, destiny and duty become tangled with desire and need. He incites her anger, makes her question everything she believes in, and tempts her with the forbidden.
A Kingdom…
Forsaken by the gods and feared by mortals, a fallen kingdom is rising once more, determined to take back what they believe is theirs through violence and vengeance. And as the shadow of those cursed draws closer, the line between what is forbidden and what is right becomes blurred. Poppy is not only on the verge of losing her heart and being found unworthy by the gods, but also her life when every blood-soaked thread that holds her world together begins to unravel.
James McBride’s newest is the most talked about book of the year! Try one of these similar reads while you wait to pick up your hold.
Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
Running into a long-ago friend sets memories from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them.
But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion.
Moonrise over New Jessup by Jamila Minnicks
Winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, a thought-provoking and enchanting debut about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves at the beginning of the civil rights movement in Alabama.
It’s 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. Instead, they seek to maintain, and fortify, the community they cherish on their “side of the woods.” In this place, Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup’s longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couple’s expulsion—or worse—from the home they both hold dear. But as Raymond continues to push alternatives for enhancing New Jessup’s political power, Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for his underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval from inside, and outside, their side of town.
Jamila Minnicks’s debut novel is both a celebration of Black joy and a timely examination of the opposing viewpoints that attended desegregation in America. Readers of Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half and Robert Jones, Jr.’s The Prophets will love Moonrise Over New Jessup.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
A debut of extraordinary distinction: Ayana Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the trials of one unforgettable family.
In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation.
Beautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is wondrous from first to last—glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly uplifting, and blazing with life. An emotionally transfixing page-turner, a searing portrait of striving in the face of insurmountable adversity, an indelible encounter with the resilience of the human spirit and the driving force of the American dream, Mathis’s first novel heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.
WINTER IS COMING…. Dark and brooding, these novels are perfect for reading under a warm blanket or with a cup of tea.
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
A grim and gothic new tale from author Alix E. Harrow about a small town haunted by secrets that can’t stay buried and the sinister house that sits at the crossroads of it all.
Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland–and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot.
Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.
As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.
If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.
Inheritance is the first in The Lost Bride Trilogy by #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts―a tale of tragedies, loves found and lost, and a family haunted for generations.
1806: Astrid Poole sits in her bridal clothes, overwhelmed with happiness. But before her marriage can be consummated, she is murdered, and the circle of gold torn from her finger. Her last words are a promise to Collin never to leave him…
Graphic designer Sonya MacTavish is stunned to learn that her late father had a twin he never knew about―and that her newly discovered uncle, Collin Poole, has left her almost everything he owned, including a majestic Victorian house on the Maine coast, which the will stipulates she must live in it for at least three years. Her engagement recently broken, she sets off to find out why the boys were separated at birth―and why it was all kept secret until a genealogy website brought it to light.
Trey, the young lawyer who greets her at the sprawling clifftop manor, notes Sonya’s unease―and acknowledges that yes, the place is haunted…but just a little. Sure enough, Sonya finds objects moved and music playing out of nowhere. She sees a painting by her father inexplicably hanging in her deceased uncle’s office, and a portrait of a woman named Astrid, whom the lawyer refers to as “the first lost bride.” It’s becoming clear that Sonya has inherited far more than a house. She has inherited a centuries-old curse, and a puzzle to be solved if there is any hope of breaking it…
A Good House for Children by Kate Collins
Once upon a time Orla was: a woman, a painter, a lover. Now she is a mother and a wife, and when her husband Nick suggests that their city apartment has grown too small for their lives, she agrees, in part because she does agree, and in part because she is too tired to think about what she really does want. She agrees again when Nick announces with pride that he has found an antiquated Georgian house on the Dorset cliffs—a good house for children, he says, tons of space and gorgeous grounds.
But as the family settles into the mansion—Nick absent all week, commuting to the city for work—Orla finds herself unsettled. She hears voices when no one is around; doors open and close on their own; and her son Sam, who has not spoken in six months, seems to have made an imaginary friend whose motives Orla does not trust.
Four decades earlier, Lydia moves into the same house as a live-in nanny to a grieving family. Lydia, too, becomes aware of intangible presences in the large house, and she, like Orla four decades later, becomes increasingly fearful for the safety of the children in her care. But no one in either woman’s life believes the stories that seem fanciful, the stuff of magic and mayhem, sprung from the imaginations of hysterical women who spend too much time in the company of children.
Are both families careening towards tragedy? Are Orla and Lydia seeing things that aren’t there? What secrets is the house hiding?
A feminist gothic tale perfectly suited for the current moment, A Good House for Children combines an atmospheric mystery with resonant themes of motherhood, madness, and the value of a woman’s work.
Sixty years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the American public continues to be obsessed with what happened. The event has inspired dozens of books, here are some of this year’s offerings…
The true story of a filmmaker whose unexpected investigation of her film’s subject opened a new window onto the world of Cold War espionage, CIA secrets, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Independent filmmaker Mary Haverstick thought she’d stumbled onto the project of a lifetime — a biopic of a little-known aviation legend whose story seemed to embody the hopeful spirit of the dawn of the space age. But after she received a mysterious warning from a government agent, Haverstick began to suspect that all was not as it seemed. What she found as she dug deeper was a darker story — a story of double identities and female spies, a tangle of intrigue that stretched from the fields of the Congo to the shores of Cuba, from the streets of Mexico City to the dark heart of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas.
As Haverstick attempted to learn the truth directly from her subject in a cat-and-mouse game that stretched across a decade, she plunged deep into the CIA files of the 1950s and 60s. A Woman I Know brings vividly to life the duplicities of the Cold War intelligence game, a world where code names and doubletalk are the lingua franca of spies bent on seeking advantage by any means necessary. As Haverstick sheds light on a remarkable set of women whose high-stakes intelligence work has left its only traces in redacted files, she also discovers disturbing and shocking new clues about what really happened at Dealey Plaza in 1963. Offering new clues to the assassination and a vivid picture of women in mid-century intelligence, A Woman I Know is a gripping real-life thriller.
“Deanne Stillman’s American Confidential takes the familiar and makes it new – makes it thrilling. You won’t believe this story; it resonates with deep American echoes.” – Darin Strauss, author of Chang & Eng
On the 60th anniversary of the JFK assassination, a critically acclaimed writer presents an astonishing new account of one of the 20th century’s most notorious assassins, Lee Harvey Oswald—and the mother who raised him . . .
Was Lee Harvey Oswald—as he himself claimed—a patsy? A hired gunman? In this startling account, Deanne Stillman suggests that there was indeed a conspiracy behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy—that of Oswald and his mother, Marguerite, who were locked in a desperate pursuit of fame and recognition. It was a struggle that would erupt on November 22, 1963, with Kennedy’s murder—after which the assassin joined the roster of infamous immortals, while his mother spent the rest of her life seeking the media limelight.
American Confidential is a mother-son noir tale that plays out across the Wild West of mid-twentieth century America, delving into Oswald’s nomadic boyhood, and the world of his restless and disillusioned mother, who passed along a legacy of class resentment and a clamorous need to matter.
In this new and surprising investigation into the short, troubled life of the ordinary man who would take down an American king, Deanne Stillman also presents a fascinating portrait of Oswald as a predecessor of the many violent young men and boys of America today, who take selfies with their rifles, and have come to define a new era of brutality.
Following in the tradition of Joan Didion and Charles Bowden, and continuing her celebrated exploration of America’s shadowlands, Stillman recounts a haunting tale of the promise and failure of the American dream. It held Oswald in its grip until the very end. “Some day,” he once told his wife, “I’d like to have a son. Maybe he’ll grow up to be president.”
Dallas, Texas. November 22, 1963. Shots ring out at Dealey Plaza. The president is struck in the head by a rifle bullet. Confusion reigns.
Special Agent Paul Landis is in the follow-up car directly behind JFK’s and is at the president’s limo as soon as it stops at Parkland Memorial Hospital. He is inside Trauma Room #1, where the president is pronounced dead. He is on Air Force One with the president’s casket on the flight back to Washington, DC; an eyewitness to Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office.
What he saw is indelibly imprinted upon his psyche. He writes and files his report. And yet . . . Agent Landis is never called to testify to the Warren Commission. The one person who could have supplied key answers is never asked questions.
By mid-1964, the nightmares from Dallas remain, and he resigns. It isn’t until the fiftieth anniversary that he begins to talk about it, and he reads his first books on the assassination.
Landis learns about the raging conspiracy theories—and realizes where they all go wrong.
Everyone loves a good ghost story, but there’s something even more compelling about ghost stories that are true. Here are some of Maria’s picks from our library’s collection…
Real Hauntings: True American Ghost Stories by Hans Holzer
Twenty-five real-life tales of hauntings and ghostly encounters across America, by the author of Houses of Horror and Ghost Hunter’s Strangest Cases.
Hans Holzers Real Hauntings continues his account of true, authenticated case histories of haunting throughout the United States. From the restless shade of a sea captain on Cape Cod, to the remorseful parishioner at St. Mark’s in New York City who is unable to forget her extramarital affair, to the little girl ghost of Landsdowne, Pennsylvania, who can’t quite understand what happened to her world, Real Hauntings chronicles the fascinating and dramatic accounts of the true experiences that ordinary people have had with the world beyond our own.
New Hampshire, Virginia, California, Louisiana, Minnesota—ghostly encounters can occur anywhere and to anyone. Among the many remarkable encounters in Real Hauntings is the story about the ghost of a young girl killed during a wild party in Hollywood; the testimony of tenants at an eighteen-century carriage house in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen regarding the several ghosts they have encountered; and the account of the piano-playing phantom in an old house in Arkansas. In all, twenty-five true, witnessed accounts are reported here by Dr. Hans Holzer.
The real-life adventures of the paranormal investigators-slash-plumbers who star in the #1 hit Sci Fi Channel television show Ghost Hunters.
The Atlantic Paranormal Society, also known as T.A.P.S., is the brainchild of two plumbers by day, paranormal investigators by night: Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson. Their hair-raising investigations, fueled by their unique abilities and a healthy dose of scientific method, have made them the subject of a hit TV show: the SCI FI Channel’s Ghost Hunters.
Now their experiences are in print for the first time, as Jason and Grant recount for us, with the help of veteran author Michael Jan Friedman, the stories of some of their most memorable investigations. The men and women of T.A.P.S. pursue ghosts and other supernatural phenomena with the most sophisticated scientific equipment available — from thermal-imaging cameras to electromagnetic-field recorders to digital thermometers — and the results may surprise you. Featuring both cases depicted on Ghost Hunters and earlier T.A.P.S. adventures never told before now, this funny, fascinating, frightening collection will challenge everything you thought you knew about the spirit world.
The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale
London, 1938. In the suburbs of the city, an ordinary young housewife has become the eye in a storm of chaos. In Alma Fielding’s modest home, china flies off the shelves, eggs fly through the air; stolen jewellery appears on her fingers, white mice crawl out of her handbag, beetles appear from under her gloves; in the middle of a car journey, a terrapin materialises on her lap.
Nandor Fodor – a Jewish-Hungarian refugee and chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research – reads of the case, and hastens to the scene of the haunting. But when Fodor starts his scrupulous investigation, he discovers that the case is even stranger than it seems. By unravelling Alma’s peculiar history, he finds a different and darker type of haunting: trauma, alienation, loss – and the foreshadowing of a nation’s worst fears.
As the spectre of Fascism lengthens over Europe, and as Fodor’s obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed. With rigour, daring and insight, the award-winning pioneer of non-fiction writing Kate Summerscale shadows Fodor’s enquiry, delving into long-hidden archives to find the human story behind a very modern haunting.
We lost author and musician Jimmy Buffett this week. He believed that everyone who attended one of his show’s deserved that time to escape to paradise; to laugh and enjoy the moment. Here are my Rom-Com picks that embrace that theme.
Meet Me in Paradise by Libby Hubscher
Ever since her journalist mother died on assignment, Marin has played it safe, refusing to set foot outside the state of Tennessee. Her wild-child younger sister, Sadie, has trotted the globe as a photographer, living off of art and adrenaline.
When Sadie returns from a tough assignment abroad and looks a little worse for wear, Marin reluctantly agrees to a sisters’ spa weekend on the tropical island of Saba. But her lifelong fear of travel is affirmed when Sadie misses the flight, Marin’s luggage gets mixed up with another passenger’s, and an episode of turbulence sends her hurtling into the lap of Lucas Tsai, the handsome stranger who stole her sister’s seat.
For the first time in a long time, Marin has to step outside of her comfort zone as she explores the island with Lucas and learns what she’s been missing out on. With each breathtaking new experience, Marin gets closer to her real self, the man she’s falling for, and the heart-wrenching truth about why she’s there in the first place.
It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey
Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar… in Washington.
Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face.
Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan—and this town full of memories—may have already caught her heart.
Tessa Bailey is back with a Schitt’s Creek-inspired rom-com about a Hollywood “It Girl” who is cut off from her wealthy family and exiled to a small Pacific Northwest beach town… where she butts heads with a surly, sexy local who thinks she doesn’t belong.
The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man.
Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.
Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of… lucky.
We lost author and musician Jimmy Buffett this week. He was known for creating hit songs and was the undisputed leader of “island escapism.” Jimmy was also a best selling author. Here are some glimpses into his free spirited life beyond his music.
Tales from Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett
The dazzling short story collection by music legend Jimmy Buffett inspired by his real life.
Margaritaville may not appear on a map, but it does exist—at least in the brilliantly creative, sometimes slightly skewed imagination of Jimmy Buffett. Tales from Margaritaville is a collection of short stories (some purely fiction, some based in truth) so vividly packed with restless dreamers, wild wanderers, and pure gypsy souls that just reading it is a wild adventure. Travel along with a cowboy named Tully Mars, as he heads from Heartache, Wyoming, to Graceland, and relive the autobiographical odyssey of a third-generation sailor and first-rate musical outlaw. With unforgettable stories that present the true roamer’s twin loves—the sea and the road—Tales from Margaritaville is one “smooth sailing book of infinite imagination” (Chicago Sun-Times).
Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way by Ryan White
A candid, compelling, and rollicking portrait of the pirate captain of Margaritaville—Jimmy Buffett.
In Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way, acclaimed music critic Ryan White has crafted the first definitive account of Buffett’s rise from singing songs for beer to his emergence as a tropical icon and CEO behind the Margaritaville industrial complex, a vast network of merchandise, chain restaurants, resorts, and lifestyle products all inspired by his sunny but disillusioned hit “Margaritaville.”
Filled with interviews from friends, musicians, Coral Reefer Band members past and present, and business partners who were there, this book is a top-down joyride with plenty of side trips and meanderings from Mobile and Pascagoula to New Orleans, Key West, down into the islands aboard the Euphoria and the Euphoria II, and into the studios and onto the stages where the foundation of Buffett’s reputation was laid.
Buffett wasn’t always the pied piper of beaches, bars, and laid-back living. Born on the Gulf Coast, the son of a son of a sailing ship captain, Buffett scuffed around New Orleans in the late sixties, flunked out of Nashville (and a marriage) in 1971, and found refuge among the artists, dopers, shrimpers, and genuine characters who’d collected at the end of the road in Key West. And it was there, in those waning outlaw days at the last American exit, where Buffett, like Hemingway before him, found his voice and eventually brought to life the song that would launch Parrot Head nation.
And just where is Margaritaville? It’s wherever it’s five o’clock; it’s wherever there’s a breeze and salt in the air; and it’s wherever Buffett sets his bare feet, smiles, and sings his songs.
A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett
For the millions of fans of Jimmy Buffett’s music as well as his bestselling books, Tales From Margaritaville and Where Is Joe Merchant?, here is the ultimate Jimmy Buffett philosophy on life and how to live it. As hard as it is to believe, the irrepressible Jimmy Buffett has hit the half-century mark and, in A Pirate Looks at Fifty, he brings us along on the remarkable journey which he took through the Southern hemisphere to celebrate this landmark birthday.
Jimmy takes us from the legendary pirate coves of the Florida Keys to the ruins of ancient Cartegena. Along the way, we hear a tale or two of how he got his start in New Orleans, how he discovered his passion for flying planes, and how he almost died in a watery crash in Nantucket harbor. We follow Jimmy to jungle outposts in Costa Rica and on a meandering trip down the Amazon, through hair-raising negotiations with gun-toting customs officials and a 3-year-old aspiring co-pilot. And he is the inimitable Jimmy Buffett through it all.
For Parrotheads, for armchair adventurers, and for anyone who appreciates a good yarn and a hearty laugh, here is the ultimate backstage pass — you’ll read the kind of stories Jimmy usually reserves for his closest friends and you’ll see a wonderful, wacky life through eyes of the man who’s lived it. A Pirate Looks at Fifty is a breath of fresh air and a ingenious manual for getting to 50 . . . and beyond.
Right now everyone seems to be in a Barbie dream world…. So here are 2 books to try if you enjoyed the movie!
Seeking a fresh start, Megan Chernoff moves to New York City, where she meets Daphne Cole. Daphne is a gorgeous, stylish, well-known momfluencer, and Megan quickly becomes immersed in a world that is filled with fancy wellness retreats and supper clubs. It seems perfect (sounds like Barbie Land to me!) , but Megan begins to wonder if it’s just for show. When she realizes it is a facade, she has to figure out how she will start a new, happy, and real life.
Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins. Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t (much like Barbie & Ken)!
Fan of the movie Oppenheimer? Want to learn more about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project? Here are Maria’s suggestions…
Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center by Ray Monk
J. Robert Oppenheimer is among the most contentious and important figures of the twentieth century. As head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, he oversaw the successful effort to beat the Nazis to develop the first atomic bomb – a breakthrough which was to have eternal ramifications for mankind, and made Oppenheimer the ‘father of the Bomb’.
But his was not a simple story of assimilation, scientific success and world fame. A complicated and fragile personality, the implications of the discoveries at Los Alamos were to weigh heavily upon him. Having formed suspicious connections in the 1930s, in the wake of the Allied victory in World War Two, Oppenheimer’s attempts to resist the escalation of the Cold War arms race would lead many to question his loyalties – and set him on a collision course with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunters.
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan
The Tennessee town of Oak Ridge was created from scratch in 1942. One of the Manhattan Project’s secret cities, it didn’t appear on any maps until 1949, and yet at the height of World War II it was using more electricity than New York City and was home to more than 75,000 people, many of them young women recruited from small towns across the South. Their jobs were shrouded in mystery, but they were buoyed by a sense of shared purpose, close friendships—and a surplus of handsome scientists and Army men!
But against this vibrant wartime backdrop, a darker story was unfolding. The penalty for talking about their work—even the most innocuous details—was job loss and eviction. One woman was recruited to spy on her coworkers. They all knew something big was happening at Oak Ridge, but few could piece together the true nature of their work until the bomb “Little Boy” was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and the secret was out. The shocking revelation: the residents of Oak Ridge were enriching uranium for the atomic bomb.
Though the young women originally believed they would leave Oak Ridge after the war, many met husbands there, made lifelong friends, and still call the seventy-year-old town home. The reverberations from their work there—work they didn’t fully understand at the time—are still being felt today. In The Girls of Atomic City, Denise Kiernan traces the astonishing story of these unsung WWII workers through interviews with dozens of surviving women and other Oak Ridge residents. Like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this is history and science made fresh and vibrant—a beautifully told, deeply researched story that unfolds in a suspenseful and exciting way.
World War II: The Definitive Visual History from Blitzkrieg to the Atom Bomb
World War II: The Definitive Visual History is a comprehensive, authoritative, yet accessible guide to the people, politics, events, and lasting effects of World War II. Perhaps the most complex, frightening, and destructive event in global history, the Second World War saw the heights of human courage and the depth of human degradation. World War II presents a complete overview of the war, including the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, fascism, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, and the D-Day landings. This book also looks at the enduring effects of World War II during succeeding decades.
Expanded with an all-new guide to battlefield and memorial sites and repackaged to honor the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, World War II: The Definitive Visual History covers key military figures, pivotal battles, political profiles, and strategies, as well as features on everyday life on the Home Front as ordinary citizens did their best to aid the war effort. Gallery spreads feature collections of uniforms, weapons, and other equipment. Maps, timelines, and side panels offer an inviting variety of entry point to the huge wealth of information.
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb,” the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generation-one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the embodiment of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific progress.
He was the author of a radical proposal to place international controls over atomic materials-an idea that is still relevant today. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and criticized the Air Force’s plans to fight an infinitely dangerous nuclear war. In the now almost-forgotten hysteria of the early 1950s, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup, and, in response, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss, Superbomb advocate Edward Teller and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover worked behind the scenes to have a hearing board find that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America’s nuclear secrets.
American Prometheus sets forth Oppenheimer’s life and times in revealing and unprecedented detail. Exhaustively researched, it is based on thousands of records and letters gathered from archives in America and abroad, on massive FBI files and on close to a hundred interviews with Oppenheimer’s friends, relatives and colleagues.
We follow him from his earliest education at the turn of the twentieth century at New York City’s Ethical Culture School, through personal crises at Harvard and Cambridge universities. Then to Germany, where he studied quantum physics with the world’s most accomplished theorists; and to Berkeley, California, where he established, during the 1930s, the leading American school of theoretical physics, and where he became deeply involved with social justice causes and their advocates, many of whom were communists. Then to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he transformed a bleak mesa into the world’s most potent nuclear weapons laboratory-and where he himself was transformed. And finally, to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which he directed from 1947 to 1966.
American Prometheus is a rich evocation of America at mid-century, a new and compelling portrait of a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man profoundly connected to its major events—the Depression, World War II and the Cold War. It is at once biography and history, and essential to our understanding of our recent past—and of our choices for the future.
Gregg Herken’s Brotherhood of the Bomb is the fascinating story of the men who founded the nuclear age, fully told for the first time
The story of the twentieth century is largely the story of the power of science and technology. Within that story is the incredible tale of the human conflict between Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller-the scientists most responsible for the advent of weapons of mass destruction.
How did science-and its practitioners-enlisted in the service of the state during the Second World War, become a slave to its patron during the Cold War? The story of these three men, builders of the bombs, is fundamentally about loyalty-to country, to science, and to each other-and about the wrenching choices that had to be made when these allegiances came into conflict.
Gregg Herken gives us the behind-the-scenes account based upon a decade of research, interviews, and newly released Freedom of Information Act and Russian documents. Brotherhood of the Bomb is a vital slice of American history told authoritatively-and grippingly-for the first time.
Ted Hall was a physics prodigy so gifted that he was asked to join the Manhattan Project when he was only eighteen years old. There, in wartime Los Alamos, working under Robert Oppenheimer and Bruno Rossi, Hall helped build the atomic bomb. To his friends and coworkers he was a brilliant young rebel with a boundless future in atomic science. To his Soviet spymasters, he was something “Mlad,” their mole within Los Alamos, a most hidden and valuable asset and the men who first slipped them the secrets to the making of the atomic bomb.
In a book that will force the revision of fifty years of scholarship and reporting on the Cold War, award-winning journalists Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel reveal for the first time a devastatingly effective Soviet spy network that infiltrated the Manhattan Project and ferried America’s top atomic secrets to Stalin. At the heart of the network was Hall, who was so secret an operative that even Klaus Fuchs, his fellow Manhattan Project scientist and Soviet agent, had no idea they were comrades. Bombshell tracks Hall from his days as a brilliant schoolboy in New York City, when he came under the influence of his older brother’s radical tracts, and on to Harvard, Los Alamos, and Chicago, where Hall continued to spy even after the war was over, passing more secrets while the Soviets were trying to build the Hydrogen bomb.
For forty years only a few Russians knew what Ted Hall really did. Now Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel reveal the astonishing true story of the atomic spies who got away. Bombshell is history at its most explosive.
Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the 116 Days that Changed the World by Chris Wallace
From Chris Wallace, the veteran journalist and anchor of Fox News Sunday, comes an electrifying behind-the-scenes account of the secret meetings and events across the globe during the 116 days leading up to the world’s first use of the atomic bomb in wartime—the American attack on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
April 12, 1945: After years of bloody conflict in Europe and the Pacific, America is stunned by news of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death. Countdown 1945 tells the gripping true story of the turbulent days, weeks, and months to follow, leading up to August 6, 1945, when new President Harry Truman gives the order to unleash the world’s first atomic bomb. Featuring some of history’s most remarkable leaders, page-turning action, and vivid details, Countdown 1945 is a thrilling narrative of the covert meetings and pivotal developments that took place in the United States and around the world during the volatile spring and summer of 1945.
Countdown 1945 takes readers inside the minds of the iconic and elusive figures who join the quest for the bomb, each for different reasons: the legendary Albert Einstein, who eventually calls his vocal support for the atomic bomb “the one great mistake in my life”; lead researcher Robert “Oppie” Oppenheimer and the Soviet spies who secretly infiltrate his team; the fiercely competitive pilots of the plane selected to drop the bomb; and many more. Perhaps most of all, Countdown 1945 is the story of an untested new president confronting a decision that he knows will change the world forever. Truman’s journey during these 116 days is a story of high drama: from the shock of learning of the bomb’s existence, to the conflicting advice he receives from generals like Eisenhower and George Marshall, to wrestling with the devastating carnage that will result if he gives the order to use America’s first weapon of mass destruction.
But Countdown 1945 is more than a book about the atomic bomb. It’s also an unforgettable account of the lives of ordinary American and Japanese civilians in wartime—from “Calutron Girls” like Ruth Sisson in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to ten-year-old Hiroshima resident Hideko Tamura, who survives the blast at ground zero but loses her mother, and later immigrates to the United States, where she lives to this day—as well as American soldiers fighting in the Pacific, waiting in fear for the order to launch a possible invasion of Japan. Told with vigor, intelligence, and humanity, Countdown 1945 is the definitive account of one of the most consequential moments in history.
Can’t get enough of Emily Henry? Don’t worry! Maria has you covered with these 2 book recommendations…
The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams
Gavin Scott’s marriage is in major trouble, but he finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville’s top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it’ll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.
Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan
Nora Hamilton, a scriptwriter for a romance channel, has the formula for true love down pat. Sadly, when her husband decides that marriage and two kids just isn’t for him, Nora is faced with a rewrite she didn’t see coming. Nora writes a screenplay about her divorce, and it grabs the attention of Hollywood. And, when a film crew arrives at her home, it brings a hot movie star who may play a leading role in Nora’s second act. Readers will happily binge-read to the end credits.
Can’t wait to get your hands on The House in the Pines? Maria has you covered with these 2 book recommendations…
When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain
In Paula McLain’s When the Stars Go Dark a San Francisco homicide detective traumatized by personal tragedy and the many horrors she’s encountered returns to Mendocino, once her childhood sanctuary, only to be drawn into the case of a missing girl and the unresolved mysteries of her own past.
What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall
Kate Alice Marshall’s What Lies in the Woods is a thrilling novel about friendship, secrets, betrayal, and lies They were eleven when they sent a killer to prison. They were heroes . . . but they were liars. For decades, the friends have kept a secret worth killing for. But now Olivia wants to tell, and Naomi sets out to find out what really happened in the woods―no matter how dangerous the truth turns out to be.
Stumped on what to read after Lessons in Chemistry? Maria has you covered with these 2 book recommendations…
The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev
Looking for a novel full of family, fiery women, and lucky/unlucky in love vibes that reminds you of Lessons in Chemistry? If so, The Vibrant Years will give you all those rom-com feels and then some. It’s funny and warmhearted about a gregarious and gorgeous grandmother (spoiler, she steals the show), her daughter, and her granddaughter (a very successful app developer) who ban together to confront pesky HOAs, bosses who squash dreams, ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands, and ultimately, work together to try and develop an app to help those looking for love. Inevitably hijinks ensue!
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn
If part of what you love about Lessons in Chemistry is the fact that Elizabeth Zott defies convention and expectation at every turn, to great hilarity and charm, than you check out Killers of a Certain Age. Four assassins -part of an elite, all-female squad called the Sphinxes; are ushered into retirement with an all-expenses-paid luxury cruise. One explosive—and unscheduled—disembarkation later, they make their way back to their country mansion to find out who has put a hit out on them.
Can’t wait for Spare to be out by Prince Harry? A number of books have been written by members of the monarchy, request one of these in the meantime…
Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself by Sarah Ferguson
An inspirational memoir from New York Times bestselling author Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, who, after hitting rock bottom, gathered the strength to put her life back together.
More than a year ago my life was so off course that I wondered whether I would ever be able to find my way back. I was broken and lost, not even sure where I was, but out of this emotional barrenness I knew I had to find me. And so, I took a journey to find myself and begin the process of healing all the broken places. Finding Sarah is the story of that journey.
So begins this extraordinarily personal memoir by Sarah Ferguson, The Duchess of York. She knows, firsthand, what it means to feel lost and she also knows that it is never too late to find your way back, to attain your goal, to take back control of your life and to make a special dream come true.
Through intimate diary excerpts and personal emails from friends and family, Sarah opens herself unsparingly. On every page of this book you will hear from her “real-life angels”—Dr. Phil McGraw, Suze Orman, Martha Beck, and many more—as they help her get to the root of her problems, from comfort eating to self-loathing, from reckless overspending to notorious mishaps. Sarah hopes that her experiences will inspire you to look closely at your own life and how you wish to improve it, then encourage you to follow your instincts and find your true path. Sarah Ferguson did, and so can you.
Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World by HRH King Charles III
For the first time, HRH The Prince of Wales shares his views on how our most pressing modern challenges—from climate change to poverty—are rooted in mankind’s disharmony with nature, presenting a compelling case that the solution lies in our ability to regain a balance with the world around us
With its holistic approach, this provocative and well-reasoned book takes the discussion of sustainability and climate change in a new direction. Prince Charles shows how the solutions to problems like climate change lie not only in technology but in our ability to change the way we view the modern world.
For decades, the Prince of Wales has been studying a wide array of disciplines to understand every aspect of man’s impact on the natural world, and in that time he has examined everything from architecture to organic farming to sustainable economics. Now, for the first time, he speaks out about his years of research, presenting a fascinating look at how modern industrialization has led us to a state of disharmony with nature, created climate change, and pushed us to the brink of disaster.
From the rice farms of India to the prairies of America’s corn belt, from the temples of Ancient Egypt to the laboratories of industrial designers, Harmony spans the globe to identify the different ways that contemporary life has abandoned the hard-earned practices of our history, a shift that has spurred a host of social problems and accelerated climate change.
Drawing on cases from farming, healthcare, transportation, and design, the Prince of Wales also offers solutions for change, creating a new vision for our world, one that incorporates the traditional wisdom of our past with the modern science of our present to avert catastrophe. In the end, Harmony paints a holistic portrait of what we as a species have lost in the modern age, while outlining the steps we can take to regain the harmony of our ancestors.
Illustrated with lush, four-color photographs and charts, this intelligent, practical, and well-reasoned guide is an indispensable weapon in the battle to save our planet.
A Royal Life by HRH The Duke of Kent
HRH The Duke of Kent has been at the heart of the British Royal Family throughout his life. As a working member of the Royal Family, he has supported his cousin, The Queen, representing her at home and abroad. His royal duties began when, in 1952, at the age of sixteen, he walked in the procession behind King George VI’s coffin, later paying homage to The Queen at her Coronation in 1953. Since then he has witnessed and participated in key Royal occasions. He represented The Queen at independence ceremonies from the age of twenty-five, he was riding with her when blanks were fired at Trooping the Colour in 1981, he was the oldest soldier on parade at Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph in November 2020 and he was alongside The Queen at her official birthday celebrations in June 2021 as Colonel of the Scots Guards.
No member of the Royal Family has spoken extensively of the modern reign and their part in it before. A Royal Life is a unique account based on a series of conversations between the Duke and acclaimed Royal historian Hugo Vickers. It covers some of the most important moments and experiences of the Duke’s life, from his upbringing at his family home Coppins in Buckinghamshire, his twenty-one years of army life, his royal tours and events, through to his work for over 140 different organisations, including presenting the trophies at Wimbledon for more than 50 years. Here too are recollections of family members including his mother, Princess Marina, his grandmother, Queen Mary, his cousin, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, and his uncle, King George VI.
The Duke is a keen photographer and the book contains never before seen photographs from his private collection.
Other members of the Royal Family contribute their memories, including his wife, the Duchess of Kent, the Duke’s siblings, Princess Alexandra and Prince Michael of Kent, his son, the Earl of St Andrews, his daughter, Lady Helen Taylor as well as his cousins, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Archduchess Helen of Austria and her brother, Hans Veit Toerring.
A Royal Life is an unprecedented, insightful and remarkable slice of Royal history.
Obsessed with Netflix’s Wednesday? Maria has you covered with these 2 book recommendations…
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
A magical coming-of-age trilogy with a hilarious female anti-hero – a darker more intelligent Harry Potter for adults. Novik, introduces you to a dangerous school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death – until one girl, El, begins to rewrite its rules. El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is a college dropout, who is the sole survivor of a multiple homicide. Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her? Tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Alex will find their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.
Stuck on the waitlist for Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry? Try one of these books in the meantime…
Oyeneyin takes us through the SPEAK acronym – Surrender, Power, Empathy, Authenticity, and Knowledge. She shares the lessons she has learned about loss, love, body image, and how she has successfully created an intentional, joyful life for herself, offering an accessible blueprint for anyone looking to make a positive change in their lives.
Gottlieb is psychotherapist and advice columnist at The Atlantic, she shows us what it’s like to be on both sides of the couch with doses of heartwarming humor and invaluable, tell-it-like-it-is wisdom.
Done with the latest Colleen Hoover book? Try one of these next…
When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole
If you were a fan of Colleen Hoover’s Verity, Alyssa Cole is the author for you. Specifically, her thriller, When No One Is Watching, is a psychological one that answers the question: Where do people in the neighborhood go when gentrification pushes them out? Hoover’s book takes the reader through the troubling research behind the life of a person, not a neighborhood like Cole’s. However, the slow, unsettling revelations that develop over documents and histories in both books are sure to keep you captivated.
The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang
Helen Hoang is a legendary writer who centers autistic protagonists in her romances and domestic fiction. Readers of Colleen Hoover’s books will love the way she works through romantic setups that appear doomed from the start, like when Anna’s boyfriend asks for an open relationship before deciding if he can truly commit to her, she decides to embark on a string of meaningless one-night stands. If you can persevere and cry through a Colleen Hoover book, you will love to be emotionally devastated by Helen Hoang.
Themed Book Lists
1. The Book of Pride: LGBTQ Heroes Who Changed the World by Mason Funk
Meet the leaders and activists on the front lines of the LGBTQ movement, from the 1960’s to the present, through stunning interviews and compelling black and white photographs compiled and presented by OUTWORDS, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the stories of LGBTQ people.
The 75 individuals featured in THE BOOK OF PRIDE—including marriage pioneer Evan Wolfson, trans icon Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Stonewall-era rabblerouser Mark Segal and legendary anti-DADT activist Grethe Cammermeyer—fought battles frequently under the threat of violence and persecution.
By capturing these accounts, we honor an important chapter in American history and ensure that the story of the LGBTQ community is safeguarded for generations to come. The brave and determined activists celebrated in THE BOOK OF PRIDE inspire each of us to resist all forms of oppression with ferocity, and to do so with great pride.
An authentic and accessible guide to understanding—and engaging in—today’s gender conversation.
The days of two genders—male, female; boy, girl; blue, pink—are over, if they ever existed at all. Gender is now a global conversation, and one that is constantly evolving. More people than ever before are openly living their lives as transgender men or women, and many transgender people are coming out as neither men or women, instead living outside of the binary. Gender is changing, and this change is gaining momentum.
We all want to do and say the right things in relation to gender diversity—whether at a job interview, at parent/teacher night, and around the table at family dinners. But where do we begin?
From the differences among gender identity, gender expression, and sex, to the use of gender-neutral pronouns like singular they/them, to thinking about your own participation in gender, Your Guide serves as a complete primer to all things gender. Guided by professor and gender diversity advocate Lee Airton, PhD, you will learn how gender works in everyday life, how to use accurate terminology to refer to transgender, non-binary, and/or gender non-conforming individuals, and how to ask when you aren’t sure what to do or say. It provides you with the information you need to talk confidently and compassionately about gender diversity, whether simply having a conversation or going to bat as an advocate.
Just like gender itself, being gender-friendly is a process for all of us. As revolutionary a resource as Our Bodies, Ourselves, Your Guide invites everyone on board to make gender more flexible and less a source of more joy, and less harm, for everyone. Let’s get started.
3. Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution by Susan Stryker
Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-’70s to 1990—the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the ’90s and ’00s.
Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture.
4. The Savvy Ally: A Guide for Becoming a Skilled LGBTQ+ Advocate by Jeannie Gainsburg
Bursting with passion and humor, The Savvy Ally: A Guide for Becoming a Skilled LGBTQ+ Advocate is a treasure trove for allies to the LGBTQ+ communities. This fully revised second edition includes:
-The most current information on identities and LGBTQ+ language
-Tips for respectfully sharing, gathering, and using pronouns
-LGBTQ+ etiquette, including common language bloopers to avoid
-Tools for navigating difficult conversations
-Best practices for creating LGBTQ+ inclusive spaces
-Appropriate actions to take after messing up
-Techniques for self-care and sustainable allyship
The Savvy Ally is a vital resource for teachers, mental health professionals, healthcare providers, college professors, faith leaders, family members, and friends who want to support and advocate for the LGBTQ+ people in their lives and help make the world a safer, more inclusive place. This informative, encouraging, and easy-to-understand guidebook will jump-start even the most tentative ally.
Recommended reads surrounding mental health!
1. Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease.
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don’s work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony—and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?
What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.
With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family’s unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.
2. Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
This groundbreaking book explains why women experience burnout differently than men—and provides a simple, science-based plan to help women minimize stress, manage emotions, and live a more joyful life.
Burnout. Many women in America have experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s world are two very different things—and women exhaust themselves trying to close the gap between them. How can you “love your body” when every magazine cover has ten diet tips for becoming “your best self”? How do you “lean in” at work when you’re already operating at 110 percent and aren’t recognized for it? How can you live happily and healthily in a sexist world that is constantly telling you you’re too fat, too needy, too noisy, and too selfish?
Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Instead of asking us to ignore the very real obstacles and societal pressures that stand between women and well-being, they explain with compassion and optimism what we’re up against—and show us how to fight back. In these pages you’ll learn
• what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle—and return your body to a state of relaxation
• how to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration
• how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it
• why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering and preventing burnout
With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in these pages—and will be empowered to create positive change. Emily and Amelia aren’t here to preach the broad platitudes of expensive self-care or insist that we strive for the impossible goal of “having it all.” Instead, they tell us that we are enough, just as we are—and that wellness, true wellness, is within our reach.
From a psychotherapist, and national advice columnist comes a thought-provoking new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist’s world — where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.
As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives — a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys — she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.
With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.
4. Broken (in the best possible way) by Jenny Lawson
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Furiously Happy and Let’s Pretend This Never Happened comes a deeply relatable book filled with humor and honesty about depression and anxiety.
As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.
With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it. From the business ideas that she wants to pitch to Shark Tank to the reason why Jenny can never go back to the post office, Broken leaves nothing to the imagination in the most satisfying way. And of course, Jenny’s long-suffering husband Victor―the Ricky to Jenny’s Lucille Ball―is present throughout.
A treat for Jenny Lawson’s already existing fans, and destined to convert new ones, Broken is a beacon of hope and a wellspring of laughter when we all need it most.
5. Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health by Thomas Insel, MD
As director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas Insel was giving a presentation when the father of a boy with schizophrenia yelled from the back of the room, “Our house is on fire and you’re telling me about the chemistry of the paint! What are you doing to put out the fire?” Dr. Insel knew in his heart that the answer was not nearly enough . The gargantuan American mental health industry was not healing millions who were desperately in need. He left his position atop the mental health research world to investigate all that was broken—and what a better path to mental health might look like.
In the United States, we have treatments that work, but our system fails at every stage to deliver care well. Even before COVID, mental illness was claiming a life every eleven minutes by suicide. Quality of care varies widely, and much of the field lacks accountability. We focus on drug therapies for symptom reduction rather than on plans for long-term recovery. Care is often unaffordable and unavailable, particularly for those who need it most and are homeless or incarcerated. Where was the justice for the millions of Americans suffering from mental illness? Who was helping their families?
But Dr. Insel also found that we do have approaches that work, both in the U.S. and globally. Mental illnesses are medical problems, but he discovers that the cures for the crisis are not just medical, but social. This path to healing, built upon what he calls the three Ps (people, place, and purpose), is more straightforward than we might imagine. Dr. Insel offers a comprehensive plan for our failing system and for families trying to discern the way forward.
The fruit of a lifetime of expertise and a global quest for answers, Healing is a hopeful, actionable account and achievable vision for us all in this time of mental health crisis.
6. Are u ok?: A Guide to Caring for Your Mental Health by Kati Morton, LMFT
A licensed family therapist and You Tube personality, Kati Morton answers the most commonly asked questions about mental health, including when to get help and where to find it.
Everyone struggles with mental health issues from time to time, but the greatest level of misunderstanding comes from knowing the difference between mental health and mental illness, figuring out whether we need professional help and, if so, how to find it. Are u ok? walks readers through the most commonly asked questions about mental health and the process of getting help. From finding the best therapist to navigating harmful and toxic relationships and everything in between, licensed family therapist and YouTube sensation Kati Morton clarifies and de-stigmatizes the struggles so many of us go through, and encourages readers to reach out for help.
What are the red flags of a mental health issue? How do you go about making a first therapy appointment? How do you know if your therapist is a good fit for you? What are the best ways of talking about mental health with your family, friends and colleagues? There are so many questions and concerns, and in the down-to-earth, friendly tone that makes Kati Morton so popular on YouTube, Are u ok? informs and reminds us that we can get through the difficult times and we are never alone.
7. Resilience: Two Sisters and a Story of Mental Illness by Jessie Close
The Close sisters are descended from very prominent and wealthy ancestors. When the Close sisters were very young, their parents joined a cult called the MRA, or Moral Rearmament. The family was suddenly uprooted to a cult school in Switzerland and, ultimately, to the Belgian Congo where their father became a surgeon in the war-ravaged republic, and ultimately the personal physician to President Mobutu. Shortly after the girls returned to the US for boarding school, Jessie first started to exhibit symptoms of severe bipolar disorder (she would later learn that this ran in the family, a well-kept secret). Jessie embarked on a series of destructive marriages as the condition worsened. Glenn was always by her side throughout. Jessie’s mental illness was passed on to her son, Calen. It wasn’t until Calen entered McLean’s psychiatric hospital that Jessie herself was diagnosed. Fifteen years and twelve years of sobriety later, Jessie is a stable and productive member of society. Glenn continues to be the major support in Jessie’s life.
In Resilience, the sisters share their story of triumphing over Jessie’s illness. The book is written in Jessie’s voice with running commentary and an epilogue written by Glenn.
8. Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness by Roy Richard Grinker
For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody’s Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma—from the eighteenth century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy.
Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family’s four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather’s analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter’s experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Nobody’s Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma. The preeminent historian of medicine, Sander Gilman, calls Nobody’s Normal “the most important work on stigma in more than half a century.”
From a psychologist and stand-up comedian comes a practical, yet laugh-out-loud guide to embracing humor to reduce stress and live a happier, fuller life.
Dr. Brian King got a degree in psychology before becoming a world-touring comic and the host of humor therapy seminars attended by more than ten thousand people each year. In this brilliant guide he presents hands-on techniques for managing stress by rewiring our brains to approach potentially difficult situations through a lens of positivity. To do so, Dr. King explores what stress is, where it comes from, and what it does to our bodies and brains. He delves deep into how to address everyday stress—as well as anxiety, insecurities, repression, and negativity—and gives insight into resulting ailments such as anxiety disorders, depression, hypertension, obesity, substance abuse disorders, and more. Dr. King’s techniques are chemical and cost free, and embrace humor, resilience, relaxation, optimism, gratitude, and acceptance. Instead of a dry medical approach to dealing with stress, this unique volume is filled with life-changing tips and instructions presented with humor and a wealth of memorable, smile-inducing anecdotes.
10. Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Dr. Julie Smith
Drawing on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, online sensation Dr Julie Smith provides the skills you need to navigate common life challenges and take charge of your emotional and mental health in her debut book.
Filled with secrets from a therapist’s toolkit, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? teaches you how to fortify and maintain your mental health, even in the most trying of times. Dr Julie Smith’s expert advice and powerful coping techniques will help you stay resilient, whether you want to manage anxiety, deal with criticism, cope with depression, build self-confidence, find motivation, or learn to forgive yourself. The book tackles everyday issues and offers practical solutions in bite-sized, easy-to-digest entries which make it easy to quickly find specific information and guidance.
Your mental well-being is just as important as your physical well-being. Packed with proven strategies, Dr Smith’s empathetic guide offers a deeper understanding of how your mind works and gives you the insights and help you need to nurture your mental health every day. Wise and practical, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? might just change your life.
Dig into these books this April!
1. The Garden Refresh: How to Give Your Yard Big Impact on a Small Budget by Kier Holmes
So you want a stylish, healthy, and productive garden that is budget and Earth-friendly? Of course you do. Garden designer Kier Holmes shows you how, in this accessible and spunky guide. She shares everything you need to create a productive and lush garden that can truly be used and enjoyed. Packed with hundreds of tips on design, plant selection, and how to address problematic situations, it also has information on which hardscape elements are worth the splurge, how to decide where to start, and how to reduce maintenance through design. Inspirational, practical, and endlessly creative, The Garden Refresh is destined to become the book you turn to again and again for the best insider ideas.
Discover how to work with nature, instead of against it, by employing permaculture techniques to create a garden that is not just more beautiful and productive, but also more resilient. While the word permaculture might sound intimidating, the principals behind it are not. The main goal of permaculture is to turn your space into a functioning ecosystem that’s less reliant on external resources and better able to sustain itself through many seasons of growth and change as it resists pests, diseases, and climate extremes. Whatever the size of your space, from a tiny patio garden to a big backyard, and whether you grow food, flowers, shrubs, trees, or a combination of all, The Regenerative Garden is here to help you become a better, more eco-conscious gardener.
Through 80 DIY projects, author Stephanie Rose of the popular website Garden Therapy introduces you to basic backyard permaculture concepts in an easy-to-follow, logical way. Each of the six chapters represents a living element of the garden, capable of playing a valuable role in its constant regeneration, including soil, water, plants, climate, ethics, and community. As you check these projects off your to-do list, you’ll find you’ve reduced your long-term work load, conserved water and other resources, turned your yard into a habitat for wildlife, and learned to grow perennial foods in creative ways.
3. The Northeast Native Plant Primer: 235 Plants for an Earth-Friendly Garden by Uli Lorimer
Bring your garden to life—and life to your garden
Do you want a garden that makes a real difference? Choose plants native to our Northeast region. The rewards will benefit you, your yard, and the environment—from reducing maintenance tasks to attracting earth-friendly pollinators such as native birds, butterflies, and bees. Native plant expert Uli Lorimer of the Native Plant Trust makes adding these superstar plants easier than ever before, with proven advice that every home gardener can follow. This incomparable sourcebook includes 235 recommended native trees, shrubs, vines, ferns, wildflowers, grasses, sedges, and annuals. It’s everything you need to know to create a beautiful and beneficial garden.
This must-have handbook is for gardeners in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, eastern Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Every new gardener has to start somewhere—and the process can be intimidating. Knowing when and what to plant, how to care for the plants once they’re in the ground, and how to keep pests and diseases away is a lot to take on. Luckily, Daryl Beyers—an expert from the New York Botanical Garden—has written what will be a go-to resource for decades to come.
The New Gardener’s Handbook is a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of gardening, based on the introductory gardening class that Beyers teaches at NYBG. Readers will learn about soil, plant selection, propagation, planting and mulching, watering and feeding, pruning, and weeds, pests, and diseases. The information applies to both ornamental and edible plants. Featuring inspiring photography and helpful illustrations, The New Gardener’s Handbook gives home gardeners a foundation upon which they can grow, and encourages them to apply the lessons they’ve learned in an intuitive, natural way.
Design a beautiful and self-sufficient garden; learn the secrets of heirloom vegetables, herbs, and flowers; and enjoy 60 seasonal recipes featuring the fruits of your labor—all with one book!
“An heirloom garden is an opportunity to plant a piece of history that provides a deeper connection to the food you eat, the people you love, and the landscape that surrounds your home.” —from the Introduction
Whether you have a small plot of land just outside your kitchen door or a wide-open field waiting to be tamed, you have an opportunity to honor the past and discover the future through long-lost plant varieties that are full of flavor, fragrance, and old-fashioned charm. By digging deeper into their history, you’ll learn why saving and planting heirloom seeds are key to the past, the present, and the future of our food gardens.
In The New Heirloom Garden, award-winning food and garden writer Ellen Ecker Ogden guides you to designing and harvesting from your own kitchen garden, with expert advice, twelve themed garden designs, and sensible tips for a successful harvest. Each design includes an illustrated layout based on a historical garden with a detailed plant key featuring the best-tasting heirloom vegetables you can grow. Discover the unique stories behind the fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers that have been growing in gardens for centuries, and why seed saving is vital to maintain food diversity.
An avid cook, Ellen attended cooking school in Italy and Ireland, and shares her 60 best garden-to-table recipes, organized by plant family, making it easy to learn how to substitute with what is growing seasonally and regionally. With a range of soups, salads, entrées, and desserts, you’ll revel in delicious fare that includes cold Summer Squash Soup with Parsley-Mint Pistou, Fennel and Watermelon Salad, Rainbow Beet Spoonbread, Rhubarb Pie with Ginger and Lemon, and Mint Granita, making this book a must-have for cooks who love to garden.
6. Grow Great Vegetables in Massachusetts by Marie Iannotti
Get the Inside Dirt, Massachusetts!
Grow Great Vegetables in Massachusetts is the ultimate guide to growing food in the Bay State! This must-have guide to growing vegetables, fruits, and herbs provides you with insider advice on climate zones, average frost dates, and growing season details. Information includes details on sun, soil, fertilizer, mulch, water, and the best varieties for your region. A garden planning section helps with design and crop rotation, and monthly lists explain what to do from January through December. In-depth profiles of fifty best edibles help ensure a can’t-miss harvest.
Celebrate Black History Month with these recommended nonfiction reads!
1. The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison
Keep your brain young, healthy, and sharp with this science-driven guide to protecting your mind from decline by neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta.
Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection–a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades.
The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison’s inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, “black matter(s),” and human rights. She looks at enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise) and that of others, among them, painter and collagist Romare Bearden, author Toni Cade Bambara, and theater director Peter Sellars. In all, The Source of Self-Regard is a luminous and essential addition to Toni Morrison’s oeuvre.
In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America’s most pivotal heroes: Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin.
Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin’s son James, about Alberta King’s son Martin Luther, and Louise Little’s son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them, who were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women.
Berdis, Alberta, and Louise passed their knowledge to their children with the hope of helping them to survive in a society that would deny their humanity from the very beginning–from Louise teaching her children about their activist roots, to Berdis encouraging James to express himself through writing, to Alberta basing all of her lessons in faith and social justice. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced.
These three mothers taught resistance and a fundamental belief in the worth of Black people to their sons, even when these beliefs flew in the face of America’s racist practices and led to ramifications for all three families’ safety. The fight for equal justice and dignity came above all else for the three mothers.
These women, their similarities and differences, as individuals and as mothers, represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue.
3. Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman
Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, Amanda Gorman’s remarkable new collection reveals an energizing and unforgettable voice in American poetry. Call Us What We Carry is Gorman at her finest. Including “The Hill We Climb,” the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, and bursting with musical language and exploring themes of identity, grief, and memory, this lyric of hope and healing captures an important moment in our country’s consciousness while being utterly timeless.
The breakout poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman.
4. A Promised Land by Barack Obama
A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making, from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy.
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.
Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office.
Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.
A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.
This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.
5. Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
6. The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama
#1 NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER – ONE OF TIME‘S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2022 – In an inspiring follow-up to her critically acclaimed, #1 bestselling memoir Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today’s highly uncertain world.
There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with readers, considering the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much?
Michelle Obama offers readers a series of fresh stories and insightful reflections on change, challenge, and power, including her belief that when we light up for others, we can illuminate the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deeper truths and new pathways for progress. Drawing from her experiences as a mother, daughter, spouse, friend, and First Lady, she shares the habits and principles she has developed to successfully adapt to change and overcome various obstacles–the earned wisdom that helps her continue to “become.” She details her most valuable practices, like “starting kind,” “going high,” and assembling a “kitchen table” of trusted friends and mentors. With trademark humor, candor, and compassion, she also explores issues connected to race, gender, and visibility, encouraging readers to work through fear, find strength in community, and live with boldness.
“When we are able to recognize our own light, we become empowered to use it,” writes Michelle Obama. A rewarding blend of powerful stories and profound advice that will ignite conversation, The Light We Carry inspires readers to examine their own lives, identify their sources of gladness, and connect meaningfully in a turbulent world.
7. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Ibram X. Kendi’s concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America–but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.
In this book, Kendi weaves together an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science, bringing it all together with an engaging personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism. How to Be an Antiracist is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society.
8. Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes
In this poignant, hilarious and deeply intimate call to arms, Hollywood’s most powerful woman, the mega-talented creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away with Murder and Catch, reveals how saying YES changed her life — and how it can change yours too. With three hit shows on television and three children at home, Shonda Rhimes had lots of good reasons to say no when invitations arrived. Hollywood party? No. Speaking engagement? No. Media appearances? No. And to an introvert like Shonda, who describes herself as ‘hugging the walls’ at social events and experiencing panic attacks before press interviews, there was a particular benefit to saying no: nothing new to fear. Then came Thanksgiving 2013, when Shonda’s sister Delorse muttered six little words at her: You never say yes to anything. Profound, impassioned and laugh-out-loud funny, in Year of Yes Shonda Rhimes reveals how saying YES changed — and saved — her life. And inspires readers everywhere to change their own lives with one little word: Yes.
9. March: Book Three by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell
Welcome to the stunning conclusion of the award-winning and best-selling MARCH trilogy. Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key figures of the civil rights movement, joins co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell to bring the lessons of history to vivid life for a new generation, urgently relevant for today’s world.
10. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston
In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.
In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past–memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War.
Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo’s unique vernacular, and written from Hurston’s perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.
11. The Mamba Mentality: How I Play by Kobe Bryant
In the wake of his retirement from professional basketball, Kobe “The Black Mamba” Bryant has decided to share his vast knowledge and understanding of the game to take readers on an unprecedented journey to the core of the legendary “Mamba mentality.” Citing an obligation and an opportunity to teach young players, hardcore fans, and devoted students of the game how to play it “the right way,” The Mamba Mentality takes us inside the mind of one of the most intelligent, analytical, and creative basketball players ever.
For the first time, and in his own words, Bryant reveals his famously detailed approach and the steps he took to prepare mentally and physically to not just succeed at the game, but to excel. Readers will learn how Bryant studied an opponent, how he channeled his passion for the game, how he played through injuries. They’ll also get fascinating granular detail as he breaks down specific plays and match-ups from throughout his career.
Bryant’s detailed accounts are paired with stunning photographs by the Hall of Fame photographer Andrew D. Bernstein. Bernstein, long the Lakers and NBA official photographer, captured Bryant’s very first NBA photo in 1996 and his last in 2016—and hundreds of thousands in between, the record of a unique, twenty-year relationship between one athlete and one photographer.
February is American Hear Month! Do you know how to “cook up” a healthy heart? Here are some books to get you started!
Boost your cardiovascular health, optimize your mental strength, and prevent and reverse arterial disease with this personalized plan from the founders of the renowned Heart Attack & Stroke Prevention Center.
Every forty seconds, someone in the US suffers a heart attack or stroke, and every sixty-five seconds someone develops dementia. The culprit is cardiovascular disease—and rates are soaring in younger, seemingly healthy people. World-
renowned cardiovascular specialists Bradley Bale, MD, and Amy Doneen, DNP, have pioneered a lifesaving method to prevent these devastating events—and reverse the disease that causes them.
The BaleDoneen Method transcends the medical silos of cardiology, neurology, endocrinology, and others with a holistic approach designed to protect and optimize the health of the heart, brain, and other vital organs, as well as the blood vessels that supply them. Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain presents a unique, comprehensive program to prevent chronic diseases and memory loss in people of all ages regardless of their body type, medical history, or genes. Offering a roadmap to lifelong arterial wellness, it includes:
Precision medical methods to prevent diseases of aging
The best and worst supplements and foods for your heart
Ten lifestyle moves that lower dementia risk by 35 percent
Information about genes that raise cardiovascular risk as much as smoking
The top ten heart attack prevention tips for women
Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain will equip you with the knowledge you need to approach your healthcare as an empowered and informed patient.
Joel Fuhrman, M.D., the New York Times bestselling author of Eat to Live, Eat to Live Cookbook, Super Immunity, The End of Diabetes, and The End of Dieting, presents a scientifically proven, practical program to prevent and reverse heart disease—coinciding with the author’s new medical study.
Heart disease and strokes are the leading cause of death in the United States—but it isn’t inevitable. The cure for America’s most lethal killer doesn’t require expensive medications or rounds of invasive surgery. In fact 99 percent of heart disease–related deaths are entirely preventable with diet and nutrition. The cure for reversing heart disease is as simple as changing the food we eat.
One of our country’s leading experts in both preventive medicine and the science of food, Dr. Fuhrman speaks directly to readers everywhere who want to take control of their health and avoid taking medication or undergoing complicated, expensive, unnecessary, and often ineffective procedures or surgery. He asserts that the public is rarely informed by their doctors of the most effective options for treating high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart disease. Nor are we provided an accurate evaluation of the true health risks from commonly prescribed drugs. Given this lack of vital information, how can we possibly make an intelligent and informed choice regarding a pill, procedure, or change in diet?
Grounded in the latest scientific research and Dr. Fuhrman’s twenty-five years of clinical experience treating heart disease, The End of Heart Disease shows us how we can significantly lower cholesterol and blood pressure, reduce weight, heal obstructive coronary artery disease, and even eradicate advanced heart disease —all without the need for dangerous procedures like angioplasty or bypass surgery. Dr. Fuhrman shows us how to eat for optimal heart health, with a range of options for differing needs and conditions. He provides detailed menu plans and delicious recipes for heart-healthy meals and snacks and includes helpful questions for doctors and patients.
3. Cardiovascular Health: How Conventional Wisdom is Failing Us by Jay N. Cohn, M.D.
Many of know someone who has suffered from heart disease, hypertension, or related cardiovascular issues. Here, a renowned cardiologist describes the biological processes leading to heart and blood vessel disease, challenging the conventional view that poor diet and lack of exercise are the culprits. Exploring the various risk factors that people most often associate with these diseases, Cohn reveals their true role in affecting cardiovascular health. The author further questions the current emphasis on population intervention to reduce risk rather than individualized health care, since individual variability makes some approaches good for some, but not for all. He argues further that inherited genomic factors are the dominant cause of premature disease development and progression. Although diet and exercise may modestly slow disease progression, the secret to life prolongation, he contests, is the prescription of drugs that slow the biological processes that accelerate the development of artery and heart disease. These pharmacologic agents lower blood pressure and lower cholesterol, but their main effect is to slow progression of disease even in those whose blood pressure and cholesterol levels are not elevated. He offers strategies for identifying and treating these early abnormalities is described, and provides guidance on early warning signs as well as lifestyle changes that may be beneficial.
Convenience and eating healthfully can go hand in hand, and with the American Heart Association Quick & Easy Cookbook, 2nd Edition, you can spend less time in the kitchen and still achieve great results at the table.
This revised and expanded edition of the classic cookbook includes more than 200 speedy dishes, of which 60 are brand new. Prep and cooking times are provided for all recipes, so you’ll know how much time you’ll need in the kitchen. And rest assured, no dish takes longer than 20 minutes to prepare, and many recipes can be made in 30 minutes from start to finish.
In fewer than 10 minutes, you can start your day with Confetti Scrambler or Mandarin Breakfast Parfaits. No one will guess you whipped up dinner in 20 minutes when you serve Chicken with Tarragon Oil, Baked Tilapia with Pineapple Reduction, or Beef Tenderloin on Herbed White Beans. When meals are this simple and good for you, even appetizers, snacks, sides, and desserts can be on the docket. You’ll find recipes for Homemade Corn Tortilla Chips, Edamame Salsa, Warm Chicken and Papaya Salad, Citrus Kale with Dried Cranberries, Chocolate-Banana Mini Cupcakes, Grilled Peaches with Almond Liqueur, and much more!
Make the most of your time in the kitchen and in the grocery store with helpful tools such as:
· Meal-planning strategies, including a sample dinner plan and a chart template to
customize your own meals week-by-week
· Guidelines for maximizing nutritious foods and minimizing nutrient-poor foods
· Shopping strategies, including lists of health-smart staples
· Tips on organizing your kitchen for the greatest efficiency
· Quick-cooking techniques and short prep tricks
With this new edition of one of the American Heart Association’s first and most popular cookbooks, you’ll have a resource right at your fingertips for making your own quick and easy meals that will offer you fast, healthy food.
THE 30-DAY HEART TUNE-UP takes readers step by step through a revolutionary program to tune up their hearts, energy, waistlines, and sex lives, with 60 delicious recipes to help jump-start a heart-healthy diet. Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer of Americans today. But, the good news is that everyone-regardless of size, genetics, gender, or age-can treat arterial plaque and prevent heart attacks and strokes with this book. The keys to the program are shrinking arterial plaque, improving circulation, and strengthening your heartbeat. The tools in this book include heart-healing foods, exercise that strengthens the heart and arteries, stress management, and a customized heart-friendly supplement plan. THE 30-DAY HEART TUNE-UP program is easy, fast, and could even be called sexy. Dr. Masley devotes a chapter to showing how improving heart health enhances sex drive and function in both men and women.
Kickstart your 2023 with Healthy Everything! From mindset habits, creating wealth, sleeping better, productivity & other inspiration from our curated selection of books.
1. Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age by Sanjay Gupta, MD
Keep your brain young, healthy, and sharp with this science-driven guide to protecting your mind from decline by neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta.
Throughout our life, we look for ways to keep our mind sharp and effortlessly productive. Now, globetrotting neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta offers insights from top scientists all over the world, whose cutting-edge research can help you heighten and protect brain function and maintain cognitive health at any age.
Keep Sharp debunks common myths about aging and cognitive decline, explores whether there’s a “best” diet or exercise regimen for the brain, and explains whether it’s healthier to play video games that test memory and processing speed, or to engage in more social interaction. Discover what we can learn from “super-brained” people who are in their eighties and nineties with no signs of slowing down—and whether there are truly any benefits to drugs, supplements, and vitamins. Dr. Gupta also addresses brain disease, particularly Alzheimer’s, answers all your questions about the signs and symptoms, and shows how to ward against it and stay healthy while caring for a partner in cognitive decline. He likewise provides you with a personalized twelve-week program featuring practical strategies to strengthen your brain every day.
Keep Sharp is the only owner’s manual you’ll need to keep your brain young and healthy regardless of your age!
2. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving—every day. James Clear, one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.
If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you’ll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.
Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.
Learn how to:
– Make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
– Overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
– Design your environment to make success easier;
– Get back on track when you fall off course;
…and much more.
Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits–whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.
3. The Comfort Book by Matt Haig
The new uplifting book from Matt Haig, the New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library, for anyone in search of hope, looking for a path to a more meaningful life, or in need of a little encouragement.
“It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learnt while we are at our lowest. But then we never think about food more than when we are hungry and we never think about life rafts more than when we are thrown overboard.”
The Comfort Book is Haig’s life raft: it’s a collection of notes, lists, and stories written over a span of several years that originally served as gentle reminders to Haig’s future self that things are not always as dark as they may seem. Incorporating a diverse array of sources from across the world, history, science, and his own experiences, Haig offers warmth and reassurance, reminding us to slow down and appreciate the beauty and unpredictability of existence.
4. Abundance: The Inner Path to Wealth by Deepak Chopra, MD
An enlightening guide to success, fulfillment, wholeness, and plenty, offering practical advice on how to cultivate a sense of abundance in times of fear and insecurity, from New York Times bestselling author Deepak Chopra.
Many of us live and operate from a mindset of lack, scarcity, and limitation. We focus on what we don’t have–financial security, confidence, an intimate relationship–which keeps us feeling insecure and inadequate. We think if only I could have those things, I could be happy. But constantly striving for more often means our ego is driving our thoughts, actions, and reactions, preventing us from reaching something greater: a true sense of inner peace, acceptance, and fulfillment. And these internal experiences allow us to access the great riches of the universe and life’s unbounded possibilities.
In The Yoga of Money, Deepak Chopra illuminates the inner path to abundance, helping readers tap into a deeper sense of awareness and become agents of change in their own lives. He demonstrates how to work past self-generated feelings of limitation and fear and provides meditations to help you focus and direct your attention, energy, and intuition so you can experience stability, prosperity, insight, creativity, love, and true power.
Increase your spending power, enhance your standard of living, and achieve financial independence with this “must-read” guide to money management (Jane Bryant Quinn).
Laurence Kotlikoff, one of our nation’s premier personal finance experts and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security, harnesses the power of economics and advanced computation to deliver a host of spellbinding but simple money magic tricks that will transform your financial future.Each trick shares a basic ingredient for financial savvy based on economic common sense, not Wall Street snake oil. Money Magic offers a clear path to a richer, happier, and safer financial life. Whether you’re making education, career, marriage, lifestyle, housing, investment, retirement, or Social Security decisions, Kotlikoff provides a clear framework for readers of all ages and income levels to learn tricks like:
How to choose a career to maximize your lifetime earnings (hint: you may want to consider picking up a plunger instead of a stethoscope).
How to buy a superior education on the cheap and graduate debt-free.
Why it’s smarter to cash out your IRA to pay off your mortgage.
Why delaying retirement for two years can reap dividends and how to lower your average lifetime tax bracket.
Money Magic’s most powerful act is transforming your financial thinking, explaining not just what to do, but why to do it. Get ready to discover the economics approach to financial planning—the fruit of a century’s worth of research by thousands of cloistered economic wizards whose now-accessible collective findings turn conventional financial advice on its head. Kotlikoff uses his soft heart, hard nose, dry wit, and flashing wand to cast a powerful spell, leaving you eager to accomplish what you formerly dreaded: financial planning.
From renowned ABC News anchor/correspondent and former insomniac Diane Macedo, comes a practical, user-friendly guide to getting better sleep. The Sleep Fix flips the switch on common advice, illuminating the reporter’s relentless search for how to get a good night’s sleep and the surprising, scientific, and practical solutions she found along the way.
Roughly thirty percent of the population is estimated to be living with insomnia, while many more suffer from other sleep disorders. ABC anchor/correspondent Diane Macedo—a former insomniac herself—understands the struggle. Now, in The Sleep Fix, Macedo presents perspective-shifting research and easy-to-implement solutions to help millions of people finally get the shut-eye they need.
Macedo’s mission is crucial to our health and well-being. Everything from our heart health to our mental acuity to our blood pressure is influenced by how much—or little—we sleep. As an early morning reporter and an overnight news anchor, Macedo learned this the hard way, struggling for years to get the sleep she so desperately needed, and watching her health deteriorate along the way. But Macedo found the more she embraced typical sleep tips, the worse she slept. So she decided to attack the problem from the ground up, interviewing sleep experts from all over the world to get to the bottom of what really keeps us from sleeping—and the various ways to fix it.
As Macedo explains, the solution to catching zzz’s is not always as simple as giving up caffeine or putting away your phone before bed. Instead she teaches us how to:
Understand our sleep biology Identify our sleep obstacles Flag sleep myths and separate fact from fiction Try counterintuitive approaches Shift our mindset Most importantly, Macedo—a working mom with a busy schedule—teaches us how to adjust and fit these solutions into our everyday lives, rather than upend our lives to fit the solutions. The result is a tell-it-like-it-is guide that combines science and humor to address one of the biggest issues facing Americans today.
Featuring expert wisdom, cutting-edge research, intimate stories from fellow news personalities, and truly actionable advice, The Sleep Fix is the accessible guide insomniacs have been waiting for.
7. Martha Stewart’s Very Good Things: Clever Tips & Genius Ideas for an Easier, More Enjoyable Life
Hundreds of clever tips, solutions, and easy ways to elevate every day, from America’s most trusted lifestyle authority, in one must-have handbook
Inside these pages Martha shares all her best good things—the original life hacks for the home—to make your life easier, more fun, more delicious, and more efficient. These practical tricks cover all areas of Martha’s domestic expertise, including decorating, organizing, homekeeping, cooking, entertaining, and celebrating. From clever ways to solve common problems (use file folder dividers to organize cutting boards and sheet pans in your cabinets) to time-saving tricks (keep a pail stocked with cleaning supplies for easy access and portability to stress reducers (color-code kids’ bathroom gear to make mornings less hectic), every one of these ideas will make you wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Also included are ways to use what you have (a Parmesan cheese rind will add great flavor to soup), streamline your stuff (use certain kitchen tools for many different purposes), or just make life a little more luxurious (add elegance to your table with DIY place cards). Whether functional, delightful, or a little bit of both, these are the details that enliven and inspire every day—that’s a good thing!
8. Unstuffed: Decluttering Your Home, Mind & Soul by Ruth Soukup
STUFF. It’s everywhere. Lurking in corners and closets, spilling onto counters and coffee tables, creating havoc everywhere we look. And it’s not just the physical clutter that weighs us down. Oh no, it is the stress of overbooked schedules, and the weight of life that sometimes feels oppressive and totally out of whack.
New York Times bestselling author Ruth Soukup feels your pain–she has been there too. Through personal stories, Biblical truth, and practical action plans, she will inspire and empower each of us to finally declutter not just our home, but our mind and soul as well. Unstuffed is real, honest, and gets right down to the question we are all facing–how can we take back our lives from the stuff that is weighing us down?
In this book, together we will:
• Create a comprehensive vision for our homes, and make instant changes to improve its overall function.
• Discover that more closet space is not the solution, and instead learn how to set strict limits for the stuff we bring in
• Overcome the frustration of dealing with our kids’ influx of stuff and implement practical solutions for keeping the chaos at bay.
• Recognize the pitfalls of an overstuffed schedule BEFORE it gets out of hand, and instead learn to combat the culture of busy that keeps us running from one thing to the next.
• Finally conquer that mountain of paperwork that threatens to tumble down around us at any moment.
• Let go of the guilt that gets attached to gifts and instead learn to separate our loved ones from their stuff.
• Begin to cultivate our real friendships while eliminating the toxic relationships that weigh us down.
The New York Times bestselling authors and stars of the upcoming Netflix series The Home Edit teach you how to apply their genius, holistic approach to your work life, on-the-go necessities, and technology.
When at home or on the go, you don’t have to live like a minimalist to feel happy and calm. The Home Edit mentality is all about embracing your life–whether you’re a busy mom, a roommate living with three, or someone who’s always traveling for work. You just need to know how to set up a system that works for you.
In the next phase of the home organizing craze, Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin go beyond the pantry and bookshelf to show you how to contain the chaos in all aspects of your life from office space to traveling bags to pet supplies and holiday storage. Take quizzes and get to know your organizing style, tailor it to your family’s lifestyle, and lead the low-guilt life as you apply more genius ideas to every aspect of your life.
Clea and Joanna are here to remind you that “it’s okay to own things” (we all do!) in the quest for pretty and smart spaces. With The Home Edit Life, you’ll be corralling phone cords, archiving old photos, packing your suitcase like a pro, and arranging your phone apps by color in no time.
From the creator of Product Launch Formula: A new edition of the #1 New York Times best-selling guide that’s redefined online marketing and helped countless entrepreneurs make millions.
The revised and updated edition of the #1 New York Times bestseller Launch will build your business – fast. Whether you’ve already got an online business or you’re itching to start one, this is a recipe for getting more traction and a fast start.
Think about it: What if you could launch like Apple or the big Hollywood studios? What if your prospects eagerly counted down the days until they could buy your product? And you could do it no matter how humble your business or budget?
Since 1996, Jeff Walker has been creating hugely successful online launches. After bootstrapping his first Internet business from his basement, he quickly developed a process for launching new products and businesses with unprecedented success. And once he started teaching his formula to other entrepreneurs, the results were simply breathtaking. Tiny, home-based businesses started doing launches that brought in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars. Whether you have an existing business or you’re starting from scratch, this is how you start fast. This formula is how you engineer massive success.
Now the question is this: Do you want to start slow, and fade away from there? Or are you ready for a launch that will change the future of your business and your life?
Holiday murder mysteries for adults!
1. An Eggnog to Die For by Amy Pershing
It’s Santa Claus, she says tonelessly. Santa Claus is dead.
Food writer Sam Barnes wants a lot of things: a quiet Christmas at home with her dog and the town’s handsome harbormaster, to never be in a viral video again, and to stop finding dead bodies. Unfortunately for Sam, her parents are coming to visit, she’s often around cameras for work, and she just found the town Santa dead in the storage room of the cocktail bar she was profiling.
Although she was only interviewing the owners of the Ginger Jar in hopes of getting the recipe for their Coquito Eggnog cocktail for the friends and family Christmas Eve dinner she’s hosting, Sam quickly finds herself taking on the role of investigator once again. She needs to find out who slayed this Santa–but with holiday stress already building, will Sam be able to pull off a perfect feast and nab a killer?
2. Dashing Through the Snowbirds by Donna Andrews
Christmas in Caerphilly is wonderful! Unless you’re a Canadian whose inconsiderate boss is forcing you to spend the holiday there, far from family and friends, with only a slim chance of a white Christmas. Meg already has her hands full, trying to make the season festive for the dozen programmers who are staying with her and Michael while working on a rush project with her brother’s software company. At least it’s an interesting project, since the Canadian company is doing forensic genealogy and DNA analysis.
When the inconsiderate boss is found murdered, there are too many suspects. Even before their Christmas in exile, his own employees had plenty of motives, and the growing number of people suing the company for faulty DNA analysis and invasion of their genetic privacy include at least one notorious murderer. Can Meg crack the case in time to keep the Yuletide bright?
3. The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict
The annual Christmas Game is afoot at Endgame House, the Armitages’ grand family home. This year’s prize is to die for–deeds to the house itself–but Lily Armitage has no intention of returning. She hasn’t been back to Endgame since her mother died, twenty-one years ago, and she has no intention of claiming the house that haunts her dreams.
Until, that is, she receives a letter from her aunt promising that the game’s riddles will give her the keys not only to Endgame, but to its darkest secrets, including the identity of her mother’s murderer.
Now, Lily must compete with her estranged cousins for the twelve days of Christmas. The snow is thick, the phone lines are down, and no one is getting in or out. Lily will have to keep her wits about her, because not everyone is playing fair, and there’s no telling how many will die before the winner is declared.
4. Santa’s Little Yelpers by David Rosenfelt
‘Tis the season in Paterson, New Jersey: Lawyer Andy Carpenter and his golden retriever, Tara, are surrounded by holiday cheer. It’s even spread to the Tara Foundation. The dog rescue organization, not used to having puppies, has their hands full with a recent litter. Eight puppies are a lot to handle, and Andy is relieved when his co-worker Chris Myers agrees to foster them.
Myers, a newer employee at the Tara Foundation, did time for a crime he swears he didn’t commit. When Myers discovers a key witness against him lied on the stand, he goes to Andy to ask for representation in getting the conviction overturned. Myers thinks they can have this wrapped up by Christmas, no problem.
But when the witness is murdered, and Myers is arrested for the crime, things go from bad to worse. Suddenly, it’s all elves on deck to make a list and check it twice, so they can prove Myers is innocent.
5. A Christmas Deliverance by Anne Perry
Scuff has come a long way from his time as a penniless orphan scraping together a living on the banks of the Thames. Now he’s studying medicine at a free clinic run by Dr. Crowe, a thoughtful if stoic mentor. But lately Crowe has been distracted, having witnessed an altercation between a wealthy former patient of his named Ellie–a woman that he not only treated but developed unacknowledged feelings for–and her controlling fiance. It seems someone is forcing Ellie to marry the man. When Crowe’s emotions come flooding back, he sets out to uncover the troubling connection between Ellie, her father, and her betrothed.
With Crowe engrossed in his investigation just weeks before the holidays, Scuff is left to run the clinic on his own, treating London’s poor and vulnerable. In the holiday spirit, he offers Mattie, a young girl in need, a warm place to stay as the winter chill sweeps through the city. Together, Scuff and Mattie must also fend off the police, who are growing suspicious of Crowe’s amateur sleuthing. Will Crowe be able to help Ellie, and will Scuff be able to ensure that he and Mattie–and all of their patients–have a safe and peaceful Christmas?
6. A Murder at Balmoral by Chris McGeorge
A delightful locked-room mystery in which the king has been poisoned, each member of the royal family has motive and opportunity, and the king’s beloved chef must figure out whodunit and why.
The royal family has gathered at their Scottish retreat, Balmoral Castle, for a traditional Christmas–and King Eric has given nearly all of the staff the day off. As a blizzard gathers outside and a delicious dinner is prepared, the family circles up for the traditional holiday toast. King Eric makes clear he has something momentous to say–in fact, he will name his chosen successor. But as he raises a glass of his favorite whiskey from a bottle that has just been sealed, he drops dead.
The King has been poisoned, only the royal family are present, and each one of them has opportunity and motive.
The only person at Balmoral who keeps his wits about him is the beloved head chef, Jonathan–an outsider in the eyes of the royal family, and one who is now hurled into the role of sleuth. In a state of shock, out of his depth, and possibly in a killer’s crosshairs, Jonathan must confront a hopeless case. Why would one of the king’s own family members want to kill him? And how did they do it?
The answers will shake the monarchy and the entire British Empire to its core.
7. When Christmas Comes by Andrew Klavan
Colorful Christmas lights dapple the family homes in the idyllic lakeside town of Sweet Haven when Jennifer Dean, a young librarian at the local elementary school, is brutally murdered. There are witnesses and her boyfriend Travis Blake confesses to the crime… but something doesn’t quite add up. Blake is a third generation Army Ranger, awarded the Silver Star for his heroism in Afghanistan—how could a beloved son of this tight-knit burgh commit such a grisly deed?
As a community of military families a few miles down the road from an Army base, no one in Sweet Haven wants to investigate a war hero like Blake, not even the top brass at the police department. In steps Cameron Winter, a rugged and lonesome English professor haunted by the ghosts of his own Christmas past, whose former lover asks him to prove Blake innocent. The Sweet Haven murder reverberates in his mind, echoing a horrific yuletide memory from his youth, and Winter knows there are darker powers at play here than a simple domestic dispute. If he can solve this small-town mystery, just maybe he can find peace from his inner demons as well.
8. Murder at the Mistletoe Ball by J.D. Griffo
Alberta is delighted that her estranged daughter has arrived in Tranquility, even if Lisa Marie has an ulterior motive. Her son, Alberta’s twenty-one-year-old grandson, Sergio, hasn’t been heard from in six months, shortly after taking up with a woman named Natalie. Maybe Alberta and her crime-reporting partner-in-sleuthing granddaughter, Jinx, can track him down before Christmas?
After some fruitless searching, the Ferraras take a break to attend the Mistletoe Ball, a fundraiser for the local hospital. But the night takes a chilling turn when a snowman decoration splits open, revealing a body. Lisa Marie screams that it’s Natalie–and screams again when she sees a man emerge from behind some Christmas trees. The good news is they’ve found Sergio. The bad news: he’s a prime suspect for murder.
It seems Sergio’s former squeeze had some shady secrets. And with more than one family member’s future at stake, Alberta and Lisa Marie will have to put their past behind them and work together, or it’ll be a blue, blue Christmas…
9. Twisted Tea Christmas by Laura Childs
Tea maven Theodosia Browning and her tea sommelier, Drayton Conneley, are catering a Victorian Christmas party at a swanky mansion in downtown Charleston. Drucilla Heyward, the hostess, is one of the wealthiest women in town.
As the champagne flows and the tea steeps, Drucilla is so pleased with the reception by her partygoers that she reveals her secret plan to Theodosia. The Grande Dame has brought the cream of Charleston society together to reveal that she is planning to give her wealth away to various charitable organizations. However, before she can make the announcement, Theodosia finds her crumpled unconscious in the hallway. It looks like the excitement has gotten to the elderly woman–except that there is a syringe sticking out of her neck.
10. A Murder Yule Regret by Winnie Archer
A holiday costume party in the sleepy coastal town of Santa Sofia could be just the boost Ivy needs for her fledgling photography business. At the party, Ivy enters a Victorian fantasy come to life, all courtesy of the fabulous Ms. Fox. Ivy gets to play shutterbug while hanging with Scrooge, Marley, the Cratchits, and more classic Dickens characters. But what begins as the best of times turns out to be the very worst for one of the party guests–a tabloid journalist with more enemies than Ebenezer himself.
When the man’s body is found sprawled across the jagged rocks below the house, the fingers begin pointing at Eliza. Meanwhile, Ivy gets roped into helping prove the starlet’s innocence. Her festive photos are now official evidence–and the Ghosts of Christmas Present could mean the party for Eliza is over, once and for all.
Keep yourself warm with one of these romances that evoke winter’s seasonal fun and holiday cheer!
1. The Christmas Spirit by Debbie Macomber
Peter Armstrong and Hank Colfax are best friends, but their lives couldn’t be more different. Peter, the local pastor who is dedicated to his community, spending time visiting the flock, attending meetings, and, with the holiday season approaching, preparing for the Christmas service and live nativity. As a bartender, Hank serves a much different customer base at his family-owned tavern, including a handful of lonely regulars and the local biker gang.
When Peter scoffs that Hank has it easy compared to him, the two decide to switch jobs until Christmas Eve. To their surprise, the responsibilities of a bartender and a pastor are similar, but taking on the other’s work is more difficult than either Peter or Hank expected. As the two begin to see each other in a new light–and each discovers a new love to cherish–their lives are forever changed.
In The Christmas Spirit, Debbie Macomber celebrates the true meaning of the holidays and the inclusive community spirit that binds us all.
2. Holidays in Virgin River by Robyn Carr
Celebrate the holidays with this special edition containing 2 fan-favorite stories from the Virgin River series. Includes exclusive recipes inspired by the Virgin River characters.
Under the Christmas Tree
With snow falling over the redwood forests, secluded Virgin River is the ideal place to spend the holidays. Each year, the close-knit community gathers in the town square to decorate and light a massive tree. Carols are sung, hot chocolate is shared—and this year, a surprise is about to bring two special people together. When the townsfolk discover a box of adorable puppies under the town’s Christmas tree, they call on local vet Nathaniel Jensen for help. But it’s his budding romance with Annie McCarty that really has tongues—and tails—wagging!
Midnight Confessions
In Virgin River, holiday kisses don’t end with Christmas—there’s still the New Year’s Eve party at Jack’s Bar to attend. Locals and newcomers alike find themselves eager for that special countdown…and that midnight kiss.
As the townspeople gather, two lonely revelers decide the best balm for their broken hearts might just be each other.
3. All is Bright by RaeAnne Thayne
Sage McKnight is an ambitious young architect working at her father’s firm who takes on her most challenging client in Mason Tucker. The former pro baseball player is still healing from the physical and emotional scars after a plane crash left him a wheelchair-using single dad, and he’s determined not to let anyone breach his emotional defenses. Sage knows her work on Mason’s new home in Hope’s Crossing is her best work yet, and she won’t let her grumpy client prevent her from showcasing her work personally.
With Sage’s gift for taking broken things and making them better, the matchmaking talent of the quirky locals and a generous sprinkling of Christmas cheer, Mason doesn’t stand a chance against the power of this magical holiday season.
4. Home Sweet Christmas by Susan Mallery
Until Camryn Neff can return to her “real” life in Chicago, she’s in Wishing Tree to care for her twin sisters. She’s not looking for forever love, not here. But handsome hotelier Jake Crane is a temptation she can’t resist, so she suggests they pair up for the season. No golden rings, no broken hearts. At his side, she sees her hometown through Christmas-colored eyes. The cheer is cheerier, the joy more joyful. She thought she had put her future on hold…but maybe her real life was here all along, waiting for her to come home.
New in town, River Best is charmed by Wishing Tree’s homespun traditions and warmhearted people. When she’s crowned Snow Queen, she’s honored but wary. Dylan Tucker, her king, seems like the stuff of sugarplum dreams, but she can’t shake the feeling that he’s hiding something big. As they perform their “royal” duties—tasting cookies, lighting trees—Dylan’s good humor and melty kisses draw her to the brink of love. But she can’t let herself fall until she uncovers his secret, even if her lack of faith means losing him forever.
5. Somebody like Santa by Janet Dailey
For Cooper Chapman, moving next door to his newlywed sister in Branding Iron, Texas, is the biggest gift he could ask for this Christmas. The divorced single dad knows his troubled teenaged son only needs the healing balm of big skies and family ties. But soon after settling into their new home, Trevor falls in with some wild friends at his new school, leaving Cooper leaning hard on youth counselor Jess Graver. With grace and wisdom, Jess soothes Cooper’s worries over his son, even as the elusive beauty stirs romantic feelings to life . . .
With the holiday growing closer, young Trevor finds an unexpected mentor in a local farmer, helping him build a horse-drawn sleigh for the Christmas parade. Now the only thing that could make Cooper’s New Year brighter would be making warm-hearted Jess his own. But when he stumbles upon a secret from her past, it will take more than mistletoe to bring them back together and keep her at his side for all the sweet seasons to come . . .
6. Christmas Eve Cowboy by Diana Palmer, Kate Pearce, and Delores Fossen
At A Little Taste of Heaven, Bernie and Libby Simmons cater all sorts of affairs, from book clubs to bridal showers and everything in between. So when their counterman, Googie, asks them to cater a doggie wedding for his girlfriend Jenni’s eight-month-old golden retrievers, they jump on the opportunity. The reception, which will also serve as a grand opening for Jennie’s new doggie daycare center, is no small affair. Bertha and Ernie—the bride and groom—will be celebrating with more than a hundred guests, including the puppers’ pals and their people.
But all weddings, even shaggy shindigs, come with some drama. Not everyone in town is excited about the upcoming pup-tuials—or Jenni’s business. Someone is sending threatening messages to Bernie, Libby, and others in town, warning them to cancel the festivities. But when folks start dying under curious circumstances, Bernie and Libby know it’s up to them to untangle the leads and find the murderer before anyone else bites it.
7. So This Is Christmas by Jenny Holiday
Matteo Benz has spent his life serving at the pleasure of the Eldovian crown. His work is his life and his life, well…he doesn’t have much of one. When he is tasked to aid a management consultant who has been flown in to help straighten out the king’s affairs, he is instantly disturbed by her brash American manner–as well by an inconvenient attraction to the brainy beauty.
Cara Delaney is in Eldovia to help clean up the king’s financial affairs, but soon finds herself at odds with the very proper Mr. Benz. As intrigued by his good looks as she is annoyed by his dedication to tradition for its own sake, she slowly begins to see the real man behind the royal throne.
As they work together to return Eldovia to its former glory during the country’s magical Christmas season, Matteo discovers he is falling hopelessly in love with the unconventional American. But a man who has devoted his life to tradition doesn’t change easily. Can he become the man Cara needs, or will their love be another sacrifice to the crown?
8. Once Upon a December by Amy E. Reichert
With a name like Astra Noel Snow, holiday spirit isn’t just a seasonal specialty–it’s a way of life. But after a stinging divorce, Astra’s yearly trip to the Milwaukee Christmas market takes on a whole new meaning. She’s ready to eat, drink, and be merry, especially with the handsome stranger who saves the best kringle for her at his family bakery.
For Jack Clausen, the Julemarked with its snowy lights and charming shops stays the same, while the world outside the joyful street changes, magically leaping from one December to the next every four weeks. He’s never minded living this charmed existence until Astra shows him the life he’s been missing outside of the festive red brick alley.
After a swoon-worthy series of dates, some Yuletide magic, and the unexpected glow of new love, Astra and Jack must decide whether this relationship can weather all seasons, or if what they’re feeling is as ephemeral as marshmallows in a mug of hot cocoa.
9. The Second Christmas by Marta Perry
When Leah Beiler pictured returning to Promise Glen, she imagined taking everything she learned from her aunt’s business in Upstate New York and starting up a quaint herbal tea shop of her own. What she didn’t expect was for Josiah Burkhalter to insist on helping her. Josiah might have been her childhood sweetheart but they’ve both changed a lot since then and Leah’s not sure she can trust the man who once broke her heart.
Josiah is determined to make the most of this unexpected second chance. When he hears of Leah’s plans to open her own shop, he resolves to help in any way he can–beginning his gentle campaign to win her back by renovating the small cottage on her family’s farm.
During her time away, Leah looked forward to once again spending the holiday season with her family, especially Second Christmas, December 26th, a time of celebrating with extended family and close neighbors like the Burkhalters. But as Christmas nears, her feelings for Josiah grow more confused, strengthened by their time of working together. Now it will take all the magic of the season for Leah to confront her fears and reach for the love she deserves.
10. The Road to Christmas by Sheila Roberts
Michelle and Max are not planning on a happy holiday. Their marriage is in shambles and the D word has entered their vocabulary. But now their youngest daughter, Julia, wants everyone to come to her new house in Idaho for Christmas, and she’s got the guest room all ready for Mom and Dad. Oh, joy.
Their other daughters, Audrey and Shyla, are driving up from California and hoping to meet a sexy rancher for Audrey along the way. What they don’t plan on is getting stranded on a ranch when the car breaks down.
The ones with the shortest drive are Grandma and Grandpa—also known as Hazel and Warren. It’s still a bit of a trek, and Hazel doesn’t like the idea of driving all that way in snow, but Warren knows they’ll have no problem. They have a reliable car—and snow tires and chains if they need them. They’ll be fine.
Surprises lie in store for all three sets of intrepid travelers as they set out on three very different adventures, all leading to one memorable family Christmas.
11. Christmas at the Cupcake Cafe by Jenny Colgan
Issy Randall, proud owner of The Cupcake Cafe, is in love and couldn’t be happier. Her new business is thriving and she is surrounded by close friends, even if her cupcake colleagues Pearl and Caroline don’t seem quite as upbeat about the upcoming season of snow and merriment. But when her boyfriend Austin is scouted for a possible move to New York, Issy is forced to face up to the prospect of a long-distance romance. And when the Christmas rush at the cafe – with its increased demand for her delectable creations – begins to take its toll, Issy has to decide what she holds most dear.
This December, Issy will have to rely on all her reserves of courage, good nature and cinnamon, to make sure everyone has a merry Christmas, one way or another…
12. A Yuletide Kiss by Madeline Hunter, Sabrina Jeffries, and Mary Jo Putney
The reigning queens of Regency Romance return with another delightful Christmas collection of three sparkling holiday romances, as stranded travelers find merriment, mistletoe, and holiday romance awaiting at a quaint country inn…
An Unexpected Christmas Gift by Madeline Hunter
Jenna Waverly has closed her inn, anticipating a blissfully quiet Christmas, until a snowstorm brings the first of several strangers to her property. Lucas Avonwood, as charming as he is secretive, is on a mission to track down a scoundrel, but the inn’s lovely owner is giving him a more compelling reason to stay…
When We Finally Kiss Good-Night by Sabrina Jeffries
When Flora Younger first met Konrad Juncker, she thought she’d found her match, only to have her hopes dashed. Konrad is now a famous playwright whose plays Flora has secretly panned in reviews. But a chance meeting in a secluded inn may help them rewrite this star-crossed romance…
When Strangers Meet by Mary Jo Putney
Kate McLeod is shocked to find that a fellow guest in the snowbound inn is the dashing sea captain who may or may not be her husband. Captain Ramesh Langdon barely remembers that night in Bombay, but the desire they discover now will be impossible to forget, or to ignore…
When truth is Stranger than Fiction, the result is hauntingly educational. These books center around mysterious places, UFOs, monsters, ghost stories, witchcraft, and all things paranormal.
1. New England UFOs: Sightings, Abductions, and Other Strange Phenomena by Taryn Plumb
Centuries before the U.S. Air Force launched Project Blue Book or mysteries swirled around the enigmatic Area 51, the Puritans in 1639 witnessed a great light in the sky over Massachusetts. It was the first recorded sighting of an unidentified flying object. Now, sightings are so common they’re not even front-page news, and the Air Force just released all the records from Project Bluebook.Despite all this, there remain sightings that cannot be easily explained. Are we being visited by another species? The Universe, it seems, is full of mystery. Tracing the strange history of UFO sightings in the region, Taryn Plumb presents the stories of sightings or events in each New England state. Many are unexplained sightings of strange objects or lights in the sky; and some tell the tales of alien encounters and even abductions. All will keep you glancing to the night sky, wondering what that was out of the corner of your eye.
It may seem like clambakes, the Red Sox, and the Patriots define New England, but boy did the Pilgrims land in one very strange spot! These six states are filled with odd curiosities and bizarre legends, such as the elusive Vermont hum, the hibernating hill folk, hillside whale tales, and the Holy Land (yes, you read that right). Tongue-in-cheek and filled with dry wit, this is a journey you’ll not soon forget.
3. New England Myths & Legends: The True Stories Behind History’s Mysteries by Diana Ross McCain
New England Myths and Legends explores unusual phenomena, strange events, and mysteries in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. From vampires to an angel, a ghost rapper to a phantom ship, New England Myths and Legends pulls back the curtain on some of the region’s most fascinating and compelling stories.
4. Haunted Massachusetts: Ghosts and Strang Phenomena of the Bay State by Cheri Revai
A fun look at unexplained phenomena in Massachusetts, including the wandering spirit of lost child Lucy Keyes, the monkey-like Dover Demon, the ghost that leaves tips at Stone’s Public Tavern, hauntings in Lizzie Borden’s house, the Black Flash phantom in Provincetown, and many more.
5. The Real Witches of New England: History, Lore & Modern Practice by Ellen Evert Hopman
New England has long been associated with witches. And while the Salem witch trials happened long ago, the prejudices and fears engendered by the witchcraft hysteria still live on in our culture. What forces were at work that brought the witch hysteria quickly from Europe to the new American colony, a place of religious freedom–and what caused these prejudices to linger centuries after the fact?
Weaving together history, sacred lore, modern practice, and the voices of today’s witches, Ellen Evert Hopman offers a new, deeper perspective on American witchcraft and its ancient pagan origins. Beginning with the “witch hysteria” that started in Europe and spread to the New World, Hopman explores the witch hunts, persecutions, mass hysteria, and killings, concluding that between forty and sixty thousand women and men were executed as witches. Combining records of known events with moving interviews with their descendants, she shares the stories of 13 New England witches persecuted during the witch trials, including Tituba and Mary Bliss Parsons, the Witch of Northhampton. Despite the number of false accusations during the witch hysteria in the New England colonies, Hopman reveals how there were practicing witches during that time and describes the positive role witches played in rural communities until the dawn of the industrial age.
Exploring how the perception and practices of witches has evolved and expanded over the centuries, Hopman also includes in-depth interviews with 25 modern-day practitioners from a variety of pagan faiths, including druids, wiccans, Celtic reconstructionists, and practitioners of the fairy faith. Emerging from their insights is a treasure trove of practical information on the sacred calendar, herb lore, spells, and magical practices. Bringing together past and present, Hopman reveals what it really means to be a “witch,” redefining the label with dignity and spiritual strength.
Every state in America has sacred sites—places that change you, heal you, and make you feel alive. Magical Destinations of the Northeast details more than 300 spiritual destinations perfect for meditation, magic, and just plain fun. This hands-on guidebook also includes spells and rituals and provides tips for the magical uses of official state plants, flowers, gems, minerals, and trees.
There are pockets of magic to be found everywhere—places that make you stop in your tracks as powerful energies speak to your soul. This book is filled with awe-inspiring destinations, featuring little-known gems, natural landscapes, and manmade creations, as well as Native American and African American heritage sites. With everything from witch’s temples to Druid circles, spiritualist communities to mysterious stones, this book will make your next trip a truly magical journey.
What better locale to consider for spooky happenings than the home of the Salem witch trials? From mysteries at sea to ghosts and unexplained footprints, you’ll shiver your way through these mesmerizing tales. Set in the state’s historic towns, charming old islands, and sparsely populated backwoods, the stories in this entertaining and compelling collection are great for the whole family.
The chilly autumn winds are upon us, but never fear! These cozy mysteries will warm your heart while you warm your bones by the fire. Grab a mug of hot tea or coffee and a fuzzy blanket to round out the perfect evening in, and most importantly: happy reading!
1. A Catered Doggie Wedding by Isis Crawford
At A Little Taste of Heaven, Bernie and Libby Simmons cater all sorts of affairs, from book clubs to bridal showers and everything in between. So when their counterman, Googie, asks them to cater a doggie wedding for his girlfriend Jenni’s eight-month-old golden retrievers, they jump on the opportunity. The reception, which will also serve as a grand opening for Jennie’s new doggie daycare center, is no small affair. Bertha and Ernie—the bride and groom—will be celebrating with more than a hundred guests, including the puppers’ pals and their people.
But all weddings, even shaggy shindigs, come with some drama. Not everyone in town is excited about the upcoming pup-tuials—or Jenni’s business. Someone is sending threatening messages to Bernie, Libby, and others in town, warning them to cancel the festivities. But when folks start dying under curious circumstances, Bernie and Libby know it’s up to them to untangle the leads and find the murderer before anyone else bites it.
2. Bayou Book Thief by Ellen Byron
Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki’s teen mother disappeared from the hospital.
Ricki’s dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, the city’s legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation – collecting vintage cookbooks – into a vocation by launching the museum’s gift shop, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.
The skills Ricky has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy for investigations. But both her business and Bon Vee could wind up as deadstock when Ricki’s past as curator of a billionaire’s first edition collection comes back to haunt her.
Will Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware be a success … or a recipe for disaster?
3. Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies by Misha Popp
Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki’s teen mother disappeared from the hospital.
Ricki’s dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, the city’s legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation – collecting vintage cookbooks – into a vocation by launching the museum’s gift shop, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.
The skills Ricky has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy for investigations. But both her business and Bon Vee could wind up as deadstock when Ricki’s past as curator of a billionaire’s first edition collection comes back to haunt her.
Will Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware be a success … or a recipe for disaster?
4. Bound by Murder by Laura Gail Black
For fans of Ellery Adams and Paige Shelton, the wedding can’t go on when the bride is found murdered—but can love still win the day in this third installment of Laura Gail Black’s cozy series.
The birds are singing, books are selling, and the Hokes Bluff Inn has begun to host weddings on its property. Antiquarian bookseller Jenna Quinn loves the romance in the air—until her ex-fiancé, Blake Emerson, walks in with his bride-to-be, Missy Plott. Blake continues to profess his love for Jenna if she’ll have him back, no matter the consequences. And the consequences are grave, indeed, when Missy turns up dead.
All evidence points to Blake, who was the last one to see her alive. He begs Jenna to help him clear his name. Blake’s mother, Cordelia, is also bent on exonerating her son. Jenna doesn’t believe that Blake could have killed Missy, and she starts digging for suspects. It could have been Missy’s ex-boyfriend, who proclaims a love for her he says only death could sever. Or might it have been Missy’s bitter “best friend,” who was secretly besotted with Missy’s ex.
Then, the police find evidence from a cold case years before—a case that had falsely implicated Jenna herself. Cordelia continues to beg Jenna to help prove her son’s innocence. Could Blake truly be innocent?
Jenna’s life is on the line in a final confrontation that will either prove Blake’s innocence—or damn them both.
5. Caramel Pecan Roll Murder by Joanne Fluke
Embracing a sweet escape from her usual routine at The Cookie Jar, Hannah gets asked for her help in baking pastries at the local inn for a flashy fishing competition with big prizes and even bigger names. But the fun stops when she spots a runway boat on the water and, on board, the lifeless body of the event’s renowned celebrity spokesperson…
Famed TV show host Sonny Bowman wasn’t humble about his ability to reel in winning catches, and no one knew that better than his tragically overworked sidekick, Joey. Did Joey finally take bloody revenge on his pompous boss—or was Sonny killed by a jealous contestant?
With goodies to bake and a mess of fresh challenges mixed into her personal life, it’s either sink or swim as Hannah joins forces with her sister, Andrea, to catch a clever culprit before another unsuspecting victim goes belly up…
6. Lady of Bones by Carolyn Haines
It’s Halloween season in Mississippi as Sarah Booth and the gang gather to decorate and gush over Tinkie’s new baby, Maylin. Sarah Booth is just about to refresh the cocktails when she hears a knock on the door and opens it to find a woman named Frankie, distraught at the disappearance of her daughter Christa, a young journalist. Christa had been investigating the disappearance of young women in New Orleans over a five-year period—one every year around Halloween. Now Christa herself is missing, and Frankie fears it may be connected to a cult based in the Garden District, called People of Eternity.
People of Eternity are known to have far-reaching connections which Frankie worries may reach as high as law enforcement. Refusing to contact the authorities, she turns to Delaney Detective Agency as her only hope.
Despite initial reservations, Sarah Booth accepts the case, which takes her on a journey to a secret underworld of beguiling cult leaders, witchcraft, and potentially human sacrifice. She’ll have to keep her wits about her if she wants to crack this case…and make it home alive.
7. Hot and Sour Suspects by Vivien Chien
At the Ho-Lee Noodle House, murder is on the menu.
When Lana Lee’s best friend, Megan Riley, asks her to help host a speed dating contest at Ho-Lee Noodle House, she doesn’t see the harm in lending a hand. The night goes better than anticipated, and both Lana and Megan are beyond thrilled with the results. But before they can break out the champagne, Rina Su, fellow Asia Village shop owner and speed dating participant, calls to inform Lana that the date she’s just matched with has been murdered. Under suspicion of foul play, Rina enlists Lana’s help in finding out what really happened that night.
Without hesitation, Lana begins to dig into the man in question. To her dismay, she quickly finds that Rina’s date has a rather unsavory past. There’s a long line of slighted women, angry neighbors, and perturbed co-workers—all of whom seem to have a motive.
As Lana continues to spiral down the treacherous path of scorned lovers and mistreated acquaintances, she can’t help but dwell on how quickly an innocent evening filled with hope and positivity could turn so sour. When the media gets in on the case, Lana must rush to find the killer before more dates turn deadly.
8. A Fatal Booking by Victoria Gilbert
At the Ho-Lee Noodle House, murder is on the menu.
When Lana Lee’s best friend, Megan Riley, asks her to help host a speed dating contest at Ho-Lee Noodle House, she doesn’t see the harm in lending a hand. The night goes better than anticipated, and both Lana and Megan are beyond thrilled with the results. But before they can break out the champagne, Rina Su, fellow Asia Village shop owner and speed dating participant, calls to inform Lana that the date she’s just matched with has been murdered. Under suspicion of foul play, Rina enlists Lana’s help in finding out what really happened that night.
Without hesitation, Lana begins to dig into the man in question. To her dismay, she quickly finds that Rina’s date has a rather unsavory past. There’s a long line of slighted women, angry neighbors, and perturbed co-workers—all of whom seem to have a motive.
As Lana continues to spiral down the treacherous path of scorned lovers and mistreated acquaintances, she can’t help but dwell on how quickly an innocent evening filled with hope and positivity could turn so sour. When the media gets in on the case, Lana must rush to find the killer before more dates turn deadly.
9. The Proof is in the Poison by Diane Kelly
Now that her moonshine shop is up and running, Hattie Hayes can focus her efforts on expanding her fledgling business to events in the area, like the Chattanooga Choo Choo Model Train Convention, which is running full steam ahead at the convention center down the block. Hattie is all aboard, seizing this perfect opportunity to promote her Southern homebrew to the folks who have come to the city for the annual event.
But when an attendee dies after drinking some of Hattie’s moonshine, she’ll need to prove her innocence. Between tight-lipped train hobbyists and competitors for a coveted convention prize, Hattie has a wide array of suspects to choose from, and she’ll need to use all the tricks up her sleeve to make sure her moonshine business can survive a murderer and stay on track.
AgawamPublicLibrary
AgawamPublicLibrary
