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Books in the National Media
July 2026 |
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Score
by Kennedy Ryan
You never forget your first love. Isn't that what they say? Verity Hill knows this truth intimately. She didn't simply miss Wright Monk Bellamy when they parted ways in college. She's haunted by his touch. Every kiss, any lover since--it's a shadow of what they had. Time heals all wounds. Isn't that what they say? Monk doesn't believe that for a second. He wasn't simply betrayed when he and Verity split. He was devastated, with parts of him left behind in the ruins of all that was destroyed. More than a decade after their disastrous breakup, Verity and Monk must work together on the set of an epic Harlem Renaissance biopic. With Monk, now a world-class musician, creating the score, and Verity, an award-winning screenwriter, penning the script, there's Oscar buzz before shooting even begins. This once-in-a-lifetime project could catapult them both to new heights, but can they can put the past behind them for the sake of the film ... for the sake of something more? Featured on Fresh Air.
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Helpless
by Jessica Knoll
It's been twelve years since Faye Heron broke Henry Spalding's heart. Henry was her college boyfriend, her first love, but Faye was in danger of being subsumed by him and the intensity of their connection--a connection that took her beyond boundaries she'd only dreamed of crossing. Now, Faye is one half of a power-producing duo with her Hollywood husband. Henry is a married father running the family business. On the surface, both of their lives have essentially gone to plan. When a former and beloved college professor suddenly passes away, Faye and Henry find themselves back on campus for the funeral, circling something old and dangerous. Something, if Faye is honest with herself, she has been trying to duplicate for years. But Henry is one of a kind. The kind who delivers a hypnotic apology for the way things ended. The kind who suggests they go back to the hotel for a drink. The kind who drugs and kidnaps her. When Faye comes to Henry's remote mountain cabin, she's beside herself. Has Henry brought her here to punish her? She did, after all, write and star in a lauded episode of television based on their indelicate appetites and vicious breakup. As her week of captivity unfolds, Henry's wanton demands intensify, and Faye finds herself pulled back into his irresistible gravity. But as Faye and Henry spiral into their old dynamic, a sprawling, years-old mystery begins to take shape--one that will rewrite history as Faye remembers it and reveal an astounding, cataclysmic truth. Featured on Good Morning America.
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Single Girls
by John Searles
In 1965, Helen Gurley Brown, a soft spoken, self-professed mouseburger, is fresh off the runaway success of her book Sex and the Single Girl, a revolutionary call to single women urging them not to rush into marriage on anyone's timeline but their own, and, even more radically, to enjoy their sex lives, gloriously free of shame. Upon the book's publication, half the country is outraged (her mother, for one, hates the book), and the other half will follow her anywhere. Moved by the thousands of letters arriving at her doorstep from readers desperate for advice, she marches from one Manhattan magazine conglomerate to another, looking for a perch from which to dispense her unconventional wisdom. At her last stop, she finally gets her shot: just three issues to turn around the flailing magazine Cosmopolitan. Helen quickly assembles a team of smart, savvy single girls up to the task. Soon, their lives become the stuff of magazine cover lines: the gorgeous Book Editor's doomed romance with a man she didn't know was married--and her bold idea for revenge. The (unofficial ) Sex Editor's trip to soak in the world's first champagne glass hot tub, which takes a very wrong turn. The Entertainment Editor's clash with Joan Crawford and interview with a Park Avenue call girl that leads to unexpected revelations. Single Girls begins at the dawn of Helen's legendary tenure and journeys back to her youth, envisioning the devastations and people who forged her into a controversial legend. Featured on Today.
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Get Lost
by Justin Halpern
When Lila Dixon gets a call that her mother has gone missing, she initially brushes it off--Mattie's disappearances are a part of life, like earthquakes in their dusty California hometown. But this time the prime suspect is Lila's larger-than-life father: the one-time baseball star, local hero, and fatal charmer John Dix Dixon. Dix's main accomplishment as a dad was finding new ways to disappoint his daughter, but even Lila knows he's not behind this. And when they uncover a $250,000 deposit to Mattie's bank account, and someone slips a threatening note under Lila's motel door, they realize Mattie may be in real danger. Now they're heading down a trail marked by unsavory Russian thugs, fat-cat farmers, and an unseen enemy who's always a step ahead. Featured on Good Morning America.
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Crash Into Me
by Robinne Lee
In a complicated marriage and raising her children in Los Angeles's toxic playground of privilege and power, Cecilia Chen is struggling to find her real self among the many labels assigned to her: wife, mother, artist, daughter. Until the moment she crashes-literally-into the Anouk Ferrand. It's been twenty years since she last encountered the enigmatic model on a photo shoot in Mexico. And it's this chance second meeting that will upend Cecilia's life. Seeing Anouk again forces Cecilia to revisit their brief time together and question where she truly fits in. Can the renewed intensity of her explosive physical and emotional entanglement with Anouk finally give her an answer? Featured on Good Morning America.
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Ransom
by Daniel Silva
Alice Winter, one of Britain's most dazzling socialites, seemingly has the perfect life--a lavish home in posh Knightsbridge, a grand estate in Devon, millions of followers on social media who eagerly await her next post. But when she disappears without a trace while on holiday with three old friends from Cambridge, her desperate husband, the real estate baron Edward Knight, turns to none other than Gabriel Allon to find her. He soon discovers that Alice Winter is not the woman she appears to be, that she has a reckless side, that she has secrets. But Edward Knight has a secret too, a secret so dangerous that Gabriel will have no choice but to return to the life he thought he had left behind. An old enemy lurks there, waiting for him to make one misstep, waiting for the perfect moment to exact vengeance. Featured on Good Morning America.
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The Five-Star Weekend
by Elin Hilderbrand
Hollis Shaw's life seems picture-perfect. She's the creator of the popular food blog Hungry with Hollis and is married to Matthew, a dreamy heart surgeon. But after she and Matthew get into a heated argument one snowy morning, he leaves for the airport and is killed in a car accident. The cracks in Hollis's perfect life--her strained marriage and her complicated relationship with her daughter, Caroline--grow deeper. So when Hollis hears about something called a Five-Star Weekend--one woman organizes a trip for her best friend from each phase of her life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlife--she decides to host her own Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket. But the weekend doesn't turn out to be a joyful Hallmark movie. The husband of Hollis's childhood friend Tatum arranges for Hollis's first love, Jack Finigan, to spend time with them, stirring up old feelings. Meanwhile, Tatum is forced to play nice with abrasive and elitist Dru-Ann, Hollis's best friend from UNC Chapel Hill. Dru-Ann's career as a prominent Chicago sports agent is on the line after her comments about a client's mental health issues are misconstrued online. Brooke, Hollis's friend from their thirties, has just discovered that her husband is having an inappropriate relationship with a woman at work. Again! And then there's Gigi, a stranger to everyone (including Hollis) who reached out to Hollis through her blog. Gigi embodies an unusual grace and, as it happens, has many secrets. Featured on Today.
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Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep
by Paul Tremblay
Meet Julia Flang, a twenty-something former semi-professional gamer, living with her retired uncle, and working two jobs she doesn't like. Out of the blue, her estranged mother, a CFO for one of the world's largest tech companies, offers her a temp job with a payday Julia can't refuse. One sham interview later, she's offered the job: to chaperone a man in a vegetative state--one with proprietary AI implanted in his head--from California to the East Coast. To sum up in Julia's own words: You want me to remote control this dead dude across the country. In a word, yes. But he's not dead dead. Meet a middle-aged man who wakes within a disorienting hellscape filled with monstrous grotesqueries. Worse than the fluid, morphing reality in which he's trapped, he has no memory of who he is. He certainly doesn't remember getting the rabbit tattoo on his arm. He only knows that he must find a certain person. Who? He can't remember. Using a cell phone modeled after a video game controller, Julia fumblingly navigates the man she calls Bernie from the company campus and onto planes and through one of the largest airports in America. All the while, the man endures an ever-changing and worsening nightmare that offers clues as to who he was--and who he must track down. And as their two lives intertwine, Julia and Bernie become unlikely allies and fugitives on a collision course with reality. Featured on Here & Now.
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The Land and Its People: Essays
by David Sedaris
In The Land and Its People, Sedaris investigates what it means to be a traveler, a brother, a lifelong friend. Trying on the role of caretaker after his boyfriend Hugh's hip-replacement surgery, he both succeeds and fails. He covers ground with his friend Dawn and challenges her to eat a truck tire. A ambivalent Duolingo bot becomes his unlikely confidante as he attempts to describe his family in a foreign language. Ever adding to his list of Countries I Have Been To, he rides a horse named Tequila in Guatemala, buys a bespoke priest's cassock in Vatican City, and goes on safari in Kenya without taking a single photo. Time takes its toll: scrolling through his address book, he counts those he couldn't bear to outlive, and realizes how many are already gone. He is bitten by a dog and insulted by a wee train passenger. A woman on the street late at night either sexually harasses him or doesn't. It's easy to agree with the lady waving a sign that reads, Enough Is Enough. And yet, life holds much to delight in: the massive testicles of a ram, a trip abroad with his sisters, a really excellent reptile video, a pair of well-made cotton underpants. Throughout these essays--at once acerbic and tender, playful and profound--Sedaris shows how much there is to marvel at when you keep your head up and your eyes open, observing with warmth and curiosity our fascinating human species and the lands we inhabit. Featured on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
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London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth
by Patrick Radden Keefe
In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain's spy agency, captured video of a young man pacing back and forth on a high balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the bank of the river Thames. At 2:24 a.m., he jumped into the river. In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried about her son. Zac had told her that he had gone to stay with a friend for the weekend, but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up and two officers relayed the dreadful news: Her son was dead. In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband, Matthew, struggled to understand what had happened to Zac. He had had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. As they would soon discover, however, there was a lot they did not know about their son. Only after his death did they learn that he had adopted a fictitious alter ego: Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a great fortune. Under this guise, Zac had become entangled with a slippery London businessman named Akbar Shamji and a murderous gangster known as Indian Dave. As the Brettlers set about investigating their son's death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one they'd always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zac's life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unable--or unwilling--to bring the perpetrators to justice. In a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers' quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private nightclubs, a city in which everything is for sale, and aspirational fantasies are underwritten by dirty money and corruption. Featured on Here & Now.
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Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard
by José Andrés
Although renowned chef Jos Andres has made the United States his home, his roots in Spain run deep: It's where he grew up and now spends summers with family and friends. It's also where some of the best ingredients and most fascinating culinary techniques are celebrated every day, and as he says, it's where I learned to cook, learned to eat, and most importantly, learned to love food. This vibrant, exciting collection of recipes bears Jos 's unique mark and proudly represents a culture where life is centered around the table. While it is impossible to capture all the richness and variety of this culture, Spain My Way showcases Spanish cooking in Jos 's signature style--not only the cornerstones of the cuisine but also his own favorite recipes, whether from his home kitchen, at his restaurants, or across Spain, enjoyed while eating with chefs and friends. Featured on CBS Mornings.
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You Won't Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters
by Rachel Aviv
A collection of reported stories that explore the relationship between mothers and daughters, by the award-winning author of Strangers to Ourselves You Won't Get Free of It tells the stories of mothers and daughters searching for each other and for themselves. Rachel Aviv explores the complexity of this relationship in seven essays, six originally published in The New Yorker and reconceived for this intimate, revelatory book. I wrote some of these stories feeling, existentially, like a daughter, and now I have returned to them with a different identification, Aviv writes. It was as if I had failed to see the drama on the mother's side, too--her particular longings and humiliations and needs. Aviv writes about one mother searching for her vanished daughter; another who sacrifices herself for her daughters by working as a nanny for other people's children. In the final story, a daughter's traumatic experience is erased by her family, only to be recast by her mother, the writer Alice Munro, in stories celebrated around the world. You Won't Get Free of It is an astonishing exploration of the competing dynamics of knowing and unknowing, recognition and refusal, that shape our most foundational relationship. Featured on Fresh Air.
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Italian Snacking: Sweet and Savory Recipes for Every Hour of the Day - A Cookbook
by Anna Francese Gass
In Italian cuisine, there is an entire category of smaller bites--spuntini--meant to be enjoyed at in-between meal moments of the day. This book by Italian food expert Anna Francese Gass introduces the American audience to the complete range of spuntini culture, with recipes drawn from all across the country. She shares recipes for spuntini di meta mattina (mid-morning snacks); merenda, the cherished after-school treat for children (and adults); and aperitivi, early-evening bites meant to be enjoyed with drinks. Also included is a chapter of delicacies from Italy's robust culture of street food. Studded with gorgeous photography, this book will elevate your snacking game to the Italian ideal. Featured on Good Morning America.
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Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose
by Jennifer Breheny Wallace
In this groundbreaking work, Wallace makes an urgent case: mattering--the feeling that we are valued and have an opportunity to add value--is a core human need, as essential to our well-being as food and water. And yet, in today's world, that fundamental need is going unmet, with perilous consequences. As mental and social health crises surge, we often blame social media, the pace of modern life, and polarizing politics. But beneath these issues lies a deeper crisis, what Wallace calls an erosion of mattering. With her signature warmth and insight, Wallace weaves together research and deeply moving stories of mattering lost and regained. From burned-out employees to overwhelmed caregivers to people grappling with grief or struggling through a destabilizing transition, Mattering explores how our lives are transformed when we are reminded, in small and intentional ways, that we are valued and that we have value to offer. Wallace provides the essential elements to building what she calls our mattering core recognizing your impact, being relied on (but not too much), feeling prioritized, and being truly known and invested in. Strengthening this core helps us reconnect to our sense of purpose, deepen our relationships, and navigate life's uncertainties and challenges with greater resilience. For readers of Bren Brown, David Brooks, and Adam Grant, Mattering is a rare, culture-shifting book that offers both a diagnosis and a remedy. With a clear road map and actionable takeaways, Wallace reveals how to unlock this powerful force within ourselves and how to build cultures of mattering in our homes, workplaces, and communities. Featured on Tamron Hall.
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Freedom Lost, Freedom Won: A Personal History of America
by Eugene Robinson
On March 27, 1829, a wealthy white planter and entrepreneur named Richard Fordham purchased four enslaved African Americans from a woman named Isabella Perman. One of them was journalist Eugene Robinson's great-great-grandfather, a boy called Harry. Starting from this transaction, which took place in Charleston, South Carolina, Freedom Lost, Freedom Won brings to life 200 years of our nation's history through the eyes of the remarkable family that Harry founded. Assigned a formal name--Henry Fordham--and put to work as a blacksmith, he achieved his own freedom a decade before the Civil War. He was there when victorious Union troops marched into Charleston in 1865, ending slavery and guaranteeing liberty for Black people--only on paper, though, and only for a time. Robinson traces the arc of his familial lineage through the repeated cycles in which African Americans have fought their way upward toward freedom and opportunity, been forced back down again, and renewed their determined climb. From his great-great-grandfather's achievement in becoming a free person of color before emancipation to his great-grandfather's Reconstruction-era success, from his father's odyssey of the Great Migration to his own coming-of-age during the civil rights movement, Robinson delves into a rich archive of Black narratives, arguing that we still have a long way to go before it is possible to speak of a post-racial America. Setting his extensive research within the larger historical context, Robinson provides both an indictment of structural racism and an illustration of how it has been fought and, at times, courageously overcome. Featured on Book TV.
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Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being
by Manoush Zomorodi
Meeting after meeting. Task after task. Email after email. If we're not chained to our chairs, we're attached to our devices, looking down at our phones and plugging in headphones. And then we go home, sit down on the couch, and scroll some more before going to bed and doing it all over again. Even children are not exempt: Many hours of their social and academic lives are spent on a screen. We all know there has to be a better way--but what is it? In Body Electric, Manoush Zomorodi, host of NPR's TED Radio Hour and the Body Electric podcast, draws on expert interviews, cutting-edge research, and real experiences from tens of thousands of everyday participants in her own citizen experiment to reveal the surprising physiological costs of our digital existences, from posture problems and dwindling eyesight to disrupted breathing and weight gain, and shares scientifically-backed, easy-to-manage tactics and solutions for better health and well-being. Along the way, she also debunks myths and misconceptions about what helps and hurts us, offers useful insights into the labs, offices, schools, and homes where small shifts are making big difference, culminating in an easy-to-apply protocol that will get us all moving. Featured on Book TV.
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The Fourth Branch: How State Government Can Save Our Union
by Daniel Squadron
This part handbook, part history, and part personal narrative will open readers' eyes to the oft-overlooked arm of government that has done more harm and more good than any other in recent years: state legislatures. After the 2024 election, many voters were left feeling disillusioned with America's highest governing body. Anxious citizens point to the federal government and national elected officials with growing alarm, but the broken political system they see in Washington is merely a symptom. The site of that break--and the best opportunity to mend it--lies in the states. In The Fourth Branch, co-founder of The States Project Daniel Squadron opens readers' eyes to the oft-overlooked arm of government that has far more power than most people even realize: state legislatures. Nearly every major issue that Americans care about--from climate change to minimum wage, abortion access to criminal justice reform, gun control to paid family leave--can be determined without the involvement of the federal government. Detailing the systems, experiences, and strategic thinking that inform The States Project's approach to making change--one designed to combat decades of conservative investment and manipulation at the state level--this guide is an urgently needed and galvanizing framework for participation in our democracy, made all the more engaging by Daniel's stories of his time as a New York State Senator and his work with inspiring lawmakers around the country. In examining the power and possibility of the states--both their capacity to influence national politics and the low barriers to involvement at the state level--this book will chart a course to real, grounded hope for the future through actions that any ordinary civilian can take to make concrete and lasting change. Featured on Book TV.
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Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI
by MD Suskind, Dana
In her groundbreaking book Thirty Million Words, Dr. Suskind revealed the extraordinary power of parent talk and interaction in building children's brains. Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, the stakes of that nurturing interaction have become even clearer. New AI applications demonstrate what technology can replicate--but they also illuminate what it cannot: the capacity of human interaction to build not just children's skills but their very capacity for human connection. Human Raised reveals the possibilities and perils of using AI and related technologies for child-rearing. From monitors that decode cries, to smart cribs that soothe babies to sleep, to interactive chatbots designed to engage an inquisitive toddler, the parenting landscape is shifting fast--and Dr. Suskind helps parents navigate this uncharted territory with clarity and confidence. Featured on Good Morning America.
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You Better Believe I'm Gonna Talk about It
by Lisa Rinna
For decades, Lisa Rinna has been captivating audiences--whether as a soap opera icon, reality TV powerhouse, fearless social media provocateur or slaying in haute couture down the catwalks of Paris. But even though she's always said it like she means it, there's still so much more to the woman whose lips launched a thousand memes. In You Better Believe I'm Gonna Talk About It, Lisa peels back the curtain on her rollercoaster career and her unapologetic approach to life, dishing on the highs, the lows, and the did-she-really-just-say-that? moments that made her a household name. Yes, she's spilling all the tea from the soundstages of Days of Our Lives to the drama of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but she's also opening up about what it means to grow older in an industry obsessed with youth, the lessons she's learned about reinvention, parenting a daughter with a chronic illness, keeping her well-documented marriage alive and healthy, and being forced to grieve in public after the loss of her mother and beloved Beverly Hills fan favorite, Lois. Bold, brash, refreshingly honest, and told with her signature wit and candor, You Better Believe I'm Gonna Talk About It is the story of a woman who understands that you go the furthest by playing by your own rules. It's the story of a woman who realizes aging is just a chance at a new chapter. It's the story of a Hollywood icon who refuses to let the world script her story for her. Featured on Tamron Hall.
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Harford County Public Library
1221-A Brass Mill Rd Belcamp, Maryland 21017 410-273-5600
hcplonline.org
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