List

In this collection of medical tales “reminiscent of Oliver Sacks...the best of medical writing” (Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water), a neurologist reckons with the stories we tell about our brains, and the stories our brains tell us.

A girl believes she has been struck blind for stealing a kiss. A mother watches helplessly as each of her children is replaced by a changeling. A woman is haunted each month by the same four chords of a single song. In neurology, illness is inextricably linked with narrative, the clues to unraveling these mysteries hidden in both the details of a patient's story and the tells of their body.

Stories are etched into the very structure of our brains, coded so deeply that the impulse for storytelling survives and even surges after the most devastating injuries. But our brains are also porous—the stories they concoct shaped by cultural narratives about bodies and illness that permeate the minds of doctors and patients alike. In the history of medicine, some stories are heard, while others—the narratives of women, of Black and brown people, of displaced people, of disempowered people—are too often dismissed.

In The Mind Electric, neurologist Pria Anand reveals—through case study, history, fable, and memoir—all that the medical establishment has overlooked: the complexity and wonder of brains in health and in extremis, and the vast gray area between sanity and insanity, doctor and patient, and illness and wellness, each separated from the next by the thin veneer of a different story.

Moving from the Boston hospital where she treats her patients, to her childhood years in India, to Isla Providencia in the Caribbean and to the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, she demonstrates again and again the compelling paradox at the heart of neurology: that even the most peculiar symptoms can show us something universal about ourselves as humans.

The rich and deeply personal debut memoir by award-winning Palestinian American poet and novelist Hala Alyan, whose experience of motherhood via surrogacy forces her to reckon with her own past, and the legacy of her family’s exile and displacement, all in the name of a new future.

After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman—the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn—to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance.

As her baby grows in the body of another woman, in another country, Hala finds her own life unraveling—a husband who wants to leave; the cost of past traumas and addictions threatening to resurface; the city of her youth, Beirut, on the brink of crisis. She turns to family stories and communal myths: of grandmothers mapping their lives through Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon; of eradicated villages and invading armies; of places of refuge that proved only temporary; of men that left and women that stayed; of the contradictions of her own Midwestern childhood, and adolescence in various Arab cities.

Meanwhile, as the baby grows from the size of a poppyseed to a grain of rice, then a lime, and beyond, Hala gathers the stories that are her legacy, setting down the ones that confine, holding close those that liberate. It is emotionally charged, painstaking work, but now the stakes are higher: how to honor ancestors and future generations alike in the midst of displacement? How to impart love for those who are no longer here, for places one can no longer touch?

A stunningly lyrical and brutally honest quest for motherhood, selfhood, and peoplehood, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home is a powerful story of unraveling and becoming, of destruction and redemption, and of homelands lost and recreated.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of two Oprah Book Club Picks—She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True—Wally Lamb comes the propulsive story of a young father who, after an unbearable tragedy, reckons with the possibility of atonement for the unforgivable.

Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that’s before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart. Sentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness and elemental kinship with a prison librarian who sees his light and some of his fellow offenders, including a tender-hearted cellmate and a troubled teen desperate for a role model. Buoyed by them and by his mother’s enduring faith in him, Corby begins to transcend the boundaries of his confinement, sustained by his hope that mercy and reconciliation might still be possible. Can his crimes ever be forgiven by those he loves?

DELUXE FIRST EDITION WITH PRINTED EDGES!

"Expertly plotted and exquisitely twisted... Julie Clark masterfully weaves together a daughter's long-held suspicions and her father's deadly secrets with the tragic events from the past. The Ghostwriter kept me turning pages in this suspenseful search for the truth." -- Ashley Elston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of First Lie Wins

From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Last Flight and The Lies I Tell comes a dazzling new thriller.

June, 1975.

The Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their own home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets.

Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she's offered a job to ghostwrite her father's last book. What she doesn't know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies. Because it's not another horror novel he wants her to write.

After fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk about what really happened that night in 1975.

A Zibby Owens "Summer Read" * A Jordy's Book Club "Most Anticipated Book of 2025" * An Oprah Daily "Best Summer Reads"

"It stole my breath and my heart. It’s a grand story of science and startups, and a simple story of first love and belonging." ―Chris Whitaker, author of All the Colors of the Dark and We Begin at the End

A singular, extraordinary debut about Zoe and Jack, Harvard students who find themselves propelled into the intoxicating biotech startup world when they announce they’ve discovered the cure for aging. A different kind of love story where the thirst for achievement consumes and the stakes are forever.

Zoe, the daughter of an MIT professor who grew up in her brother’s shadow, can envision her future anew at Harvard. Jack, a boy in Zoe’s organic chemistry class with unruly hair and a gleam of competitiveness, matches her intellect and curiosity with every breath. When Jack refers Zoe for a position in a prestigious professor’s lab, the two become entwined as colleagues, staying up late to discuss scientific ideas. They find themselves on the cusp of a breakthrough: the promise of immortality through a novel antiaging drug.

Zoe and Jack set off on their new project in secret. Finding encouraging results, they bring their work to an investor, drop out of Harvard, and form a startup. But after the money, the magazine covers, and the national news stories detailing their success, Zoe and Jack receive a startling accusation that threatens to destroy both the company they built and their partnership.

A captivating novel about young love, the allure of immortality, and the recklessness that can come with early success, Notes on Infinity asks: How far would you go to achieve your dreams?

Spaceships aren't programmed to seek revenge--but for Dracula, Demeter will make an exception.

Demeter just wants to do her job: shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying--and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans.

To keep from getting decommissioned, Demeter must join forces with her own team of monsters: A werewolf. An engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones. Together, this motley crew will face down the ultimate evil--Dracula.

The queer love child of pulp horror and ​classic ​sci-fi, Of Monsters and ​Mainframes ​is a dazzling, heartfelt odyssey that probes what it means to be one of society's monsters--and explores the many types of friendship that make us human.

"As talented a natural storyteller as is working in American fiction."--Washington Post

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins--and in the wild, propulsive spirit of Charles Portis' True Grit--comes a hilarious and brilliantly provocative adventure through life in modern America, about a reclusive journalist forced back into the world to rescue his kidnapped grandchildren.

A few weeks after the 2016 election, at Thanksgiving with his daughter's family, Rhys Kinnick snapped. After an escalating fight about politics, he hauled off and punched his conspiracy theorist son-in-law. Horrified by what he'd done, by the state of the country and by his own spiraling mental health, Rhys chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, off the grid and with no one around--except a pack of hungry raccoons.

Now, seven years later, Kinnick's old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep. Can this failed husband and father, a man with no phone, no computer, and a car that barely runs, reemerge into a broken world to track down his missing daughter and save his sweet, precocious grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia

With the help of his caustic ex-girlfriend, a bipolar retired detective, and his only friend (who happens to be furious with him), Kinnick heads off on a madcap journey through cultural lunacy and the rubble of a life he thought he'd left behind. So Far Gone is a rollicking, razor-sharp, and ultimately moving road trip through a fractured nation, from a writer who has been called "a genius of the modern American moment" (Philadelphia Inquirer).

A LIBRARY READS PICK

From the award-winning, critically-acclaimed author of Lakewood and The Women Could Fly, a dazzling novel about two brilliant sisters and what happens to their undeniable bond when a mysterious and possibly perilous new world beckons.

On an ordinary summer morning, the world is changed by the appearance of seven mysterious doors that seemingly lead to another world. People are, of course, mesmerized and intrigued: A new dimension filled with beauty and resources beckons them to step into an adventure. But, perhaps inevitably, people soon learn that what looks like paradise may very well be filled with danger.

Ayanna and Olivia, two Black midwestern teens--and twin sisters--have different ideas of what may lie in the world beyond. But will their personal bond endure such wanton exploration? And when one of them goes missing, will the other find solace on her own? And will she uncover the circumstances of what truly happened to her once constant companion and best friend?

Megan Giddings brings her customarily brilliant and eye-opening powers of storytelling to give us a narrative that dazzles the senses and bewitches the mind. Meet Me at the Crossroads is an unforgettable novel about faith, love, and family from one of today's most exciting and surprising young writers.

Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes, a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama.

When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.

Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: himself, and his own particular set of skills.

Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.

Because everything burns.

A LibraryReads Pick

Rivalry and romance spark when two bookstore managers who are opposites in every way find themselves competing for the same promotion.

Despite managing bookstores on the same Boston street, Josie Klein and Ryan Lawson have never interacted much—Josie’s store focuses on serious literature, and Ryan’s sells romance only. But when the new owner of both stores decides to combine them, the two are thrust into direct competition. Only one manager will be left standing, decided by who turns the most profit over the summer. 

Efficient and detail-oriented Josie instantly clashes with easygoing and disorganized Ryan. Their competing events and contrasting styles lead to more than just frustration—the sparks between them might just set the whole store on fire. Their only solace during this chaos is the friendship they’ve each struck up with an anonymous friend in an online book forum. Little do they know they’re actually chatting with each other. 

As their rivalry heats up in real life, their online relationship grows, and when the walls between their stores come tumbling down, Josie and Ryan realize not all’s fair in love and war. And maybe, if they’re lucky, happily ever afters aren’t just for the books.

A Time Must-Read Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year 
Winner of the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction

A bold, innovative biography that offers a new understanding of the life, work, and enduring impact of Audre Lorde. 

We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center walls. But even those who are inspired by Lorde’s teachings on “the creative power of difference” may be missing something fundamental about her life and work, and what they can mean for us today. 

Lorde’s understanding of survival was not simply about getting through to the other side of oppression or being resilient in the face of cancer. It was about the total stakes of what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation. Possibly the focus on Lorde’s quotable essays, to the neglect of her complex poems, has led us to ignore her deep engagement with the natural world, the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. For her, ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be of earth on earth, and how to survive—to live the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands. 

In Survival Is a Promise, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the first researcher to explore the full depths of Lorde’s manuscript archives, illuminates the eternal life of Lorde. Her life and work become more than a sound bite; they become a cosmic force, teaching us the grand contingency of life together on earth.

From the acclaimed novelist, a first-of-its-kind, deeply personal, and moving oral history of a generation of trans and gender nonconforming elders of color--from leading activists to artists to ordinary citizens--who tell their own stories of breathtaking courage, cultural innovations, and acts of resistance.



So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate accounts of how they created space for themselves and their communities in the world. This singular project collects the testimonies of twenty elders, each a glimmering thread in a luminous tapestry, preserving their words for future generations--who can more fully exist in the world today because of these very trailblazers.



De Robertis creates a collective coming-of-age story based on hundreds of hours of interviews, offering rare snapshots of ordinary life: kids growing up, navigating family issues and finding community, coming out and changing how they identify over the years, building movements and weathering the AIDS crisis, and sharing wisdom for future generations. Often narrating experiences that took place before they had the array of language that exists today to self-identify beyond the gender binary, this generation lived through remarkable changes in American culture, shaped American culture, and yet rarely takes center stage in the history books. Their stories feel particularly urgent in the current political moment, but also remind readers that their experiences are not new, and that young trans and nonbinary people today belong to a long lineage.



The anecdotes in these pages are riveting, joyful, heartbreaking, full of personality and wisdom, and artfully woven together into one immersive narrative. In De Robertis's words, So Many Stars shares "behind-the-scenes tales of what it meant--and still means--to create an authentic life, against the odds."

Elle's Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 | The Boston Globe's Best Books of 2024 | San Francisco Chronicle's Best New Books of Fall 2024



From standup comedian Youngmi Mayer, an unforgettable memoir written with "raw, enviable freedom that simply floors you," interrogating whiteness, gender, and sexuality in America, navigating a tumultuous childhood in Korea and Saipan, and coming to terms with her parents' shortcomings (Michelle Zauner).



"Do you know what happens if you laugh while crying? Hair grows out of your butthole." It was a constant truism Youngmi Mayer's mother would say threateningly after she would make her daughter laugh while crying. Her mother used it to cheer her up in moments when she could tell Youngmi was overtaken with grief. The humorous saying would never fail to lighten the mood, causing both daughter and mother to laugh and cry at the same time. Her mother had learned this trick from her mother, and her mother had learned this from her mother before her: it had also helped an endless string of her family laugh through suffering.

In I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying, Youngmi jokes through the retelling of her childhood as an offbeat biracial kid in Saipan, a place next to a place that Americans might know. She jokes through her difficult adolescence where she must parent her own parents: a mother who married her husband because he looked like white Jesus (and the singer of The Bee Gees). And with humor and irreverence and full-throated openness, she jokes even while sharing the story of what her family went through during the last century of colonialism and war in Korea, while reflecting how years later, their wounds affect her in New York City as a single mom, all the while interrogating whiteness, gender, and sexuality.

Youngmi jokes through these stories in hopes of passing onto the reader what her family passed down to her: The gift of laughing while crying. The gift of a hairy butthole. Because throughout it all, the one thing she learned was one cannot exist without the other. And like a yin and yang, this duality is reflected in this whip-smart, heart-wrenching, and disarmingly funny memoir told by a bright new voice with so much heart and wisdom.

In this searing and uplifting memoir, a young Black queer woman fresh out of college adopts her baby brother after their incarcerated mother dies, determined to create the kind of family she never had.



Nikkya Hargrove spent a good portion of her childhood in prison visiting rooms. When her mother--addicted to cocaine and just out of prison--had a son and then died only a few months later, Nikkya was faced with an impossible choice. Although she had just graduated from college, she decided to fight for custody of her half brother, Jonathan. And fight she did.



Nikkya vividly recounts how she is subjected to preconceived notions that she, a Black queer young woman, cannot be given such responsibility. Her honest portrayal of the shame she feels accepting food stamps, her family's reaction to her coming out, and the joy she experiences when she meets the woman who will become her wife reveal her sheer determination. And whether she's clashing with Jonathan's biological father or battling for Jonathan's education rights after he's diagnosed with ADHD and autism, this is a woman who won't give up. 



Nikkya's moving story picks up where Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy left off, exploring generational trauma and pulling back the curtain on family court and poverty in America. Mama is an ode to motherhood and identity, and to finding strength in family and community, for readers of memoirs by Ashley C. Ford, Natasha Tretheway, and Dawn Turner.

 

From one of the most vital and passionate LGBTQ+ activists comes a powerful memoir about self-discovery, community, love, and resilience in the face of adversity.

You never forget your first. First kiss. First love. First heartache. They all burrow their way into your subconscious, destined to reshape how you see the world forever.

Growing up in rural Oregon, Brandon Wolf grappled with the devastating loss of his supportive mother and with the embedded racism and homophobia of a community that made him feel like an unwelcome stranger. After the lack of connection and role models led him down a spiral of risky behavior, Wolf escaped to survive. In Orlando, he found what he'd been searching for: belonging--in a community that was a safe space with people he'd come to call his chosen family. They taught Wolf how to love, and be loved, unconditionally. Then, on June 12, 2016, in an exhilarating refuge where Wolf and hundreds of others had discovered a liberating new normal, they were suddenly challenged with fighting for a way out--in order to survive. Overnight, everything was ripped away by chaos, panic, and fear. But the unimaginable tragedy also gave Wolf a new power: purpose.

In this unforgettable coming-of-age memoir, Wolf shares his transformative journey from young outsider to galvanizing activist. Marshaling the compassion and strength of a community, Wolf explores how to get through the darkest times with healing, hope, and resistance. "With our backs against the wall," he writes, "we find a way out together."

A transgender reporter's "powerful, profoundly moving"(New York Times Book Review) narrative tour through the surprisingly vibrant queer communities sprouting up in red states, offering a vision of a stronger, more humane America. 
Ten years ago, Samantha Allen was a suit-and-tie-wearing Mormon missionary. Now she's a senior Daily Beast reporter happily married to another woman. A lot in her life has changed, but what hasn't changed is her deep love of Red State America, and of queer people who stay in so-called "flyover country" rather than moving to the liberal coasts. 

In Real Queer America, Allen takes us on a cross-country road-trip stretching all the way from Provo, Utah to the Rio Grande Valley to the Bible Belt to the Deep South. Her motto for the trip: "Something gay every day." Making pit stops at drag shows, political rallies, and hubs of queer life across the heartland, she introduces us to scores of extraordinary LGBT people working for change, from the first openly transgender mayor in Texas history to the manager of the only queer night club in Bloomington, Indiana, and many more.

Capturing profound cultural shifts underway in unexpected places and revealing a national network of chosen family fighting for a better world, Real Queer America is a treasure trove of uplifting stories and a much-needed source of hope and inspiration in these divided times.
 

"[A] powerful treatise on creating a more accepting world." -- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Creating LGBTQ allies happens one child at a time. And it begins with each of us.

Raising LGBTQ Allies sheds light on the deeper, multi-faceted layers of homophobia. It opens up a conversation with parents around the possibility they may have an LGBTQ child and shows how heteronormativity can be harmful if not addressed clearly and early. Although not every parent will have an LGBTQ child, their child will jump rope or play tag with a child who is LGBTQ. By showing readers the importance of having open and authentic conversations with children at a young age, Chris Tompkins walks parents through the many ways they can prevent new generations from adopting homophobic and transphobic beliefs, while helping them explore their own subconscious biases.

Offering specific actions that parents, family members, and caregivers can take to help navigate conversations, address heteronormativity, and challenge societal beliefs, Raising LGBTQ Allies serves as a guide to help normalize being LGBTQ from a young age. Creating allies and a world where closets don't exist happens one child at a time--and it begins with each of us and what we say, as much as what we choose not to say.

By acclaimed Forward Prize winner, novelist, and poet, Kei Miller's linked collection of essays blends memoir and literary commentary to explore the silences that exist in our conversations about race, sex, and gender.

In a deeply moving, critical and lyrical collection of interconnected essays, award-winning writer Kei Miller explores the silences in which so many important things are kept. Miller examines the experience of discrimination through this silence and what it means to breach it -- "to risk words, to risk truth; and through the body and the histories those bodies inherit" the crimes that haunt them, and how the meanings of our bodies can shift as we move through the world, variously assuming privilege or victimhood.

Through letters to James Baldwin, encounters with Soca, Carnival, family secrets, love affairs, questions of aesthetics and more, Miller powerfully and imaginatively recounts everyday acts of racism and prejudice from a black, male, queer perspective. An almost disarmingly personal collection, Kei dissects his experiences in Jamaica and Britain, working as an artist and intellectual, making friends and lovers, discovering the possibilities of music and dance, literary criticism, culture, and storytelling.

With both the epigrammatic concision and conversational cadence of his poetry and novels, Things I Have Withheld is a great artistic achievement: a work of innovation and beauty which challenges us to interrogate what seems unsayable and why, "our actions, defense mechanisms, imaginations and interactions" and those of the world around us.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2023"
A TIME Magazine "100 Must-Read Books of 2023"
A Washington Post "50 Notable Works of Nonfiction"
An Autostraddle "Best Queer Books of 2023"

“Vivid...Moving...Juicy” – NPR

"Eloquent and enthralling..." —Washington Post

"Searing, deeply moving, and incredibly poignant... This isn’t simply a book on what it means to be trans, it’s about what it means to be human." —Alok Vaid-Menon

Full of intimate stories, from chasing down secret love affairs to battling body image and struggling with familial strife, Pageboy is a love letter to the power of being seen. With this evocative and lyrical debut, Oscar-nominated star Elliot Page captures the universal human experience of searching for ourselves and our place in this complicated world.

“Can I kiss you?” It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans person. Getting closer to his desires, his dreams, himself, without the repression he’d carried for so long. But for Elliot, two steps forward had always come with one step back. 

With Juno’s massive success, Elliot became one of the world’s most beloved actors. His dreams were coming true, but the pressure to perform suffocated him. He was forced to play the part of the glossy young starlet, a role that made his skin crawl, on and off set. The career that had been an escape out of his reality and into a world of imagination was suddenly a nightmare. 

As he navigated criticism and abuse from some of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a past that snapped at his heels, and a society dead set on forcing him into a binary, Elliot often stayed silent, unsure of what to do. Until enough was enough. 

The Oscar-nominated star who captivated the world with his performance in Juno finally shares his story in a groundbreaking and inspiring memoir about love, family, fame — and stepping into who we truly are with strength, joy and connection.

Presents a bold and accessible overview of LGBTQ+ history: the good, the bad, and the clandestine. 

Discover the rich and complex history of LGBTQ+ people around the world—their struggles, triumphs, and cultural contributions.

Exploring and explaining the most important ideas and events in LGBTQ+ history and culture, this book showcases the breadth of the LGBTQ+ experience. This diverse, global account explores the most important moments, movements, and phenomena, from the first known lesbian love poetry of Sappho to the Kinseys' modern sexuality studies, and features biographies of key figures from Anne Lister to Allen Ginsberg.

The LGBTQ+ History Book celebrates the victories and untold triumphs of LGBTQ+ people throughout history, such as the Stonewall Riots and first transgender surgeries, as well as commemorating moments of tragedy and persecution, from the Renaissance Italian “Night Police” to the 20th century “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy. The book also includes major cultural cornerstones—the secret language of polari, Black and Latinx ballroom culture, and the many flags of the community—and the history of LGBTQ+ spaces, from 18th-century “molly houses” to modern “gayborhoods.” 

Using the “Big Ideas” series’ trademark combination of authoritative, accessible text and bold graphics, The LGBTQ+ History Book celebrates the long, proud—and often hidden—history of LGBTQ+ people, cultures, and places from around the world.



 

Named one of the Best Books of the 21st Century by Kirkus. Winner of the 2022 Lambda Literary LGBTQ Nonfiction Award and the 2022 NLGJA Excellence in Book Writing Award. A 2021 New York Times Book Review Notable Book.

One of NPR, New York, and The Guardian's Best Books of 2021, one of Buzzfeed's Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2021, one of Electric Literature's Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2021, one of NBC's 10 Most Notable LGBTQ Books of 2021, and one of Gay Times' Best LGBTQ Books of 2021. 

"This is not reverent, definitive history. This is a tactician’s bible." --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

Twenty years in the making, Sarah Schulman's Let the Record Show is the most comprehensive political history ever assembled of ACT UP and American AIDS activism 

In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. They stormed the FDA and NIH in Washington, DC, and started needle exchange programs in New York; they took over Grand Central Terminal and fought to change the legal definition of AIDS to include women; they transformed the American insurance industry, weaponized art and advertising to push their agenda, and battled—and beat—The New York Times, the Catholic Church, and the pharmaceutical industry. Their activism, in its complex and intersectional power, transformed the lives of people with AIDS and the bigoted society that had abandoned them. 

Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today’s activists, Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration—and long-overdue reassessment—of the coalition’s inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world.

From America's most beloved foursome--the TikTok sensation @oldgays--a book of unexpected aspirational advice and inspirational stories drawn from their decades of living, from pre-Stonewall to the rise of the LGBTQ+ movement to gay marriage and beyond.

Ranging in age from sixty-seven to eighty, Mick, Jessay, Robert, and Bill are the real-life Golden Girls of the social media era, a quartet of old gays whose hard-won confidence and awesome authenticity have taken the culture by storm. They are America's queens--and, more important, they are survivors whose lives have been transformed by sweeping cultural change. In this fabulously fun and entertaining book, they share their stories--humorous, heartbreaking, shocking, and profound tales that only older gay men can tell. It was their generation that was devastated by AIDS, a health crisis that deprived us of so many brilliant, creative lives, including many of their friends.

In this delightful group memoir, Mick, Jessay, Robert, and Bill tell all about their lives, revealing who they are beyond TikTok, where they came from, and how they found one another. They offer their collective wisdom on a rainbow of topics, including coming out, sex, gay liberation, gay marriage, AIDS, aging, and saving the best act for last. Outrageous and hilarious, refreshingly earnest and unfiltered, engaging and insightful, they've been through it all--harassment, divorce, depression, bankruptcy, even near-death experiences. Between the four of them, there's not much of life they haven't seen or done, and now they dish on everything from fitness and fabulous dinner parties to church and orgies.

An intimate and moving portrait of four friends who have experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly, and are still looking forward to the best that is yet to come, The Old Gays Guide to the Good Life is a celebration of lives lived to the fullest--sometimes against all odds--a lesson for all of us that age is just a number and that getting older can be audaciously fun.

"Just a few years ago, Schuyler Bailar rose to national and international prominence when he became the first openly transgender athlete to compete on an NCAA Division 1 team in any sport. A top high school prospect, Schuyler had been recruited by Harvard for the women's team, but after taking a gap year to address mental health and ultimately to transition, Schuyler swam instead for Harvard's men's team. Since then, Schuyler has become a go to expert on gender identity for the media and has given hundreds of talks on gender literacy and inclusion. But at the same time, Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked in her confirmation hearing to define the word "woman," a seemingly simple question that in that particular arena was too politically charged for her to answer. Meanwhile, anti-gay and anti-trans legislation in Florida and Texas shows that trans rights are under attack. Transgender suicides are up, transgender hotlines are buzzing, and the only thing that is certain is this: America is long overdue for a reckoning with gender. He/She/They uses storytelling and the art of conversation to give us the fundamental language and context of gender so that we can meet people where they are and pave the way to understanding, acceptance, and inclusion. As a transgender man, inclusion advocate, and LGBTQ educator, Schuyler Bailar is more than familiar with the myriad questions that come up. In He/She/They, he addresses them head on, such as why being transgender is not a choice, why pronouns are important, and what is biological sex. But this book is more than a book on allyship; many of Schuyler's vast followers come to him for support; one of his most popular reels is speaking to a young trans person who asks, "does it get better?" Schuyler speaks to everyone, no matter where they are. In the same way that So You Want to Talk About Race defined the conversation about race in American, He/She/They is an essential, urgent, and, as Schuyler points out, potentially life-saving book that will change the conversation about gender identity and how we talk about it, moving us toward a more equitable future"--

***An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller!***

From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date--a deeply intimate memoir of discovery, found family, and self-acceptance. The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag.

Central to RuPaul's success has been his chameleonic adaptability. From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world's largest television franchises, RuPaul's ever-shifting nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and supermogul. Yet that adaptability has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir, his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly known.

In The House of Hidden Meanings, RuPaul strips away all artifice and recounts the story of his life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental mother, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes of Atlanta and New York, to finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his own biography life-story, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history.

Here in RuPaul's singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living--a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of chosen family, the importance of harnessing what makes you different, and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.

A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag. "I've always loved to view the world with analytical eyes, examining what lies beneath the surface. Here, the focus is on my own life--as RuPaul Andre Charles," says RuPaul.

If we're all born naked and the rest is drag, then this is RuPaul totally out of drag. This is RuPaul stripped bare.

“MONUMENTAL.” (The New Yorker) • “HEROIC.” (The New York Times Book Review ) • “THRILLING.” (Los Angeles Times) • “PRISMATIC.” (The Atlantic)

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
A Finalist for the the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, NBC New York, Kirkus Reviews, The Brooklyn Public Library
A Must-Read: Nylon, The Minnesota Star Tribune, Ms., San Francisco Chronicle, The Bay Area Reporter, Town & Country, InsideHook, W

From the acclaimed biographer Cynthia Carr, the first full portrait of the queer icon and Warhol superstar Candy Darling.

You must always be yourself no matter what the price . . . Don’t dare destroy your passion for the sake of others. 

The Warhol superstar and transgender icon Candy Darling was glamour personified, but she was without a real place in the world.

Growing up on Long Island, lonely and quiet and queer, she was enchanted by Hollywood starlets like Kim Novak. She found her turn in New York’s early Off-Off-Broadway theater scene, in Warhol’s films Flesh and Women in Revolt, and at the famed nightclub Max’s Kansas City. She inspired songs by Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones. She became friends with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, borrowed a dress from Lauren Hutton, posed for Richard Avedon, and performed alongside Tennessee Williams in his own play.

Yet Candy lived on the edge, relying on the kindness of strangers, friends, and her quietly devoted mother, sleeping on couches and in cheap hotel rooms, keeping a part of herself hidden. She wanted to be a star, but mostly she wanted to be loved. Her last diary entry was: “I shall try to be grateful for life . . . Cannot imagine who would want me.” Candy died at twenty-nine in 1974, just as conversations about gender and identity were beginning to enter the broader culture. She never knew it, but she changed the world.

Brimming with all the fizz and wildness of New York in the 1960s and ’70s, this is the first biography of this extraordinary figure—an unintentional pioneer who became an icon. Cynthia Carr’s Candy Darling is packed with tales of luminaries, gossip, and meticulous research, laced with Candy’s words and her friends’ recollections, and signals Candy’s long-overdue return to the spotlight.

Includes 16 pages of color photographs

"Tart, sassy, and hilariously funny from start to finish, Rainbow’s book offers laughter as a tonic for troubled times." — Kirkus Reviews

A new essay collection by adored comedian and New York Times bestseller Randy Rainbow

Randy Rainbow has a few things on his mind that he wants to talk about. As a savvy social commentator tuned into the public discourse, his unfailing intuition tells him that the perspective everyone in America is clamoring for is that of a privileged white male complaining about a bunch of shit. While writing his New York Times bestseller Playing With Myself, Randy saw an America in crisis. He knew that what the country needed to get back on its high heels was a hard-hitting gay agenda and here it is - Low Hanging Fruit - a book filled with sparkling whines, a few flutes of champagne problems and a Birkin bag of the most pressing issues facing the US, from dancing TikTok grandmas, to Elon Musk, the GOP, and Donald Jessica Trump.

On the down low, Randy dishes up some sex talk about life on the dating apps, Craigslist hookups and more. (“Gurl, wait till you hear the story about the fireman and the goggles...”) Randy’s longtime companion, the glamorous Chinchilla Silver Persian cat Tippi, makes an appearance as she dishes about her life Chez Randy. And, in the most highly anticipated sequel since Top Gun: Maverick, Randy continues the conversation with his mother, Gwen, because who knows better than the Jewish mother of a gay man about how to solve America’s problems? Randy Rainbow’s Low Hanging Fruit – a bold manifesto for a nation desperately in need of a makeover.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The irreverent and candid coming-of-age memoir of Nicole Maines, trailblazing trans actress, activist—and sometimes someone who’s just existing, which is actually pretty hard!

Nicole Maines knows a little something about “happily ever after”—not just because she’s a self-professed expert in the Disney princess canon, but because she’s lived it. After coming out at an early age, her family had not only to educate themselves, but also those around them as they fought and won a landmark court case in the state of Maine before she graduated high school. She made it into college, got the guy, and finally had The Surgery™. She achieved her lifelong goal of becoming an actress when she landed a major role in the CW’s Supergirl, playing television’s very first live-action transgender superhero.

Cue sappy music and sunsets, because we’ve got ourselves a happy ending, right?

Ha! As if.

For the first time, in her own words, Nicole tells the story of her journey from childhood in rural Maine to the spotlights of Hollywood, sharing the lessons she’s learned along the way. With clever wit and unflinching honesty, she tackles some of the most insidious messaging absorbed by queer kids and all young women, from the idea that any one thing can (or should) ever really “fix” you, to wondering what’s wrong with you when things don’t always feel better, and reminding us that, sometimes, a happy ending is only the beginning of the story.

What is the difference between men and women? Jennifer Finney Boylan, bestselling author of She’s Not There and co-author of Mad Honey with Jodi Picoult, examines the divisions—as well as the common ground—between the genders, and reflects on her own experiences, both difficult and joyful, as a transgender American.

Jennifer Finney Boylan’s She’s Not There was the first bestselling work written by a transgender American. Since its publication twenty years ago, she has become the go-to person for insight into the impact of gender on our lives, from the food we eat to the dreams we dream, both for ourselves and for our children. But Cleavage is more than a deep dive into gender identity; it’s also a look at the difference between coming out as trans in 2000—when many people reacted to Boylan’s transition with love—and the present era of blowback and fear. 

How does gender affect our sense of self? Our body image? The passage of time? The friends we lose—and keep? Boylan considers her womanhood, reflects on the boys and men who shaped her, and reconceives of herself as a writer, activist, parent, and spouse. With heart-wrenching honesty, she illustrates the feeling of liminality that followed her to adulthood, but demonstrates the redemptive power of love through it all.

With Boylan’s trademark humor and poignancy, Cleavage is a sharp, witty, and captivating look at the triumphs and losses of a life lived in two genders. Cleavage provides hope for a future in which we all have the freedom to live joyfully as men, as women, and in the space between us.

Gender transition is different for everyone—get the support you need for your unique journey

Gender Transition For Dummies is an essential resource for transgender and non-binary readers who are considering the various elements of what is often called gender transition. It starts at the beginning, answering questions like, “What is transgender and what is non-binary?” and, “How Do I Know If I'm Transgender?” Learn to navigate social transition, prepare for gender-affirming surgery, tell loved ones about your transition plans, find a supportive community, and take care of your mental health.

Undertaking any of these steps is a big decision, and it isn't always easy. With this Dummies guide, you'll know that you aren't alone, and you'll get tips from experts on advocating for yourself.

• Manage gender dysphoria, find supportive care providers, and protect your mental health
• Know what to expect with hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgery
• Learn how to change your legal documents and ask people to use the name and pronouns that feel right for you

Gender Transition For Dummies is here to support and guide the transgender and gender-diverse community—and their loved ones—and help them to thrive.

Jon Savage, the author of the canonical England's Dreaming, explodes new ground in this electrifying history of pop music from 1955 through 1979. In demonstrating that gay and lesbian artists were responsible for many of the greatest cultural breakthroughs in the last half of the twentieth century, he shows that it was their secretly encoded music--appealing to a closeted but greatly oppressed public--which led to the historic dismantling of discriminatory gay laws and the fusion of queer and straight culture.



Fittingly, Savage's kaleidoscopic work begins with the pomp-and-pompadour appearance of Little Richard, whose relentlessly driving sound, replete with gospel shrieks and sexual contortions, enthralled a generation of 1950s stultified white teenagers. Things soon went mainstream, as Elvis enthralled a nation with his seductive low moans and bump-and-grind twists, heavily derivative of Black music, while James Dean and Rock Hudson became the face of 1950s Hollywood; yet this explosion of queer expression remained covert and could not be accepted for what it was.



While music, with supporting roles from cinema and fashion, became the key medium through which homosexuality could be clandestinely enacted, overt expressions of gay behavior were met with arrests and crackdowns. While hippies reveled in 1967's "Summer of Love," gays remained "harassed by police, demonized by the media and politicians, imprisoned simply for being who they were." J. Edgar Hoover, himself a closeted homosexual, continued to spy on homosexual deviants; CBS's Mike Wallace aired an invidious show about homosexuality; and the New York police continued to raid gay bars.



Yet the music itself produced a cultural eruption that simply could not be stanched. While Bette Midler sang "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boys" to a Continental Baths audience of 600 gay men, all naked except for towels, David Bowie "blew the whole topic wide open" and "became the most totemic pop star of his generation." Even though roadblocks remained, the gear-grinding crunch of the music signaled that the gay civil rights movement could no longer be suppressed.



Ending the narrative with the sudden collapse of disco, The Secret Public asserts then that the genie was out of the bottle, that queer culture had finally entered the mainstream, producing a transcendent vision of pop culture that could never be marginalized again.

"I'm determined to get to know the real Tommy, to trace the shape of my scars."



For years, Tommy Dorfman turned her back on her thoughts and emotions, hoping they'd simply go away.



After a lifetime of confusion, she finally gained clarity around her gender and began to transition.



But there were still parts of herself she'd locked away, elements of her story that she needed, for the first time, to fully confront.



She sought guidance in a tarot deck.



Maybe This Will Save Me is structured through the cards of that tarot pull. The youngest of five children, she grappled with her own identity from an early age and spent her teenage years numbed by drugs and alcohol. At the same time, she harbored dreams of creative stardom and a desire to make herself seen. Charting her early struggles in theater, her rise to fame in 13 Reasons Why, her hard-fought journey to sobriety, and the relationships that shaped her, Maybe This Will Save Me is a luminously written, bracingly honest, and structurally audacious memoir of an artist whose vision transcends mediums.

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Featured in The New York Times's Nonfiction to Read This Spring

Black transgender luminary Tourmaline brings to life the first definitive biography of the revolutionary activist Marsha P. Johnson, one of the most important and remarkable figures in LGBTQIA+ history, revealing her story, her impact, and her legacy.

“She is the preeminent and foremost scholar on Marsha P. Johnson. . . . To us, Tourmaline is the expert.”—Janet Mock, Allure

“Thank god the revolution has begun, honey.” Rumor has it that after Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, she picked up a shard of broken mirror to fix her makeup. Marsha, a legendary Black transgender activist, embodied both the beauty and the struggle of the early gay rights movement. Her work sparked the progress we see today, yet there has never been a definitive record of her life. Until now. 

Written with sparkling prose, Tourmaline’s richly researched biography Marsha finally brings this iconic figure to life, in full color. We vividly meet Marsha as both an activist and artist: She performed with RuPaul and with the internationally renowned drag troupe The Hot Peaches. She was a muse to countless artists from Andy Warhol to the band Earth, Wind & Fire. And she continues to inspire people today.

Marsha didn’t wait to be freed; she declared herself free and told the world to catch up. Her story promises to inspire readers to live as their most liberated, unruly, vibrant, and whole selves.

Expert quilter Kim Taylor shares a unique and powerful story of the celebration of the first Juneteenth, from the perspective of a young girl.

On June 19, 1865, in Galveston, General Gordon Granger of the Union Army delivered the message that African Americans in Texas were free. Since then, Juneteenth, as the day has come to be known, has steadily gained recognition throughout the United States. ln 2020,a powerful wave of protests and demonstrations calling for racial justice and equality brought new awareness to the significance of the holiday.

A Flag for Juneteenth depicts a close-knit community of enslaved African Americans on a plantation in Texas, the day before the announcement is to be made that all enslaved people are free. Young Huldah, who is preparing to celebrate her tenth birthday, can’t possibly anticipate how much her life will change that Juneteenth morning. The story follows Huldah and her community as they process the news of their freedom and celebrate together by creating a community freedom flag. 

Debut author and artist Kim Taylor sets this story apart by applying her skills as an expert quilter. Each of the illustrations has been lovingly hand sewn and quilted, giving the book a homespun, tactile quality that is altogether unique. 

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

A lyrical picture book about our newest national holiday, Juneteenth follows the annual celebration in Galveston, Texas--birthplace of Juneteenth--through the eyes of a boy coming to understand his place in Black American history in a story from three Texan creators.

A young Black child experiences the magic of the Juneteenth parade for the first time with their family as they come to understand the purpose of the party that happens every year--and why they celebrate their African American history!

The poetic text includes selected lyrics from "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the unofficial Black National Anthem, and the vibrant art illuminates the beauty of this moment of Black joy, celebrated across the nation. This vibrant adventure through the city streets invites young readers to make a joyful noise about freedom for all.

In this “urgently relevant”* collection featuring the landmark essay “The Case for Reparations,” the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me “reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath”*—including the election of Donald Trump. 

New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times • USA Today • Time • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Essence • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Week • Kirkus Reviews

*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.”

But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period—and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective—the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.

We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates’s iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates’s own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.

Featured in The New York Times's Nonfiction to Read This Spring

Black transgender luminary Tourmaline brings to life the first definitive biography of the revolutionary activist Marsha P. Johnson, one of the most important and remarkable figures in LGBTQIA+ history, revealing her story, her impact, and her legacy.

“She is the preeminent and foremost scholar on Marsha P. Johnson. . . . To us, Tourmaline is the expert.”—Janet Mock, Allure

“Thank god the revolution has begun, honey.” Rumor has it that after Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, she picked up a shard of broken mirror to fix her makeup. Marsha, a legendary Black transgender activist, embodied both the beauty and the struggle of the early gay rights movement. Her work sparked the progress we see today, yet there has never been a definitive record of her life. Until now. 

Written with sparkling prose, Tourmaline’s richly researched biography Marsha finally brings this iconic figure to life, in full color. We vividly meet Marsha as both an activist and artist: She performed with RuPaul and with the internationally renowned drag troupe The Hot Peaches. She was a muse to countless artists from Andy Warhol to the band Earth, Wind & Fire. And she continues to inspire people today.

Marsha didn’t wait to be freed; she declared herself free and told the world to catch up. Her story promises to inspire readers to live as their most liberated, unruly, vibrant, and whole selves.

A follow-up to the wildly successful What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, this collection of essays from sixteen notable writers breaks the silence on the complex—and sometimes contentious—relationships we have with our fathers.

What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About has become a rare gem in the literary world. Both a viral sensation online and chosen by Oprah Daily as one of the best nonfiction books of the past two decades, it is an essential collection that dives into the personal and poignant topics we often struggle to discuss with those who are meant to know and love us best.

This captivating follow-up, edited by Michele Filgate, tackles the intricate and challenging relationships we have with our dads, breaking the silence around these vital connections. Andrew Altschul reflects on the life-altering experience of becoming a father and how it reshaped his view of his own dad’s parenting. Isle McElroy shares memories of weekends spent tagging along as their father fixed up the homes of their wealthier neighbors. Jaquira Díaz delves into her father’s history in 1970s Williamsburg, uncovering the roots of their shared restlessness. Tomás Q. Morín paints a raw portrait of an absentee father, while Kelly McMasters portrays a loving and dedicated one. Maurice Carlos Ruffin insightfully captures a father who communicated through his integrity rather than words. Jiordan Castle reveals how we can love our fathers from a distance and Susan Muaddi Darraj explores the particular challenges of “eldest daughter syndrome” as a daughter of Palestinian immigrants.

With moments that are both humorous and deeply moving, this anthology is the second act that many have been eagerly waiting for.

Contributions by Michele Filgate, Andrew Altschul, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Dylan Landis, Jaquira Díaz, Kelly McMasters, Isle McElroy, Susan Muaddi Darraj, Tomás Q. Morín, Robin Reif, Heather Sellers, Jiordan Castle, Nayomi Munaweera, Joanna Rakoff, and Julie Buntin.

The #1 New York Times bestselling authors and award-winning podcasters Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle created We Can Do Hard Things—the guidebook for being alive—to help fellow travelers find their way through life.

When you travel through a new country, you need a guidebook. 

When you travel through love, heartbreak, joy, parenting, friendship, uncertainty, aging, grief, new beginnings—life—you need a guidebook, too. 

We Can Do Hard Things is the guidebook for being alive.

Every day, Glennon Doyle spirals around the same questions: Why am I like this? How do I figure out what I want? How do I know what to do? Why can’t I be happy? Am I doing this right?

The harder life gets, the less likely she is to remember the answers she’s spent her life learning. She wonders: I’m almost fifty years old. I’ve overcome a hell of a lot. Why do I wake up every day having forgotten everything I know?

Glennon’s compasses are her sister, Amanda, and her wife, Abby. Recently, in the span of a single year, Glennon was diagnosed with anorexia, Amanda was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Abby’s beloved brother died. For the first time, they were all lost at the same time. So they turned toward the only thing that’s ever helped them find their way: deep, honest conversations with other brave, kind, wise people.

They asked each other, their dearest friends, and 118 of the world’s most brilliant wayfinders: As you’ve traveled these roads—marriage, parenting, work, recovery, heartbreak, aging, new beginnings—have you collected any wisdom that might help us find our way?

As Glennon, Abby, and Amanda wrote down every life-saving answer, they discovered two things:

1. No matter what road we are walking down, someone else has traveled the same terrain.
2. The wisdom of our fellow travelers will light our way.

They put all of that wisdom in one place: We Can Do Hard Things—a place to turn when you feel clueless and alone, when you need clarity in the chaos, or when you want wise company on the path of life.

We are all life travelers. We don’t have to travel alone. We Can Do Hard Things is our guidebook.

Featuring wisdom from: ALOK • Sara Bareilles • Dr. Yaba Blay • Kate Bowler • adrienne maree brown • Brandi Carlile • Brittney Cooper • Brittany Packnett Cunningham • Kaitlin Curtice • Megan Falley • Jane Fonda • Stephanie Foo • Ashley C. Ford • Ina Garten • Roxane Gay • Andrea Gibson • Elizabeth Gilbert • Dr. Orna Guralnik • Tricia Hersey • Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson • Luvvie Ajayi Jones • Dr. Becky Kennedy • Emily Nagoski • Esther Perel • Ai-Jen Poo • Cole Arthur Riley • Dr. Alexandra Solomon • Cheryl Strayed • Sonya Renee Taylor • Ocean Vuong • And many others

"The perfect cocktail of well-plotted, good-hearted, murderous fun." --Nina Simon, bestselling author of Mother-Daughter Murder Night

THEY'D KILL TO BE WIDOWS.

Three best friends turn to murder to collect on their husbands' life insurance policies... But the husbands have a plan of their own in this darkly funny debut that will delight readers from the first laugh to the final twist.

After thirty years of friendship, Pam dreams of her perfect retirement with Nancy, Shalisa, Marlene, and their husbands--until their husbands pool their funds for an investment that goes terribly wrong. Suddenly, their golden years are looking as dreary as their marriages.

But when the women discover their husbands have seven-figure life insurance policies, a new dream forms. And this time, they need a hitman.

Meanwhile, their husbands are working on their own secret retirement scheme and when things begin to go sideways, they fear it's backfired. The husbands scramble to stay alive...but soon realize they may not be quick enough to outmaneuver their wives.

Two women haunted by their sisters’ unsolved disappearances band together in this captivating mystery from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of All Good People Here and host of the #1 true crime podcast Crime Junkie.

“Sharp, slick, and chilling, with a whiplash ending you’ll never see coming.”—Jeneva Rose, author of Home Is Where the Bodies Are

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

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

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

In this dazzling debut, Stegner Fellow Jemimah Wei explores the formation and dissolution of family bonds in a story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing that failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.

When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is. In the story of a family and its contention with the roiling changes of our rapidly modernizing, winner-take-all world, The Original Daughter is a major literary debut, rife with emotional clarity and searing social insight.

“A true modern classic. The Manor of Dreams is beautiful, eerie, and woven with enough intrigue to hold all who enter captive. Christina Li remains unmatched in breathing characters to life—and the hauntings thereafter.” —Chloe Gong, New York Times bestselling author of Immortal Longings

Mexican Gothic meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in Christina Li’s haunting novel about the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it.

Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career to live out the rest of her life as a recluse.

Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will, and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood home: Vivian’s grand, sprawling, Southern California garden estate. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead—one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement.

In hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. As Vivian’s daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother’s life, disturbing visions and bizarre behaviors start to take hold of everyone in the house, forcing them to realize they are being haunted by something far more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth behind the house’s origins and the last, tragic summer they spent there—or will they cling to their secrets until it’s too late?

Told in dual timelines, spanning three generations, and brimming with romance, betrayal, ambition, and sacrifice, The Manor of Dreams is a thrilling family gothic that examines the true cost of the American Dream—and what happens when the roots we set down in this country turn to rot.

A brand-new epic fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Joe Abercrombie, featuring a notorious band of anti-heroes on a delightfully bloody and raucous journey

Holy work sometimes requires unholy deeds.

Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.

Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it's a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.

Featuring beautiful spray-painted edges with vibrant designed endpapers.

It’s a thin line between love and love-hating in the newest laugh out loud, all the feels rom-com by New York Times bestselling author Katherine Center. 

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

Plus, Cole and Hutch are brothers. And they don’t get along. Next stop: paradise! But paradise is messier than it seems. As Katie gets entangled with Hutch (the most scientifically good-looking man she has ever seen . . . but maybe a bit of a love hater), along with his colorful aunt Rue and his rescue Great Dane, she gets trapped in a lie. Or two. Swim lessons, helicopter flights, conga lines, drinking contests, hurricanes, and stolen kisses ensue—along with chances to tell the truth, to face old fears, and to be truly brave at last. 

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

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“Dazzling…The Names is startlingly joyful and paced like a thriller…Knapp tirelessly and beautifully replicates not just loss and grief but endless rebirth and delight.”—The Washington Post

“Elegant…this is a wholly original work.—People Magazine

“A magnificent novel, thrumming with life in all its pain and precariousness, yet suffused with the glorious possibilities of love and redemption.” —Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Horse


The extraordinary novel that asks: Can a name change the course of a life?

In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...

Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

With exceptional sensitivity and depth, Knapp draws us into the story of one family, told through a prism of what-ifs, causing us to consider the "one . . . precious life" we are given. The book’s brilliantly imaginative structure, propulsive storytelling, and emotional, gut-wrenching power are certain to make The Names a modern classic.

“The Emperor of Gladness is a poetic, dramatic and vivid story. Epic in its sweep, the novel also handles intimacy and love with delicacy and deep originality. Hai and Grazina are taken from the margins of American life by Ocean Vuong and, by dint of great sympathy and imaginative genius, placed at the very center of our world.” —Colm Tóibín, author of Long Island and Brooklyn

“A masterwork.” —Bryan Washington, author of Palaver and Family Meal

Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

A momentous and diverse anthology of the influences and inspirations of Yiddish voices in America—radical, dangerous, and seductive, but also sweet, generous, and full of life—edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert. 

Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are based on Holocaust survivors? And how has Yiddish, a language without a country, influenced Hollywood? These and other questions are explored in this stunning and rich anthology of the interplay of Yiddish and American culture, edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert. 

It starts with the arrival of Ashkenazi immigrants to New York City’s Lower East Side and follows Yiddish as it moves into Hollywood, Broadway, literature, politics, and resistance. We take deep dives into cuisine, language, popular culture, and even Yiddish in the other Americas, including Canada, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia. The book presents a bountiful menu of genres: essays, memoir, song, letters, poems, recipes, cartoons, conversations, and much more. Authors include Nobel Prize–winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and luminaries such as Grace Paley, Cynthia Ozick, Chaim Grade, Michael Chabon, Abraham Cahan, Sophie Tucker, Blume Lempel, Irving Howe, Art Spiegelman, Alfred Kazin, Harvey Pekar, Ben Katchor, Paula Vogel, and Liana Finck.

Readers will laugh and cry as they delve into personal stories of assimilation and learn about people from a diverse variety of backgrounds, Jewish and not, who have made the language their own. The Yiddish saying states: Der mentsh trakht un got lakht. Man plans and God laughs. How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish illustrates how those plans are full of zest, dignity, and tremendous humanity.

"Twitty makes the case that Blackness and Judaism coexist in beautiful harmony, and this is manifested in the foods and traditions from both cultures that Black Jews incorporate into their daily lives...Twitty wishes to start a conversation where people celebrate their differences and embrace commonalities. By drawing on personal narratives, his own and others', and exploring different cultures, Twitty's book offers important insight into the journeys of Black Jews."--Library Journal

"A fascinating, cross-cultural smorgasbord grounded in the deep emotional role food plays in two influential American communities."--Booklist

The James Beard award-winning author of the acclaimed The Cooking Gene explores the cultural crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine and issues of memory, identity, and food.

In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them.

The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. Koshersoul also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty's own passage to and within Judaism.

As intimate, thought-provoking, and profound as The Cooking Gene, this remarkable book teases the senses as it offers sustenance for the soul.

Koshersoul includes 48-50 recipes.

Bitter Southerner 2024 Summer Reading pick - Garden & Gun fall cookbooks pick - The Nosher Best Jewish Cookbooks of 2023 - The Local Palate Best Cookbooks of 2023 - Food Network 35 Best Jewish-Authored Cookbooks

A poignant--and delicious--compendium of South Carolina Jewish life revealed through food and story

Where people go, so goes their food. In Kugels & Collards: Stories of Food, Family, and Tradition in Jewish South Carolina, Rachel Gordin Barnett and Lyssa Kligman Harvey celebrate the unique and diverse food history of Jewish South Carolina. They gather stories and recipes from diverse Jewish sources--Sephardic and Ashkenazi families who have been in the state for hundreds of years, descendants of Holocaust survivors, and more recent immigrants from Russia and Israel--and explore how cherished dishes were influenced by available ingredients and complemented by African American and regional culinary traditions. These stories are a vital part of the South's "Jewish geography" and foodways, stretching across state lines to shape southern culture. On the southern Jewish table, many cultures are savored. Extensively illustrated with original and archival photographs, Kugels & Collards collects includes more than eighty recipes from seventy contributors. Barnett and Harvey draw on family cookbooks and troves of personal recipes and highlight Jewish staples like kreplach dumplings and stuffed cabbage as well as adaptations of southern favorites such as peach cobbler, plus modern fusions like grits and lox casserole, and of course kugels and collards. Kugels & Collards invites readers into family homes, businesses, and community centers to share meals and memories.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Town & Country

Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.
 
From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.

A Sydney Taylor Gold Medalist 

A National Jewish Book Award Winner 



This warm and welcoming New Year celebration invites readers to learn about Rosh Hashanah and Lunar New Year traditions and to reflect on the rich blends of cultures and traditions in their own lives.



For this multicultural family, inspired by the author's own, two New Years mean twice as much to celebrate! In the fall, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, offers an opportunity to bake challah, dip apples in honey, and lift voices in song. In the spring, Lunar New Year brings a chance to eat dumplings, watch dragon dances, and release glowing lanterns that light up the sky.



With bright, joyful prose and luminous illustrations, Richard Ho and Lynn Scurfield invite readers of all backgrounds to experience the beauty of two New Year traditions, paying homage to the practices that make each unique while illuminating the values of abundance, family, and hope that they share.



Full of opportunities to reflect on the rich blends of cultures and traditions in our lives, this moving picture book is a beautiful reminder that, at heart, our celebrations might not be so different after all.



TWO BEAUTIFUL NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS: This book is brimming with opportunities for readers to learn about cultures different from their own--from Jewish readers learning about Lunar New Year, to Chinese readers learning about Rosh Hashanah, to readers from other cultures being invited to experience both!



A WELCOMING READ: This content-rich picture book encourages readers of all backgrounds to reflect more deeply on the blending of traditions in their own families and communities.



A GORGEOUS GIFT: Vibrant illustrations and a lyrical narrative with strong backmatter will make this a treasured gift.





Perfect for:

• Parents, grandparents, and caregivers
• Teachers, educators, and librarians
• Lunar New Year and Rosh Hashanah gift giving
• Readers seeking celebrations of different cultures and faiths
• Anyone who appreciates beautifully illustrated, multicultural picture books

The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • The incredible saga of the German-Jewish immigrants—with now familiar names like Goldman and Sachs, Kuhn and Loeb, Warburg and Schiff, Lehman and Seligman—who profoundly influenced the rise of modern finance (and so much more), from the New York Times best-selling author of Sons of Wichita

Joseph Seligman arrived in the United States in 1837, with the equivalent of $100 sewn into the lining of his pants. Then came the Lehman brothers, who would open a general store in Montgomery, Alabama. Not far behind were Solomon Loeb and Marcus Goldman, among the “Forty-Eighters” fleeing a Germany that had relegated Jews to an underclass.

These industrious immigrants would soon go from peddling trinkets and buying up shopkeepers’ IOUs to forming what would become some of the largest investment banks in the world—Goldman Sachs, Kuhn Loeb, Lehman Brothers, J. & W. Seligman & Co. They would clash and collaborate with J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, Jay Gould, and other famed tycoons of the era. And their firms would help to transform the United States from a debtor nation into a financial superpower, capitalizing American industry and underwriting some of the twentieth century’s quintessential companies, like General Motors, Macy’s, and Sears. Along the way, they would shape the destiny not just of American finance but of the millions of Eastern European Jews who spilled off steamships in New York Harbor in the early 1900s, including Daniel Schulman’s paternal grandparents. 

In The Money Kings, Schulman unspools a sweeping narrative that traces the interconnected origin stories of these financial dynasties. He chronicles their paths to Wall Street dominance, as they navigated the deeply antisemitic upper class of the Gilded Age, and the complexities of the Civil War, World War I, and the Zionist movement that tested both their burgeoning empires and their identities as Americans, Germans, and Jews.

Inspired by a true story, this graphic novel follows a Jewish immigrant's efforts to help his Japanese neighbors while they're incarcerated during World War II. Winner, Best in Young Adult Non-Fictionfrom the Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards

"A powerful book about advocating for friends and neighbors during times of great division." --Kazu Kibuishi, #1 New York Times bestselling author-illustrator of the Amulet series

An evocative and beautiful graphic novel revealing the truth of one man's extraordinary efforts, We Are Not Strangers converges two perspectives into a single portrait of a community's struggle with race, responsibility, and what it truly means to be an American.

Marco Calvo always knew his grandfather, affectionately called Papoo, was a good man. After all, he was named for him. A first-generation Jewish immigrant, Papoo was hardworking, smart, and caring.

When Papoo peacefully passes away, Marco expects the funeral to be simple. But he' caught off guard by something unusual. Among his close family and friends are mourners he doesn't recognize--Japanese American families--and no one is quite sure who they are or why they are at the service. How did these strangers know his grandfather so well?

Set in the multicultural Central District of Seattle during World War II and inspired by author Josh Tuininga's family experiences, We Are Not Strangers explores a unique situation of Japanese and Jewish Americans living side by side in a country at war.

Following Papoo's perspective, we learn of his life as a Sephardic Jewish immigrant and his friendship with Sam Akiyama, a Japanese man whose life is upended by Executive Order 9066, which authorized the incarceration of nearly all Japanese Americans and residents of Japanese ancestry. Determined to keep Sam's business afloat while he and his family are unjustly imprisoned, he and Papoo create a plan that will change the Akiyama's lives forever.

"At its core, a relatable tale of friendship, shared experiences of discrimination, and the power of individuals to make a difference." -- The Beat

Introduction by award-winning author Ken Mochizuki 

Afterword by Devin Naar, author of Jewish Salonica

The long-awaited memoir by the superstar of stage, screen, recordings, and television

Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in the history of popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major motion picture. In My Name Is Barbra, she tells her own story about her life and extraordinary career, from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl on stage and winning the Oscar for that performance on film. Then came a long string of successes in every medium in the years that followed. The book is, like Barbra herself, frank, funny, opinionated, and charming. She recounts her early struggles to become an actress, eventually turning to singing to earn a living; the recording of some of her acclaimed albums; the years of effort involved in making Yentl; her direction of The Prince of Tides; her friendships with figures ranging from Marlon Brando to Madeleine Albright; her political advocacy; and the fulfillment she’s found in her marriage to James Brolin.
 
No entertainer’s memoir has been more anticipated than Barbra Streisand’s, and this engrossing and delightful book will be eagerly welcomed by her millions of fans.

Perfect for readers of A Woman of No Importance, Three Ordinary Girls, and Eleanor: A Life comes the first-ever biography of Anna Marie Rosenberg, the Hungarian Jewish immigrant who became FDR’s closest advisor during World War II and, according to Life, “the most important official woman in the world” —a woman of many firsts, whose story, forgotten for too long, is extraordinary, inspiring, and uniquely American. Her life ran parallel to the front lines of history yet her influence on 20th century America, from the New Deal to the Cold War and beyond, has never before been told.

A Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s special envoy to Europe in World War II she went where the president couldn’t go. She was among the first Allied women to enter a liberated concentration camp, and stood in the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s mountain retreat, days after its capture. She guided the direction of the G.I. Bill of Rights and the Manhattan Project. Though Anna Rosenberg emerged from modest immigrant beginnings, equipped with only a high school education, she was the real power behind national policies critical to America winning the war and prospering afterward. Astonishingly, her story remains largely forgotten.

With a disarming mix of charm and Tammany-hewn toughness, Rosenberg began her career in public relations in 1920s Manhattan. She became friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, who recommended Anna to her husband, who was then running for Governor of New York. As FDR’s unofficial adviser, Rosenberg soon wielded enormous influence—no less potent for being subtle. Roosevelt dubbed her “my Mrs. Fix-It.” Her extraordinary career continued after his death.

By 1950, she was tapped to become the assistant secretary of defense—the highest position ever held by a woman in the US military—prompting Senator Joe McCarthy to wage an unsuccessful smear campaign against her. In 1962, she organized John F. Kennedy’s infamous birthday gala, sitting beside him while Marilyn Monroe sang. Until the end of her life, Rosenberg fought tirelessly for causes from racial integration to women’s equality to national health care.

More than the story of one remarkable woman, The Confidante explores who gets to be at the forefront of history, and why. Though she was not quite a hidden figure, Rosenberg’s position as “the power behind,” combined with her status as an immigrant and a Jewish woman, served to diminish her importance. In this inspiring, impeccably researched, and revelatory book, Christopher C. Gorham at last affords Anna Rosenberg the recognition she so richly deserves.

“Far and away the most important woman in the American government, and perhaps the most important official female in the world.” —LIFE magazine, 1952

Inspired by history, a riveting novel of love and friendship, motherhood and ambition, and one woman’s fight to be a Supreme Court justice.

Half of the United States is waiting for Justice Sylvia Olin Bernstein to die. The other half is praying for her to hold on. At 83, “the contemptuous S.O.B.” doesn’t have much time left. What she has is a story, one she has wrested from the grip of history to tell herself—of how she rose to her historic position on the Supreme Court, and the barriers she broke along the way.

Told over fifty years, from losing her mother at a young age, to falling in love, to navigating an unplanned pregnancy and motherhood, to learning how to spar with a sexist mentor, Sylvia’s personal story reveals the intimate truth about who she was as she ascended to her modern throne: not just a brilliant mind, but a daughter, a best friend, a wife, mother, and advocate. While caught in a dramatic tug of war between career and family, truth and convenience, progress and patience, she will be given a chance to change the course of American history – and give voice, at last, to the majority. 

Set against the vibrant sweep of the 20th century, THE MAJORITY brings us into the sacrifices, heartaches, and complex emotional life of a powerful woman ahead of her time, whose life and work turn out to have supreme stakes.

A poignant multicultural ode to family and what it means to create a home as one girl helps her Tía move away from her beloved Miami apartment.

When Estrella's Tía Fortuna has to say goodbye to her longtime Miami apartment building, The Seaway, to move to an assisted living community, Estrella spends the day with her. Tía explains the significance of her most important possessions from both her Cuban and Jewish culture, as they learn to say goodbye together and explore a new beginning for Tía.

A lyrical book about tradition, culture, and togetherness, Tía Fortuna's New Home explores Tía and Estrella's Sephardic Jewish and Cuban heritage. Through Tía's journey, Estrella will learn that as long as you have your family, home is truly where the heart is.

In her poignant debut graphic novel inspired by her own life, Emily Bowen Cohen embraces the complexity, meaning, and deep love that comes from being part of two vibrant tribes.

Mia is still getting used to living with her mom and stepfather, and to the new role their Jewish identity plays in their home. Feeling out of place at home and at her Jewish day school, Mia finds herself thinking more and more about her Muscogee father, who lives with his new family in Oklahoma. Her mother doesn't want to talk about him, but Mia can't help but feel like she's missing a part of herself without him in her life.

Soon, Mia makes a plan to use the gifts from her bat mitzvah to take a bus to Oklahoma--without telling her mom--to visit her dad and find the connection to her Muscogee side she knows is just as important as her Jewish side.

This graphic novel by Muscogee-Jewish writer and artist Emily Bowen Cohen is perfect for fans of American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. It is published by Heartdrum, an imprint that centers stories about contemporary Indigenous young people.

Winner of the 2019 Everett Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion Book of the Year Award from the Jewish Book Council

“A welcome addition to the American historical canon.”—Jordana Horn, New York Times Book Review 
 

Pamela S. Nadell weaves together the complex story of Jewish women in America—from colonial-era matriarch Grace Nathan and her great-granddaughter, poet Emma Lazarus, to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Recounting how Jewish women have been at the forefront of social, economic, and political causes for centuries, Nadell shows them fighting for suffrage, labor unions, civil rights, feminism, and religious rights—shaping a distinctly Jewish American identity.

New historical fiction from a Newbery Honor–winning author about how middle schooler Ariel Goldberg's life changes when her big sister elopes following the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, and she's forced to grapple with both her family's prejudice and the antisemitism she experiences, as she defines her own beliefs.

Twelve-year-old Ariel Goldberg's life feels like the moment after the final guest leaves the party. Her family's Jewish bakery runs into financial trouble, and her older sister has eloped with a young man from India following the Supreme Court decision that strikes down laws banning interracial marriage. As change becomes Ariel's only constant, she's left to hone something that will be with her always--her own voice.

An Instant NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A LOS ANGELES TIMES, BOSTON GLOBE, WALL STREET JOURNAL, and NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR according to Elle, Real Simple, and Kirkus Reviews

"Memoir gold: a profound and exquisitely rendered exploration of identity and the true meaning of family." --People Magazine

"Beautifully written and deeply moving--it brought me to tears more than once."--Ruth Franklin, The New York Times Book Review


From the acclaimed, best-selling memoirist, novelist--"a writer of rare talent" (Cheryl Strayed)-- and host of the hit podcast Family Secrets, comes a memoir about the staggering family secret uncovered by a genealogy test: an exploration of the urgent ethical questions surrounding fertility treatments and DNA testing, and a profound inquiry of paternity, identity, and love.

What makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience, and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us?
In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. She woke up one morning and her entire history--the life she had lived--crumbled beneath her.
Inheritance is a book about secrets--secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. It is the story of a woman's urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in--a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover.

TIME's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 New York Post's 30 Best Books for Spring Amazon's Best Books of the Month BookRiot's Best Books of April Queerty's Spring 2025 LGBTQ+ Books Town & Country's Must-Read Books of Spring 2025

tender, clear-eyed memoir, Accidentally on Purpose charts a journey full of purpose, belonging, and real love--a "recipe for a life worth living" (Stacy London).

Kristen Kish never could have imagined people on the street knowing her name--not when she was a carefree softball-tossing kid, in high school working at a pretzel stand, and not even when she finally found her true calling as a chef. In those early days, becoming a chef meant tethering oneself to a restaurant and working in the back of a kitchen, not a television set. But working in the spotlight happened naturally, even if the attention was totally unanticipated. And like most things in Kristen's life, the road was so much more winding and complicated than it may have appeared from the outside.

From growing up as an adoptee in the Midwest, to trying to fit in with all the other girls who were busy dating boys, to coming out and finding love when she least expected it, Kristen learned that, unlike a map, no set of plans or definitions can dictate or explain a life. In fact, accidents happen. Curveballs will come. And even the full-circle moments--like winning Top Chef to becoming its Emmy-nominated host years later--could not have guaranteed these opportunities.

In Accidentally on Purpose, what defines Kristen's story aren't the missteps or even the pleasant surprises that crop up but how she learned to find her voice and use it. Because while accidents may be unexpected, they don't have to be at odds with purpose. And as Kristen approaches life's milestones, big and small, with intention, she realizes at those junctures--the ones beyond the borders of the map, behind-the-scenes, and off camera--are where the decisions and discoveries are made. Where the unexpected meets the intentional. And that's where things get really interesting.

From the author of The Immortal King Rao, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a personal exploration of how technology companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding and connection

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: The New York Times, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Foreign Policy, Bustle, Alta, Ms. Magazine, Cultured, Denizen, The Millions, Lit Hub, Book Riot, and Electric Literature

When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive project: teaching AI-powered machines to write. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to build machines that not only could communicate but also could do all kinds of other activities, and better than humans ever could. But was this goal actually achievable? And if reached, would it lead to our liberation or our subjugation? 

Vauhini Vara, an award-winning tech journalist and editor, had long been grappling with these questions. In 2021, she asked a predecessor of ChatGPT to write about her sister’s death, resulting in an essay that was both more moving and more disturbing than she could have imagined. It quickly went viral.

The experience, revealing both the power and the danger of corporate-owned technologies, forced Vara to interrogate how these technologies have influenced her understanding of herself and the world around her—from discovering online chat rooms as a preteen to using social media as The Wall Street Journal’s first Facebook reporter to asking ChatGPT for writing advice—while compelling her to add to the trove of human-created material exploited for corporate financial gain. Interspersed throughout this investigation are her own Google searches, Amazon reviews, and the other raw material of internet life—including the viral AI experiment that started it all. Searches illuminates how technological capitalism is both shaping and exploiting human existence while proposing that by harnessing the collective creativity that makes humans unique, we might imagine a freer, more empowered relationship with our machines and, ultimately, with one another.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith distills creativity and the craft of writing with a practical guide perfect for fans of Elizabeth Gilbert’sBig Magicand Anne Lamott’sBird by Bird.

Drawing from her twenty years of teaching experience and her bestselling Substack newsletter, For Dear Life, Maggie Smith breaks down creativity into ten essential elements: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Each element is explored through short, inspiring, and craft-focused essays, followed by generative writing prompts. Dear Writer provides tools that artists of all experience levels can apply to their own creative practices and carry with them into all genres and all areas of life.

"A compelling, gory, ghostly romp."

--Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie



"This is what it felt like to live in New York City during lockdown: haunted, absurd, terrifying, ridiculous, and full of hungry ghosts."

--Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House



In this explosive horror novel, a woman is haunted by inner trauma, hungry ghosts, and a serial killer as she confronts the brutal violence experienced by East Asians during the pandemic.



Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. But none of that seems so terrible when she's already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister, Delilah, being pushed in front of a train.



Before fleeing the scene, the murderer shouted two words: bat eater.



So the bloody messes don't really bother Cora--she's more bothered by the germs on the subway railing, the bare hands of a stranger, the hidden viruses in every corner, and the bite marks on her coffee table. Of course, ever since Delilah was killed in front of her, Cora can't be sure what's real and what's in her head.



She pushes away all feelings and ignores the advice of her aunt to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open. But she can't ignore the dread in her stomach as she keeps finding bat carcasses at crime scenes, or the scary fact that all her recent cleanups have been the bodies of East Asian women.



As Cora will soon learn, you can't just ignore hungry ghosts.



For fans of Stephen Graham Jones and Gretchen Felker-Martin, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng is a wildly original, darkly humorous, and subversive contemporary novel from a striking new voice in horror.

 

The first novel in the all-new Golden Girls Cozy Mystery Series!

When Dorothy's obnoxious date is found dead in a hotel freezer, it not only ruins a gorgeous cheesecake but threatens the elaborate St. Olaf-themed wedding Rose is hosting.

Things are heating up, and not just because of Blanche's hot flashes. Rose's cousin is eloping to Miami, and Rose is playing host. If she can't balance the groom's family's snobbery against the traditional St. Olaf wedding week guidelines, her hometown may never accept her cousin again! 

Dorothy quickly realizes she needs a date with whom she can exchange wedding-related wisecracks. Turning to a newfangled VHS dating service, she believes she's found the ideal conversationalist. Unfortunately, what looks good on TV can actually be a total jerk in real life. It seems she'll just have to enjoy the company of Sophia, Blanche, and whomever Blanche has targeted for a hookup.

As the Girls all pitch in, Rose is thrilled that the tea-and-fish-themed kickoff event is perfect, not a herring out of place. That is until Dorothy's date is found dead--face-planted in an otherwise scrumptious-looking cheesecake. With every guest a suspect (especially Dorothy) and a marriage on the line, the four besties must ID the real killer, get the should-be-happy couple down the aisle, and make sure nobody from St. Olaf gets lost in the wilds of Miami. It's up to the Golden Girls to sleuth out a way for friendship and love to win the day!

"This beautiful page-turner kept me reading all night." --Janet Skeslien Charles, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library

When a young librarian discovers historic dollhouses in a hidden room, she embarks on an unexpected journey that reveals surprising secrets about the lost miniatures.

Tildy Barrows, Head Curator of a beautiful archival library in San Francisco, is meticulously dedicated to the century's worth of inventory housed in her beloved Beaux Art building. She loves the calm and order in the shelves of books and walls of art. But Tildy's uneventful life takes an unexpected turn when she, first, learns the library is on the verge of bankruptcy and, second, discovers two exquisite never-before-seen dollhouses. After finding clues hidden within these remarkable miniatures, Tildy starts to believe that Belva Curtis LeFarge, the influential heiress who established the library a century ago, is conveying a significant final message.

With a newfound sense of spontaneity, Tildy sets out to decipher the secret history of the dollhouses, aiming to salvage her cherished library in the process. Her journey to understand introduces her to a world of ambitious and gifted women in Belle Époque Paris, a group of scarred World War I veterans in the English countryside, and Walt Disney's bustling Burbank studio in the 1950s. As Tildy unravels the mystery, she finds not only inspiring, overlooked history, but also a future for herself, filled with exciting possibilities--and an astonishing familial revelation.

Spanning the course of a century, The Library of Lost Dollhouses is a warm, bright, and captivating story of secrets and love that embraces the importance of illuminating overlooked women of the past.

A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK!

“You will open this book and you will not stop reading.” —Jenna Bush Hager 

“A riveting wilderness suspense novel by a novelist at the height of her powers” (Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Candy House), Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

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

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

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

A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom—and her family’s ties to it—in this enthralling novel from the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award-winning author of Take My Hand.

As featured in The Washington Post ∙ People ∙ Harper's Bazaar ∙ NPR ∙ TODAY ∙ PopSugar ∙ Reader's Digest ∙ SheReads ∙ Woman’s World ∙ Real Simple ∙ BookBrowse ∙ and more!

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

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

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

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

In this debut thriller perfect for fans of Bunny and Yellowface, a young woman steps into her deceased twin’s influencer life, only to discover dark secrets hidden behind her social media façade.

Julie Chan has nothing. Her twin sister has everything. Except a pulse.

Julie Chan, a supermarket cashier with nothing to lose, finds herself thrust into the glamorous yet perilous world of her late twin sister, Chloe VanHuusen, a popular influencer. Separated at a young age, the identical twins were polar opposites and rarely spoke, except for one viral video that Chloe initiated (Finding My Long-Lost Twin And Buying Her A House #EMOTIONAL). When Julie discovers Chloe’s lifeless body under mysterious circumstances, she seizes the chance to live the life she’s always envied.

Transforming into Chloe is easier than expected. Julie effortlessly adopts Chloe’s luxurious influencer life, complete with designer clothes, a meticulous skincare routine, and millions of adoring followers. However, Julie soon realizes that Chloe’s seemingly picture-perfect life was anything but.

Haunted by Chloe’s untimely death and struggling to fit into the privileged influencer circle, Julie faces mounting challenges during a weeklong island retreat with Chloe’s exclusive group of influencer friends. As events spiral out of control, Julie uncovers the sinister forces that may have led to her sister’s demise and realizes she might be the next target.