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A short story collection exploring cultural complexities in China, the Chinese diaspora in America, and the world at large. In a vibrant and illuminating follow-up to her award-winning story collection, Useful Phrases for Immigrants, May-lee Chai’s latest collection Tomorrow in Shanghai explores multicultural complexities through lenses of class, wealth, age, gender, and sexuality—always tracking the nuanced, knotty, and intricate exchanges of interpersonal and institutional power. These stories transport the reader, variously: to rural China, where a city doctor harvests organs to fund a wedding and a future for his family; on a vacation to France, where a white mother and her biracial daughter cannot escape their fraught relationship; inside the unexpected romance of two Chinese-American women living abroad in China; and finally, to a future Chinese colony on Mars, where an aging working-class woman lands a job as a nanny. Chai’s stories are essential reading for an increasingly globalized world. -
Based on true events, Tomorrow Is for the Brave is a gripping World War II page‑turner about a courageous woman who risks it all for what is right—perfect for fans of Natasha Lester and Kristen Harmel. 1939, France: Lavish parties, fast cars, and a closet full of the latest fashion—to the average eye, socialite Violet St. Croix seemingly has it all. But what she truly wants is a life full of meaning and purpose. So when France falls to Germany, Violet defies her parents’ wishes and joins the war effort. With her impeccable skill for driving under pressure, she is soon sent to North Africa to shepherd French Foreign Legion officers carrying valuable intelligence through dangerous territory. But as the Allies encounter one mishap after another, Violet becomes convinced there is a spy in their ranks. And when her commanding officer is murdered, Violet realizes she might be the only one who can uncover the traitor and save the lives of countless soldiers on the front lines. Convincing others to believe her is difficult enough. Finding someone she can trust just might be impossible. -
From Carola Lovering, the author of Tell Me Lies, comes Too Good to Be True, an emotionally nuanced psychological suspense, and an obsessive, addictive love story, for fans of Lisa Jewell and The Wife Between Us. Skye Starling is overjoyed when her boyfriend, Burke Michaels, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Though Skye seems to have the world at her fingertips―she’s smart, beautiful, and from a well-off family―she’s also battled crippling OCD ever since her mother’s death when she was eleven, and her romantic relationships have suffered as a result. But now Burke―handsome, older, and more emotionally mature than any man she’s met before―says he wants her. Forever. Except, Burke isn’t who he claims to be. And interspersed letters to his therapist reveal the truth: he’s happily married, and using Skye for his own, deceptive ends. In a third perspective, set thirty years earlier, a scrappy seventeen-year-old named Heather is determined to end things with Burke, a local bad boy. Inspired by the sophisticated mother of her babysitting charges, Heather vows to leave her impoverished hometown behind and make a better life for herself in New York City. But can her adolescent love stay firmly in her past―or will he find his way into her future? On a collision course she doesn’t see coming, Skye throws herself into wedding planning, as Burke’s scheme grows ever more twisted. Meanwhile, three decades in the past, Heather’s longed-for transformation finally seems within reach. But of course, even the best laid plans can go astray. And just when you think you know where this story is going, you’ll discover that there’s more than one way to spin the truth. -
From debut author Andrew Duplessie, a terrifying collection of teen short horror stories—and accompanying videos—that will keep you up long into the night! Perfect for fans of Five Nights at Freddy’s. A garbage disposal that feeds on flesh . . . A beloved stuffed rabbit that cooks up your parents . . . Roses that require human blood to bloom . . . From blood-chilling horror to supernatural scares, this collection of short stories from debut author Andrew Duplessie offers something to stoke anyone’s fear factor. But that’s only the beginning. In a first-ever twist, each story also comes with a pulse-pounding video that deepens the horror. Point your phone at the QR code and be prepared to scream! Maybe even share it with your friends, if you dare. Ready or not, Too Scared to Sleep will answer the question: How brave are you, really? -
The second book in the acclaimed Torch Trilogy, set in a future dystopia with star-crossed lovers, impossible friendships, and forbidden power. Welcome to a world where songlight is either your greatest power—or your greatest curse. Lark has fled Northaven with her mother and is urgently seeking a safe haven. Nightingale is being held captive and forced to use her songlight against her own people. Piper has been promoted up the ranks, where nothing but bloodshed is demanded of him. Rye has stumbled across an incredible airship, the likes of which has never been seen before. . . . All four are united by their desire for peace. But peace between feels more fragile than ever. In this sequel to the brilliant and acclaimed Songlight, Lark and Nightingale see the glimmers of hope for a world in which they can live freely—but at what cost? Torchfire is perfect for fans of Sabaa Tahir, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Adrienne Young. -
On an ordinary day in June of 1964 in a small town in the Altiplano of Peru, Sister Mary Katherine (formerly known as Kate), a young American nun recently arrived in this very foreign place, walks away from her convent with no money and no destination. Desperate and afraid of her feelings for an Irish priest with whom she has been working, she spends eight days on the run, encountering a variety of characters along the way: a cynical Englishman who helps her out; a suspicious Peruvian police officer who takes her in for questioning; and two American Peace Corps workers who befriend her. As Kate traverses this dangerous physical journey through Peru, she also embarks upon an interior journey of self-discovery―one that leads her somewhere she never could have expected.
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Yaa Gyasís stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama. Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief—a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasís phenomenal debut. -
From the author of ROAD OUT OF WINTER, winner of The Philip K. Dick Award!
A resonant, visionary novel about the power of art and the sacrifices we are willing to make for the ones we love A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: garbage is currency. In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a “plucker,” pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club’s violent owner rules as unofficial mayor. Amid the polluted landscape, Coral works desperately to save up enough to rescue her child from the recycling factories, where he is forced to work. In her stolen free hours, she does something that seems impossible in this place: Coral makes art. When a reporter from a struggling city on the coast arrives in Trashlands, Coral is presented with an opportunity to change her life. But is it possible to choose a future for herself? Told in shifting perspectives, Trashlands is a beautifully drawn and wildly imaginative tale of a parent’s journey, a story of community and humanity in a changed world. -
When seventeen-year-old Jade Reynolds witnesses a violent clash between a protesting tree sitter and a local logger, she runs as far as she can from the battles that plague her home and from the mysteries of the redwood forest. But the ancient redwoods are embedded in her psyche—she feels their call even in the dark and forgotten back alleys of Portland, Oregon where she’s hiding out. She soon becomes entangled with a lovable misfit and a band of radical slackers, environmentalists, and anarchists, and finds herself living 100 feet high in the canopy of a redwood grove, trying to decide whose side she’s on: the logging community she’s known her entire life or the environmentalists who are risking their lives for the future of the forest. To find a way beyond the division between Us and Them, Jade turns to the ancient trees themselves—and the thread-thin web that connects us all. Tree Dreams is an eco-literary, coming of age novel relevant for teenagers and adults alike, for this rite of passage asks the same of us all—whatever our age or life stage, we each must discover our one true voice, and learn how to offer it to the world. -
A jaded bartender is wooed by a charmingly quirky couple in this fresh and sizzling polyamorous rom-com, set in the glamorous world of high-end cocktail bars—from the acclaimed author of the “tender, decadent, and sparklingly funny” (Lana Harper, New York Times bestselling author) Chef’s Choice. As a bartender at Terror & Virtue, a swanky New York City cocktail lounge known for its romantic atmosphere and Insta-worthy drinks, Mel has witnessed plenty of disastrous dates. That, coupled with her own romantic life being in shambles, has Mel convinced love doesn’t exist. Everything changes when Bebe walks into the bar. She’s beautiful, funny, knows her whiskeys—and is happily married to her partner, Kade. Mel’s resigned to forget the whole thing, but Bebe makes her a unique offer: since she and Kade have an open marriage, she’s interested in taking Mel on a date. What starts as a fun romp turns into a burgeoning relationship, and soon Mel is trying all sorts of things she’d been avoiding, from grand romantic gestures to steamy exploits. Mel even gets the self-confidence to enter a cocktail competition that would make her dream of opening her own bar a reality. In the chaotic whirl of all these new experiences, Mel realizes there might be a spark between her and Kade, too. As Bebe, Kade, and Mel explore their connections, Mel begins to think that real love might be more expansive than she ever thought possible. With TJ Alexander’s signature “witty and insightful voice, complex characters, and full-throated celebration of the joy of queer community” (Ava Wilder, author of How to Fake It in Hollywood), Triple Sec is a passionate, thirst-quenching love story that will have you asking for another round…or three. -
From Northern Ireland to Southern California and back―a mother and daughter confront the violence of the past in an enthralling novel about the possibility of love and redemption during the most transforming and unsettled times. It’s the final years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and Bríd and her sister, Ina, try to maintain a stable life in a divided country. Pushed by her mother’s fanaticism and a family tragedy, Bríd joins the IRA and makes a devastating choice. Frightened and guilt ridden, she flees, leaving behind Ireland and her family for America. Years later, her guilt and tragic history still buried, Bríd is an overprotective mother raising her sensitive daughter, Bernie, in Southern California. Growing up amid a different kind of social unrest, Bernie’s need for independence and her exploration of her sexuality drive a wedge into their already-fragile relationship. When mother and daughter are forced to return to Northern Ireland, they both must confront the past, the present, and the women they’ve become. As they navigate their troubled legacies, mother and daughter untangle the threads of love, violence, and secrets that formed them―and that will stubbornly, beautifully, bind them forever. -
Abigail Milton was born into the British middle class, but her family has landed in unthinkable debt. To ease their burdens, Abby’s parents send her to America to live off the charity of their old friend, Douglas Elling. When she arrives in Charleston at the age of seventeen, Abigail discovers that the man her parents raved about is a disagreeable widower who wants little to do with her. To her relief, he relegates her care to a governess, leaving her to settle into his enormous estate with little interference. But just as she begins to grow comfortable in her new life, she overhears her benefactor planning the escape of a local slave―and suddenly, everything she thought she knew about Douglas Elling is turned on its head. Abby’s attempts to learn more about Douglas and his involvement in abolition initiate a circuitous dance of secrets and trust. As Abby and Douglas each attempt to manage their complicated interior lives, readers can’t help but hope that their meandering will lead them straight to each other. Set against the vivid backdrop of Charleston twenty years before the Civil War, Trouble the Water is a captivating tale replete with authentic details about Charleston’s aristocratic planter class, American slavery, and the Underground Railroad. -
Written for caregivers of parents and spouses, this funny but brutally honest collection of essays from award-winning author Eastman challenges the romanticized notion of caregiving, portraying it as an elegant conflict that reshapes family dynamics. At first grateful to be able remodel the dining room of her family’s modest home in Connecticut to accommodate her eighty-six-year-old father for what everyone felt would be a short duration of care, Cindy Eastman ultimately experienced a whole gamut of feelings over the course of what turned out to be four years of caring for her dying dad. Caregiving impacts everyone, and this account—told in essays recorded before, during, and after the time Eastman’s father was with her—details that impact, not just on the primary caregiver but also the rest of the family. One of the reasons Eastman committed to writing down her experiences was because she predicted that once her dad died, there would be a tendency to soften or even deny any of the negative and challenging times—and there were many. As of 2020, more than 53 million adults provide homecare in this country, and the reality of that arrangement is different for every family. It is not, as some might suggest, a “noble gesture” but rather an elegant conflict—an intricate reassembling of the family dynamic that many people don’t ever see coming. In these candid, often poignant essays, Cindy Eastman brings all the emotions of taking on the challenging responsibility of caregiving a parent at the end of their life to the surface. -
Inventing a formula to predict people’s perfect partners doesn’t equate to love in this contemporary YA novel that New York Times bestsellers Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick call “honest, raw, and breathtakingly real.” College freshman Grace Tang never meant to rewrite the rules of love. She came to college to move on from a grief-stricken senior year and to start anew. So she follows a predictable routine: Attend class, study, go home and visit her dad every weekend. She doesn’t leave any room in her life for outliers or anomalies. Then, Grace comes up with an algorithm for her statistics class to pair students with their perfect romantic partners. Though some people are skeptical, like Julia, Grace’s prickly coworker, Grace is confident that her program will take all the drama out of relationships. That’s why she keeps trying to make things work with her match, a guy named Jamie. But as the semester goes on and she grows closer to Julia, Grace starts to question who she’s really attracted to. In award-winning author Christina Li’s YA debut, Grace will have to make a choice between the tidy equations she knows will protect her from heartbreak or the possibility that true love doesn’t follow any formula. -
The new novel from Liane Moriarty, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Husband’s Secret, Big Little Lies, and What Alice Forgot, about how sometimes we don’t appreciate how extraordinary our ordinary lives are until it’s too late. Six responsible adults. Three cute kids. One small dog. It’s just a normal weekend. What could possibly go wrong? In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty turns her unique, razor-sharp eye towards three seemingly happy families. Sam and Clementine have a wonderful, albeit, busy life: they have two little girls, Sam has just started a new dream job and Clementine, a cellist, is busy preparing for the audition of a lifetime. If there’s anything they can count on, it’s each other. Clementine and Erika are each other’s oldest friends. A single look between them can convey an entire conversation. But theirs is a complicated relationship, so when Erika mentions a last minute invitation to a barbecue with her neighbors, Tiffany and Vid, Clementine and Sam don’t hesitate. Having Tiffany and Vid’s larger than life personalities there will be a welcome respite. Two months later, it won’t stop raining, and Clementine and Sam can’t stop asking themselves the question: What if we hadn’t gone? In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty takes on the foundations our lives: marriage, sex, parenthood, and friendship. She shows how guilt can expose the fault lines in the most seemingly strong relationships, how what we don’t say can be more powerful than what we do, and how sometimes it is the most innocent of moments that can do the greatest harm. -
Starting over means looking back for a mother and daughter on the road to reinventing themselves in a moving novel about family secrets and second chances by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Jamie Beck. Seventeen years ago, two pink stripes on a pregnancy test changed Anne Sullivan’s life. She abandoned her artistic ambitions, married her college sweetheart before graduation, and—like the mother she lost in childhood—devoted herself to her family. To say she didn’t see the divorce coming is an understatement. Now, eager to distance herself from her ex and his lover, she moves with her troubled daughter, Katy, to the quaint bayside town of Potomac Point, where she spent her childhood summers. But her fresh start stalls when the contractor renovating her grandparents’ old house discovers a vintage recipe box containing hints about her beloved grandmother’s hidden past. Despite the need to move forward, Anne is drawn into exploring the mysterious clues about the woman she’s always trusted. Gram’s dementia is making that harder, and the stakes intensify when Katy’s anxieties take an alarming turn. Amid the turmoil, uncovered secrets shatter past beliefs, forcing each woman to confront her deepest fears in order to save herself. -
Bianca Maria Curtis is at the brink of losing it all when she meets Eric at a bar in Manhattan. Eric, as it turns out, is the famous Korean drama celebrity Park Hyun Min, and he’s in town for one night to escape the pressures of fame. From walking along Fifth Avenue to eating ice cream at Serendipity to sharing tender moments on top of the Empire State building, sparks fly as Bianca and Eric spend twelve magical hours far away from their respective lives. In that time, they talk about the big stuff: love, life, and happiness, and the freedom they both seek to fully exist and not merely survive. But real life is more than just a few exhilarating stolen moments in time. As the clock strikes the twelfth hour, Bianca returns back to the life she detests to face a tragedy that will test her strength and resolve—and the only thing she has to keep going is the memory of a man she loves in secret from a world away. -
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners and the “delectable, moving” (Entertainment Weekly) My Favorite Half-Night Stand comes a modern love story about what happens when your first love reenters your life when you least expect it… Sam Brandis was Tate Jones’s first: Her first love. Her first everything. Including her first heartbreak. During a whirlwind two-week vacation abroad, Sam and Tate fell for each other in only the way that first loves do: sharing all of their hopes, dreams, and deepest secrets along the way. Sam was the first, and only, person that Tate—the long-lost daughter of one of the world’s biggest film stars—ever revealed her identity to. So when it became clear her trust was misplaced, her world shattered for good. Fourteen years later, Tate, now an up-and-coming actress, only thinks about her first love every once in a blue moon. When she steps onto the set of her first big break, he’s the last person she expects to see. Yet here Sam is, the same charming, confident man she knew, but even more alluring than she remembered. Forced to confront the man who betrayed her, Tate must ask herself if it’s possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason… and whether “once in a lifetime” can come around twice. With Christina Lauren’s signature “beautifully written and remarkably compelling” (Sarah J. Maas, New York Times bestselling author) prose and perfect for fans of Emily Giffin and Jennifer Weiner, Twice in a Blue Moon is an unforgettable and moving novel of young love and second chances. -
When Juniper Kowalski, a mediocre artist and graduate of one of the best art schools in the country, gets pregnant by her married lover, she ends up back in Gobles, Michigan, living in her dead grandma’s trailer. She fears that her new life as a hotel maid, and as the best friend of a subrural call girl, has fulfilled some bleak fate. But Juniper’s pregnancy also ignites a will to create. Every hurt that she’s ever suffered begins to emerge as confrontational, public art. Family lore has taught Juniper disdain for men. But it’s not hatred for her absent father, abusive grandpa, or even her baby daddy, causing her issues. It’s facing actual love from a big, flawed, breathtaking man. “Twine” celebrates a quietly radical view of small-town life, ambition, and motherhood. It is the story of a young woman who needs no hero, and what she does when he shows up anyway. -
For fans of Colleen Hoover, this inspirational follow-up to Shooting Stars Above continues the love story between internationally best-selling novelist Tess and counterterrorism agent Jack as they both fight to overcome their deepest fears. Tess Lee is a wildly successful and world-famous novelist whose inspirational books explore our innermost struggles and the human need to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Jack Miller is a federal agent who has spent decades working in counterterrorism—a violent world that has left an inevitable residue on his psyche. Two years into their marriage, as Tess and Jack both heal from past trauma, their epic love, fostered by their ability to truly see one another, has brought them profound happiness. When an anonymous threat is made against Tess’s life, however, everything changes. Will they learn to lean on each other, or will they fall apart into the darkness? In Twinkle of Doubt, the second Celestial Bodies Romance, Tess, Jack, and their chosen family explore the nature of doubt and the struggle to feel worthy of love. -
#1 New York Times bestselling author Kendare Blake returns with the highly anticipated third book in the Three Dark Crowns series! And while Arsinoe, Mirabella, and Katharine all have their own scores to settle, they aren’t the only queens stirring things up on Fennbirn Island. Queen Katharine has waited her entire life to wear the crown. But now that she finally has it, the murmurs of dissent grow louder by the day. There’s also the alarming issue of whether or not her sisters are actually dead—or if they’re waiting in the wings to usurp the throne. Mirabella and Arsinoe are alive, but in hiding on the minland and dealing with a nightmare of their own: being visited repeatedly by a specter they think might be the fabled Blue Queen. Though she says nothing, her rotting, bony finger pointing out to sea is clear enough: return to Fennbirn. Jules, too, is in a strange place—in disguise. And her only confidants, a war-gifted girl named Emilia and her oracle friend Mathilde, are urging her to take on a role she can’t imagine filling: a legion-cursed queen who will lead a rebel army to Katharine’s doorstep. This is an uprising that the mysterious Blue Queen may have more to do with than anyone could have guessed—or expected. -
“You can quit waiting for the other shoe to drop: I’m in it for life.” Those are the fateful, repeated words that help convince Kathryn Taylor to remarry, retire from her thirty-year profession, sell her home, and relocate in support of her new husband’s career. But five years later, in a car packed with food she has carefully prepared to nourish her husband’s dying brother, the other shoe does drop. With this, the life Taylor has come to know is over. Relying on the strength of a lifelong friend who refuses to let her succumb to the intense waves of grief, she slowly begins to find her way out of the shadows of grief. Over the course of two years, through appointments with attorneys and therapists, purging shared belongings, and pushing herself to meet new people and do new things, Taylor not only regains a sense of control in her life, she also learns to enjoy the new life she has built, the friendships she’s formed—and to savor her newfound strength. -
Known for her wonderfully addictive characters, multiple award-winning author Gigi Pandian introduces her newest heroine in this heartfelt series debut. Under Lock & Skeleton Key layers stunning architecture with mouthwatering food in an ode to classic locked-room mysteries that will leave readers enchanted.
An impossible crime. A family legacy. The intrigue of hidden rooms and secret staircases. After a disastrous accident derails Tempest Raj’s career, and life, she heads back to her childhood home in California to comfort herself with her grandfather’s Indian home-cooked meals. Though she resists, every day brings her closer to the inevitable: working for her father’s company. Secret Staircase Construction specializes in bringing the magic of childhood to all by transforming clients’ homes with sliding bookcases, intricate locks, backyard treehouses, and hidden reading nooks. When Tempest visits her dad’s latest renovation project, her former stage double is discovered dead inside a wall that’s supposedly been sealed for more than a century. Fearing she was the intended victim, it’s up to Tempest to solve this seemingly impossible crime. But as she delves further into the mystery, Tempest can’t help but wonder if the Raj family curse that’s plagued her family for generations―something she used to swear didn’t exist―has finally come for her. -
A birch tree grows tall and arabesque in the front yard of Nancy Chadwick’s childhood home. Over time the tree becomes her buddy and first learned connection, synonymous with home―and one spring morning, she makes a discovery under its boughs that foreshadows the many disconnections within her family, relationships, jobs, and home that are to come. Through the chapters in her life, Chadwick’s search for home carries her through with unflinching honesty, but in the end, it is a story of survival and triumph over adversity. She does not wallow in self-pity but remains tenacious as she examines her life. An exploration of what it means to belong, Under the Birch Tree is a success story of finding home. -
During a weekend retreat, a powerful family plays a dangerous game of dark secrets and cold-blooded ambition in a novel by Kaira Rouda, USA Todaybestselling author of Beneath the Surface. Under the direction of the Kingsleys’ new president, Paige, the family has gathered for a weekend retreat at a luxurious Laguna Beach resort. Still clinging to the hope of succession are the sons of Richard Kingsley, the family patriarch and CEO: John, the oldest, who’s clawed his way back from a dark tragedy, and Paige’s estranged husband, Ted, the golden boy. When Richard’s ex and his wayward daughter join the fray, Paige finds herself with two fast allies. They know a secret that could shatter the family legacy. Call it leverage, call it revenge, the Kingsley women believe they have the upper hand. But as the power games begin, greater threats than the howling Santa Ana winds are coming. Because this weekend, amid so much greed and betrayal, no Kingsley is safe. It’s family. Watch your back. -
Two childhood friends discover that love—and family—can be found in unconventional ways in this timely, moving novel from the USA TODAY bestselling author of the “beautifully Southern, evocative Peachtree Bluff series” (Kristin Harmel, internationally bestselling author of The Winemaker’s Wife). Recently separated Amelia Buxton, a dedicated journalist, never expected that uncovering the biggest story of her career would become deeply personal. But when she discovers that a cluster of embryos belonging to her childhood friend Parker and his late wife Greer have been deemed “abandoned,” she’s put in the unenviable position of telling Parker—and dredging up old wounds in the process. Parker has been unable to move forward since the loss of his beloved wife three years ago. He has all but forgotten about the frozen embryos, but once Amelia reveals her discovery, he knows that if he ever wants to get a part of Greer back, he’ll need to accept his fate as a single father and find a surrogate. Each dealing with their own private griefs, Parker and Amelia slowly begin to find solace in one another as they navigate an uncertain future against the backdrop of the pristine waters of their childhood home, Buxton Beach. The journey of self-discovery leads them to an unforgettable and life-changing lesson: Family—the one you’re born into and the one you choose—is always closer than you think. From “the next major voice in Southern fiction” (Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Under the Southern Sky is a fresh and unforgettable exploration of love, friendship, and the unbreakable ties that bind. -
Tuni’s father began sexually abusing her when she was just four years old. Her mother, though aware of the abuse, was a silent witness—one either incapable or unwilling to intervene—and the abuse continued until Tuni was eleven. Three years later, when Tuni was fourteen, she was raped by an adult actor who was part of her cast in a professional theater production. These traumas would go on to shape much of her life. Underwater Daughter follows how Tuni grappled with her relationship with her parents, the aftermath of her rape, an eating disorder, drug and alcohol excesses, and shame as she came of age and began to build a life. In order to not lose her inner innocence, in order to protect herself, in order to believe in love, she began early on to create imaginary worlds into which she could escape—to use dreams to transport her away from her fears. By early adulthood, she was well practiced at slapping lipstick (pink, frosty, kiss-me, gloss-over, perfect lipstick) over whatever darkness might be bubbling beneath. Hired by a dance company right out of high school, she found success as a dancer in Chicago and New York, but in her personal and emotional life, she continued to struggle. Ultimately, it took her decades of dancing, hiding, faking, fucking, costuming, implanting, dissociating, marrying, divorcing, and purging—all while staying silent about her past trauma—before a bike accident at age fifty-five forced her to stop and truly take stock of her life. As she did, she came to a resting place, finally, in regard to her father; developed the loving relationship she’d always wanted with her mother; and came to understand that, in the end, love is all anyone wants—or needs. -
Inez Champlain’s life is moving along nicely as a woman in her thirties living in Manhattan as a freelance beauty writer. She spends quality time navigating through the city with her best friend Sam. Her go-to support system outside of Sam includes Ruby, the owner of her neighborhood coffee shop Inez uses as her office and a homeless man whom she has had a chance encounter. She meets Jason Parkson and falls in love…until she meets his brother Jimmy. At the same time Inez becomes invested in the Parkson family while being asked to write a feature story on their business, Parkson Construction. A family matter forces Inez to move to Florida quickly learning that the past isn’t too far behind. This is a story of navigating through challenges and following your heart – ultimately things have a way of working out, maybe not as expected, but better. -
Melanie Smith knows from experience how grief and trauma can feel complex and immovable. She used that experience to fuel her research into the issues of trauma, loss, and finding happiness, which led to the creation of Unfinished Business—an eight-step, actionable, step-by-step process that will help you uncover the story of your life from the perspective of heartbreaks, emotional wounds, limiting beliefs, old patterns, and unconscious habits.
As you work through this process, you will examine who your models and influencers were and are, as well as the relationships in your life that remain unresolved and incomplete; and you will learn to heal past traumas, forgive, and overcome long-held beliefs, patterns of behavior, negative self-talk, self-judgment, overwhelm, and misalignment that have held you back from succeeding in love, relationships, business, finance, and health. Through this work, you will come to know yourself at the deepest level, experience clarity of vision, and find complete self-awareness. Grounded in a scientifically supported and solution-based methodology, Melanie’s Unfinished Business system has already transformed people’s lives globally through her one-on-one and group coaching sessions; now everyone can access it—and change their lives once and for all.
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Dr. Pepper Hunt and Detective Beau Antelope team up again to investigate a tragic murder/suicide in a prominent ranch family in the small town of Farson, Wyoming. As they explore events leading up to the night of the disturbing crime they are drawn into the dark heart of a troubled family touched by a legacy of trauma.
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Perfect for fans of Brigid Kemmerer and Lexi Ryan, this debut romantasy stand-alone novel blends an immersive world, unique magic system, and swoon-worthy romance to create an unputdownable read that explores the great and terrible lengths to which love compels us to go. Elia Tallis’s key conjuring abilities, when used with her father’s magic, allow her to open a path to any location. But Papa is dying, and Elia has been forced to painfully tether him to life so she can siphon his magic to provide for her siblings. The god of death, angry to be denied his due, punishes her by claiming her youngest brother as a servant. Desperate to save her brother, Elia accepts a potentially deadly commission from Trys, a kindhearted prince with his nose stuck in a book. Trys wants Elia to help him find a legendary scroll. In exchange, he’ll give her his hand in marriage, securing her and her siblings’ futures and allowing her to release Papa to the afterlife. Despite the danger of their quest, Elia and Trys find themselves increasingly drawn to each other. But when Trys finally reads the scroll, it transforms him into a monster beyond comprehension. Elia will have to wield her power in ways she never thought possible, braving a world of endless darkness and the nightmares dwelling within it to bring home the prince she’s growing to love. -
SOON TO BE A MOVIE FROM HBO MAX Perfect for fans of Juno and Jennifer E. Smith, Unpregnant is a heartfelt and hysterically funny YA debut about fierce friendship, reproductive rights, and the wild road to adulthood. “Hilarious. A remarkable debut.” —Stephen Chbosky, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower “A buddy road trip novel so funny, touching, and surprising, readers will forget it’s also important. Honest and relatable!” —Alex Flinn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beastly Seventeen-year-old Veronica Clarke never thought she’d want to fail a test—that is, until she finds herself staring at a piece of plastic with two solid pink lines. With a college-bound future now disappearing before her eyes, Veronica considers a decision she never imagined she’d have to make: an abortion. There’s just one catch—the closest place to get one is over nine hundred miles away. With conservative parents, a less-than-optimal boyfriend, and no car, Veronica turns to the only person who won’t judge her: Bailey Butler, a legendary misfit at Jefferson High—and Veronica’s ex-best friend. What could go wrong? Not much, apart from three days of stolen cars, crazed ex-boyfriends, aliens, ferret napping, and the betrayal of a broken friendship that can’t be outrun. Under the starlit skies of the Southwest, Veronica and Bailey discover that sometimes the most important choice is who your friends are. This breakout novel is from authors Jenni Hendriks (writer for How I Met Your Mother) and Ted Caplan (music editor for The Hate U Give). “A stellar, timely debut.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Timely, hilarious, and heartfelt.” —Kirkus (starred review) -
Unsexed examines the role that sex plays in the life of one woman with two mothers who introduce her to polarized frameworks of female sexuality. Born in Greece to a violent prostitute and then adopted by a cold and unloving virgin from New York, Marina inherits a sexual identity steeped in fear and shame—one that, as she grows older and becomes a wife and mother, trickles into her marriage and the parenting of her children. Without the tools needed to understand her complex mothers or to unpack the lessons they taught her, Marina relies on self-erasure to survive relationships that silence and define her—until she finally becomes fed up with those old patterns and begins to stand in her own power. A memoir that unearths the layered emotional and sexual lives of women and exemplifies the satisfaction that comes when they assert their voices and power, Unsexed speaks to millions of women who have different narratives but face similar struggles in reclaiming their voices, bodies, and sexuality. -
From reader-beloved and New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates comes the sizzling second book in her new Gold Valley Western romance series. Shy tomboy Kaylee Capshaw never thought she’d have a chance of winning the heart of her longtime friend Bennett Dodge, even if he is the cowboy of her dreams. But when she learns he’s suddenly single, can she finally prove to him that the woman he’s been waiting for has been right here all along? -
When Laura Whitfield was fourteen, her extraordinary brother, Lawrence, was killed in a mountain climbing accident. That night she had an epiphany: Life is short. Dream big, even if it means taking risks. So, after graduating from high school, she set out on her own, prepared to do just that.
Laura spent her first summer after high school on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a magical few months filled with friendships, boys, and beer. There she met a handsome DJ who everyone called “Steve the Dream,” and risked her heart. When September came, Steve moved to New York City to become a model —prompting Laura to start thinking about modeling, too. After just one semester of college, still seeking to fill the void left by her brother’s death, she dropped out and moved to New York to become a cover girl. But while juggling the demands of life in the big city—waiting tables, failed relationships, and the cutthroat world of modeling—she lost her way. A stirring memoir about a young woman’s quest to find hope and stability after devastating loss, Untethered is Laura’s story of overcoming shame, embracing faith, and learning that taking risks—and failing—can lead to a bigger life than you’ve ever dared to imagine. -
COULD YOU BE THE ONE WHO CHANGES EVERYTHING? In her senior year at NYU, Riley Hope appears to be on top of the world. With a loving mother who makes Lorelai Gilmore look like a parenting slacker, ride-or-die friends, and a long-time boyfriend destined for the National Hockey League, she puts on a smile for the world. But behind it, Riley’s drowning. Racked with fears for the future, she battles to stay afloat amid life in the shadows of a heartbreaking illness. And then, Ben Fagan comes crashing into her life. Twenty-three-years-old, British, and alone in the Big Apple after a disastrous pilot season in LA, the struggling actor is looking for an escape: booze, mischief, sex—minimum commitment, maximum fun—anything to avoid returning across the pond. As they form an unlikely bond, Riley keeps her reality from Ben so that he remains a happy refuge. But how long can she hold back the truth…and is Ben keeping his own secrets, too? From the award-winning author of London Belongs to Me and London, Can You Wait?, comes a bittersweet story about love, loss, sacrifice, and the life-changing decisions we make. -
Mandy Stadtmiller comes to Manhattan in 2005, newly divorced, thirty years old, with a job at the New York Post, ready to conquer the city, the industry, and love in one fell swoop. Like a “real-life Carrie Bradshaw” (so called by Jenny McCarthy), she proceeds to chronicle her fearless attempts for nearly a decade in the Post, xoJane, and New York magazine. But underneath the glitz and glamour of her new life, there is a darker side threatening to surface. Mandy goes through numerous unsuccessful, high-profile hookups in the New York comedy and writing scene. There are soon too many nights she can't remember, and the blind spots start to add up. She begins to realize that falling in love won't fix her—she needs to fix herself first. -
In the 1970s South, Valeria Vose’s life is not as she expected. Raised to be a wife and mother in a closed society with traditions that have blinded her from her own potential and her desire to be an artist, she is unprepared for a life-altering crisis. Then, just when she’s on the brink of forty, her eighteen-year marriage is shattered by her husband’s infidelity and his lover’s attempted suicide. Searching for direction, Valeria turns to an Episcopal priest-and spins into a clandestine love affair that results in abuse and betrayal. Ultimately, however-despite her disillusionment and pain-she picks herself up and embarks on a course that leads to personal, creative independence. Relentlessly honest in its internal observations, rich in detail of time and place, Valeria Vose shows that it is triumph of the spirit that wins in the end. -
From the critically acclaimed author of Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune comes a new delightful novel about exploring all the magical possibilities of life in the most extraordinary city of all: Paris. Vanessa Yu never wanted to see people's fortunes—or misfortunes—in tealeaves. Ever since she can remember, Vanessa has been able to see people's fortunes at the bottom of their teacups. To avoid blurting out their fortunes, she converts to coffee, but somehow fortunes escape and find a way to complicate her life and the ones of those around her. To add to this plight, her romance life is so nonexistent that her parents enlist the services of a matchmaking expert from Shanghai. After her matchmaking appointment, Vanessa sees death for the first time. She decides that she can't truly live until she can find a way to get rid of her uncanny abilities. When her eccentric Aunt Evelyn shows up with a tempting offer to whisk her away, Vanessa says au revoir to California and bonjour to Paris. There, Vanessa learns more about herself and the root of her gifts and realizes one thing to be true: knowing one's destiny isn't a curse, but being unable to change it is. -
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a riveting noir about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of a missing woman that brings them together.
1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger. Her next-door neighbor, Leonora, a beautiful art student, seems to live a life of intrigue and romance that Maite envies. When Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman—and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents. Meanwhile, someone else is also looking for Leonora at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists. Elvis is an eccentric criminal who longs to escape his own life: He loathes violence and loves old movies and rock ’n’ roll. But as Elvis searches for the missing woman, he comes to observe Maite from a distance—and grows more and more obsessed with this woman who shares his love of music and the unspoken loneliness of his heart. Now as Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, they can no longer escape the danger that threatens to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies all aiming to protect Leonora’s secrets—at gunpoint. -
Struggling to forget a crumbling marriage, forty-year-old Anna Lucia Lottol comes to Venice to visit an old friend—but instead of finding solace, she is dragged into the police station and accused of murdering a money-laundering count with whom she had a brief affair. A US Treasury officer with brains and athleticism, Anna fights to clear her name in a seductive city full of watery illusions. As she works to pry information from a cast of recalcitrant characters sometimes denying what she sees and hears, she succeeds in unleashing a powerful foe bent on destroying her. Will she save herself and vanquish her enemies, including her darkest fears? A mysterious tapestry of murder, betrayal, and family, Venetian Blood is a story of one woman’s brave quest for the truth —before it’s too late. -
In this colorful and humorous tale, a hopeful young painter finds herself embroiled in the world of art heists…and possibly responsible for the counterfeits needed to cover them up. Freshly graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, Veridian Sterling is ready to hang her work in any of the countless New York galleries that are sure to give her a show. The problem is only one will, and they’re not interested in her art so much as her personal assistant skills. No glitz, no glam, and definitely none of the money she needs to help her struggling mother finally realize her dream of starting her own business after having sacrificed everything for Veri to go to art school. So when she overhears her new boss discussing the impressive finder’s fee for a lost van Gogh, Veri takes matters into her own hands. Maybe her own artwork isn’t celebrated, but she knows how to copy what is, and maybe those skills can help lead to a discovery. But when a famous art dealer takes her under his wing (and his charming driver takes her interest), Veri realizes she’s in deeper than she expected, and quite possibly with the wrong people. With her mother’s dreams and her own future at stake, Veri will have to pull out every trick she can think of to wipe her canvas clean and erase the mess she’s created before she goes down for someone else’s crimes. -
The triumphant conclusion to the Villains series from V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. Eli Ever. Victor Vale. Two men, first best friends, then mortal enemies, each destined to be the other’s shadow. One left standing―but the game isn’t over yet Against all the years–and the odds―a group of allies and arch rivals meet on a chess board set by an opponent they couldn’t have predicted… to see who will be victorious. -
Resonant with the emotional urgency of Alice Walker’s classic Meridian and the poignant charm of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, a gripping debut novel of female power and vulnerability, race, and class that explores the unlikely friendship between a precocious black girl and a mysterious white woman in a small Mississippi town in the early 1980s. Set in 1982, in rural, racially divided Ricksville, Mississippi Wade in the Water tells the story of Ella, a black, unloved, precocious eleven-year-old, and Ms. St. James, a mysterious white woman from Princeton who appears in Ella’s community to carry out some research. Soon, Ms. St. James befriends Ella, who is willing to risk everything to keep her new friend in a town that does not want her there. The relationship between Ella and Ms. St. James, at times loving and funny and other times tense and cautious, becomes more fraught and complex as Ella unwittingly pushes at Ms. St. James’s carefully constructed boundaries that guard a complicated past, and dangerous secrets that could have devastating consequences. Told in two voices, Ella’s and Ms. St. James’s, and set around richly developed characters, this riveting, page turning coming of age story will keep readers entranced until the last shocking revelation. -
A startling and timely debut, Julie Carrick Dalton's Waiting for the Night Song is a moving, brilliant novel about friendships forged in childhood magic and ruptured by the high price of secrets that leave you forever changed. Cadie Kessler has spent decades trying to cover up one truth. One moment. But deep down, didn’t she always know her secret would surface? An urgent message from her long-estranged best friend Daniela Garcia brings Cadie, now a forestry researcher, back to her childhood home. There, Cadie and Daniela are forced to face a dark secret that ended both their idyllic childhood bond and the magical summer that takes up more space in Cadie’s memory then all her other years combined. Now grown up, bound by long-held oaths, and faced with truths she does not wish to see, Cadie must decide what she is willing to sacrifice to protect the people and the forest she loves, as drought, foreclosures, and wildfire spark tensions between displaced migrant farm workers and locals. Waiting for the Night Song is a love song to the natural beauty around us, a call to fight for what we believe in, and a reminder that the truth will always rise. -
Named a Most Anticipated book by Newsweek * USA Today * CNN * Parade * Buzzfeed * Medium * GoodReads * PopSugar * Frolic Media * Betches * The Nerd Daily * SheReads and more "Smart and searingly passionate...an illuminating snapshot of nature, betrayal, and sacrifices set in the evocative New Hampshire wilderness."--Kim Michele Richardson, bestselling author of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek A startling and timely debut, Julie Carrick Dalton's Waiting for the Night Song is a moving, brilliant novel about friendships forged in childhood magic and ruptured by the high price of secrets that leave you forever changed. Cadie Kessler has spent decades trying to cover up one truth. One moment. But deep down, didn’t she always know her secret would surface? An urgent message from her long-estranged best friend Daniela Garcia brings Cadie, now a forestry researcher, back to her childhood home. There, Cadie and Daniela are forced to face a dark secret that ended both their idyllic childhood bond and the magical summer that takes up more space in Cadie’s memory then all her other years combined. Now grown up, bound by long-held oaths, and faced with truths she does not wish to see, Cadie must decide what she is willing to sacrifice to protect the people and the forest she loves, as drought, foreclosures, and wildfire spark tensions between displaced migrant farm workers and locals. Waiting for the Night Song is a love song to the natural beauty around us, a call to fight for what we believe in, and a reminder that the truth will always rise.
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Naya’s family is all about heritage: their art, their traditions, their secret ability to see time. They expect her to follow in their footsteps, creating art and keeping their powers concealed. But she wants to be a doctor—and you can’t do that if you’re hiding all the time! When a chance to go to medical science camp comes up, her family disapproves, but Grandmother challenges her to a contest: if she can weave her soul wrap before the camp begins, she can go; if she fails, she has to say good-bye to her science dreams for good. With all of the knowledge of time at her fingertips, Naya is sure she can win. But someone is rigging events to learn her family’s secrets—and it turns out that what she doesn’t know could jeopardize everyone she loves. -
Alan and Joanne marry in midlife and live a happily-ever-after existence until, at sixty-nine, Alan is diagnosed with a rare, fatal, neurodegenerative illness. As he becomes increasingly disabled and dependent on others, and decreasingly able to find joy in life, he decides he wants to end his suffering using Colorado’s Medical Aid in Dying law.
Joanne desperately wants Alan to live, but when he asks for her help completing the Medical Aid in Dying application, she can’t say no. She helps him complete the requirements, hoping deep down that his application will be denied . . . only to be stunned when his medical team approves his request and writes him a prescription for the life-ending drugs. Told with affection and spiced with humor, Walking Him Home is Joanne’s tale of coming to terms with her kind, funny husband’s illness; of learning to navigate the intricate passageways of caregiving and the pitfalls of our medical system; and of choosing to help Alan in his quest to die with dignity, even though she wants nothing more than to grow old with him. Tender and heartfelt, this is one woman’s story about loving extravagantly—and being loved in kind. -
Greece. Politics. Love. Danger. Reeling from a failed marriage and spurred on by a burgeoning sense of feminism, twenty-five-year-old Kate accepts a position as a speech therapist in a center for children with cerebral palsy in Thessaloniki, Greece. It is 1974, and the recent end of Greece’s seven-year dictatorship has ignited a fiery anti-American sentiment within the country. Despite this, as her Greek improves, Kate teaches communication to severely handicapped children, creates profound friendships, and finds a home in the ancient and historied city. From a dramatic Christmas pig slaughter to a mesmerizing fire walking ceremony, her world expands rapidly—even more so when she falls in love with Thanasis, a handsome Communist. Through Thanasis, Kate meets people determined to turn a spotlight on their former dictators’ massacre of university students, as well as their record of widespread censorship and torture of dissidents. The more she learns, the more her loyalty to her country and almost everything she was taught in her conservative home state of Texas is challenged. Kate is transformed by her odyssey, but when her very safety is threatened by the politics of her lover, she must choose: risk everything to stay with Thanasis and the Greece that has captured her heart, or remove herself from harm’s way by returning to her homeland? -
Logan technically doesn’t exist. He is terrified of the Black Lapels and their Swordsman church, who imprisoned his parents for bearing an unlicensed, “unnatural” child. When he’s taken to a home for unwanted boys, he meets Jace-a master liar who isn’t afraid of anything. Their world wants them to become Swordsmen and soldiers. All they want is a life together where neither has to hide. WANTED BOYS is a queer dystopia where found family is the only thing that can save the boys who will change the world. -
#1 New York Times bestselling author Kendare Blake returns to the world of the Aristene in this epic fantasy novel as a young member of the order faces down old loves and old foes. A must-read for fans of Victoria Aveyard and Shelby Mahurin. The cost was steep, but Reed is officially an Aristene. And not just any Aristene, but a Glorious Death, guiding only those heroes whose glory costs them their lives. It is a heavy burden, but to forget the prince she left behind, Reed throws herself into it, harvesting heroes at what some say is a reckless pace. So when Lyonene is summoned to guide a princess to a glorious marriage, Reed sees an opportunity—a hero who isn’t fated to die—and they secretly arrange for Reed to go in her place. But instead of an easy mission she arrives to find chaos: an old enemy is rising to threaten the Aristene, and one of the princess’s suitors is Hestion, whom Reed still loves, and who may yet love her. Reed has already given everything to the order. As oaths are broken and lives are lost, what more must she give to save her sisters, and herself? -
Lose yourself in this exhilarating return to the #1 global bestselling Shatter Meuniverse, the first book in a new series set ten years after the fall of The Reestablishment. This breathtaking custom deluxe edition features:- Shimmery jacket with holographic foil
- Gorgeous designed endpapers
- Foil case design with a quote from the novel
- Stunning holographic edges
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Sadie Morelli and Cason Tano were friends in middle school, back before Cason’s mom died and Sadie transferred to a new school. When they meet again as high school juniors at the local ice rink where Sadie waitresses and Cason’s hockey team plays, what was once friendship blooms into something more. Given the intensity of the rivalry between their schools, their budding romance is a secret for them alone. But then someone turns up dead at the local train station. Sadie and Cason were both at the station the night of the murder, and both have a reason to want to hurt the victim. With accusations flying and secrets being held close to the chest, Sadie and Cason must decide the lengths they’re willing to go to to clear their own names—and to protect each other. -
The oldest child in a troubled Philadelphia family, Angel Ferente struggles to care for her three sisters while pursuing her goal of attending college on a swimming scholarship. She has a problematic relationship with her mother, Pic, who uses alcohol and drugs to self-medicate and at one point lost custody for a year, and an outright hostile relationship with her stepfather, the only father figure in her life. Angel is the center of stability in the household―making sure the younger girls get to school, ensuring that holidays are observed, doing the family’s laundry at her part-time job at a Laundromat, and even taking care of Pic when she is sick or depressed. It’s 1993, the midst of the crack epidemic, and Angel and her sisters are witness to the everyday events of life in a community beset by poverty and drugs: dealers on the corner, shoot-outs that kill bystanders, prostitutes on the job, and more. Then Angel goes to a team party on New Year’s Eve―and doesn’t come home afterward. In the wake of her disappearance, her teammates, her coach’s church, and her family search the city for her. The result changes their lives forever. -
From the author of Queen Sugar—now a critically acclaimed series on OWN directed by Ava Duvernay—comes a beautiful exploration and celebration of black farming in America. In this impressive anthology, Natalie Baszile brings together essays, poems, photographs, quotes, conversations, and first-person stories to examine black people’s connection to the American land from Emancipation to today. In the 1920s, there were over one million black farmers; today there are just 45,000. Baszile explores this crisis, through the farmers’ personal experiences. In their own words, middle aged and elderly black farmers explain why they continue to farm despite systemic discrimination and land loss. The "Returning Generation"—young farmers, who are building upon the legacy of their ancestors, talk about the challenges they face as they seek to redress issues of food justice, food sovereignty, and reparations. These farmers are joined by other influential voices, including noted historians Analena Hope Hassberg and Pete Daniel, and award-winning author Clyde W. Ford, who considers the arrival of Africans to American shores; and James Beard Award-winning writers and Michael Twitty, reflects on black culinary tradition and its African roots. Poetry and inspirational quotes are woven into these diverse narratives, adding richness and texture, as well as stunning four-color photographs from photographers Alison Gootee and Malcom Williams, and Baszile’s personal collection. As Baszile reveals, black farming informs crucial aspects of American culture—the family, the way our national identity is bound up with the land, the pull of memory, the healing power of food, and race relations. She reminds us that the land, well-earned and fiercely protected, transcends history and signifies a home that can be tended, tilled, and passed to succeeding generations with pride. We Are Each Other’s Harvest elevates the voices and stories of black farmers and people of color, celebrating their perseverance and resilience, while spotlighting the challenges they continue to face. Luminous and eye-opening, this eclectic collection helps people and communities of color today reimagine what it means to be dedicated to the soil. -
Secrets, lies, and second chances are served up beneath the stars at a picturesque mountain getaway in this powerful novel about love and family by the bestselling author of This Is Not How It Ends. At the Vis Ta Vie inn, Reneé and Jean-Paul De La Rue face the daunting decision to close their beloved home for good. They’re not the only ones going through a season of change, though. Their guests include three couples in crisis: Hollywood celebs Leo and Penny are spending their silver anniversary together while on the cusp of divorce. Lucy, a practical-minded therapist, and Henry, an astronomer with his head in the stars, are struggling to find common ground. And former lawyer and current stay-at-home mom Sienna and charismatic sports agent Adam look perfect but are hiding rifts of their own. Thrown into the mix are self-absorbed single mother Cassidy and her sullen fifteen-year-old daughter, Rosalie. The stage is set for a week of betrayals, regrets, and shocking truths that can rend the heart or heal it. Vis Ta Vie—live your life—captures what it means to love through the darkness, and to find the light even after the magic fades. -
This is a novel about the superstorm that threatens to destroy a marriage, a town and the entire Eastern seaboard. But the destruction begins early, when fear infects people’s lives and spreads like the plague. Ash and Pia move from hipster Brooklyn to rustic Vermont in search of a more authentic life. But just months after settling in, the forecast of a superstorm disrupts their dream. Fear of an impending disaster splits their tight-knit community and exposes the cracks in their marriage. Where Isole was once a place of old farm families, rednecks and transplants, it now divides into paranoid preppers, religious fanatics and government tools, each at odds about what course to take. WE ARE UNPREPARED is an emotional journey, a terrifying glimpse into the human costs of our changing earth and, ultimately, a cautionary tale of survival and the human spirit. -
From the author of She Regrets Nothing, which BuzzFeed called a “sharp, glittering story of wealth, family, and fate,” comes a vivid novel about a young Olympic skier who loses everything and escapes to Buenos Aires, where she reinvents herself, meets a colorful group of ex-pats, and becomes enmeshed with a man keeping dark secrets of his own. Katie Cleary has always known exactly what she wants: to be the best skier in the world. As a teenager, she leaves her home to live and train full time with her two best friends, all-American brothers Luke and Blair, whose wealthy father has hired the best coaches money can buy. Together, they are the USA’s best shot at bringing home Olympic gold. But as the upward trajectory of Katie’s elite skiing career nears its zenith, a terrifying truth about her sister becomes impossible to ignore—one that will lay ruin not only to Katie’s career but to her family and her relationship with Luke and Blair. With her life shattered and nothing left to lose, Katie flees the snowy mountainsides of home for Buenos Aires. There, she reinvents herself as Liz Sullivan, and meets a colorful group of ex-pats and the alluring, charismatic Gianluca Fortunado, a tango teacher with secrets of his own. This beautiful city, with its dark history and wild promise, seems like the perfect refuge, but can she really outrun her demons? In alternating chapters, Katie grows up, falls in love, and races down the highest peaks on the planet—while Liz is reborn, falls into lust, and sinks into the underground tango scene at the bottom of the world. From the moneyed ski chalets of the American West to the dimly lit milongas of Argentina, We Came Here to Forget explores what it means to dream, to desire, to achieve—and what’s left behind after it all disappears. -
Set during the iconic 1939 New York World’s Fair, two intrepid young women – an aspiring journalist and a down-on-her-luck actress- form an unlikely friendship as they navigate a world of endless possibility, stand down adversity, and find what they are truly made of during the glorious summer of spectacle and opportunity… “An ode to female friendship that pulses with momentum and left me breathless.” –Fiona Davis, national bestselling author of The Chelsea Girls. “A remarkable novel about the challenges women face and the courage they must summon in order to lead the lives they deserve.” – Lynda Loigman, author of The Two-Family House Vivi Holden is closer than she’s ever been to living her dream as a star actress in sun-dappled L.A, but an unfair turn of events sets her all the way back to New York. Back to where she worked so hard to escape from. She has one last chance to get back to Hollywood – by performing well as the lead in the heralded Aquacade’s swimming and dancing production at the World’s Fair. The universe seems to be working against her, but her summer in New York will lead to her biggest opportunity to find her own way, on her own terms… Maxine Roth wants nothing more than to be a star journalist at the iconic New York Times, but the universe has other plans. Instead, she’s landed a post at the pop-up publication dedicated to covering the World’s Fair―and even then, her big ideas are continually overlooked by her male counterparts. Max didn’t work this hard to be the only, unheard woman in the room. When Max and Vivi’s worlds collide, they forge an enduring friendship. One that shows them to be the daring, bold women they are, and one that shows them to never stop holding on to what matters most, in the summer that leads to tomorrow. -
Kyrie McCauley, author of the William C. Morris YA Debut Award winner If These Wings Could Fly, delivers a powerful contemporary YA novel about the lasting bonds of friendship and three girls fighting for each other in the aftermath of a school shooting. Perfect for fans of Laura Ruby and Mindy McGinnis. Beck and Vivian never could stand each other, but they always tried their best for their mutual friend, Cassie. After the town moves on from Cassie’s murder too fast, Beck and Vivian finally find common ground: vengeance. They memorialize Cassie by secretly painting murals of her around town, a message to the world that Cassie won’t be forgotten. But Beck and Vivian are keeping secrets, like the third passenger riding in Beck’s VW bus with them—Cassie’s ghost. When their murals catch the attention of a podcaster covering Cassie’s case, they become the catalyst for a debate that Bell Firearms can no longer ignore. With law enforcement closing in on them, Beck and Vivian hurry to give Cassie the closure she needs—by delivering justice to those responsible for her death. -
For fans of Becky Albertalli and Kelly Quindlen, We Got the Beat is the perfect queer friends-to-enemies-to-lovers tale. With romance, fat representation, and a meaningful exploration on how past hurts can affect our future, Jenna Miller’s novel is sure to deliver all the feels. Jordan Elliott is a fat, nerdy lesbian, and the first junior to be named editor in chief of the school newspaper. Okay, that last part hasn’t happened yet, but it will. It’s positive thinking that has gotten Jordan this far. Ever since Mackenzie West, her friend-turned-enemy, humiliated her at the start of freshman year, Jordan has thrown herself into journalism and kept her eyes trained on the future. So it’s a total blow when Jordan discovers that she not only didn’t get the editor in chief spot, but she’s been assigned the volleyball beat instead. And who is the star and newly crowned captain of the volleyball team? Mackenzie West. But words are Jordan’s weapon, and she has some ideas about how to exact a long-awaited revenge on her nemesis. Then things get murky when forced time together has Mack and Jordan falling back into their friendship, and into something more. And when Mack confesses the real reason she turned on Jordan freshman year, it has Jordan questioning everything—past, present, and future. If Jordan lets her guard down and Mack in, will she get everything she wants, or will she be humiliated all over again? -
A woman’s trip home reveals frightening truths in a twisty novel of murder and family secrets by the New York Times bestselling author of And Now She’s Goneand These Toxic Things. TV writer Yara Gibson’s hometown of Palmdale, California, isn’t her first choice for a vacation. But she’s back to host her parents’ twentieth-anniversary party and find the perfect family mementos for the celebration. Everything is going to plan until Yara receives a disturbing text: I have information that will change your life. The message is from Felicia Campbell, who claims to be a childhood friend of Yara’s mother. But they’ve been estranged for years―drama best ignored and forgotten. But Yara can’t forget Felicia, who keeps texting, insisting that Yara talk to her “before it’s too late.” But the next day is already too late for Felicia, whose body is found floating in Lake Palmdale. Before she died, Felicia left Yara a key to a remote lakeside cabin. In the basement are files related to a mysterious tragedy, unsolved since 1998. What secrets was Felicia hiding? How much of what Yara knows about her family has been true? The deeper Yara digs for answers, the more she fears that Felicia was right. Uncovering the truth about what happened at the cabin all those years ago will change Yara’s life―or end it. -
Beloved author Kasie West’s sparkling adult rom-com debut about a hopeless romantic falling for the one man she never expected. Can a swipe right turn into swept away? Margot Hart is a hopeless romantic. That’s why she wants to be a literary agent—to help bring romance books to the world. It’s also why she hates dating apps with all her romance loving soul. She wants her own love story to be just as much fun as the books she reads—a mixed up coffee order, a mistaken identity. She’s not going to tell the story that she swiped right on future husband’s shirtless pic for the rest of her life. The problem is that her most consistent relationship over the last several years is with Oliver, a guy she keeps rematching with on the apps. They’ve only been on one date and it was a disaster…well, until the make out session in the car before parting ways. But, she keeps reminding herself, a make out session does not a relationship make. And so there will not be a date two regardless of how witty their app banter is. When Margot gets fired from her job on the same day she meets Oliver again, her life becomes a veritable shit show. Her dream career is dying right before her eyes, and Oliver thinks she’s interested in only one thing: a repeat of the hot make out session they had three years ago so she can get him out of her system. And maybe that is all she wants from him, because she and Oliver are definitely not compatible—he doesn’t hit the snooze button, he runs five miles every morning, he reads nonfiction, and worst of all, she didn’t meet him in cute way! But in her scramble to keep her dream career alive, by opening her own agency, Oliver is there with his golden retriever energy, more steady and helpful than any man she’s ever dated. Just when she thinks she’s overcome her app bias, she realizes that maybe it’s not her who’s holding back, but him. And his reasons are more than she bargained for. Kasie West’s romantic and sexy adult debut is full of witty banter, meet cutes gone awry and, ultimately, true love. -
It’s the 1950s and the Hollywood lifestyle is at its height. Sonya’s mother is the epitome of her time. Violet is glamorous and beautiful. She puts on a show of living a life of luxury but her daughters know that underneath the glitz, Violet is unhappy. When Sonya is twelve, her grandfather, a Chicago magnate, bankrolls Violet’s divorce and buys her an expensive apartment in Scarsdale, New York. Everyone expects the beautiful Violet to remarry, but none of her suitors stick. Sonya is fourteen when Violet―claiming to have a tumor in her stomach that she must get treatment for in Kentucky, and making her daughters promise not to share this information with anyone―leaves Sonya and her sixteen-year-old sister, Joan, alone with a maid for months. The maid has a heart attack midway through Violet’s absence, leaving the girls alone and scared for weeks. They cannot tell their father, he has visitation rights, because they have promised Violet to tell no one. Their mother left no forwarding address. What has become of her? Sonya is haunted by these events, and the secrets surrounding them. When, years later, she finds out the real story behind Violet’s four-month absence, she realizes that some secrets are best kept secret. -
A backpacking trip has deadly consequences in this “sharp, unsettling thriller about power, obsession, and the inescapable grip of the past” (Megan Miranda) from the bestselling author of The Lost Night and The Herd. “A nail-biting, immersive whirl of a read brimming with mysterious twists, turns, and a frenemyship of the most chilling proportions.”—Zakiya Dalila Harris, author of The Other Black Girl
Emily is having the time of her life—she’s in the mountains of Chile with her best friend, Kristen, on their annual reunion trip, and the women are feeling closer than ever. But on the last night of the trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass on the floor. Kristen says the cute backpacker she brought back to their room attacked her, and she had no choice but to kill him in self-defense. Even more shocking: The scene is horrifyingly similar to last year’s trip, when another backpacker wound up dead. Emily can’t believe it’s happened again—can lightning really strike twice? Back home in Wisconsin, Emily struggles to bury her trauma, diving headfirst into a new relationship and throwing herself into work. But when Kristen shows up for a surprise visit, Emily is forced to confront their violent past. The more Kristen tries to keep Emily close, the more Emily questions her motives. As Emily feels the walls closing in on their cover-ups, she must reckon with the truth about her closest friend. Can Emily outrun the secrets she shares with Kristen, or will they destroy her relationship, her freedom—even her life? -
Maid Marian’s life is over. Her cowardly father has betrothed her to the most reviled man in the land: the Sheriff of Nottingham. Devastated, she’s sent on the quickest path to meet her husband, through the fae-infested Sherwood Forest. But everything changes when her carriage is attacked by the most feared fae of all: the Merry Men, followers of the infamous Robin Hood. Kidnapped and waiting on the Sheriff’s rescue, Marian finds herself surrounded by the magical creatures she’s been raised to fear. But the more time she spends in their presence, Marian realises that not everything she’s been taught by her family is true. And Marian can’t help but find herself drawn to her captor – the sinfully handsome Robin, who stands between her and returning to life amongst the humans. As the Sheriff’s men close in on Marian’s location, she will soon be faced with the ultimate choice: the family she’s always known, or the love she can choose for herself… A breathtaking debut romantasy novel for lovers of Robin Hood, The Knight and the Moth and Heavenly Bodies. -
Wendy Darling has found herself once again in the arms of charming Peter Pan, the god-child who desires power above all things. This time, though, Wendy burns not with passion but with a secret: with Hook as her ally, she is there to defeat the evil that lies inside of Peter, the evil that holds all Neverland hostage—the Shadow. To do this, Wendy must quietly undo Peter from inside his heart while at the same time convincing Tink to betray the twisted love that binds them together. This is a task made nearly impossible by the arrival of Booth, her sweetheart from London and a new pawn in Peter’s manipulative game—a boy whose heart she must break in order to save his life. As all of Neverland prepares to fight, Wendy races to untangle Peter’s connection to the Shadow, a secret long buried in the Forsaken Garden. When the time comes, pirates, mermaids, Lost Boys, and the Darling family will all rise—but if Wendy can’t call the Shadow, they will all be destroyed by Peter’s dark soul. War has come to paradise, and Neverland will never be the same. Wendy Darling: Shadow is the thrilling final installment in Colleen Oakes’s Wendy Darling Trilogy. -
Wendy Darling: Seas finds Wendy and Michael aboard the dreaded Sudden Night, a dangerous behemoth sailed by the infamous Captain Hook and his blood-thirsty crew. In this exotic world of mermaids, spies and pirate-feuds, Wendy finds herself struggling to keep her family above the waves. Hunted by the twisted boy who once stole her heart and struggling to survive in the whimsical Neverland sea, returning home to London now seems like a distant dream―and the betrayals have just begun. Will Wendy find shelter with Peter’s greatest enemy, or is she a pawn in a much darker game, one that could forever alter not only her family’s future, but also the soul of Neverland itself? -
In this dramatic coming-of-age novel we meet Fiona, an art student at a New Jersey college who is brilliant, beautiful, and struggling to find herself. Through her eyes we relive the turbulent culture of sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll, the first draft lottery since World War II, the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, the Kent State University shootings, and the harsh realities of war for Americans in their early twenties. Fiona’s best friend, Melissa, is in a dead-end relationship, pregnant, and going nowhere fast. After Melissa’s abortion, Fiona and Melissa spend a week in Florida, where they are introduced to tarot cards and the anti-war movement. Following this experience, Melissa becomes obsessed with the occult; Fiona, though intrigued, approaches the tarot cautiously, with the voice of her conservative Christian mother screaming in her head. After Fiona’s return from Florida, she begins dating Reuben―a journalism major and political activist. Reuben decides to move to Canada to avoid the draft and encourages Fiona to accompany him. But is that really what she wants? Caught between her feelings for Reuben and her own aspirations, Fiona struggles to define herself, her artistic career, and her future. -
A writer’s search for her missing friend becomes a real-life thriller in a twisting novel of suspense by the New York Times bestselling author of These Toxic Things. Bailey Meadows has just moved into the remote Topanga Canyon home of thriller author Jack Beckham. As his writer-in-residence, she’s supposed to help him once again reach the bestseller list. But she’s not there to write a thriller―she’s there to find Sam Morris, a community leader dedicated to finding missing people, who has disappeared in the canyon surrounding Beckham’s property. The missing woman was last seen in the drought-stricken forest known for wildfires and mountain lions. Each new day, Bailey learns just how dangerous these canyons are―for the other women who have also gone missing here…and for her. Could these missing women be linked to strange events that occurred decades ago at the Beckham estate? As fire season in the canyons approaches, Bailey must race to unravel the truth from fiction before she becomes the next woman lost in the forest. -
When a mutilated body is found hanging in a seedy motel in Philadelphia, forensics specialist Liam Dwyer assumes the crime scene will be business as usual. Instead, the victim turns out to be a woman he’d had an affair with before breaking it off to save his marriage. But there’s a bigger problem: Liam has no memory of where he was or what he did on the night of the murder. Panicked, Liam turns to his brother, Sean, a homicide detective. Sean has his back, but incriminating evidence keeps piling up. From fingerprints to DNA, everything points to Liam, who must race against time and his department to uncover the truth—even if that truth is his own guilt. Yet as he digs deeper, dark secrets come to light, and Liam begins to suspect the killer might actually be Sean… When the smoke clears in this harrowing family drama, who will be left standing? -
Theater star Teddy McGuire is ready for all his dreams to come true. He and his best friend, Annie, have been counting down the days to the end-of-the-year drama club trip to New York City. To make it even more magical, if they can win the annual scavenger hunt, they’ll get a chance to meet their popstar idol, Benji Keaton.
But the universe has other plans: when Annie can’t go on the trip, Teddy is forced to room with tech crew loner Sebastian, who has no interest in the scavenger hunt—or Teddy—and seems to have a secret agenda of his own. On a larger-than-life adventure across the city, the boys will discover a lot more than what’s on their checklist, including masquerade mishaps, obstacles of Jurassic proportions, Hollywood starlets, and, most surprisingly of all, sparks beginning to fly between them. In a joyful romp from author Robby Weber about chasing your destiny, Teddy and Sebastian are about to learn the secret to making their own luck. -
It’s murder in paradise as a woman uncovers a host of secrets off the rocky California coast in a gripping novel of suspense by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Howzell Hall. Colette “Coco” Weber has relocated to her Catalina Island home, where, twenty years before, she was the sole survivor of a deadly home invasion. All Coco wants is to see her aunt Gwen, get as far away from her ex as possible, and get back to her craft―writing obituaries. Thankfully, her college best friend, Maddy, owns the local paper and has a job sure to keep Coco busy, considering the number of elderly folks who are dying on the island. But as Coco learns more about these deaths, she quickly realizes that the circumstances surrounding them are remarkably similar…and not natural. Then Coco receives a sinister threat in the mail: her own obituary. As Coco begins to draw connections between a serial killer’s crimes and her own family tragedy, she fears that the secrets on Catalina Island might be too deep to survive. Because whoever is watching her is hell-bent on finally putting her past to rest. -
In 1967, Fay Stonewell, a water tank escape artist in Florida, leaves for Vietnam to join the Amazing Humans—a jerry-rigged carnival there to entertain the troops—abandoning her disabled teenage son, Dickie, to the care of an abusive boyfriend.
Months after Fay’s departure, Dickie’s troubled home life ends in a surprising act of violence that forces him to run away. He soon lands in Manhattan, where he’s taken in by eccentric artist Laurence Jones. Fay, meanwhile, is also facing dangerous threats. From the night her plane jolts onto a darkened Saigon runway, she is forced to confront every bad decision she’s ever made as she struggles to return to her son. But the Humans owner is hell-bent on keeping her in Vietnam, performing only for war-injured children at a hospital, daily reminders of the son she’s left behind.
Decades later, Dickie is forty, living in a Massachusetts coastal town with a man who’s dying of AIDS, and doing everything he can to escape his past. But although Spin may be giving Dickie what he’s always wanted—a home without wheels—it seems that the farther Dickie runs, the tighter the past clings to him. Ultimately, What We Give, What We Take is a deeply moving story of second chances and rising above family circumstances, however dysfunctional they may be.
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A chilling murder mystery lies at the heart of this page-turning thriller about a missing teacher, small town secrets, and turbulent tween friendships from master of middle grade horror Mary Downing Hahn. When best friends Abbi and Skylar witness a clandestine meeting between a mysterious woman and someone in a dark van, they’re thrilled. Finally, a mystery to spice up the summer! Who could these people be? Why are they meeting? Are they spies? Criminals? The two girls are determined to find out. But then a local woman goes missing and is found dead in the woods. And Abbi and Skylar realize that their detective work could hold the keys to solving her murder. Suddenly, sleuthing isn’t so fun anymore. As tensions rise and their friendship frays, the girls find themselves in increasing danger, and must choose between keeping a secret or exposing a life-altering truth. -
From the bestselling author of This Is Not How It Ends comes a moving novel of two unfinished love stories and the music and lyrics that bring them together. Journalist Cecilia James is a sucker for a love song. So when she stumbles across a clue to the identity of the muse for one of rock’s greatest, she devotes herself to uncovering the truth, even as her own relationship is falling apart. While writing an article for Rolling Stone, Cecilia works to reveal the mystery that has intrigued fans and discovers a classic tale of two soulmates separated by fate and circumstance. Rock star Eddie Vee once sang with his soul, dedicating love songs to Sara Friedman, his inspiration and first love. Now, Eddie takes refuge in anonymity, closed off to the past. Sara, too, has distanced herself from their love, moving thousands of miles away to live the life she once railed against. As Eddie and Sara tentatively open up to Cecilia about broken dreams, she struggles to give them a happy ending. In the process, she learns that broken hearts can be healed―even her own. What You Do To Me is the story of a love song and of the triumph of the heart over the greatest of odds. Even for those who have written off love forever. -
Determined daughters. Controlling mothers. There’s no such thing as friendly competition in a twisty novel of suspense about ambition, revenge, and unrealized dreams. Valerie Yarnell is a hardworking single mother who’d do anything for her daughter, Kate. Kate is a dancer with dreams of stardom, just like her talented best friend, Colette. Despite Valerie’s sacrifices, it’s Colette’s mother, former prima ballerina Elise, whom Kate adores. And Colette has become like the practically perfect sister Kate never had. How can Valerie not feel frustrated, ineffectual, and a little jealous of the queen bee of dance moms? Not only has she hijacked her daughter, but Elise is married to the man Valerie pines for. Rivalries are forming. Tension is mounting. In preparation for an elite dance competition, Kate outshines the more promising Colette onstage, and the pressure is on for Colette to keep her position in the spotlight―and especially to keep her demanding mother happy. Who could have foreseen the violent attack that sabotages everything? Anyone who’s been watching closely. As ruthless and sinister ambitions are exposed, a media firestorm and an explosive town scandal erupt. Before it’s over, two mothers and two daughters will learn just how fierce and dangerous a rivalry can still get. -
Perfect for fans of Water for Elephants, Wonder and All the Bright Places, When Elephants Fly shows that how we choose to live our lives matters, and that there are some battles worth fighting even if it means losing yourself. Lily Decker is a high school senior with a twelve-year plan: avoid stress, drugs, alcohol and boyfriends, and take regular psych quizzes administered by her best friend, Sawyer, to make sure she’s not developing schizophrenia. Genetics are not on Lily’s side. When she was seven, her mother, who had paranoid schizophrenia, tried to kill her. And a secret has revealed that Lily’s odds are even worse than she thought. Still, there’s a chance to avoid triggering the mental health condition, if Lily can live a careful life from ages eighteen to thirty, when schizophrenia most commonly manifests. But when a newspaper internship results in Lily witnessing a mother elephant try to kill her three-week-old calf, Swifty, Lily can’t abandon the story or the calf. With Swifty in danger of dying from grief, Lily must choose whether to risk everything, including her sanity and a first love, on a desperate road trip to save the calf’s life, perhaps finding her own version of freedom along the way. -
The stunning and provocative coming-of-age memoir about Sarah Valentine’s childhood as a white girl in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and her discovery that her father was a black man. At the age of 27, Sarah Valentine discovered that she was not, in fact, the white girl she had always believed herself to be. She learned the truth of her paternity: that her father was a black man. And she learned the truth about her own identity: mixed race. And so Sarah began the difficult and absorbing journey of changing her identity from white to black. In this memoir, Sarah details the story of the discovery of her identity, how she overcame depression to come to terms with this identity, and, perhaps most importantly, asks: why? Her entire family and community had conspired to maintain her white identity. The supreme discomfort her white family and community felt about addressing issues of race–her race–is a microcosm of race relationships in America. A black woman who lived her formative years identifying as white, Sarah’s story is a kind of Rachel Dolezal in reverse, though her “passing” was less intentional than conspiracy. This memoir is an examination of the cost of being black in America, and how one woman threw off the racial identity she’d grown up with, in order to embrace a new one. -
When it comes to Cassidy, Katie can't think straight. Katie Daniels, a twenty-eight-year-old Kentucky transplant with a strong set of traditional values, has just been dumped by her fiancé when she finds herself seated across a negotiating table from native New Yorker Cassidy Price, a sexy, self-assured woman wearing a man's suit. At first neither of them knows what to make of the other, but soon their undeniable connection will bring into question everything each of them thought they knew about sex and love. When Katie Met Cassidy is a romantic comedy about gender and sexuality, and the importance of figuring out who we are in order to go after what we truly want. It's also a portrait of a high-drama subculture where barrooms may as well be bedrooms, and loyal friends fill in the spaces absent families leave behind. Katie's glimpse into this wild yet fiercely tightknit community begins to alter not only how she sees the larger world, but also where exactly she fits in. -
Charming, hilarious, and emotional...When Sparks Fly is Helena Hunting at her very best! Avery Spark is living her best life. Between her friends, her sisters, and Spark House, the event hotel her family owns, she doesn’t have much time for anything else, especially relationships. She’d rather hang out with her best friend and roommate, Declan McCormick, than deal with the dating scene. But everything changes when she is in a car accident and needs someone to care for her as she heals. Declan avoids relationships, giving him a playboy reputation that he lives up to when he puts a one-night stand ahead of a promise he made to Avery. While he may not have been the one driving the car, he feels responsible for Avery’s injuries and is determined to make it up to her by stepping into the role of caretaker. Little did they know that the more time they spend in compromising positions, the attraction they’ve been refusing to acknowledge becomes impossible to ignore. When they finally give in to the spark between them, neither is prepared for the consequences. Their love is fragile and all it will take is a blow from the past to shatter it all. -
In When Stars Rain Down, Angela Jackson-Brown introduces readers to a small, Southern town grappling with haunting questions still relevant today—and to a young woman whose search for meaning resonates across the ages. This summer has the potential to change everything. The summer of 1936 in Parsons, Georgia, is unseasonably hot, and Opal Pruitt senses a nameless storm brewing. She hopes this foreboding feeling won’t overshadow her upcoming eighteenth birthday or the annual Founder’s Day celebration in just a few weeks. She and her Grandma Birdie work as housekeepers for the white widow Miss Peggy, and Opal desperately wants some time to be young and carefree with her cousins and friends. But when the Ku Klux Klan descends on Opal’s neighborhood, the tight-knit community is shaken in every way possible. Parsons’s residents—both Black and white—are forced to acknowledge the unspoken codes of conduct in their post-Reconstruction era town. To complicate matters, Opal finds herself torn between two unexpected romantic interests—the son of her pastor, Cedric Perkins, and the grandson of the woman she works for, Jimmy Earl Ketchums. Both young men awaken emotions Opal has never felt before. -
Seventeen-year-old Mira has always danced to her own beat. A music prodigy in a family of athletes, she’d rather play trumpet than party–and with her audition to a prestigious jazz conservatory just around the corner (and her two best friends at music camp without her), she plans to spend the summer focused on jazz and nothing else. She only goes to the warehouse party in a last-ditch effort to bond with her older sister. Instead, she falls in love with dance music, DJing… and Derek, a gorgeous promoter who thinks he can make her a star. Suddenly trumpet practice and old friendships are taking a backseat to packed dance floors, sun-soaked music festivals, outsized personalities, and endless beats. But when a devastating tragedy plunges her golden summer into darkness, Mira discovers just how little she knows about her new boyfriend, her old friends, and even her own sister. Music is what brought them together… but will it also tear them apart? -
When a journalist acquires the power to hear lies, the real test isn’t exposing the truth, but living with it in the next striking novel from Harper Ross, author of The Unwritten Rules of Magic. Rowan Winslow built her career exposing liars, no matter the consequences. That conviction cost her a job at a prestigious Boston paper, as well as her reputation. At 28, she’s back in her hometown of Pinebridge, Vermont, navigating the wreckage of her relationship with her sister and trying not to suffocate in a town where everyone knows her past. Then a birthday wish during a meteor shower grants her what seems like the perfect gift: the power to hear when people lie. At first, it’s intoxicating. Seductive, even, as she uses her ability to uncover secrets for stories that could relaunch her career. But the deeper she leans into her power, the more her choices begin to strain the fragile relationships she has been trying to rebuild. When a shocking family secret comes to light, Rowan’s world grinds to a halt, forcing her to question everything she thought she knew about the people she loves and the truths she has built her life around. The truth has always been Rowan’s creed, but now it’s demanding a sacrifice she’s not sure she can make. Because not all truths set you free. Some leave you trapped in an impossible choice. -
Teen Instagram sensation and author of Light Filters In @poeticpoison returns with a second collection of short, powerful poems about love, forgiveness, self-discovery, and what it’s like living after a hard-fought battle with depression, in the vein of poetry collections like Milk and Honey and the princess saves herself in this one. In her second book of poetry, Instagram sensation Caroline Kaufman—known as @poeticpoison—explores the shock, wonder, and beauty of an uncertain future. When the World Didn’t End is a vivid account of trying to find a path forward while reckoning with the pain of the past, embracing imperfection, and unlearning the language of self-criticism. It’s an ode to the awkward silence between goodbye and hanging up, to hearts that continue to beat after they’re broken, to the empty spaces that depression leaves behind. With vulnerability and insight, this powerful collection of short poems holds up a mirror to the doubt and longing inside us all. This hardcover collection features completely new material plus some fan favorites from Caroline’s account. Filled with haunting, spare pieces of original art, When the World Didn’t End will thrill existing fans and newcomers alike. so, what now? how will you make the most of it? how will you live the life you never thought you’d get the chance to see? -
For Conrad Burrell―husband, father, and successful attorney in the autumn of his life―the world has come apart. Having long ago lost his first wife, the mother of his grown daughter and a widow herself, to youth and pride, he’s now lost his second to a violent accident,. “You think you’re finished, that you have no more stories in you,” his ex-wife warns, and he fears she’s right. Within hailing distance of the end of his days, after a lifetime of meeting the expectations of others, none are left but Conrad’s own, and he must discover whether love survives death as well as divorce―whether family memory can redeem individual mortality.
What do we do, then, we widows and widowers for whom there’s nothing left but the world’s permission to stop what we’ve done all our lives? In the cities of his youth, in the deserts of New Mexico, but most of all in a small Pennsylvania town, Conrad finds he has one more lesson in love to learn from the women of his past, and the one woman he’s certain he can’t live without.
When We Were All Still Alive is a novel of grief and healing, a portrait of a marriage, and a love song to ordinary lives.
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From award-winning author Kelly Loy Gilbert comes a powerful, achingly romantic drama about the secrets we keep, from each other and from ourselves, perfect for fans of Permanent Recordand I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter.
All Beth wants is for her tight-knit circle of friends—Grace Nakamura, Brandon Lin, Sunny Chen, and Jason Tsou—to stay together. With her family splintered and her future a question mark, these friends are all she has—even if she sometimes wonders if she truly fits in with them. Besides, she’s certain she’ll never be able to tell Jason how she really feels about him, so friendship will have to be enough. Then Beth witnesses a private act of violence in Jason’s home, and the whole group is shaken. Beth and her friends make a pact to do whatever it takes to protect Jason, no matter the sacrifice. But when even their fierce loyalty isn’t enough to stop Jason from making a life-altering choice, Beth must decide how far she’s willing to go for him—and how much of herself she’s willing to give up. -
From New York Times bestselling author Laura Taylor Namey comes an exquisitely crafted, heartrending novel about friendship and the bittersweetness of growing up and growing apart.
When they were fifteen, Willa, Luz, and Britton’s friendship was everything. When they were sixteen, they stood by each other no matter what. When they were seventeen, they went through the worst. And when they were eighteen, Willa ruined it all. Now, it’s the week of graduation, and Willa is left with only a memory box filled with symbols of the friendship she destroyed: A book of pranks. Corsages from a nightmarish homecoming. A greasy pizza menu. Greeting cards with words that mean the world… It’s enough to make Willa wonder how anything could tear her, Luz, and Britton apart. But as Willa revisits the moments when she and her friends leaned on each other, she can’t avoid the moments they leaned so hard their friendship began to crack. As Willa tries to find a way back to Luz and Britton, she must confront the why of her betrayal, and answer a question she never saw coming: Who is she without them? -
Some poems are wrapped in silk and appear to be glistening gifts. Others cascade from the sky like violent hailstorms. At times, they are scattered across the landscape of lips and hide within closed fists. Jasmin Kaur’s striking debut novel is divided into six sections that speak to readers using poems, prose and illustrations to explore what it means to be a young woman living in a world that doesn’t always hear her. Her narrative tells the story of Kiran as she flees a history of trauma and raises her daughter, Sahaara, while living undocumented in North America. This powerful narrative of resilience, healing, empowerment, and love will galvanize readers to fight for what is right in their world. -
An unlikely couple must decide what truly defines family. Gentry Cabot’s rebellious life comes to a screeching halt when a one-night stand leads to a sobering new reality: motherhood. Exhausted and overwhelmed, the former wild child struggles to raise an infant on her own. After a lifetime of feeling like the odd Cabot out, Gentry knows that what her son needs most is family. For his sake, she plans to rebuild bridges with them, but first she needs a little help on the home front. Humanitarian worker Ian Crawford has devoted his life to service. Forced to temporarily return stateside, he’s eager to head back to Haiti to expand the nonprofit he just founded in his late father’s honor. He can’t do that without money, so when Gentry offers a hefty paycheck for a short-term gig as a live-in nanny, he can’t afford to say no. Ian expects to deal with a barrage of privileged problems. What he doesn’t expect is how quickly being a makeshift father transforms him. Despite his growing attachment to Gentry and her child, Ian still has his dreams, and Gentry wants a full-time dad for her son. When the baby’s father reenters the picture, will Gentry and Ian embrace the family they’ve formed or end up worlds apart? -
Old friends. New lies. Deadly consequences. Bree Wagner has spent her life behind the scenes―as a ghostwriter, an aunt, and a woman scarred by tragedy. When her former best friend Miranda, now the wildly popular lifestyle influencer Randi F. Alexander, begs for help with her next book, Bree reluctantly agrees. It’s a chance to reconnect after eighteen years of silence following a devastating accident in Amsterdam. But just as Bree steps back into Randi’s world, a viral misstep sends the influencer’s career into a tailspin. While Bree tries to steer clear of the spotlight and the toxic whirlwind of cancel culture, old secrets begin to surface―ones that make her question everything she thought she knew about Miranda and their shared past. As tensions rise and lines blur, Bree is forced to make an impossible choice―stay hidden, or risk exposing everything to protect her orphaned nephew. When You Tell is a gripping psychological suspense about friendship, fame, and fierce love. -
Perfect for fans of Eat, Pray, Love, this soulful travel memoir blends poetry, global adventure, cultural connection and personal transformation with reflections on race, identity, and belonging. In 2010, twenty-nine-year-old poet Ebony Walden quits her job to go to on an eight-month solo journey across fifteen countries and five continents. Propelled by a sense of purpose and adventure, she moves from teaching English and volunteering in places like Guatemala and India to conducting poetry workshops in Kenya, walking the ruins of Machu Picchu, and paragliding over the Swiss Alps. Along the way, Ebony writes “Where I’m From” poems with the people she meets—intimate reflections that capture family, identity and culture, weaving their voices into her own unfolding journey. But each destination also challenges her in unexpected ways, forcing her to reckon with the hardships of growing up in New York in the ’80s and ’90s. Through breathtaking landscapes, unexpected setbacks, and profound encounters with strangers, Ebony begins to understand that travel is not just about seeing the world—it is about allowing the world to change you. Part travel memoir, part coming-of-age story, Where I’m From invites readers to take their own journey beyond borders and come home to themselves. -
Fans of Allison Saft and Margaret Rogerson will be swept away into this lush and beguiling sapphic romantasy from the bestselling author of Flowerheart, Catherine Bakewell. Ofelia has lived her life dreaming of entering Le Château Enchanté—the mysterious court of the gods-blessed King Léo, where the shadow monsters that roam Ofelia’s home never trespass. Lope has lived her life as a knight, defending Ofelia and her home from Shadows even as she dreams of escaping with Ofelia by her side. When the Shadows venture too close, Lope and Ofelia are thrust into a journey that will lead them to the heart of the darkness haunting their home: the dazzling and deceptive Château Enchanté itself. A mesmerizing daydream with a subtle edge of darkness that will leave you utterly unable to put it down, Where Shadows Bloom pits terrifying monsters, chilling secrets, capricious gods, immortal kings, and death itself against the unstoppable love between two girls. -
After a lifetime of strained bonds with her aging parents, Patricia Williams finds herself in the unexpected position of being their caregiver and neighbor. As they all begin to navigate this murky battleground, the long-buried issues that have divided their family for decades―alcoholism, infidelity, opposing politics―rear up and demand to be addressed head-on. Williams answers the call of duty with trepidation at first, confronting the lines between service and servant, guardian and warden, while her parents alternately resist her help and wear her out. But by facing each new struggle with determination, grace, and courage, they ultimately emerge into a dynamic of greater transparency, mutual support, and teachable moments for all. Honest and humorous, graceful and grumbling, While They’re Still Here is a poignant story about a family that waves the white flag and begins to heal old wounds as they guide each other through the most vulnerable chapter of their lives. -
In this debut contemporary YA romance by bestselling author Alisha Rai, a girl with undocumented family members goes viral after saving her crush’s life in disguise. A must read for fans of Sandhya Menon and Nicola Yoon. It’s a classic story: girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, boy finally notices girl when he sees her in a homemade costume. At least, that’s what Sonia Patil is hoping for when she plans to meet her crush at the local comic-con in cosplay. But instead of winning her crush over, Sonia rescues him after he faints into a canal and, suddenly, everything changes. Since she was in disguise, no one knows who the masked do-gooder was . . .but everyone is trying to find out. Sonia can’t let that happen—her sister is undocumented, and the girls have been flying under the radar since their mother was deported back to Mumbai. Sonia finds herself hiding from social media detectives and trying to connect with her crush and his family. But juggling crushes and a secret identity might just take superpowers. Can Sonia hide in plain sight forever? -
“If only you’d listened to us, none of this would have happened.” Sloane, Ardie, Grace, and Rosalita have worked at Truviv, Inc. for years. The sudden death of Truviv’s CEO means their boss, Ames, will likely take over the entire company. Each of the women has a different relationship with Ames, who has always been surrounded by whispers about how he treats women. Those whispers have been ignored, swept under the rug, hidden away by those in charge. But the world has changed, and the women are watching this promotion differently. This time, when they find out Ames is making an inappropriate move on a colleague, they aren’t willing to let it go. This time, they’ve decided enough is enough. Sloane and her colleagues’ decision to take a stand sets in motion a catastrophic shift in the office. Lies will be uncovered. Secrets will be exposed. And not everyone will survive. All of their lives―as women, colleagues, mothers, wives, friends, even adversaries―will change dramatically as a result. “If only you had listened to us,” they tell us on page one, “none of this would have happened.” -
The acclaimed, prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling writer returns with a moving, luminous novel that reminds us of the sweetness and impermanence of life and the power of connection to defy time. When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again. Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything. -
“This ghost story is a perfect example of new wave horror that will also satisfy fans of classic Stephen King.” ―Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic Erika T. Wurth’s White Horse is a gritty, vibrant debut novel about an Indigenous woman who must face her past when she discovers a bracelet haunted by her mother’s spirit. Some people are haunted in more ways than one… Kari James, Urban Native, is a fan of heavy metal, ripped jeans, Stephen King novels, and dive bars. She spends most of her time at her favorite spot in Denver, a bar called White Horse. There, she tries her best to ignore her past and the questions surrounding her mother who abandoned her when she was just two years old. But soon after her cousin Debby brings her a traditional bracelet that once belonged to Kari’s mother, Kari starts seeing disturbing visions of her mother and a mysterious creature. When the visions refuse to go away, Kari must uncover what really happened to her mother all those years ago. Her father, permanently disabled from a car crash, can’t help her. Her Auntie Squeaker seems to know something but isn’t eager to give it all up at once. Debby’s anxious to help, but her controlling husband keeps getting in the way. Kari’s journey toward a truth long denied by both her family and law enforcement forces her to confront her dysfunctional relationships, thoughts about a friend she lost in childhood, and her desire for the one thing she’s always wanted but could never have… -
The Haunting of Hill House meets Get Out in this chilling YA psychological thriller and modern take on the classic haunted house story from New York Times bestselling author Tiffany D. Jackson! Marigold is running from ghosts. The phantoms of her old life keep haunting her, but a move with her newly blended family from their small California beach town to the embattled Midwestern city of Cedarville might be the fresh start she needs. Her mom has accepted a new job with the Sterling Foundation that comes with a free house, one that Mari now has to share with her bratty ten-year-old stepsister, Piper. The renovated picture-perfect home on Maple Street, sitting between dilapidated houses, surrounded by wary neighbors has its . . . secrets. That’s only half the problem: household items vanish, doors open on their own, lights turn off, shadows walk past rooms, voices can be heard in the walls, and there’s a foul smell seeping through the vents only Mari seems to notice. Worse: Piper keeps talking about a friend who wants Mari gone. But “running from ghosts” is just a metaphor, right? As the house closes in, Mari learns that the danger isn’t limited to Maple Street. Cedarville has its secrets, too. And secrets always find their way through the cracks. -
As a little girl, Trudy Herman is taught to stand up for truth by her much-loved grandfather. Then in 1943, Trudy’s childhood drastically changes when her family is sent to a German-American Internment Camp in Texas. On the journey to the camp, Trudy meets Ruth, who tells her and her friend Eddie the legend of the Paladins—knights of Emperor Charlemagne who used magic gifted to them by the heavens to stand up for virtue and truth. Ruth insists both Trudy and Eddie will become modern-day Paladins—defenders of truth and justice—but Trudy’s experiences inside the camp soon convince her that she doesn’t have what it takes to be a knight. After two years, her family is released from the camp and they move to Mississippi. Here, Trudy struggles to deal with injustice when she comes face to face with the ingrained bigotries of the local white residents and the abject poverty of the black citizens of Willow Bay. Then their black housekeeper—a woman Trudy has come to care for—finds herself in crisis, and Trudy faces a choice: look the other way, or become the person her grandfather and Ruth believed she could be? -
She’s the one that got away. He’s the one that never let her go. #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of Done and Dusted and Swift and Saddled, the next book in the Rebel Blue Ranch series, a small-town romance in which past lovers get a second chance to rediscover what they lost “The perfect farewell . . . I dare you to get to the last page without turning right back around to walk through the gates of Rebel Blue all over again. I’ll see you there.”—Jessica Joyce, USA Today bestselling author of The Ex Vows Camille Ashwood had always loved a plan. Her latest was her best yet. She was going to get married so she could secure her daughter’s future, get her overbearing parents off her back, and finally start building her own life in small-town Meadowlark, Wyoming. Easy, right? But when her groom doesn’t show up to the wedding, Cam’s life is turned upside down—she doesn’t even have a place to live. That is until she finds out the house she’s loved since high school is available to rent. There’s only one problem: the neighbor. Dusty Tucker has spent nearly all of his adult life running. Running from what, though? More like who: Cam Ashwood. But ever since he returned home last year, the girl who was his first, well, everything has become a woman seemingly determined to keep him at arm’s length. And he was okay with that—at least, that’s what he kept telling himself. She was getting married, after all. But now she’s single and living next door. Dusty wants to show her that they can be friends, and that he can stay put. Despite her best attempts to stay far away from Dusty Tucker, Cam realizes that being close to him is like slipping into her favorite jeans. Easy. Comfortable. That is until past wounds start to open and feelings—both old and new—wreak havoc. Nearly ten years after they first met, Dusty and Cam begin to wonder if their first love can also be their last. And this time, will it be forever?
