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The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year
by Linda Raedisch
'Tis the Season for Witches, Elves, and a Legion of Ghosts Not so very long ago, Yuletide was as much a chilling season of ghosts and witches as it was a festival of goodwill. In The Old Magic of Christmas, you'll rub elbows with veiled spirits, learn the true perils of elves, and discover a bestiary of enchanted creatures. Rife with the more frightful characters from folklore and the season's most petulant ghosts, this book takes you on a spooky sleigh ride from the silvered firs of a winter forest to the mirrored halls of the Snow Queen. Along the way, you'll discover how to bring the festivities into your home with cookie recipes and craft instructions, as well as tips for delving more deeply into your relationship with the unseen. Praise: Steeped in history and adorned with a bit of enchantment, The Old Magic of Christmas is the perfect book to read by a winter's fire with a mug of mulled cider in hand.--Deborah Blake, author of The Witch's Broom ...[A] fascinating journey into the stories behind the tinsel and bows.--Doreen Shababy, author of The Wild & Weedy Apothecary ...[A]n intriguing little tome that explores the darker side of the Yuletide holiday.--Ellen Dugan, author of The Enchanted Cat
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Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books
by Hwang Bo-Reum
From the author of the international bestseller Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, a heartfelt invitation to reflect on your relationship with reading and celebrate the joys of books.
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A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature
by Adam Morgan
Wholly transportive and spellbinding. I was beguiled. --Ling Ma, bestselling author of Severance and Bliss Montage A fascinating account of a remarkable woman dangerously ahead of her time. --Kevin Kwan, bestselling author of Crazy Rich Asians Exquisitely researched, deeply felt, and poignant. This one belongs on your shelf. --Sarah Rose Etter, author of Ripe and The Book of The life and times of literary pioneer and queer icon Margaret C. Anderson, who risked everything to be the first to publish James Joyce's Ulysses in America. Perfect for fans of The Editor, Flapper, and Nasty Women. Already under fire for publishing the literary avant-garde into a world not ready for it, Margaret C. Anderson's cutting-edge magazine The Little Review was a bastion of progressive politics and boundary-pushing writing from then-unknowns like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, and Djuna Barnes. And as its publisher, Anderson was a target. From Chicago to New York and Paris, this fearless agitator helmed a woman-led publication that pushed American culture forward and challenged the sensibilities of early 20th century Americans dismayed by its salacious writing and advocacy for supposed extremism like women's suffrage, access to birth control, and LBGTQ rights. But then it went too far. In 1921, Anderson found herself on trial and labeled a danger to the minds of young girls by a government seeking to shut her down. Guilty of having serialized James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses in her magazine, Anderson was now not just a publisher but also a scapegoat for regressives seeking to impose their will on a world on the brink of modernization. Author, journalist, and literary critic Adam Morgan brings Anderson and her journal to life anew in A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls, capturing a moment of cultural acceleration and backlash all too familiar today while shining light on an unsung heroine of American arts and letters. Bringing a fresh eye to a woman and a movement misunderstood in their time, this biography highlights a feminist counterculture that audaciously pushed for more during a time of extreme social conservatism and changed the face of American literature and culture forever.
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Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live
by Rob Dunn
A natural history of the wilderness in our homes, from the microbes in our showers to the crickets in our basements Even when the floors are sparkling clean and the house seems silent, our domestic domain is wild beyond imagination. In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn introduces us to the nearly 200,000 species living with us in our own homes, from the Egyptian meal moths in our cupboards and camel crickets in our basements to the lactobacillus lounging on our kitchen counters. You are not alone. Yet, as we obsess over sterilizing our homes and separating our spaces from nature, we are unwittingly cultivating an entirely new playground for evolution. These changes are reshaping the organisms that live with us -- prompting some to become more dangerous, while undermining those species that benefit our bodies or help us keep more threatening organisms at bay. No one who reads this engrossing, revelatory book will look at their homes in the same way again.
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A Ferry Merry Christmas
by Debbie Macomber
A delayed ferryboat brings people together in the best of ways during the holiday season in this enchanting Christmas novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber. Avery and Reed Bond grew up sharing a close-knit relationship, weathering life's storms side by side. Even so, Avery often finds herself exasperated by her brother's relentless matchmaking, while Reed can't resist teasing his sister--after all, isn't that what siblings do? Facing their first Christmas without their beloved Grams, the woman who lovingly raised them, Reed and Avery decide to spend the holiday together at Reed's home. However, their plans take an unexpected turn when the ferry Avery's traveling on stalls in the middle of Puget Sound, stranding its passengers and leaving Reed waiting a now undetermined length of time for her arrival. What is at first an inconvenience threatens to ruin the plans of a number of commuters, but Avery and Reed soon discover that this unforeseen delay might end up being be a perfectly timed blessing in disguise. While stuck on the ferry, Avery meets a handsome sailor and witnesses a Christmas miracle that reignites her belief in the holiday spirit. Meanwhile, Reed runs into a coworker who's also waiting for a family member to arrive, and sparks a surprising and delightful connection. In this tale of holiday magic, the Bond siblings find themselves taking a chance on love, proving that sometimes the best moments in life come when we least expect them.
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Canticle
by Janet Rich Edwards
GOODREADS READERS' MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF FALL * REAL SIMPLE BEST BOOKS OF 2025 A masterful debut novel following a spirited young woman's explorations of faith, agency, and love in thirteenth-century Bruges. Aleys is sixteen years old and unusual: stubborn, bright, and prone to religious visions. She and her only friend, Finn, a young scholar, have been learning Latin together in secret--but just as she thinks their connection might become something more, everything unravels. When her father promises her in marriage to a merchant she doesn't love, she runs away from home, finding shelter among the beguines, a fiercely independent community of religious women who refuse to answer to the Church. Among these hardworking and strong-willed women, Aleys glimpses for the first time the joys of belonging: a life of song, meaning, and friendship in the markets and along the canals of Bruges. But forces both mystical and political are at work. Illegal translations of scripture, the women's independence, and a sudden rash of miracles all draw the attention of an ambitious bishop--and bring Aleys and those around her into ever-increasing danger, a danger that will push Aleys to a new understanding of love and sacrifice. Grounded in the little-told stories of medieval women--mystics, saints, anchoresses, and beguines--and introducing a major new talent, Canticle is a luminous work of historical fiction, vividly evoking a world on the verge of transformation.
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Honeymoon Phase
by Amy Daws
When Addison 'Roe' Monroe tells me she's going on a husband hunt at the local lumberjack competition so she can inherit her father's lumberyard, desperate times call for desperate measures. She's sworn off romance. Says she's been through enough tragedy. So I offer myself as an alternative, 'cause that's what best friends are for. But my stubborn friend, who would rather drive a forklift than get her nails done, refuses to accept my help, and now I find myself training to become a lumberjack. I refuse to let Roe hitch her wagon to some hulking ax wielder who might be a serial killer. She means too much to me. And I swear there are moments where she looks at me like I mean something more to her, too. On the surface, I'm offering a marriage of convenience to protect her. But the truth is...I'm hopelessly in love with my best friend. So if I have to marry her and move her up to Fletcher Mountain just to see if she could love me back, so be it. Because my only regret would be losing her forever, and that's a fact--
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Queen Esther
by John Irving
Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board the ship to Portland, Maine; her mother is murdered by anti-Semites in Portland. Dr. Larch knows it won't be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther; in fact, he won't find any family who'll adopt her. When Esther is fourteen, soon to be a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows, a philanthropic New England family with a history of providing foster care for unadopted orphans. The Winslows aren't Jewish, but they despise anti-Semitism. Esther's gratitude for the Winslows is unending; even as she retraces her roots back to Vienna, she never stops loving and protecting the Winslows. In the final chapter, set in Jerusalem in 1981, Esther Nacht is seventy-six--
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