Holly James

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

California

A Novel

In Holly James's newest rom-com, sparks ignite as a pair of broke exes get locked in a house together on a reality show for a chance to win a million dollars, a second-chance romance that perfectly captures the absurd sincerity of made-for-TV love. Olivia Martin and Chuck Walsh have chemistry. Too much chemistry, perhaps. Their every interaction as a couple either lights the house up with sexual tension or burns it down with anger. After one huge, very public fight, they finally break up for good. Or so they think. Someone was filming their dramatic argument in the street and—because Olivia’s parents were Hollywood royalty, and because Chuck’s an actor whose star is on the rise—the video goes viral. When Name Your Price, a reality game show, sees the footage, they invite Olivia and Chuck to shoot a very unusual challenge: Live locked in a house together for one month and they will be paid a million dollars. Each. Olivia really needs the money if she's going to keep her beloved grandmother in her nursing home, and Chuck is desperate for any chance to win Olivia back. So the game is on—even as the show tries to pluck every nerve with only one bed, one bathroom, and a set of rules that will lose them money if broken—including no touching. With stakes that have never been higher and their explosive chemistry at a fever pitch, can Chuck and Olivia keep it together (and their hands off each other) for one month? Find out next week on Name Your Price!

Name Your Price

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Niobe Way

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture

From NYU professor of developmental psychology Niobe Way, an in-depth exploration about what boys and young men teach us about themselves, us, and the toxic culture we have created, one in which we value money over people, toys over human connection, and academic achievement over kindness. Based on her longitudinal and mixed-method research over thirty-five years, Rebels with a Cause is a true call to action to change the culture so that we stop the vicious cycle of violence and blame. Dr. Niobe Way has spent her career researching social and emotional development and finds that boys and young men desperately want and need the same thing as everyone else: close friendships. Yet they and we grow up in a stereotyped “boy” culture, one that devalues and mocks those relationships, rather than recognizing that they’re necessary for human survival. In Rebels with a Cause, Way takes her message one step beyond her previous book, Deep Secrets, which was the inspiration for an Oscar-nominated film Close, to reveal how these “rebels,” as she calls the boys and young men in her research and in her classrooms, teach us about their and our crisis of connection, evidence of which is visible in our soaring rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, suicide, and mass violence. They also teach us about the solutions to the crisis, which is to care, to listen with curiosity, and to take individual and collective responsibility for the damage we have done to them, to ourselves, and to the world around us. Way provides us not only with data-driven insight into the roots and consequences of this crisis of connection, but also offers us concrete and empirically tested strategies for creating a culture that better aligns with our human nature and our human needs. Her book reminds us that “it’s not the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it’s the troubles that cause the rebels.” The time to listen to and act on what young rebels have been telling us for almost a century is now.

Rebels with a Cause

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Jaclyn Goldis

A bestselling thriller author arranges a luxury train trip that is not what it appears to be in this electrifying modern homage to Agatha Christie from the author of the “tense and twisty” (Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author) The Chateau. Reclusive, mysterious author Ginevra Ex is famous for her unusual approach to crafting her big bestselling thrillers: she hires real people and conducts intensive interviews, then fictionalizes them. Her latest main character, Rory, is thrilled when Ginevra presents her with an extravagant bonus—a lavish trip along Italy’s Mediterranean coast on the famed, newly renovated Orient Express. But when Rory boards the train, she’s stunned to discover that her brother, her best friend, and even her ex-fiancé are passengers, as well. All invited by Ginevra, all hiding secrets. With each stop, from Cinque Terre to Rome to Positano, it becomes increasingly clear that Ginevra has masterminded the ultimate real life twisty plot with Rory as her main character. And as Ginevra’s deceptions mount, and the lies and machinations of Rory’s travel companions pile up, Rory begins to fear that her trip will culminate like one of Ginevra’s books: with a murder or two. In the opulent compartments of the iconic train, Rory must untangle the shocking reasons why Ginevra wanted them all aboard—and to what deadly end. Another stylish and compulsively readable mystery from Jaclyn Goldis, this is the perfect read for fans of Ruth Ware, Lucy Foley, and Paula Hawkins.

The Main Character

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Therese Oneill

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America

A quippy and irreverent collection of illustrated profiles of the great American women who weren’t attractive, well-spoken, demure, or sinless enough to receive their rightful place in history, until now, from New York Times bestselling author Therese Oneill. Slut. Shrew. Sinful. Scold. The 19th- and early 20th-century American women profiled in this collection were called all these names and worse when they were alive. And that’s just fine. These glorious dames earned those monikers, and one hundred years later they can wear them proudly! They refused to conform to societal standards. They bucked everyday niceties and blazed their own trails. They were collectively unbecoming as women, but they forever changed what women can become. With irresistible charm and laugh-out-loud impertinence, New York Times bestselling author Therese Oneill chronicles the lives of eighteen unbecoming ladies whose audacity, courage, and sheer disdain for lady-like expectations left them out of so many history books. Curious readers will learn about forgotten heroines such as: -Dr. Mary Edwards Walker: who, despite being the only woman ever awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, was shunned and forgotten due to her insistence on wearing pants in public. -Elizabeth Packard: whose careful record of her own unjust incarceration in a 19th century madhouse by her husband (her crime: not wanting to be Presbyterian anymore) led to nationwide law reforms to protect the rights of those with mental health issues. -Lilian Gilbreth: best remembered for being the real-life mom of Cheaper by the Dozen but who probably should be remembered for scientifically removing the stigma of the sanitary napkin and designing the modern-day kitchen. -And many more! With dozens of illustrations and historical photographs throughout, Unbecoming a Lady shines a light on unforgettable, impressive women who deserve to be remembered.

Unbecoming a Lady

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Stephanie Scott

"Each chapter of this enrapturing novel is elegantly brief and charged with barely contained emotion." --New York Times Book Review A gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime, for readers of Everything I Never Told You and The Perfect Nanny, What's Left of Me Is Yours charts a young woman's search for the truth about her mother's life--and her murder. In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the wakaresaseya (literally "breaker-upper"), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings. When Satō hires Kaitarō, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, both assume it will be an easy case. But Satō has never truly understood Rina or her desires and Kaitarō's job is to do exactly that--until he does it too well. While Rina remains ignorant of the circumstances that brought them together, she and Kaitarō fall in a desperate, singular love, setting in motion a series of violent acts that will forever haunt her daughter's life. In an engrossing dual narrative inspired by a true crime, Stephanie Scott exquisitely renders the affair and its intricate repercussions. As Rina's daughter, Sumiko, fills in the gaps of her mother's story and her own memory, Scott probes the thorny psychological and moral grounds of the actions we take in the name of love, asking where we draw the line between passion and possession.

What's Left of Me Is Yours

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Jesse Q. Sutanto

Some friends—and friendships—are worth killing for in this dark, twisty suspense novel by national bestselling author Jesse Q. Sutanto. Jane is unhappy. A struggling midlist writer whose novels barely command four figures, she feels trapped in an underwhelming marriage, just scraping by to pay a crippling Bay Area mortgage for a house—a life—she's never really wanted. There's only ever been one person she cared about, one person who truly understood her: Thalia. Jane's best and only friend nearly a decade ago during their Creative Writing days at Oxford. It was the only good year of Jane’s life—cobblestones and books and damp English air, heady wine and sweet cider and Thalia, endless Thalia. But then one night ruined everything. The blood-soaked night that should have bound Thalia to Jane forever but instead made her lose her completely. Thalia disappeared without a trace, and Jane has been unable to find her since. Until now. Because there she is, her name at the top of the New York Times bestseller list: A Most Pleasant Death by Thalia Ashcroft. When she discovers a post from Thalia on her website about attending a book convention in New York City in a week—“Can’t wait to see you there!”—Jane can’t wait either. She’ll go to New York City, too, credit card bill be damned. And this time, she will do things right. Jane won’t lose Thalia again.

I'm Not Done with You Yet

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Sopan Deb

A poignant, heartwarming, and charmingly funny debut novel about how a discovered box in the attic leads one Bengali American family down a path toward understanding the importance of family, even when splintered.

Shantanu Das is living in the shadows of his past. In his fifties, he finds himself isolated from his traditional Bengali community after a devastating divorce from his wife, Chaitali; he hasn't spoken to his eldest daughter Mitali in months; and most painfully, he lives each day with the regret that he didn't accept his teenaged daughter Keya after she came out as gay. As the anniversary of Keya's death approaches, Shantanu wakes up one morning utterly alone in his suburban New Jersey home and realizes it's finally time to move on.

This is when Shantanu discovers a tucked-away box in the attic that could change everything. He calls Mitali and pleads with her to come home. She does so out of pity, not realizing that her life is about to shift.

Inside the box is an unfinished manuscript that Keya and her girlfriend were writing. It's a surprising discovery that brings Keya to life briefly. But Neesh Desai, a new love interest for Mitali with regrets of his own, comes up with a wild idea, one that would give Keya more permanence: what if they are to stage the play? It could be an homage to Keya's memory, and a way to make amends. But first, the Dases need to convince Pamela Moore, Keya's girlfriend, to give her blessing. And they have to overcome ghosts from the past they haven't met yet.

A story of redemption and righting the wrongs of the past, Keya Das's Second Act is a warmly drawn homage to family, creativity, and second chances. Set in the vibrant world of Bengalis in the New Jersey suburbs, this debut novel is both poignant and, at times, a surprising hilarious testament to the unexpected ways we build family and find love, old and new.

Keya das's Second Act

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Julie Murphy

Sierra Simone

A Christmas Notch Novel

Following the success of A Merry Little Meet Cute, a new holiday rom-com cowritten by #1 New York Times bestselling author Julie Murphy and USA Today bestselling author Sierra Simone--about an actress and a perpetually single former boy-band member reunited as costars on a steamy holiday film.

Kallum Lieberman is the funny one(tm). As the arguably lesser of the three former members of the boy band INK, he enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame and then moved home where he opened a regional pizza chain called Slice, Slice, Baby! He's living his best dad bod life, hooking up with bridesmaids at all his friends' weddings. But after an old one-off sex tape is leaked and quickly goes viral, Kallum decides he's ready to step into the spotlight again, starring in a sexy Santa biopic for the Hope Channel. 

Winnie Baker did everything right. She married her childhood sweetheart, avoided the downfalls of adolescent stardom, and transitioned into a stable adult acting career. Hell, she even waited until marriage to have sex. But after her perfect life falls apart, Winnie is ready to redefine herself--and what better way than a steamier-than-a-steaming-hot-mug-of-cider Christmas movie?

With decade old Hollywood history between them, Winnie and Kallum are both feeling hesitant about their new situation as costars...especially Winnie who can't seem to fake on screen pleasure she's never experienced in real life. She's willing to do the pleasure research--for science and artistic authenticity, of course. And there's no better research partner than her bridesmaid sex tape hall of fame costar, Kallum. But suddenly, Kallum's teenage crush on Winnie is bubbling to the surface and Winnie might be catching feelings herself. 

They say opposites attract, but is this holly jolly ever after really ready for its close-up?

A Holly Jolly Ever After

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Kevin Kwan

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

"Kevin Kwan, ... author of Crazy Rich Asians, is back with a ... new novel of social climbing, secret e-mails, art-world scandal, lovesick billionaires, and the outrageous story of what happens when Rachel Chu, engaged to marry Asia's most eligible bachelor, discovers her birthfather"--

China Rich Girlfriend

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Angie Cruz

“I have been eagerly waiting for a new book from Angie Cruz. So glad the time has come.” —Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother I’m Dying and Breath, Eyes, Memory “Gorgeous writing, gorgeous story.” —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street “An essential read for our times.” —Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban Fifteen-year-old Ana Cancion never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes. It doesn’t matter that he is twice her age, that there is no love between them. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate. So on New Year’s Day, 1965, Ana leaves behind everything she knows and becomes Ana Ruiz, a wife confined to a cold six-floor walk-up in Washington Heights. Lonely and miserable, Ana hatches a reckless plan to escape. But at the bus terminal, she is stopped by Cesar, Juan’s free-spirited younger brother, who convinces her to stay. As the Dominican Republic slides into political turmoil, Juan returns to protect his family’s assets, leaving Cesar to take care of Ana. Suddenly, Ana is free to take English lessons at a local church, lie on the beach at Coney Island, see a movie at Radio City Music Hall, go dancing with Cesar, and imagine the possibility of a different kind of life in America. When Juan returns, Ana must decide once again between her heart and her duty to her family.

Dominicana

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Guy Gunaratne

A blazingly propulsive novel from the prize-winning author of In Our Mad and Furious City, following a captured jihadist and poet-preacher as he recounts his path to international notoriety Who is Yahya Bas? Revolutionary poet, notorious jihadist, misbegotten son, self-styled idiot-boy. When the enigmatic Yahya finds himself languishing in a detention center after fleeing the conflict in Syria, he has many questions to face. What was he doing in the desert? Why did he betray his home country? What led him to write the incendiary verses that launched him into international infamy? Mister, his interrogator, wants answers. So Yahya resolves to tell his own story, in his own words, and on his own terms. Mister, Mister is what follows: a coming-of-age story of radical self-invention, a quest for a long-lost father, and a discovery of another way to live in the shadow of war. Brash, biting, yet ultimately tender and bracingly imaginative, Mister, Mister follows a child of the tumultuous 90s and the ravaged aughts as he becomes the unwitting voice of a generation. Who is Yahya Bas? An anti-hero for our modern era, in which we've just begun to survey the wreckage of the West's forever-wars.

Mister, Mister

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Rebel Wilson

A Memoir

From the scene-stealing star of Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids comes a refreshingly candid, hilarious, and inspiring book about her unconventional journey to Hollywood success and loving herself. For decades, Rebel Wilson had single-mindedly focused on her career, making a name for herself through her iconic roles in Pitch Perfect, Bridesmaids, and Isn’t It Romantic. Now, she’s ready to chronicle the emotional and physical lessons she learned, as well as her most embarrassing experiences. A malaria-induced hallucination? An all-style martial arts fighting tournament? Junior handling at dog shows? And this was all BEFORE she moved to Hollywood! Rebel Rising follows Rebel Wilson’s incredible journey of “making it,” constantly questioning, “Am I good enough? Will I ever find love? Will I ever change and become healthy?” Rebel writes for the first time about the most personal and important moments in her life—from fertility issues, weight gain and loss, sexuality, overcoming shyness, rejections, and, well...okay there’s at least one story thrown in about Brad Pitt! It’s all here. This memoir shows us how to love ourselves while making us laugh uncontrollably.

Rebel Rising

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Sunjeev Sahota

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION'S CARNEGIE MEDAL “Sunjeev Sahota's new novel follows characters across generations and continents...Heart-wrenching.” —Entertainment Weekly “An intimate page-turner with a deeper resonance as a tale of oppression, independence and resilience.” —San Francisco Chronicle A transfixing, "powerfully imaged" (USA Today) novel about two unforgettable characters seeking to free themselves—one from the expectations of women in early twentieth-century Punjab, and the other from the weight of life in the contemporary Indian diaspora Mehar, a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. Married to three brothers in a single ceremony, she and her now-sisters spend their days hard at work in the family’s “china room,” sequestered from contact with the men—except when their domineering mother-in-law, Mai, summons them to a darkened chamber at night. Curious and strong willed, Mehar tries to piece together what Mai doesn’t want her to know. From beneath her veil, she studies the sounds of the men’s voices, the calluses on their fingers as she serves them tea. Soon she glimpses something that seems to confirm which of the brothers is her husband, and a series of events is set in motion that will put more than one life at risk. As the early stirrings of the Indian independence movement rise around her, Mehar must weigh her own desires against the reality—and danger—of her situation. Spiraling around Mehar’s story is that of a young man who arrives at his uncle’s house in Punjab in the summer of 1999, hoping to shake an addiction that has held him in its grip for more than two years. Growing up in small-town England as the son of an immigrant shopkeeper, his experiences of racism, violence, and estrangement from the culture of his birth led him to seek a dangerous form of escape. As he rides out his withdrawal at his family’s ancestral home—an abandoned farmstead, its china room mysteriously locked and barred—he begins to knit himself back together, gathering strength for the journey home. Partly inspired by award-winning author Sunjeev Sahota’s family history, China Room is at once a deft exploration of how systems of power circumscribe individual lives and a deeply moving portrait of the unconquerable human capacity to resist them. At once sweeping and intimate, lush and propulsive, it is a stunning achievement from a contemporary master.

China Room

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Elizabeth Strout

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout explores the mysteries of marriage and the secrets we keep, as a former couple reckons with where they’ve come from—and what they’ve left behind. “Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favorite writers, so the fact that Oh William! may well be my favorite of her books is a mathematical equation for joy. The depth, complexity, and love contained in these pages is a miraculous achievement.”—Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William. Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are. So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret—one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us. What happens next is nothing less than another example of what Hilary Mantel has called Elizabeth Strout’s “perfect attunement to the human condition.” There are fears and insecurities, simple joys and acts of tenderness, and revelations about affairs and other spouses, parents and their children. On every page of this exquisite novel we learn more about the quiet forces that hold us together—even after we’ve grown apart. At the heart of this story is the indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who offers a profound, lasting reflection on the very nature of existence. “This is the way of life,” Lucy says: “the many things we do not know until it is too late.”

Oh William!

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Dan Kois

"Exceptionally warm-hearted . . . mounts a convincing case for such uncool causes as good taste over fashionable taste, editing as creative craft work, and smart novels where everything matters only as much as it ever matters in life." --Vox Slate editor Dan Kois makes his fiction debut with this stunning coming-of-age novel set in New York City, about the joys of unexpected life-altering friendships, the power of finding ourselves in the moment, and the importance of forgiving ourselves when we inevitably mess everything up. It's 1991. Em moved to New York City for excitement and possibility, but the big city isn't quite what she thought it would be. Working as a literary agent's assistant, she's down to her last nineteen dollars but has made two close friends: Emily, a firebrand theater director living in a Lower East Side squat, and Lucy, a middle-aged novelist and single mom. Em's life revolves around these two wildly different women and their vividly disparate yet equally assured views of art and the world. But who is Em, and what does she want to become? It's 2004. Em is now Emily, a successful book editor, happily married and barely coping with the challenges of a new baby. And suddenly Lucy and Emily return to her life: Her old friend Lucy's posthumous book needs a publisher, and her ex-friend Emily wants to rekindle their relationship. As they did once before, these two women--one dead, one very alive--force Emily to reckon with her decisions, her failures, and what kind of creative life she wants to lead. A sharp, reflective, and funny story of a young woman coming into herself and struggling to find her place, Vintage Contemporaries is a novel about art, parenthood, loyalty, and fighting for a cause--the times we do the right thing, and the times we fail--set in New York City on both sides of the millennium.

Vintage Contemporaries

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Ghost Forest

Diana Evans

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • Longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction​ • A sweeping and beautifully rendered exploration of home and yearning, following the fracturing of a family upon the demise of its patriarch "Each character here is richly and deeply drawn...This is a novel that encourages us to stand in life’s burning doorways, and to think long before we walk away or walk through.” —New York Times In the early hours of June 14, 2017, the world watches as flames leap up the sides of a residential high-rise in West London, consuming Grenfell Tower and many of the lives within it. Across town, an earlier spark has caught fire. A cigarette left burning in an ashtray. A table strewn with post-it reminders and old newspapers. And one Cornelius Winston Pitt—estranged husband, complicated dad, and Pitt family patriarch—takes his final breaths alone. These twin tragedies open Diana Evans’s A House for Alice, an aching portrait of a family of women shaken by loss and searching for closure. At the novel’s center is Alice herself, the Pitt matriarch who, after fifty years in England, now longs to live out her final years in her homeland of Nigeria. Her three daughters are torn on the issue of whether she stays or goes, and while youngest sibling Melissa also grapples with the embers of her own failed relationship, the Pitt family’s foundational pillars—of trust, love, and cultural identity—begin to crack. Intimately drawn and set against a fraught political backdrop, yet equally full of hope, humor, and humanity, A House for Alice traces the scars of grief and betrayal across generations and uncovers the secrets we keep from those closest to us.

A House for Alice

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Handmade tweed black and white checkered crochet e-reader sleeve!

Crochet Kindle sleeve

Colleen Hoover

This special collector’s edition of the “stunning sequel” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) to Colleen Hoover’s #1 New York Times bestselling novel—now a major motion picture starring Blake Lively—It Ends with Us, features a beautiful foil jacket over a hardcover case embossed with the author’s signature, newly designed endpapers, a Reading Group Guide, and four delicious, fan-favorite Atlas recipes. Lily and her ex-husband, Ryle, have just settled into a civil coparenting rhythm when she suddenly bumps into her first love, Atlas, again. After nearly two years separated, she is elated that for once, time is on their side, and she immediately says yes when Atlas asks her on a date. But her excitement is quickly hampered by the knowledge that, though they are no longer married, Ryle is still very much a part of her life—and Atlas Corrigan is the one man he will hate being in his ex-wife and daughter’s life. Switching between the perspectives of Lily and Atlas, It Starts with Us picks up right where the epilogue for the “gripping, pulse-pounding” (Sarah Pekkanen, New York Times bestselling author) bestselling phenomenon It Ends with Us left off. Revealing more about Atlas’s past and following Lily as she embraces a second chance at true love while navigating a jealous ex-husband, it proves that “no one delivers an emotional read like Colleen Hoover” (Anna Todd, New York Times bestselling author).

It Starts with Us: Special Collector's Edition

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Emma Bamford

Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Vertigo, the author of the “subtle and ominous” (Lee Child) debut Deep Water returns with a wholly original and sinister novel about the beauty industry, a ghostwriter, and the reappearance of the lover she thought was dead. When Maddy Wight is hired to ghostwrite the memoir of world-renowned cosmetic surgeon Dr. Angela Reynolds, she thinks it might just be her chance to get her career back on track. She travels to Angela’s remote estate in the Scottish Highlands to hunker down and learn everything she can. But the deeper she digs, the more elusive the doctor becomes. Is there more hidden beneath the surface of the kaleidoscopic beauty industry than Angela wants to reveal? Sharing the estate is Angela’s enigmatic business partner, Scott, whose mercurial moods change as quickly as the conditions on the darkening moors outside. Confined to the glass-walled house, Maddy can’t shake the feeling of being watched. As objects go missing, handprints appear on the windows, and a stranger lurks in the grounds, she finds herself drawn ever closer to Scott. Returning to London once the book is finished, Maddy is excited for their future together. But her dreams are shattered at the book launch when Angela learns that Scott has leapt to his death from the Scottish cliffs. Which is why, months later and lost in a fog of grief, Maddy is completely blindsided when she sees Scott entering the Tube station just in front of her. It can’t be him, can it? After all, Scott is dead...or is he? In exploring the differences between looking and seeing, surface and depth, and the power of the female gaze, this tribute to Hitchcock’s 1958 film masterpiece asks: If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, how much can you trust what you see?

Eye of the Beholder

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Shayla Lawson

A Decolonial Memoir

“Phenomenal.... A memoir that opens into the world, with brilliance, courage, and elegant prose.... This is a book to read, read again, and remember.”—Imani Perry, New York Times bestselling author of the National Book Award winner South to America Poet and journalist Shayla Lawson follows their National Book Critics Circle finalist This Is Major with these daring and exquisitely crafted essays, where Lawson journeys across the globe, finds beauty in tumultuous times, and powerfully disrupts the constraints of race, gender, and disability. In their new book, Shayla Lawson reveals how traveling can itself be a political act, when it can be a dangerous world to be Black, femme, nonbinary, and disabled. With their signature prose, at turns bold, muscular, and luminous, Shayla Lawson travels the world to explore deeper meanings held within love, time, and the self. Through encounters with a gorgeous gondolier in Venice, an ex-husband in the Netherlands, and a lost love on New Year’s Eve in Mexico City, Lawson’s travels bring unexpected wisdom about life in and out of love. They learn the strength of friendships and the dangers of beauty during a narrow escape in Egypt. They examine Blackness in post-dictatorship Zimbabwe, then take us on a secretive tour of Black freedom movements in Portugal. Through a deeply insightful journey, Lawson leads readers from a castle in France to a hula hoop competition in Jamaica to a traditional theater in Tokyo to a Prince concert in Minnesota and, finally, to finding liberation on a beach in Bermuda, exploring each location—and their deepest emotions—to the fullest. In the end, they discover how the trials of marriage, grief, and missed connections can lead to self-transformation and unimagined new freedoms.

How to Live Free in a Dangerous World

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Kate Schapira

How to Live with Care and Purpose in an Endangered World

Climate anxiety is real--and here is a practical, accessible guide to addressing it on personal, relational, and structural levels, from the founder of the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth. In 2013, Kate Schapira sat in her office at Brown University and read about acidic waters, ecological imbalance, dead zones, and zombie ecosystems. Before then, she'd had the same broad understanding of climate change that most people did at the time, but these articles on the permanent disappearance of coral reefs filled her with such hopelessness and overwhelm that she desperately needed an outlet--someone or some people to talk to, who understood how she was feeling. Soon, she was setting up a Peanuts-style "The Doctor Is In" booth in her hometown of Providence, Rhode Island so that she could talk about climate change with her community. Ten years and over 1200 conversations later, Schapira channels all she's learned into an accessible, understandable, and aware guide for processing climate anxiety and affecting real change in your life and in your community. Filled with stories, questions, and exercises, Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth focuses on five action verbs readers can use to build their climate resilience: recognize, release, find, build, and become. All of the stories, questions and practices are included in the book because they helped someone find what they wanted or needed, whether in the moment or for the years to come. Through their use of this book, readers will move through their personal and general climate anxiety, frustration, helplessness and grief, toward a sense of shared purpose and community care. Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth meets readers where they are, with thoughtful and deeply practical strategies to help us meet this growing crisis in a way that doesn't sugarcoat the realities or scream fragility, but one that offers communal support.

Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth

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Breanne Mc Ivor

Combining the honesty, warmth, and humor of Queenie and a modern-day Bridget Jones's Diary, this entertaining, transportive, and luminous debut novel from award-winning writer Breanne Mc Ivor follows a young Trinidadian woman finding her voice and a new kind of happy ending.

Bianca Bridge has always dreamt of becoming a writer. But Trinidadian society can be unforgiving, and having an affair with a married government official is a sure-fire way to ruin your prospects. So when Obadiah Cortland, a notoriously tyrannical entrepreneur in the island's beauty scene, offers her a job, Bianca accepts, realizing that working on his magazine is the closest to her dreams she'll get.

 As Bianca begins to embrace her power and creative voice, she starts to suspect Obadiah is not the elite tyrant he seems. She's right. Born in one of the poorest parts of Trinidad, Obadiah has clawed partway up society's ladder and built his company around his meticulously crafted persona. Now, he's not about to let anyone, especially Bianca, see past his façade.

 When Bianca's ex-lover threatens everything she's rebuilt, jeopardizing all she's come to love about her new life, she's surprised to find support from the most unlikely ally and, finally, draws the strength to fight back like her mother taught her.

 Sharp-witted and fiercely fun, The God of Good Looks alternates between Bianca's diary entries and Obadiah's first-person narrative to portray modern Trinidad's rigid class barriers and the fraught impact of beauty commodification in a patriarchal society. Boisterous, moving, and full of meaty, universally relatable questions, Mc Ivor's sparkling debut is an open-hearted, awakening tale about prejudice and pride, the masks we wear, and what we can become if we dare to take them off.

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