“The things we do in the name of protecting others are so often attempts to spare some part of ourselves.” – Angela Flournoy, The Turner House
The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand & Shelby Cunningham
fiction / romance / mystery.
It’s move-in day at Tiffin Academy and amidst the happy chaos of friends reuniting, selfies uploading, and cars unloading, shocking news arrives: America Today just ranked Tiffin the number two boarding school in the country. It’s a seventeen-spot jump – was there a typo? The dorms need to be renovated, their sports teams always come in last place, and let’s just say Tiffin students are known for being more social than academic. On the other hand, the campus is exquisite, class sizes are small, and the dining hall is run by an acclaimed New York chef. And they do have fun—lots of parties and school dances, and a piano man plays in the student lounge every Monday night.
But just as the rarefied air of Tiffin is suffused with self-congratulation, the wheels begin to turn – and then they fall off the bus. One by one, scandalous blind items begin to appear on phones across Tiffin’s campus, thanks to a new app called ZipZap, and nobody is safe. From Davi Banerjee, international influencer and resident queen bee, to Simone Bergeron, the new and surprisingly young history teacher, to Charley Hicks, a transfer student who seems determined not to fit in, to Cordelia Spooner, Admissions Director with a somewhat idiosyncratic methodology – everyone has something to hide.
As if high school wasn’t dramatic enough… As the year unfolds, bonds are forged and broken, secrets are shared and exposed, and the lives of Tiffin’s students and staff are changed forever. The Academy is Elin Hilderbrand’s fresh, buzzy take on boarding school life, and a thrilling new direction from one of America’s most satisfying and popular storytellers.
“Our favorite beach novelist has teamed up with her daughter to concoct a juicy campus novel… Expect nonstop drama, served with smarts and style.” – Marion Winik, Oprah Daily
“The Academy has all of Hilderbrand’s breezy storytelling, roving points of view, and effortless characterization that her readers love… Addictive, dishy fun, with enough loose ends to suggest a sequel might be in the works.” – Susan Maguire, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“The authors employ catchy narrative devices, such as the gossipy collective voice of a clique of Tiffin girls and SAT-word-riddled posts from Davi, and they give the main characters plenty of depth. Readers are in for a treat.” – Publishers Weekly
Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill
fiction / fantasy.
Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.
In folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.
Now, Nesi must learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.
“This charming novella paints a picture of how rebellions can spark: a mix of resisting despair, resisting erasure, and telling the right stories… [full of] rich world building, witty asides, and determined protagonists.” – Leah von Essen, Booklist
“[A] marvelous and heartbreaking tale of a lone warrior for good who learns that she can’t succeed alone but that making friends carries its own devastation. Highly recommended for readers who enjoy a good time-travel story that explores all the paradoxes and anyone who loves Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills Cycle.” – Marlene Harris, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood by Adam Nicolson
nonfiction / memoir / nature / birds.
Poets and scientists, saints and naturalists, stalk through these pages. Neighboring cock robins duel almost to the death. Tawny owl widows are seen looking for tawny owl widowers to set up shop with. Blackbirds are found singing phrases from late Beethoven quartets, both in a garden in southern England (where they have been listening to records played through the open window of a drawing room) and in Bonn, where Beethoven himself first heard them and where they are still singing to the same rhythms two hundred fifty years later.
Bird School describes and follows Adam Nicolson’s progress over two or three years in trying to learn about, and eventually to create an environment friendly to, the birds of the farm where he lives in Sussex. In simple language that evinces his careful observational prowess, Nicolson aims to cross the boundary between the scientific and the prescientific understanding of birds, looking into why and how they sing, how they fly and breed, how they survive and migrate, how they have suffered at our hands, how we have loved them and damaged them, and how we might create, or re-create, a refuge for them. Here is a set of lessons for someone who knows little but cares a lot about the living world that is in such dire crisis. Here is life in the “rough grounds,” on the edge of culture and nature.
“…revelatory… a beautiful love letter to the avian world.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“An evocative ode to English birds that invites readers to look more closely at the world around them.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“[A] marvellous and revelatory guide to our native bird-life… jam-packed with fascinating insights… Bird School is a magical reminder of the rich, inexhaustible pleasures of watching wildlife and bird-life, not as an obsessive twitcher trying to tick off rare species, but simply being in nature… an intoxicating and joyous invitation to us all, to step out into nature and take it all in. Relax. Breathe. And listen to the birds.” – Christopher Hart, The Daily Mail
Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love by Samin Nosrat
nonfiction / food / cooking.
With all the generosity of spirit that has endeared her to millions of fans, Samin Nosrat offers more than 125 of her favorite recipes—simply put, the things she most loves to cook for herself and for friends—and infuses them with all the beauty and care you would expect from the person Alice Waters called “America’s next great cooking teacher.” As Samin says, “Recipes, like rituals, endure because they’re passed down to us—whether by ancestors, neighbors, friends, strangers on the internet, or me to you. A written recipe is just a shimmering decoy for the true inheritance: the thread of connection that cooking it will unspool.”
Good Things is an essential, joyful guide to cooking and living, whether you’re looking for a comforting tomato soup to console a struggling friend, seeking a deeper sense of connection in your life, or hosting a dinner for ten in your too-small dining room. Here you’ll find go-to recipes for ricotta custard pancakes, a showstopping roast chicken burnished with saffron, a crunchy, tingly Calabrian chili crisp, super-chewy sky-high focaccia, and a decades-in-the-making, childhood-evoking yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Along the way, you’ll also find plenty of tips, techniques, and lessons, from how to buy olive oil (check the harvest date) to when to splurge (salad dressing is where you want to use your best ingredients) to the best uses for your pressure cooker (chicken stock and dulce de leche, naturally).
Good Things captures, with Samin’s trademark blend of warmth, creativity, and precision, what has made cooking such an important source of delight and comfort in her life.
“[A] warm, heartfelt, and personal testament to the power food has to create comfort, delight, and connection.” – Happy Foodie
“[A] collection of essential recipes and kitchen wisdom that celebrates the art of cooking as an opportunity for connection and community… Adventurous home cooks will appreciate the firm foundation of knowledge that ultimately offers the freedom and confidence to experiment and create special foods to share.” – Jane Harper, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Gray Dawn by Walter Mosley
fiction / mystery.
The name Easy Rawlins stirs excitement in the hearts of readers and fear in the hearts of his foes. His success has bought him a thriving detective agency, with its first female detective; a remote home, shared with children and pets and lovers, high atop the hills overlooking gritty Los Angeles; and more trouble, more problems, and more threat to those whom he loves. In other words, he’s still beset on all sides.
A number of below-the-law powerbrokers plead with Easy to locate a mysterious, dangerous woman—Lutisha James, though she’s gone by another name that Easy will immediately recognize. 1970s Los Angeles is a transient city of delicate, violent balances, and Lutisha has disturbed that. She also has a secret that will upend Easy’s own life, painfully closer to home.
“Mosley has more than earned his reputation as the ultimate craftsman – his language is precise, evocative, and poetic, and his stories challenge and satisfy in equal measure.” – Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads
“By now, it’s tempting to take Mosley’s inimitable blend of taut lyricism and evocative landscapes for granted. Don’t.” – Kirkus Reviews
“In Mosley’s masterful hands, this is a portal to Los Angeles streets and their vastly different worlds, communities born of disadvantage, and mysteries that highlight universal truths.” – Christine Tran, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
History Matters by David McCullough; edited by Dorie McCullough Lawson & Michael Hill
nonfiction / essays / history.
History Matters brings together selected essays by beloved historian David McCullough, some published here for the first time, written at different points over the course of his long career but all focused on the subject of his lifelong passion: the importance of history in understanding our present and future. Edited by McCullough’s daughter, Dorie McCullough Lawson, and his longtime researcher, Michael Hill, History Matters is a tribute to a master historian and offers fresh insights into McCullough’s enduring interests and writing life. The book also features a foreword by Jon Meacham.
McCullough highlights the importance of character in political leaders, with Harry Truman and George Washington serving as exemplars of American values like optimism and determination. He shares his early influences, from the books he cherished in his youth to the people who mentored him. He also pays homage to those who inspired him, such as writer Paul Horgan and painter Thomas Eakins, illustrating the diverse influences on his writing as well as the influence of art.
Rich with McCullough’s signature grace, curiosity, and narrative gifts, these essays offer vital lessons in viewing history through the eyes of its participants, a perspective that McCullough believed was crucial to understanding the present as well as the past. History Matters is testament to McCullough’s legacy as one of the great storytellers of this nation’s history and of the lasting promise of American ideals.
“[A] master of the narrative history form.” – Rosemary Michaud, The Post and Courier
“[This] collection displays McCullough’s eye for engrossing anecdotes and ebullient prose (‘History should not ever be dull,’ he declares). The historian’s admirers will find this an enjoyable and warmhearted valedictory hymn to the American spirit.” – Publishers Weekly
“[An] enjoyable complement to McCullough’s canon of works… Throughout the book, McCullough’s remarks display concerns about the consequences of historical illiteracy. His pieces also illustrate the power of helping out younger writers and connecting with them… Hopefully, it will provide inspiration to readers to delve into McCullough’s writings.” – Andrew DeMillo, AP
Other People’s Houses by Clare Mackintosh
fiction / mystery / suspense.
The Hill is the kind of place everyone wants to live: luxurious, exclusive and safe. But now someone is breaking and entering these Cheshire homes one by one, and DS Leo Brady suspects the burglar is looking for something, or someone, in particular.
Over the border in Wales, DC Ffion Morgan recovers the body of an estate agent from the lake. There’s no love lost between Ffion and estate agents, but who hated this one enough to want her dead – and why?
As their cases collide, Ffion and Leo discover people will pay a high price to keep their secrets behind closed doors…
“Mackintosh smoothly braids her three main plot threads, infusing the action with humor and surprising sweetness… mystery readers of all stripes will find something to like.” – Publishers Weekly
“MacIntosh’s third Ffion Morgan mystery offers a witty take on social climbing along with a tangle of connected whodunits that follow satisfying classic tropes. Highly recommended…” – Christine Tran, Booklist
Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach ★
nonfiction / science / health / biology.
The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available—sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we’re attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet?
In Replaceable You, Mary Roach explores the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body’s failings. When and how does a person decide they’d be better off with a prosthetic than their existing limb? Can a donated heart be made to beat forever? Can an intestine provide a workable substitute for a vagina?
Roach dives in with her characteristic verve and infectious wit. Her travels take her to the OR at a legendary burn unit in Boston, a “superclean” xeno-pigsty in China, and a stem cell “hair nursery” in the San Diego tech hub. She talks with researchers and surgeons, amputees and ostomates, printers of kidneys and designers of wearable organs. She spends time in a working iron lung from the 1950s, stays up all night with recovery techs as they disassemble and reassemble a tissue donor, and travels across Mongolia with the cataract surgeons of Orbis International.
Irrepressible and accessible, Replaceable You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable, and surreal quest to build a new you.
“[A] fascinating tour of the wonderful world of regenerative medicine.” – Shannon Carlin, Time
“Highly recommended reading for those curious about ‘fixes’ for the body and the world of biotechnology.” – Tony Milksanek, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“An amiably entertaining, endlessly intriguing stroll through the stuff of which we’re made.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“This approachable and humorous explainer will delight the scientifically curious while removing stigma, fear, or embarrassment around biomedical adaptive technologies and body enhancements.” – Wade Lee-Smith, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel / Palestine by Hussein Agha & Robert Malley
nonfiction / history / politics / current events.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas fighters killed more than eleven hundred Israelis and took more than two hundred hostages, prompting an Israeli response that has in turn taken tens of thousands of lives and devastated the Gaza Strip. Why did this happen, and can anything be done to grant peace and justice to Israelis and Palestinians alike?
In Tomorrow Is Yesterday, the analyst Hussein Agha and the diplomat Robert Malley offer a personal and bracing perspective on how the hopes of the Oslo Peace Process became the horrors of the present. Drawing on their experience advising the Palestinian leadership (Arafat and Abbas) and US presidents (Clinton, Obama, and Biden) and their participation in secret talks over decades, Agha and Malley offer candid portraits of leading figures and an interpretation of the conflict that exposes the delusions of all sides. They stress that the two-state solution became a global goal only when it was no longer viable; that U.S. officials preferred technical schemes to a frank reckoning with the past; that Hamas’s onslaught and Israel’s war of destruction were not historical exceptions but historical reenactments; and that the gaps separating Israelis and Palestinians have less to do with territorial allocation than with history and emotions.
“[A] sharp and unsentimental new book.” – Scott Simon, NPR
“[An] understandable explanation of and commentary on the conflict… fascinating and authoritative… This is a highly recommended and truly timely work that should be made available immediately to the public in the collections of all libraries.” – Steve Dixon, Library Journal
“Hard lessons from decades of Middle East diplomacy… a doleful epitaph for the so-called two-state solution… the authors offer a riveting insiders’ account of high-stakes statesmanship… A fascinating postmortem of failed statesmanship in a fraught region—and a guarded plea for new ideas.” – Kirkus Reviews
Uncertain Sons and Other Stories by Thomas Ha
fiction / short stories / horror / science fiction / fantasy.
Uncertain Sons is a startling and masterful collection exploring familial love and trauma; societal and technological anxieties; identity and class; and alternate near-future irrealities. Sharp, incisive, imaginative, and visionary, Thomas Ha’s debut heralds the arrival of a vital new voice.
“I can certainly recommend this ambitious collection to anyone remotely interested in speculative fiction, weird fiction, or imaginative short fiction in general. The concepts are fresh, with a tip of the hat to Ray Bradbury for their imaginative concepts and the overall execution of the storytelling.” – James M. Fisher, The Seaboard Review of Books
“[Ha’s book] maintains a deeply human melancholy, elevating it above the surrealist portraits and darker fiction of its peers into something strange, affecting, and beautiful… a brilliant debut collection, an exploration of who we are when all we have is ourselves and our own received wisdom, and one of the best collections of the year.” – Sam Reader, Strange Library
We The People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore ★
nonfiction / history / politics / law.
The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world but also one of the most difficult to amend. Jill Lepore, Harvard professor of history and law, explains why in We the People, the most original history of the Constitution in decades—and an essential companion to her landmark history of the United States, These Truths.
Published on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding—the anniversary, too, of the first state constitutions—We the People offers a wholly new history of the Constitution. “One of the Constitution’s founding purposes was to prevent change,” Lepore writes. “Another was to allow for change without violence.” Relying on the extraordinary database she has assembled at the Amendments Project, Lepore recounts centuries of attempts, mostly by ordinary Americans, to realize the promise of the Constitution. Yet nearly all those efforts have failed. Although nearly twelve thousand amendments have been introduced in Congress since 1789, and thousands more have been proposed outside its doors, only twenty-seven have ever been ratified. More troubling, the Constitution has not been meaningfully amended since 1971. Without recourse to amendment, she argues, the risk of political violence rises. So does the risk of constitutional change by presidential or judicial fiat.
Challenging both the Supreme Court’s monopoly on constitutional interpretation and the flawed theory of “originalism,” Lepore contends in this “gripping and unfamiliar story of our own past” that the philosophy of amendment is foundational to American constitutionalism. The framers never intended for the Constitution to be preserved, like a butterfly, under glass, Lepore argues, but expected that future generations would be forever tinkering with it, hoping to mend America by amending its Constitution through an orderly deliberative and democratic process.
Lepore’s remarkable history seeks, too, to rekindle a sense of constitutional possibility. Congressman Jamie Raskin writes that Lepore “has thrown us a lifeline, a way of seeing the Constitution neither as an authoritarian straitjacket nor a foolproof magic amulet but as the arena of fierce, logical, passionate, and often deadly struggle for a more perfect union.” At a time when the Constitution’s vulnerability is all too evident, and the risk of political violence all too real, We the People, with its shimmering prose and pioneering research, hints at the prospects for a better constitutional future, an amended America.
“Essential reading for all Americans; a great fit for public library collections.” – Tina Panik, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“…startling and innovative… draw[s] attention instead to the repeated attempts to enlarge what was meant by ‘People’ in the country’s most foundational laws… offers a vivid portrait of mostly unfamiliar voices of constitutional demurral… Lepore persuasively contends that we still can learn from the long trail of would-be amenders and constitutionalists… Left hanging in the air at the end of this rewarding book is a dark question: At what cost have we abandoned amendment?” – Aziz Z. Huq, New York Times
“In her characteristically lively history of the U.S. Constitution, Lepore argues that the document’s capacity for amendment was not only central to the founders’ political thinking but essential to its ratification… Lepore’s passionate denunciation of [originalism] paints it as one of the ‘stranger paradoxes’ of American constitutional history.” – Jessica T. Matthews, Foreign Affairs
“[A] phenomenally researched, eminently accessible, and acutely relevant history of the U.S. Constitution… In this entertaining, illuminating, and essential exploration of the country’s most foundational document, Lepore provides the insights necessary to appreciate the struggles of the past and navigate present and future challenges.” – Carol Haggas, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy ★
fiction.
Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood—overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences—swoops in and stays.
Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January’s got a relationship with a “good” man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.
As these friends move from the late 2000’s into the late 2020’s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another—amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.
The Wilderness is Angela Flournoy’s masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship.
“Elegant and unsettling, this novel evades the expected at every turn.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“…expansive and intimate… This is not your generic book club selection, celebrating four friends living, laughing, loving. But if you want a ruminating, clear-eyed look at friendship as a means of survival, this is it.” – Lauren LeBlanc, Boston Globe
“Flournoy’s pages radiate with intelligence as her characters attempt to shape their lives on their own terms. It’s a knockout.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Flournoy is an immersive writer, describing the interiority of her characters and where their lives take place with striking detail and insight… An absorbing, uplifting, and poignant story of community and deep connection.” – Allison Escoto, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights by Keisha N. Blain
nonfiction / history / politics.
Even before they were recognized as citizens of the United States, Black women understood that the fights for civil and human rights were inseparable. Over the course of two hundred years, they were at the forefront of national and international movements for social change, weaving connections between their own and others’ freedom struggles around the world.
Without Fear tells how, during American history, Black women made humans rights theirs: from worldwide travel and public advocacy in the global Black press to their work for the United Nations, they courageously and effectively moved human rights beyond an esoteric concept to an active, organizing principle. Acclaimed historian Keisha N. Blain tells the story of these women—from the well-known, like Ida B. Wells, Madam C. J. Walker, and Lena Horne, to those who are still less known, including Pearl Sherrod, Aretha McKinley, and Marguerite Cartwright. Blain captures human rights thinking and activism from the ground up with Black women at the center, working outside the traditional halls of power.
By shouldering intersecting forms of oppression—including racism, sexism, and classism—Black women have long been in a unique position to fight for freedom and dignity. Without Fear is an account of their aspirations, strategies, and struggles to pioneer a human rights approach to combating systems of injustice.
“[A] meticulously detailed, distinctly illuminating, and invaluable history…” – Amanda Dee, Booklist
“[An] eye-opening account… a thoroughly researched and invigorating look at a robust grassroots push for human rights in the 20th century.” – Publishers Weekly
“…powerful… This well-written and deeply researched study of Black women’s fight for human rights would be a welcome addition for readers interested in Black history and social justice.” – Chad E. Statler, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
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