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Strange Is the Light
by Sarah Maria Griffin
A childhood game of wild imagination takes a frightening turn.
For Daphne McSharry, Valentia Island was a place of joyful childhood independence, adventure and playing with her beloved friends, Ronan, Leonie and Finn. They returned to one game of their own making year after year, and let their imaginations roam free. But when the game is stolen from them by an outsider, it becomes something dark and strange, forcing Daphne to make a choice with a terrible cost. When tragedy brings her back to the island years later, she and her friends finally have to face the consequences of what she did. Daphne never took her final turn... And there is a debt that must be paid.
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The Young Will Remember
by Eve J. Chung
A sweeping novel about a correspondent trapped behind enemy lines during the Korean War. 1950. It’s the coldest winter in decades, and twenty-eight-year-old Chinese American journalist Ellie Chang is on a military flight to cover a battle in the mountains of North Korea when her plane is shot down. As she emerges from the fallen aircraft onto an icy field surrounded by the enemy, Ellie is sure it’s the end, certain she’ll never make it home to her parents…until a woman pushes her way through the crowd and claims Ellie as the lost daughter that she’s been searching for since the last war ended. Never mind that Ellie doesn’t speak a word of Korean. Ellie is taken in by her rescuer—a woman who calls herself “Emma”—and the Paks, a pastor’s family. Emma’s decision to claim Ellie, and Ellie’s choice to take her hand, will connect their lives forever.
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First Summer
by Ekin Oklap
A dreamy debut novel about the summer love that changes two girls at the edge of adulthood.
One afternoon at the start of summer, a teenage girl watches a new girl move in across the street. In Clara, she recognizes the same loneliness that she feels herself, but finds tenderness and laughter, too. Over hot, languid days spent talking and reading side by side in the garden, the narrator is awakened to the possibility of a true connection with another human being. Meanwhile, in a distant fictional galaxy, Nadia the space explorer—the protagonist of a childhood book series beloved by both girls—traverses the known universe with her companion Rosa. Their imagined adventures make sense of new and powerful feelings. This first summer of love echoes throughout the characters’ lives and will change them forever.
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Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It
by Brooke Averick
Despite being a hopeless romantic, Phoebe Berman’s about to be a thirty-year-old virgin. With one month before her milestone birthday, she's determined to finally lose it...if her own anxiety doesn’t slow her down.
Phoebe Berman fears the one thing she wants the most: love. Thanks to an extremely unfortunate first kiss attempt, crippling intimacy anxiety has plagued her since she was a teen. Phoebe has so much going for her: a dream teaching job, a supportive and hilarious group of best friends, and all the romance novels a girl could want at her fingertips—but she can’t help but beat herself up over the one thing she can’t quite seem to figure out. Determined to change this, she drafts up the ultimate "Guide to Losing My Virginity" checklist with the hope of finally getting laid. Suddenly, she goes from a relatively boring (basically non-existent) dating life to juggling three romantic prospects at once. Phoebe Berman’s Gonna Lose It is a brutally honest and completely relatable story for anyone who’s ever felt stuck between coming of age and coming apart.
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Fallen for France
by Elizabeth Letts
A sweeping novel of love, war, empire, and the power of kindness in a world descending into darkness.
Beddou is six years old when he is sent off to apprentice far from his High Atlas village in Morocco. That same month, a magnificent filly is born in the splendor of the Sultan’s palace. For a brief, golden time, the mare belongs to the boy. But Beddou’s heart is broken when a soldier steals his horse and disappears into France just as the Great War roars to a start.
Estelle, a young woman in France, finds a distressed Arabian mare wandering alone in the meadow behind her house. She is determined to look after this radiant creature just as tenderly as she cares for her vulnerable younger brother.
Thomas is an Englishman hardened by his experience as a wartime veterinarian in France. He finds the mare and promises to protect her—and the woman who once loved her—but he doubts his own ability to keep anyone safe.
Spanning Morocco and France in the shadow of World War I, Fallen for France follows unforgettable characters whose lives are bound by a magnificent horse and a string of amber beads.
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How to Find Love in the Cereal Aisle
by Alissa DeRogatis
A fresh, charming romcom about the chaos of dating in your twenties.
Ainsley Green writes happily-ever-afters for a rabid fanbase of hopeless romantics. In real life? Her boyfriend just broke up with her, her editor wanted a new book yesterday, and she’s starting to wonder if love actually exists beyond the pages of her favorite novels. So when Lucas, Ainsley’s best friend and biggest cheerleader, insists the best cure for writer’s block is real-life inspiration, she’s ready to try anything. Enter: the meet-cute plan, a mission to take her head out of her heartbreak and force meet-cutes IRL to spark some new ideas. But as failed missions bumping into strangers at the airport and spilling coffee on men at the cafe result in nothing but embarrassment and stained clothing, Ainsley begins to wonder if maybe the romance she’s been chasing already has a leading man.
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Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance
by Cindy Cohn
A personal chronicle of three key legal privacy battles that have defined the digital age and shaped the internet as we know it.
Can we still have private conversations if we live our lives online? Privacy’s Defender chronicles Cindy Cohn’s thirty-year battle to protect our right to digital privacy and shows just how central this right is to all our other rights, including our ability to organize and make change in the world. Shattering the hypermasculine myth that our digital reality was solely the work of a handful of charismatic tech founders, the author weaves her own personal story with the history of Crypto Wars, FBI gag orders, and the post-9/11 surveillance state. Part memoir and part legal history for the general listener, this book is a compelling testament to just how hard-won the privacy rights we now enjoy as tech users are, but also how crucial these rights are in our efforts to combat authoritarianism, grow democracy, and strengthen other human rights.
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A Bite-Sized History of Italy: Gastronomic Tales of the Roman Empire, Renaissance, and Republic
by Danielle Callegari
A compelling exploration into the rich tapestry of Italian food history and culture from the Roman Empire to today.
Though a relatively young country, Italy’s culinary identity has been simmering for centuries, shaped by a shared gastronomic culture. From the dormice and garum of the Roman Empire to the heresy of pineapple pizza, A Bite-Sized History of Italy traces this legacy, offering a delicious romp through millennia of culinary tradition and transformation. Author Danielle Callegari, Dartmouth College professor and celebrated Gola podcast co-host, guides readers through the kitchens, vineyards, city squares, and coastal ports of the iconic peninsula, painting an intimate portrait of a place justly famous for its cuisine—so much so that food might well be the very reason for its existence.
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Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution
by Denise Kiernan
A sweeping chronicle challenging the traditional mythology of the nation's beginnings and championing the unsung women behind the American Revolution.
History has always celebrated the "Founding Fathers"—the sly but victorious tactics of Washington, the daring exploits of Lafayette, the grand ideas of Jefferson. Yet we rarely hear of the women who kept the colonies running and liberty alive. Obstinate Daughters finally rewrites the story of America’s birth by revealing the courageous, resourceful women whose actions shaped a nation. From the battlefields to the printing press, from the plantations to the pulpit, these women fought, spied, published, preached, farmed, organized. From the front lines to the home front, from the colonies to the frontier, these unsung heroines turned the tide. With journalistic rigor and narrative flair, Kiernan reminds us that the past is always open to challenge, and that every untold story can inspire a new generation.
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The Lost Cities of El Norte: Coronado's Quest, the Unconquered West, and the Birth of American Indian Resistance
by Peter Stark
A thrilling and masterfully crafted narrative of the Conquistador Francisco Coronado's expedition across 2,500 miles of the vast uncharted North American interior.
In 1540, the grandest exploring expedition ever assembled in the Americas paraded north from the ruins of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, a glittering column of 2,000 men heading into the unknown. Their destination was El Norte Misterioso--The Mysterious North, present-day United States--where fabulous cities of gold were rumored to shine beyond the horizon. Two years later, survivors began stumbling back, half dead. Lost to poisoned arrows, brutal deserts, starvation, cold, desertion, and countless other hardships, 90% of those who left would never return. Led by Francisco Coronado and backed by the full weight of the Spanish empire, the superpower of its day, they had expected to seize the land, steal its riches, and subjugate its peoples, just as they had so recently done to the mighty Aztec and Inca empires. But instead they encountered the unconquered American West, populated by complex societies of indigenous nations, masters of a vast and unforgiving landscape who fiercely resisted this European "incursion" onto their lands.
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The Black Death: A Global History of Humanity's Most Devastating Pandemic
by Thomas Asbridge
This vivid account of the Plague moves beyond Christian Europe to the Muslim Near East, illustrating the truly international impact of humanity's greatest scourge on the medieval world.
In 1347, a catastrophic plague fell on Europe and its neighbors, halving entire populations and causing untold suffering. The Black Death is, without question, one of the defining episodes in our history, and yet, one critical fact too often gets sidelined: this disease was not solely, or even primarily, a European phenomenon, but rather a catastrophe that touched the whole medieval world, including the Muslim near and Middle East, the Byzantine Empire, north Africa and Asia. Thomas Asbridge, a historian at Queen Mary University of London, Asbridge treats the Black Death as the truly international phenomenon that it was, crisscrossing the globe to follow the plague’s appearance. Compiling over seven years of research, Asbridge brings the drama of this era to life through hundreds of eyewitness accounts. As Thomas Asbridge masterfully demonstrates, reducing the story of the Black Death to a Western narrative not only limits our view of the past, but it also makes it impossible to appreciate the pandemic’s true scale and long-term significance.
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Idle in Provence: A Brief History of Thyme
by Eric Idle
Charming, cheeky, and unexpectedly moving, Idle in Provence is Eric Idle at his best—hilarious, candid, and unforgettable.
In 1971, at the beginning of Monty Python mania, Eric Idle bought a crumbling ruin in the hills of Provence. With no electricity, no water, no road, and no plan, he set out to transform the neglected stone shack into what he lovingly calls a shackeau. Idle in Provence is the story of the transformation of both the place and the man. Against the sun-drenched backdrop of southern France, Idle penned iconic songs and scripts, hosted a revolving door of eccentric and brilliant friends—George Harrison, Robin Williams, Paul Simon, and others—and found a rare kind of peace far from the madness of showbiz. Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and comedy masterclass, the book is filled with laugh-out-loud moments, tender reflections, and the kind of sharp, self-deprecating wit only Idle can deliver.
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