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Half of a Yellow Sun

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene. Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.

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Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set

Douglas Adams

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

When a check-in desk at London’s Heathrow Airport disappears in a ball of orange flame, the event is said to be an act of God. But which god, wonders holistic detective Dirk Gently. And how is this connected to Dirk’s battle with his cleaning lady over his filthy refrigerator…or to the murder of his latest client? Or are these events just another stretch of coincidences in the life of the world’s most off-kilter private investigator?

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Along the River Road

Isaac Morris

The ninth circle of Dante's hell is where we find those who have betrayed a special relationship—such as the one between priest and child. It is this spiritual pit we encounter “Along the River Road.”Sister Margaret Donovan, a former sheriff's deputy, has turned in her gun and badge to take the veil. She works as parish administrator for a small congregation in rural southern Illinois. The idyllic assignment turns dark when an elderly priest is assigned to say mass on Sundays. Some in the church recognize him. A suicide in the parish alerts Margaret that there is something awry, but she gets no help from her diocese: they claim not to know a thing.Margaret's cop instincts kick into high gear, and she soon encounters dark secrets buried in the past, a bureaucracy that doesn't cough up secrets easily, and a link to a hideous murder-suicide that occurred forty years earlier. Sister Margaret isn't like any nun you have ever know. She is a flawed individual who struggles to maintain her vocation in a world where faith has gone by the wayside. Her struggle with criminality mirrors her own struggle with sin and redemption.

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Tales from the Levee

Martha Miller

Tales from the Levee centres on Casey, a masculine, part Apache lesbian born and raised in a small Midwestern town. Always knowing inside herself that she is not like others she knew, she escapes, moves to the centre of Springfield, Illinois, where she discovers an area known as the Levee. The street, infamously sprinkled with several gay bars, a massage parlor, a hamburger stand, and apartments, becomes her new home. There, she befriends, lives and loves with lesbians, drag queens, prostitutes and gays also seeking a place they too can call home.

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Coast to Coast and Back to Chicago

Mike Shepherd

Coast to Coast and Back to Chicago begins with the protagonist Mick Scott hitchhiking out of the Windy City to escape a cold winter and a failed relationship with a cold-hearted woman. His trip takes him across the Deep South and up the east coast to Boston. He continues on through the west to San Francisco with stops in Austin, El Paso, Santa Fe, and Salt Lake City. He then returns to Chicago where he resolves his relationship with the woman he left while meeting the famous columnist Mike Royko, who helps him in his attempt to publish a book about his hitchhiking adventures.

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Sweet Boy and Wild One

T. L. Hayes

Graduate student Rachel Cole is feeling the weekend blues and heads to her favorite lesbian hangout, looking for Ms. Right Now. She is immediately attracted to a brown- haired, brown-eyed, flannel-wearing soulful singer named Bobby Layton. But when Bobby introduces himself to Rachel, Rachel questions things about herself--things like her own sexuality and her very identity. Could she be falling for this sweet boy?

Bobby Layton lost a lot when he came out as trans. And he's sworn off dating lesbians because dealing with hate from the straight world is hard enough. Who needs the drama? But something about wild girl Rachel Cole keeps him coming back.

Love may be enough to take them to unexpected places beyond their expectations.

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ABE & ANN

Gary Moore

ABE & ANN brings to life Abraham Lincoln's passionate romance with Ann Rutledge when he was young and timid and hopelessly in love. Years later he would be enthroned in Washington after saving democracy, his wisdom and greatness legendary. Was it all because of a woman?


Auburn-haired Ann Rutledge, feisty and fed-up with propriety, is frontier royalty, the 18-year-old daughter of the founder of the village where the 22-year-old Lincoln comes looking for work. She is lively and literate and funny, and Abe is homely and poor, but full of high ambition. Lincoln courts the dazzling red-haired woman who comes into his life like a revelation. In the spell of their feelings, the lovers question the limits in their lives and boldly dream of a better future. But she is engaged to another man.


Readers who enjoyed Doris Kearns Goodwin's bestselling Lincoln book Team of Rivals, Steven Spielberg's blockbuster film Lincoln, and George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo will marvel again at this very different and compelling tale of Lincoln as a young man.


Not a grand historical treatment but a lyrical telling of a deeply personal tale, ABE & ANN dares to give readers an earnest but untutored Lincoln whose humanity every reader can share, who was weak before he was strong, frightened before he was bold, and deeply in love with a woman whose admiration confirmed the greatness growing within him.

 

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Manchester Bluff

J. D. Proffitt

Jason Alexander is abruptly informed that he won't be able to finish his studies at Illinois College because the school is closing down for the Civil War in the fall of 1862. The son of the largest cattle rancher in the Union is assigned to Edwin Stanton's War Department. Jason's adventures begin on the train ride to Washington when he foils an attempt by an evil member of the subversive Knights of the Golden Circle to assassinate Anna Ella Carroll, a close confidant of President Abraham Lincoln.Reporting to the assistant secretary of war, Agent Alexander examines mysterious documents and explores the dangerous countryside for clues to the Confederacy's uncanny ability to smuggle critical information out of Washington and into the hands of Jeb Stuart's cavalry, lurking just beyond the outer perimeter of the city's defenses. Miss Carroll mentors Jason as he confronts both War Department politics and the determined enemies of the Union.Jason Alexander's gripping saga finds him locked in deadly struggles for survival as one revealing discovery leads to another at the war's most pivotal moments just prior to Gettysburg. Manchester Bluff is a thrilling story of individual sacrifice and determination that blends fact and fiction in a way that makes it impossible to determine which is which. This is a must-read for Civil War and thriller aficionados alike.

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Noteworthy Tribute

Mark G. Bradley

Cory Lynn Faber finds himself in Virginia Beach three thousand miles away from home after the death of his best friend and bandmate. While on the path to re-discovery he meets a local aspiring music producer, Evan Spencer. Evan, a young DJ, has his own struggles with his family's desire for him to pursue college and a "normal" life versus starting a band and traveling. All of this unfolds against the backdrop of family secrets.Noteworthy Tribute is a coming-of-age story where characters young and old learn the importance of relationships and that sacrifice is the bridge to their destiny.

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House of Living Stones

Katie Schuermann

In a small college town where things dont change; at least not often and certainly not easily. Once a reputation is earned or a routine is established, it sticks. No one steps out of a comfort zone or into the fray. That is certainly true at Zion Lutheran Church, where things are predictable and comfortable. That is until Zions new young pastor hires a new choir director and sets in motion a chain of events that changes everything. The crusty church secretary, Mrs. Scheinberg (everyone knows shes the one whos really in charge), must learn to adjust. The talented but difficult organist, Evan Ebner, must face reality. And the new girl in town, Emily Duke, must come to terms with her past. Even Pastor Michael Fletcher has his own world shaken up by the baggage Emily brings with her and by the handsome Zachary Brandt who pursues her.

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Crime of Passion

Maggie Ferguson

All her life, attorney Taylor Quinlan has kept a devastating family secret, which has effectively pushed aside all thoughts of matrimony--until she meets defense attorney Michael Steele. Now, Taylor's famous cousin stands accused of his wife's sensationalized murder, and her secret--if she makes it known--will become evidence for the prosecution, and could tear her from Michael's embrace forever.

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Karilyne's Korner

Kristy Woods

Karilyne is having a difficult time with the death of her mother. Her children are suddenly grown and gone and her husband is consumed with work. Jaclyn is returning to the village to spend time with her ailing father. Patricia is running away from painful memories and guilt. Karilyne opens the tea room she has always dreamed of hoping to fill the void. Jaclyn and Patricia are drawn to the small cafe where "the tea is warm and comforting and the chocolate cake is soulful". While her husband is gone, Kurt, the first love of her life, moves back to the village while Frankie, a gorgeous organic farmer, begins his own campaign to win Karilyne's affections. Will Karilyne seek the comfort of another man while Jake is gone or will she stop feeling sorry for herself long enough to see that if she turns her self-pity into the strength she has hidden within, find the faith she has lost, she could make a difference in the lives of those around her and, ultimately, in her own.

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2112

Thomas W. Wente

What happens in a world gone mad? Plenty! Most people are exterminated. From all lands between Peking and Washington there is a trial of death and destruction. How did this come to be? Poor countries have become prominent with backing from Communist China and the Russians. Missile sites appear in these parts of the world. China keeps waiting for a new missile delivery system being developed by the soviets. The plan is to blow America off the earth. Successive explosions throughout the world did occur causing mass destruction and the eradication of many families. Several surviving groups include a wealthy Chicago family, one notorious bank robber, a California father and his attractive daughter, and a carrer military man. The Colorado Mountains eventually become their home. Their trials take them through many desolate cities where many lives were lost and thousands of skeletons remain. There are love triangles and children brought into this world. One member leaves this group but leaves instructions in his lock box. Life goes on_____________________

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The Last Chopper Out

Joseph Flynn

As President Patricia Grant nears the end of her second term, three big questions hang heavy in the air: Who will succeed her as the next president: her vice president, Jean Morrissey, or Senate Majority Leader Oren Worth? After a Navy warship shoots down two Chinese fighter jets, how far will hostilities with China go? And, of the utmost personal importance to Patti Grant, will her husband and henchman, Jim McGill, live to see the end of her presidency?

McGill is targeted by a cluster of killers known as los muertos, working under the direction of an enigmatic contract assassin called Taps. So McGill summons his colleagues -- the private detectives who will staff his newly expanded firm, McGill Investigations International -- to help keep him alive and kicking.

They're soon put to the test when an ambush and ensuing fire-fight shatter the peace of the posh Washington neighborhood of Georgetown. Undeterred, McGill and his colleagues continue the hunt, leading to a climax that leaves McGill fighting tooth-and-nail for his life.

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No Evidence of a Crime

S. Connell Vondrak

As Washington, D.C. detectives investigate the murder of a beautiful, young congressional aide shot dead near the Capital Mall, subtle discrepancies with the evidence become apparent. The murder weapon is identified as a Glock, but an eyewitness places the shooter too far away to have used a handgun. The slain woman was a player in high-stakes D.C. politics, yet DNA results reveal she was pregnant and the baby's father was a gang member. The detectives bring in a forensic scientist to retest the samples, and determine evidence is being altered at the crime laboratory. Detectives Jarrod and Jackson must find out who is tampering with the facts...and why.

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The Yonder Side of Sass and Texas

Joanna Beth Tweedy

Raised deep in the Shawnee Hills amid hogback bluffs, a roundabout river, and unending family, two divergent sisters share a colorful journey: first through childhood in a place both blessed and cursed by the hybrid footprints of the Appalachia and Ozark regions surrounding it, and then into the world beyond, compelled by their shared wanderlust. Arkansas (Sass) and Texas MacTerptin gradually understand that the sheltered bluffs of their youth are vastly removed from the broad ground beyond, and they find themselves on a truly foreign journey, separated from familiarity by an ocean and realizing amid their travels the depth of native soil all over again. Joanna Beth Tweedy's combination of both rural-homeland and poetic language will surprise and delight you--as will the stories of two unforgettable sisters and their backwoods clan.

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The Evening and the Morning

Ken Follett

It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Those in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns.

In these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined. A young boatbuilder's life is turned upside down when the only home he's ever known is raided by Vikings, forcing him and his family to move and start their lives anew in a small hamlet where he does not fit in. . . . A Norman noblewoman marries for love, following her husband across the sea to a new land, but the customs of her husband's homeland are shockingly different, and as she begins to realize that everyone around her is engaged in a constant, brutal battle for power, it becomes clear that a single misstep could be catastrophic. . . . A monk dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a center of learning that will be admired throughout Europe. And each in turn comes into dangerous conflict with a clever and ruthless bishop who will do anything to increase his wealth and power.

Thirty years ago, Ken Follett published his most popular novel, The Pillars of the Earth. Now, Follett's masterful new prequel The Evening and the Morning takes us on an epic journey into a historical past rich with ambition and rivalry, death and birth, love and hate, that will end where The Pillars of the Earth begins.

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Thick as Thieves

Sandra Brown

Twenty years ago in the dead of night, four seemingly random individuals pulled the ultimate heist and almost walked away with half a million dollars. But by daybreak, their plan had been shot to hell. One of them was in the hospital. One was in jail. One was dead. And one got away with it.

Arden Maxwell, the daughter of the man who disappeared all those years ago—presumably with the money, after murdering his accomplice—has never reconciled with her father's abandonment of her and her sister. After countless personal setbacks she decides to return to her family home near mysterious Caddo Lake, and finally get answers to the many questions that torment her. Little does she know, two of her father's co-conspirators—a war hero and a corrupt district attorney—are watching her every move.

Ledge Burnet, a rebellious teen at the time of the heist, evaded his jail sentence by enlisting in the army. Now he's back in town to care for his ailing father—and to keep his eye on the county's corrupt district attorney, whom he suspects was the real murderer. Although the two are bound to silence because of the crime they committed together, each has spent years waiting and hoping that the other will make a fatal misstep. But the arrival of their elusive accomplice's daughter, Arden, who may know more about the missing money than she's telling, sets them both on red alert. She ignites Ledge's determination to expose the D.A.'s treachery . . . and sparks a desire he wishes to deny.

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Squeeze Me

Carl Hiaasen

At the height of Palm Beach's charity ball season, Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons, a prominent member of geriatric high society, suddenly vanishes during a swank gala. Kiki Pew was a founding member of the Potussies, a group of women dedicated to supporting the President, who spends half the year at the "Winter White House" just down the road. Meanwhile, Angie Armstrong, wildlife wrangler extraordinaire, is called to the island to deal with a monster-sized Burmese python that has taken residency in a tree. But the President is focused on the disappearance of Kiki Pew. Never one to miss an opportunity to play to his base, he immediately declares her a victim of rampaging immigrant hordes. This, it turns out, is far from the truth, which now lies in the middle of the road, where a bizarre discovery brings the First Lady's motorcade to a grinding halt. Irreverent, ingenious, and uproariously entertaining, Squeeze Me perfectly captures the absurdity of our times.

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The Tea Chest

Heidi Chiavaroli

Boston, 1773
Emma Malcolm's father is staunchly loyal to the crown, but Emma's heart belongs to Noah Winslow, a lowly printer's assistant and Patriot. But her father has promised her hand to Samuel Clarke, a rapacious and sadistic man. As his fiancée, she would have to give up Noah and the friends who have become like family to her--as well as the beliefs she has come to embrace.

After Emma is drawn into the treasonous Boston Tea Party, Samuel blackmails her with evidence that condemns each participant, including Noah. Emma realizes she must do whatever it takes to protect those she loves, even if it means giving up the life she desires and becoming Samuel's wife.

Present Day
Lieutenant Hayley Ashworth is determined to be the first woman inducted into the elite Navy SEALs. But before her dream can be realized, she must return to Boston in order to put the abuse and neglect of her childhood behind her. When an unexpected encounter with the man she once loved leads to the discovery of a tea chest and the document hidden within, she wonders if perhaps true strength and freedom are buried deeper than she first realized.

Two women, separated by centuries, must find the strength to fight for love and freedom. . . and discover a heritage of courage and faith.

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Desperate Measures

Stuart Woods

Upon returning to the states from a European jaunt, Stone Barrington makes the acquaintance of a stunning woman who seems like she could be an ideal candidate to meet some of his professional--and personal--needs. Before long, though, Stone is put to the task of protecting his new hire when New York City is rocked by a series of disturbing crimes, and it looks as if she might be the next target.

In the city that never sleeps there's always a plot being hatched, and the only recourse is constant vigilance and a bit of luck. But if those defensive systems fail, Stone will have to go head-to-head against some of the most dastardly scum he's ever faced . . .

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What Rose Forgot

Nevada Barr

Rose Dennis wakes up in a hospital gown, her brain in a fog, only to discover that she's been committed to an Alzheimer's Unit in a nursing home. With no memory of how she ended up in this position, Rose is sure that something is very wrong. When she overhears one of the administrators saying about her that she's "not making it through the week," Rose is convinced that if she's to survive, she has to get out of the nursing home. She avoids taking her medication, putting on a show for the aides, then stages her escape.

The only problem is—how does she convince anyone that she's not actually demented? Her relatives were the ones to commit her, all the legal papers were drawn up, the authorities are on the side of the nursing home, and even she isn't sure she sounds completely sane. But any lingering doubt Rose herself might have had is erased when a would-be killer shows up in her house in the middle of the night. Now Rose knows that someone is determined to get rid of her.

With the help of her computer hacker/recluse sister Marion, thirteen-year old granddaughter Mel, and Mel's friend Royal, Rose begins to gather her strength and fight back—to find out who is after her and take back control of her own life. But someone out there is still determined to kill Rose, and they're holding all the cards.

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One Fatal Flaw

Anne Perry

When a desperate woman comes to Daniel Pitt seeking a lawyer for her boyfriend, Rob Adwell, Daniel is convinced of the young man's innocence. Adwell has been accused of murder and of setting a fire to conceal the body, but Daniel is sure that science can absolve him--and Miriam fford Croft is the best scientist he knows. Miriam connects Daniel with her former teacher Sir Barnabas Saltram, an expert in arson, and together, they reveal Adwell's innocence by proving that an accidental fire caused the victim's death. But it's not long before Adwell is killed in the same fiery fashion. If these deaths are, in fact, murders, what essential clue could Daniel and Miriam have missed?

As their investigation deepens, one of Saltram's former cases comes into question, and Miriam finds herself on the defensive. If the reasoning Saltram used in that case is proved false, several other cases will have to be re-tried, and Saltram's expert status--not to mention Miriam's reputation--will be ruined. Haunted by Saltram's shady tactics in and outside of the classroom, Miriam is desperate to figure out truths both past and present and protect herself in the face of Saltram's lies. What started as an accidental fire in Adwell's case seems to be linked to a larger plot for revenge, with victims accumulating in its wake, and Miriam and Daniel must uncover who or what is stoking these recurring flames--before they, too, find themselves burned.

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Skin Game

Stuart Woods

When Teddy Fay receives a freelance assignment from a gentleman he can't refuse, he jets off to Paris on the hunt for a treasonous criminal. But as Teddy unearths more information that just doesn't seem to connect, his straightforward mission becomes far bigger--and stranger--than he could imagine. The trail of bread crumbs leads to secrets hidden within secrets, evildoers trading in money and power, and a global threat on an unprecedented scale. Under the beautiful veneer of the City of Lights, true villainy lurks in the shadows...and Teddy Fay alone can prevent the impending disaster.

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Half Moon Bay

Jonathan Kellerman

Clay Edison has his hands full. He's got a new baby who won't sleep. He's working the graveyard shift. And he's trying, for once, to mind his own business. Then comes the first call. Workers demolishing a local park have made a haunting discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a child. But whose? And how did it get there?

No sooner has Clay begun to investigate than he receives a second call--this one from a local businessman, wondering if the body could belong to his sister. She went missing fifty years ago, the man says. Or at least I think she did. It's a little complicated.

And things only get stranger from there. Clay's relentless search for answers will unearth a history of violence and secrets, revolution and betrayal. Because in this town, the past isn't dead. It's very much alive. And it can be murderous.

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The Lucky One

Lori Rader-Day

From the author of the Edgar Award®-nominated Under A Dark Sky comes an unforgettable, chilling novel about a young woman who recognizes the man who kidnapped her as a child, setting off a search for justice, and into danger.

Most people who go missing are never found. But Alice was the lucky one...

As a child, Alice was stolen from her backyard in a tiny Indiana community, but against the odds, her policeman father tracked her down within twenty-four hours and rescued her from harm. In the aftermath of the crime, her family decided to move to Chicago and close the door on that horrible day.

Yet Alice hasn’t forgotten. She devotes her spare time volunteering for a website called The Doe Pages scrolling through pages upon pages of unidentified people, searching for clues that could help reunite families with their missing loved ones. When a face appears on Alice’s screen that she recognizes, she’s stunned to realize it’s the same man who kidnapped her decades ago. The post is deleted as quickly as it appeared, leaving Alice with more questions than answers.

Embarking on a search for the truth, she enlists the help of friends from The Doe Pages to connect the dots and find her kidnapper before he hurts someone else. Then Alice crosses paths with Merrily Cruz, another woman who’s been hunting for answers of her own. Together, they begin to unravel a dark, painful web of lies that will change what they thought they knew—and could cost them everything.

Twisting and compulsively readable, The Lucky One explores the lies we tell ourselves to feel safe.

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June

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

Cassie Danvers is holed up in her family's crumbling mansion in small-town Ohio, mourning the loss of her grandmother, June. But the noise of the rusted doorbell forces her out of isolation. Cassie has been named the sole heir to legendary movie star Jack Montgomery's fortune.

Soon Jack's famous daughters arrive, entourage in tow, determined to wrestle Cassie away from an inheritance they feel is theirs. Together, they come to discover the true reason for June's silence about the summer she was eighteen, when Hollywood came to town, and June and Jack's lives were forever altered. Shifting deftly between the past and present, Cassie and her guests will be forced to reexamine their legacies, their definition of family, and what it truly means to love someone, steadfastly, across the ages.

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The Hype Machine

Sinan Aral

Social media connected the world—and gave rise to fake news and increasing polarization. It is paramount, MIT professor Sinan Aral says, that we recognize the outsize effect social media has on us—on our politics, our economy, and even our personal health—in order to steer today’s social technology toward its great promise while avoiding the ways it can pull us apart.

Drawing on decades of his own research and business experience, Aral goes under the hood of the most powerful social networks to tackle the critical question of just how much social media actually shapes our choices, for better or worse. He shows how the tech behind social media offers the same set of behavior influencing levers to everyone who hopes to change the way we think and act—from Russian hackers to brand marketers—which is why its consequences affect everything from elections to business, dating to health. Along the way, he covers a wide array of topics, including how network effects fuel Twitter’s and Facebook’s massive growth, the neuroscience of how social media affects our brains, the real consequences of fake news, the power of social ratings, and the impact of social media on our kids.

In mapping out strategies for being more thoughtful consumers of social media, The Hype Machine offers the definitive guide to understanding and harnessing for good the technology that has redefined our world overnight.

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Caste

Isabel Wilkerson

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People 30th Anniversary Guided Journal

Stephen R. Covey

How do you manage your time and stay organized? Whether you're struggling to stay motivated or are looking for new high-performance habits, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Guided Journal offers journal prompts, worksheets, and exercises to help you accomplish all your short and long term goals.

Goal setting just got easier. When The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was released as a card deck, audiences approached Stephen R. Covey's time-tested principles in a whole new way. Now, this companion journal gives readers a chance to craft inspiration into action. Its concise format is accessible and easy to stick with. Each habit is broken down into a weekly format inspiring both beginners and seasoned 7 Habits readers to get motivated, build confidence, and boost inspiration and personal growth.

Cultivate success, skill, and self-growth. Featuring thought-provoking prompts, worksheets, and self-development quotes that teach you how to achieve your goals, this is the ultimate guided self-growth journal.

Inside, find:

  • Journaling prompts for self-discovery and to build confidence and self esteem
  • Worksheets for strategic time management and deeper learning of the 7 Habits
  • Self-motivation tips, exercises, and challenges for optimal goal achievement

 

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Atomic Habits

James Clear

No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Learn how to:
make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
design your environment to make success easier;
get back on track when you fall off course;
...and much more.

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.

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Where the Bodies Were Buried

T. J. English

The New York Times bestselling author of The Westies and Paddy Whacked offers a front-row seat at the trial of Whitey Bulger, and an intimate view of the world of organized crime—and law enforcement—that made him the defining Irish American gangster.

For sixteen years, Whitey Bulger eluded the long reach of the law. For decades one of the most dangerous men in America, Bulger—the brother of influential Massachusetts senator Billy Bulger—was often romanticized as a Robin Hood-like thief and protector. While he was functioning as the de facto mob boss of New England, Bulger was also serving as a Top Echelon informant for the FBI, covertly feeding local prosecutors information about other mob figures—while using their cover to cleverly eliminate his rivals, reinforce his own power, and protect himself from prosecution. Then, in 2011, he was arrested in southern California and returned to Boston, where he was tried and convicted of racketeering and murder.

Our greatest chronicler of the Irish mob in America, T. J. English covered the trial at close range—by day in the courtroom, but also, on nights and weekends, interviewing Bulger’s associates as well as lawyers, former federal agents, and even members of the jury in the backyards and barrooms of Whitey’s world. In Where the Bodies Were Buried, he offers a startlingly revisionist account of Bulger’s story—and of the decades-long culture of collusion between the Feds and the Irish and Italian mob factions that have ruled New England since the 1970s, when a fateful deal left the FBI fatally compromised. English offers an authoritative look at Bulger’s own understanding of his relationship with the FBI and his alleged immunity deal, and illuminates how gangsterism, politics, and law enforcement have continued to be intertwined in Boston.

As complex, harrowing, and human as a Scorsese film, Where the Bodies Were Buried is the last word on a reign of terror that many feared would never end.

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Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

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The Penguin Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

In the history of postwar American art and politics, Arthur Miller casts a long shadow as a playwright of stunning range and power whose works held up a mirror to America and its shifting values. The Penguin Arthur Miller celebrates Miller’s creative and intellectual legacy by bringing together the breadth of his plays, which span the decades from the 1930s to the new millennium. From his quiet debut, The Man Who Had All the Luck, and All My Sons, the follow-up that established him as a major talent, to career hallmarks like The Crucible and Death of a Salesman, and later works like Mr. Peters’ Connections and Resurrection Blues, the range and courage of Miller’s moral and artistic vision are here on full display.

This lavish bespoke edition, specially produced to commemorate the Miller centennial, is a must-have for devotees of Miller’s work. The Penguin Arthur Miller will ensure a permanent place on any bookshelf for the full span of Miller’s extraordinary dramatic career.

The Penguin Arthur Miller includes: The Man Who Had All the LuckAll My SonsDeath of a SalesmanAn Enemy of the PeopleThe CrucibleA View from the BridgeAfter the FallIncident at VichyThe PriceThe Creation of the World and Other BusinessThe Archbishop’s CeilingThe American ClockPlaying for TimeThe Ride Down Mt. MorganThe Last YankeeBroken GlassMr. Peters’ Connections, and Resurrection Blues.

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The Warmth of Other Suns

Isabel Wilkerson

In this beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an "unrecognized immigration" within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.

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The Lucky One

Lori Rader-Day

From the author of the Edgar Award®-nominated Under A Dark Sky comes an unforgettable, chilling novel about a young woman who recognizes the man who kidnapped her as a child, setting off a search for justice, and into danger.

Most people who go missing are never found. But Alice was the lucky one...

As a child, Alice was stolen from her backyard in a tiny Indiana community, but against the odds, her policeman father tracked her down within twenty-four hours and rescued her from harm. In the aftermath of the crime, her family decided to move to Chicago and close the door on that horrible day.

Yet Alice hasn’t forgotten. She devotes her spare time volunteering for a website called The Doe Pages scrolling through pages upon pages of unidentified people, searching for clues that could help reunite families with their missing loved ones. When a face appears on Alice’s screen that she recognizes, she’s stunned to realize it’s the same man who kidnapped her decades ago. The post is deleted as quickly as it appeared, leaving Alice with more questions than answers.

Embarking on a search for the truth, she enlists the help of friends from The Doe Pages to connect the dots and find her kidnapper before he hurts someone else. Then Alice crosses paths with Merrily Cruz, another woman who’s been hunting for answers of her own. Together, they begin to unravel a dark, painful web of lies that will change what they thought they knew—and could cost them everything.

Twisting and compulsively readable, The Lucky One explores the lies we tell ourselves to feel safe.

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Pushcart Prize XLV

Bill Henderson

Pushcart Prize XLV is continuing evidence that much of today's vibrant writing appears only in small journals and book presses.The series has been selected for Publishers Weekly Carey Thomas Award, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof citation, and the Poets and Writers/Barnes and Noble "Writers For Writers" award among others.Here are 70 authors from more than 50 presses as selected from the nominations of 220 distinguished Contributing Editors and 800 participating presses.Recent reviews include: "Essential." Library Journal"Must reading" Kirkus Reviews"Distinguished." New York Times Book Review

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The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook for Your Instant Pot

Kathy Hester

Quick and Easy Plant-Based Meals for Your Instant Pot®

With this must-have vegan guide, bestselling author Kathy Hester shows you how easy it is to pressure cook, steam, sauté and slow cook with your Instant Pot®. Cook an entire meal at the same time with Kathy’s layered entrees and sides, try a one-pot meal or prepare beans and lentils in half the time. With recipes like Herbed French Lentils with Beets and Pink Rice, Creamy Mushroom Curry with Brown Basmati Rice Pilaf, Southern- Style Pinto Beans, Whole-Grain Cornbread, Smoky Pecan Brussels Sprouts and Tres Leches-Inspired Dessert Tamales, maintaining a vegan lifestyle has never been easier or tastier. Kathy also shows you how to save time and money by making your own homemade condiments like No-Effort Soy Yogurt, Fresh Tomato Marinara Sauce and Not-Raw Almond Milk.

Make delicious vegan meals the easy way with the press of a button.

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Atomic Habits

James Clear

Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Learn how to:
make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
design your environment to make success easier;
get back on track when you fall off course;
...and much more.

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.

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How to Be an Antiracist

Ibram X. Kendi

From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a bracingly original approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society--and in ourselves.

"The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it--and then dismantle it."

Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America--but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.

In this book, Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science, bringing it all together with an engaging personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism. How to Be an Antiracist is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society.
 

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The Churchill Complex

Ian Buruma

From one of its keenest observers, a brilliant, witty journey through the "Special Relationship" between Britain and America that has done so much to shape the world, from World War II to Brexit.

It is impossible to understand the last seventy-five years of American history, through to Trump and Brexit, without understanding the Anglo-American relationship, particularly the bonds between presidents and prime ministers. FDR of course had Winston Churchill; JFK had Harold Macmillan, his consigliere during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ronald Reagan found his ideological soul mate in Margaret Thatcher; and George W. Bush found his fellow believer, in religion and in war, in Tony Blair. Today, the bond between Donald Trump and Boris Johnson illuminates the populist uprisings in both countries, as well as a new kind of Special Relationship that goes against everything it once stood for.


Remembering the past, even its most glorious moments, can be as misleading as forgetting it. Over and over, in the name of freedom and democracy, British and especially American leaders have evoked Winston Churchill as a model for brave leadership (and Nevillle Chamberlain to represent craven weakness). As Ian Buruma shows, in his dazzling, short tour de force of storytelling and analysis, the myths of World War II too often resulted in bad policies and foolish wars.

But The Churchill Complex is much more than a reflection on the weight of Churchill's legacy and its misuses. At its heart are shrewd and absorbing character studies of the president-prime minster dyads, which in Ian Buruma's gifted hands serve as a master class in politics, diplomacy, and the personal quirks of our leaders. It has never been a relationship of equals: from Churchill's desperate cajoling and conniving to keep FDR on his side in World War II, British prime ministers have put much more stock in the relationship than their US counterparts. After the loss of its once-great empire, Britain clung to the world's greatest superpower as a path to continued relevance and leverage. As Buruma shows, this was almost always fool's gold, and now, the alliance has floundered on the rocks of isolationism. The Churchill Complex may not have a happy ending, but as with Ian Buruma's other works, piercing lucidity is its own lasting comfort.

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Apocalypse Never

Michael Shellenberger

Climate change is real but it's not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem.

Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world's last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today's Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions.

But in 2019, as some claimed "billions of people are going to die," contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction.

Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas.

Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions.

What's really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.

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Caste

Isabel Wilkerson

"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power--which groups have it and which do not."

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

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Think Like a Monk

Jay Shetty

Jay Shetty, social media superstar and host of the #1 podcast On Purpose, distills the timeless wisdom he learned as a monk into practical steps anyone can take every day to live a less anxious, more meaningful life.

When you think like a monk, you’ll understand:
-How to overcome negativity
-How to stop overthinking
-Why comparison kills love
-How to use your fear
-Why you can’t find happiness by looking for it
-How to learn from everyone you meet
-Why you are not your thoughts
-How to find your purpose
-Why kindness is crucial to success
-And much more...

Shetty grew up in a family where you could become one of three things—a doctor, a lawyer, or a failure. His family was convinced he had chosen option three: instead of attending his college graduation ceremony, he headed to India to become a monk, to meditate every day for four to eight hours, and devote his life to helping others. After three years, one of his teachers told him that he would have more impact on the world if he left the monk’s path to share his experience and wisdom with others. Heavily in debt, and with no recognizable skills on his résumé, he moved back home in north London with his parents.

Shetty reconnected with old school friends—many working for some of the world’s largest corporations—who were experiencing tremendous stress, pressure, and unhappiness, and they invited Shetty to coach them on well-being, purpose, and mindfulness. Since then, Shetty has become one of the world’s most popular influencers. In 2017, he was named in the Forbes magazine 30-under-30 for being a game-changer in the world of media. In 2018, he had the #1 video on Facebook with over 360 million views. His social media following totals over 38 million, he has produced over 400 viral videos which have amassed more than 8 billion views, and his podcast, On Purpose, is consistently ranked the world’s #1 Health and Wellness podcast.

In this inspiring, empowering book, Shetty draws on his time as a monk to show us how we can clear the roadblocks to our potential and power. Combining ancient wisdom and his own rich experiences in the ashram, Think Like a Monk reveals how to overcome negative thoughts and habits, and access the calm and purpose that lie within all of us. He transforms abstract lessons into advice and exercises we can all apply to reduce stress, improve relationships, and give the gifts we find in ourselves to the world. Shetty proves that everyone can—and should—think like a monk.

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Hidden Valley Road

Robert Kolker

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.

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Melania and Me

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff

What Melania wants, Melania gets.

The former director of special events at Vogue and producer of nine legendary Met Galas, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff met Melania Knauss in 2003 and had a front row seat to the transformation of Donald Trump’s then girlfriend from a rough-cut gem to a precious diamond. As their friendship deepened over lunches at Manhattan hot spots, black-tie parties, and giggle sessions in the penthouse at Trump Tower, Wolkoff watched the newest Mrs. Trump raise her son, Barron, and manage her highly scrutinized marriage.

After Trump won the 2016 election, Wolkoff was recruited to help produce the 58th Presidential Inaugu­ration and to become the First Lady’s trusted advisor. Melania put Wolkoff in charge of hiring her staff, organizing her events, helping her write speeches, and creating her debut initiatives. Then it all fell apart when she was made the scapegoat for inauguration finance irregularities. Melania could have defended her innocent friend and confidant, but she stood by her man, knowing full well who was really to blame. The betrayal nearly destroyed Wolkoff.

In this candid and emotional memoir, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff takes you into Trump Tower and the White House to tell the funny, thrilling, and heartbreaking story of her intimate friendship with one of the most famous women in the world, a woman few people truly understand.

How did Melania react to the Access Hollywood tape and her husband’s affair with Stormy Daniels? Does she get along well with Ivanka? Why did she wear that jacket with “I really don’t care, do u?” printed on the back? Is Melania happy being First Lady? And what really happened with the inauguration’s funding of $107 million? Wolkoff has some ideas...

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A Very Stable Genius

Philip Rucker

“I alone can fix it.” So proclaimed Donald J. Trump on July 21, 2016, accepting the Republican presidential nomination and promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet as he undertook the actual work of the commander in chief, it became nearly impossible to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal, investigation, and constant bluster. In fact, there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration was loyalty—not to the country, but to the president himself—and Trump’s North Star was always the perpetuation of his own power. 

With deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reveal the forty-fifth president up close. Here, for the first time, certain officials who felt honor-bound not to divulge what they witnessed in positions of trust tell the truth for the benefit of history.

A peerless and gripping narrative, A Very Stable Genius not only reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished but shows how he tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.

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Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man

Emmanuel Acho

“You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have.” So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states. “There is a fix,” Acho says. “But in order to access it, we’re going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations.”

In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white Americans are afraid to ask—yet which all Americans need the answers to, now more than ever. With the same open-hearted generosity that has made his video series a phenomenon, Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and “reverse racism.” In his own words, he provides a space of compassion and understanding in a discussion that can lack both. He asks only for the reader’s curiosity—but along the way, he will galvanize all of us to join the antiracist fight.

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We Keep the Dead Close

Becky Cooper

You have to remember, he reminded me, that Harvard is older than the U.S. government. You have to remember because Harvard doesn't let you forget.

1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious twenty-three-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment.   Forty years later, Becky Cooper a curious undergrad, will hear the first whispers of the story. In the first telling the body was nameless. The story was this: a Harvard student had had an affair with her professor, and the professor had murdered her in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology because she'd threatened to talk about the affair. Though the rumor proves false, the story that unfolds, one that Cooper will follow for ten years, is even more complex: a tale of gender inequality in academia, a 'cowboy culture' among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims. We Keep the Dead Close is a memoir of mirrors, misogyny, and murder. It is at once a rumination on the violence and oppression that rules our revered institutions, a ghost story reflecting one young woman's past onto another's present, and a love story for a girl who was lost to history.

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Unacceptable

Melissa Korn

An explosive true crime story of fraud, corruption, greed, celebrity, and justice in the cheating scandal that shattered the myth of meritocracy.

The largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice broke on March 12, 2019, sending shock waves through American schools and families. In Unacceptable, veteran Wall Street Journal reporters Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz trace the wiretapped calls, covert payments, and blatant deceit that brought the feds to Beverly Hills mansions and Upper East Side apartments, their residents all linked by one man: college whisperer and ultimate hustler Rick Singer.

The shocking tale at the heart of Unacceptable is how, over decades, the charismatic Singer easily exploited a system rigged against regular people. Exploring the status obsession that seduced entitled parents in search of an edge, Korn and Levitz detail a scheme that eventually entangled more than fifty conspirators--a catalog of wealth and privilege that included CEOs, lawyers, real-estate developers, financiers, and famous actresses, mingling in jail cells and courtrooms.

Detailing Singer's steady rise and dramatic fall, woven with stories of key players in the case, Unacceptable exposes the ugly underbelly of elite college admissions as a game with no rule book--paid-off proctors and storied college coaches turning a blind eye, helicopter parents and coddled teens spinning lies--opening loopholes and side doors into America's most exclusive institutions.

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The Case Against Impeaching Trump

Alan Dershowitz

Alan Dershowitz has been called “one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America” by Politico and “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights” by Newsweek. Yet he has come under partisan fire for applying those same principles to Donald Trump during the course of his many appearances in national media outlets as an expert resource on civil liberties and constitutional law.

The Case Against Removing Trump seeks to reorient the debate over impeachment to the same standard that Dershowitz has continued to uphold for decades: the law of the United States of America, as established by the Constitution. In the author’s own words:

“In the fervor to impeach President Trump, his political enemies have ignored the text of the Constitution. As a civil libertarian who voted against Trump, I remind those who would impeach him not to run roughshod over a document that has protected us all for two and a quarter centuries. In this case against impeachment, I make arguments similar to those I made against the impeachment of President Bill Clinton (and that I would be making had Hillary Clinton been elected and Republicans were seeking to impeach her). Impeachment and removal of a president are not entirely political decisions by Congress. Every member takes an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution sets out specific substantive criteria that MUST be met.

I am thrilled to contribute to this important debate and especially that my book will be so quickly available to readers so they can make up their own minds.”

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People 30th Anniversary Guided Journal

Stephen R. Covey

How do you manage your time and stay organized? Whether you're struggling to stay motivated or are looking for new high-performance habits, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Guided Journal offers journal prompts, worksheets, and exercises to help you accomplish all your short and long term goals.

Goal setting just got easier. When The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was released as a card deck, audiences approached Stephen R. Covey's time-tested principles in a whole new way. Now, this companion journal gives readers a chance to craft inspiration into action. Its concise format is accessible and easy to stick with. Each habit is broken down into a weekly format inspiring both beginners and seasoned 7 Habits readers to get motivated, build confidence, and boost inspiration and personal growth.

Cultivate success, skill, and self-growth. Featuring thought-provoking prompts, worksheets, and self-development quotes that teach you how to achieve your goals, this is the ultimate guided self-growth journal.

Inside, find:

  • Journaling prompts for self-discovery and to build confidence and self esteem
  • Worksheets for strategic time management and deeper learning of the 7 Habits
  • Self-motivation tips, exercises, and challenges for optimal goal achievement

 

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Axiom's End

Lindsay Ellis

Truth is a human right.

It’s fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn’t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government—and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father’s leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him—until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades.

Realizing the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. The alien presence has been completely uncommunicative until she convinces one of them that she can act as their interpreter, becoming the first and only human vessel of communication. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human—and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.

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Grimspace

Ann Aguirre

As the carrier of a rare gene, Sirantha Jax has the ability to jump ships through grimspace-a talent which makes her a highly prized navigator for the Corp. Then a crash landing kills everyone on board, leaving Jax in a jail cell with no memory of the crash. But her fun's not over. A group of rogue fighters frees her...for a price: her help in overthrowing the established order.
 

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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Becky Chambers

#SmallAngryPlanet

When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn't expecting much. The ship, which has seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy, and distance from her troubled past.

But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer. The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptillian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. Life on board is chaotic, but more or less peaceful - exactly what Rosemary wants.

Until the crew are offered the job of a lifetime: the chance to build a hyperspace tunnel to a distant planet. They'll earn enough money to live comfortably for years... if they survive the long trip through war-torn interstellar space without endangering any of the fragile alliances that keep the galaxy peaceful.

But Rosemary isn't the only person on board with secrets to hide, and the crew will soon discover that space may be vast, but spaceships are very small indeed.

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Rainbow Milk

Paul Mendez

An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative from a thrilling new voice, Rainbow Milk follows nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah's Witness upbringing.

In the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has immigrated to Britain with his wife and children to secure a brighter future. Blighted with unexpected illness and racism, Norman and his family are resilient, but are all too aware that their family will need more than just hope to survive in their new country.
At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London, escaping a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and his depressed hometown in the industrial Black Country. But once he arrives he finds himself at a loss for a new center of gravity, and turns to sex work, music and art to create his own notions of love, masculinity and spirituality.
A wholly original novel as tender as it is visceral, Rainbow Milk is a bold reckoning with race, class, sexuality, freedom and religion across generations, time and cultures.

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The Stars We Share

Rafe Posey

Set against the backdrop of World War II, a sweeping, atmospheric novel of sacrifice, ambition, and commitment, and the secrets we keep from the ones we love

It's 1927 when Alec and June meet as children in a tranquil English village. Alec, an orphan, anchors himself in the night sky and longs for adventures. June memorizes maps and railway timetables, imagining a future bright with possibilities.

As the years pass, their loves feels inevitable, but soon the Second World War separates them. Alec enlists as a Royal Air Force pilot flying daredevil fighter sorties at night; June finds her calling as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, covert work that will mean keeping her contribution to the war effort a secret from Alec forever. Each is following a dream--but those dreams force them apart for years at a time.

Their postwar reunion is bittersweet: Alec, shot down and imprisoned in a series of POW camps, grapples with his injuries and the loss of his RAF career. June, on the other hand, has found her vocation and struggles to follow the expected path to domesticity, as much as she loves Alec. But Alec wants nothing more than to make a life and a family together.

With the war behind them, their scars--both visible and unseen--make them strangers to each other. Now each must decide how much to reveal to the other, which dreams can be sacrificed, and which secrets are too big to bear alone.

Spanning forty years and shifting from bustling Indian ports to vibrant gardens in Edinburgh to a horse farm in Kenya, The Stars We Share is a poignant, heart-wrenching novel about the decisions and concessions that make a life and a love worth having.

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The House of Always

Jenn Lyons

What if you were imprisoned for all eternity?

In the aftermath of the Ritual of Night, everything has changed.

The Eight Immortals have catastrophically failed to stop Kihrin's enemies, who are moving forward with their plans to free Vol Karoth, the King of Demons. Kihrin has his own ideas about how to fight back, but even if he's willing to sacrifice everything for victory, the cost may prove too high for his allies.

Now they face a choice: can they save the world while saving Kihrin, too? Or will they be forced to watch as he becomes the very evil they have all sworn to destroy.

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It Had to Be You

Georgia Clark

For the past twenty years, Liv and Eliot Goldenhorn have run In Love in New York, Brooklyn’s beloved wedding-planning business. When Eliot dies unexpectedly, he even more unexpectedly leaves half of the business to his younger, blonder girlfriend, Savannah. Liv and Savannah are not a match made in heaven, to say the least. But what starts as a personal and professional nightmare transforms into something even savvy, cynical Liv Goldenhorn couldn’t begin to imagine.

It Had to Be You cleverly unites Liv, Savannah, and couples as diverse and unique as New York City itself, in a joyous Love-Actually-style braided narrative. The result is a smart, modern love story that truly speaks to our times. Second chances, secret romance, and steamy soul mates are front and center in this sexy, tender, and utterly charming rom-com.

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Enemy at the Gates

Vince Flynn

Picking up where the “tour de force” (The Providence JournalTotal Power left off, the next thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Mitch Rapp series follows the CIA’s top operative as he searches for a high-level mole with the power to rewrite the world order.

Mitch Rapp has worked for a number of presidents over his career, but Anthony Cook is unlike any he’s encountered before. Cunning and autocratic, he feels no loyalty to America’s institutions and is distrustful of the influence Rapp and CIA director Irene Kennedy have in Washington.

Meanwhile, when Kennedy discovers evidence of a mole scouring the Agency’s database for sensitive information on Nicholas Ward, the world’s first trillionaire, she convinces Rapp to take a job protecting him. In doing so, he finds himself walking an impossible tightrope: Keep the man alive, but also use him as bait to uncover a traitor who has seemingly unlimited access to government secrets.

As the attacks on Ward become increasingly dire, Rapp and Kennedy are dragged into a world where the lines between governments, multinational corporations, and the hyper-wealthy fade. An environment in which liberty, nationality, and loyalty are meaningless. Only the pursuit of power remains.

As “one of the best thriller writers on the planet” (The Real Book Spy), Kyle Mills has created another nail-biter that not only echoes the America of today, but also offers a glimpse into its possible future.

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Send for Me

Lauren Fox

An achingly beautiful work of historical fiction that moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present-day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the powerful bonds of family.

Annelise is a dreamer: imagining her future while working at her parents' popular bakery in Feldenheim, Germany, anticipating all the delicious possibilities yet to come. There are rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, but Annelise and her parents can't quite believe that it will affect them; they're hardly religious at all. But as Annelise falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer: a brick thrown through her window; a childhood friend who cuts ties with her; customers refusing to patronize the bakery. Luckily Annelise and her husband are given the chance to leave for America, but they must go without her parents, whose future and safety are uncertain.

Two generations later, in a small Midwestern city, Annelise's granddaughter, Clare, is a young woman newly in love. But when she stumbles upon a trove of her grandmother's letters from Germany, she sees the history of her family's sacrifices in a new light, and suddenly she's faced with an impossible choice: the past, or her future. A novel of dazzling emotional richness that is based on letters from Lauren Fox's own family, Send for Me is a major departure for this acclaimed author, an epic and intimate exploration of mothers and daughters, duty and obligation, hope and forgiveness.

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Band of Sisters

Lauren Willig

A scholarship girl from Brooklyn, Kate Moran thought she found a place among Smith's Mayflower descendants, only to have her illusions dashed the summer after graduation. When charismatic alumna Betsy Rutherford delivers a rousing speech at the Smith College Club in April of 1917, looking for volunteers to help French civilians decimated by the German war machine, Kate is too busy earning her living to even think of taking up the call. But when her former best friend Emmeline Van Alden reaches out and begs her to take the place of a girl who had to drop out, Kate reluctantly agrees to join the new Smith College Relief Unit.

Four months later, Kate and seventeen other Smithies, including two trailblazing female doctors, set sail for France. The volunteers are armed with money, supplies, and good intentions--all of which immediately go astray. The chateau that was to be their headquarters is a half-burnt ruin. The villagers they meet are in desperate straits: women and children huddling in damp cellars, their crops destroyed and their wells poisoned.

Despite constant shelling from the Germans, French bureaucracy, and the threat of being ousted by the British army, the Smith volunteers bring welcome aid--and hope--to the region. But can they survive their own differences? As they cope with the hardships and terrors of the war, Kate and her colleagues find themselves navigating old rivalries and new betrayals which threaten the very existence of the Unit.

With the Germans threatening to break through the lines, can the Smith Unit pull together and be truly a band of sisters?

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Three Weeks with My Brother

Nicholas Sparks

In this New York Times bestseller, follow the author of The Notebook as he travels the world with his brother learning about faith, loss, connection, and hope.

As moving as his bestselling works of fiction, Nicholas Sparks's unique memoir, written with his brother, chronicles the life-affirming journey of two brothers bound by memories, both humorous and tragic. In January 2003, Nicholas Sparks and his brother, Micah, set off on a three-week trip around the globe. It was to mark a milestone in their lives, for at thirty-seven and thirty-eight respectively, they were now the only surviving members of their family.

Against the backdrop of the wonders of the world and often overtaken by their feelings, daredevil Micah and the more serious, introspective Nicholas recalled their rambunctious childhood adventures and the tragedies that tested their faith. And in the process, they discovered startling truths about loss, love, and hope.

Narrated with irrepressible humor and rare candor, and including personal photos, Three Weeks with My Brother reminds us to embrace life with all its uncertainties . . . and most of all, to cherish the joyful times, both small and momentous, and the wonderful people who make them possible.  

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The Butcher's Theater

Jonathan Kellerman

They call the ancient hills of Jerusalem the  butcher's theater. Here, upon this bloodstained stage,  a faceless killer performs his violent specialty:  The first to die brutally is a fifteen-year-old  girl. She is drained of blood, then carefully bathed  and shrouded in white. Precisely one week later, a  second victim is found. From the sacred  Wailing Wall to the monasteries where dark secrets  are cloistered, from black-clad bedouin enclaves  to labyrinthine midnight alleys, veteran police  inspector Daniel Sharavi and his crack team plunge  deep into a city simmering with religious and  political passions to hunt for a murderer whos  insatiable taste for young women could destroy the  delicate balance on which Jerusalem's very survival  depends.

A brilliant novel by a master of  the genre, a vivid look at the tortured  complexities of a psychopath's mind, a rich evocation of a  city steeped in history -- this, and more, is  The Butcher's Theater.

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High Stakes

Iris Johansen

#1 New York Times bestselling author Iris Johansen enters the world of high-stakes gambling in her latest gripping novel.

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Clive Cussler's the Serpent's Eye

Robin Burcell

Husband-and-wife team Sam and Remi Fargo face a new exciting adventure in the bestselling series by Clive Cussler, Grand Master of Adventure.

The latest action-packed thriller featuring tresure-hunting team Sam and Remi Fargo.

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Bloodless

Douglas Preston

Agent Pendergast faces his most unexpected challenge yet when bloodless bodies begin to appear in Savannah, GA, in this next installment of the #1 NYT bestselling series.
A legendary heist:
On the evening of November 24, 1971, D. B. Cooper hijacked Flight 305 -- Portland to Seattle -- with a fake bomb, collected a ransom of $200,000, and parachuted into the night, never to be seen again... Perhaps.

A brutal crime steeped in malevolence:

Fifty years later, Agent Pendergast takes on a bizarre and gruesome case: in the ghost-haunted city of Savannah, Georgia, bodies are found completely drained of blood--sowing panic and reviving the infamous legend of the Savannah Vampire.

A case like no other in Pendergast's career:

Through twists and turns, Pendergast and his partner, Agent Coldmoon, race to understand how these murders are connected to the most mystifying hijacking in American history. Together, they discover not just the killer-but an unearthly evil beyond all reckoning.

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Saga

Brian K. Vaughan

"The sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the universe. When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old world"--Page [4] of cover (volume one).

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Arrival

Ted Chiang

Ted Chiang has long been known as one of the most powerful science fiction writers working today. Offering readers the dual delights of the very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, Arrival presents characters who must confront sudden change. In "Story of Your Life," which provides the basis for the film Arrival, alien lifeforms suddenly appear on Earth. When a linguist is brought in to help communicate with them and discern their intentions, her new knowledge of their language and its nonlinear structure allows her to see future events and all the joy and pain they may bring. In each story of this incredible collection, with sharp intelligence and humor, Ted Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by wonder.

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Remnant Population

Elizabeth Moon

For forty years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia’s home. On this planet far away in space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden, and grown placidly old. And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days—until the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere new and strange and not of their choosing. But while her fellow colonists grudgingly anticipate a difficult readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the promise of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the hurly-burly of a new community . . . but closing out her life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no intention of leaving. A population of one.

With everything she needs to sustain her, and her independent spirit to buoy her, Ofelia actually does start life over–for the first time on her own terms: free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others. But when a reconnaissance ship returns to her idyllic domain, and its crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia realizes she is not the sole inhabitant of her paradise after all. And, when the inevitable time of first contact finally arrives, she will find her life changed yet again—in ways she could never have imagined. . . .

 

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Contact

Carl Sagan

At first it seemed impossible - a radio signal that came not from Earth but from far beyond the nearest stars. But then the signal was translated, and what had been impossible became terrifying.

For the signal contains the information to build a Machine that can travel to the stars. A Machine that can take a human to meet those that sent the message.

They are eager to meet us: they have been watching and waiting for a long time.

And now they will judge.

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The Three-Body Problem

Cixin Liu

Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.
 

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Lagoon

Nnedi Okorafor

It’s up to a famous rapper, a biologist, and a rogue soldier to handle humanity’s first contact with an alien ambassador—and prevent mass extinction—in this novel that blends magical realism with high-stakes action.

After word gets out on the Internet that aliens have landed in the waters outside of the world’s fifth most populous city, chaos ensues. Soon the military, religious leaders, thieves, and crackpots are trying to control the message on YouTube and on the streets. Meanwhile, the earth’s political superpowers are considering a preemptive nuclear launch to eradicate the intruders. All that stands between seventeen million anarchic residents and death is an alien ambassador, a biologist, a rapper, a soldier, and a myth that may be the size of a giant spider, or a god revealed.

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Annihilation

Jeff VanderMeer

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.

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Childhood's End

Arthur C. Clarke

The inspiration for the Syfy miniseries.

Childhood's End is one of the defining legacies of Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and many other groundbreaking works. Since its publication in 1953, this prescient novel about first contact gone wrong has come to be regarded not only as a science fiction classic but as a literary thriller of the highest order.

Spaceships have suddenly appeared in the skies above every city on the planet. Inside is an intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior alien race known as the Overlords. At first, their demands seem benevolent: unify Earth, eliminate poverty, end war. But at what cost? To those who resist, it's clear that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. Has their arrival marked the end of humankind . . . or the beginning?
 

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The Contact Paradox

Keith Cooper

Inside the difficult questions about humanity's search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

What will happen if humanity makes contact with another civilization on a different planet? In The Contact Paradox, space journalist Keith Cooper tackles some of the myths and assumptions that underlie SETI--the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

In 1974 a message was beamed towards the stars by the giant Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, a brief blast of radio waves designed to alert extraterrestrial civilizations to our existence. Of course, we don't know if such civilizations really exist. But for the past six decades a small cadre of researchers have been on a quest to find out, as part of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

The silence from the stars is prompting some researchers, inspired by the Arecibo transmission, to transmit more messages into space, in an effort to provoke a response from any civilizations out there that might otherwise be staying quiet. However, the act of transmitting raises troubling questions about the process of contact. We look for qualities such as altruism and intelligence in extraterrestrial life, but what do these mean to humankind? Can we learn something about our own history when we explore what happens when two civilizations come into contact? Finally, do the answers tell us that it is safe to transmit, even though we know nothing about extraterrestrial life, or as Stephen Hawking argued, are we placing humanity in jeopardy by doing so?

In The Contact Paradox, author Keith Cooper looks at how far SETI has come since its modest beginnings, and where it is going, by speaking to the leading names in the field and beyond. SETI forces us to confront our nature in a way that we seldom have before--where did we come from, where are we going, and who are we in the cosmic context of things? This book considers the assumptions that we make in our search for extraterrestrial life, and explores how those assumptions can teach us about ourselves.

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They Are Already Here

Sarah Scoles

An anthropological look at the UFO community, told through first-person experiences with researchers in their element as they pursue what they see as a solvable mystery—both terrestrial and cosmic.

More than half a century since Roswell, UFOs have been making headlines once again. On December 17, 2017, the New York Times ran a front-page story about an approximately five-year Pentagon program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The article hinted, and its sources clearly said in subsequent television interviews, that some of the ships in question couldn’t be linked to any country. The implication, of course, was that they might be linked to other solar systems.

The UFO community—those who had been thinking about, seeing, and analyzing supposed flying saucers (or triangles or chevrons) for years—was surprisingly skeptical of the revelation. Their incredulity and doubt rippled across the internet. Many of the people most invested in UFO reality weren’t really buying it. And as Scoles did her own digging, she ventured to dark, conspiracy-filled corners of the internet, to a former paranormal research center in Utah, and to the hallways of the Pentagon.

In They Are Already Here we meet the bigwigs, the scrappy upstarts, the field investigators, the rational people, and the unhinged kooks of this sprawling community. How do they interact with each other? How do they interact with “anomalous phenomena”? And how do they (as any group must) reflect the politics and culture of the larger world around them?

We will travel along the Extraterrestrial Highway (next to Area 51) and visit the UFO Watchtower, where seeking lights in the sky is more of a spiritual quest than a “gotcha” one. We meet someone who, for a while, believes they may have communicated with aliens. Where do these alleged encounters stem from? What are the emotional effects on the experiencers?

Funny and colorful, and told in a way that doesn’t require one to believe, Scoles brings humanity to an often derided and misunderstood community. After all, the truth is out there . . .

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How to Grow Your Dinner

Claire Ratinon

A vegetable garden is not an option for everyone, and so container growing has become desirable for people with little outside space

Many have discovered the love of growing houseplants and want to take their skills to another level; others are inspired by the idea of growing their own food organically and sustainably. The book covers all the essentials of growing a range of edible plants in pots, and meeting each crop's specific needs.

Author Claire Ratinon brings her urban food growing expertise to this popular subject, in a book designed to appeal to new gardeners and anyone who would like to take on the rewarding challenge of growing their own dinner, even if they've only got a window box or balcony to work with.

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Grow Your Soil!

Diane Miessler

Growing awareness of the importance of soil health means that microbes are on the minds of even the most casual gardeners. After all, anyone who has ever attempted to plant a thriving patch of flowers or vegetables knows that what you grow is only as good as the soil you grow it in. It is possible to create and maintain rich, dark, crumbly soil that’s teeming with life, using very few inputs and a no-till, no-fertilizer approach. Certified permaculture designer and lifelong gardener Diane Miessler presents the science of soil health in an engaging, entertaining voice geared for the backyard grower. She shares the techniques she has used — including cover crops, constant mulching, and a simple-but-supercharged recipe for compost tea — to transform her own landscape from a roadside dump for broken asphalt to a garden that stops traffic, starting from the ground up.

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The Family Garden Plan

Melissa K. Norris

Grow a Year’s Worth of Food for Your Family

Do something good for your loved ones by learning how to plant a garden that will yield wholesome, organic fruits and vegetables in surprisingly less space than you would think. Melissa K. Norris, fifth-generation homesteader and host of the popular Pioneering Today podcast, walks you through each step of the process, including how to

  • decide which food crops are best for your area and family
  • plan your garden to maximize the space you have
  • protect your garden from common pests and diseases naturally
  • determine when your fruits and vegetables are ready to be harvested
  • improve soil health with simple techniques like crop rotation and backyard composting  

Sharing the same practices and techniques from her homestead, Melissa shows you how easy it can be to raise a year’s worth of produce at home. Simple-to-follow charts, worksheets, and photographs are provided throughout to help you through every phase of the gardening process.     

You can enjoy good eating and greater well-being for you and your family.

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Garden Alchemy

Stephanie Rose

Garden Alchemy is a hands-on guide for do-it-yourself gardeners who want to turn their garden into gold using natural recipes and herbal concoctions (while saving both time and money!).

This gardening recipe and project book is packed with over 80 ideas to naturally beautify your garden, using organic methods that regenerate your soil and revitalize your plants. By following the processes that are closest to nature, it brings the gardener in sync with the garden, allowing plants to thrive with less effort and less cost.

Recipes for mixing your own potting soils and homemadeorganic fertilizers give you the freedom to choose what ingredients make their way into your garden. Step-by-step instructions for building a compost pile, concocting soil tests, and constructing inexpensive DIY seed-starting equipment are accompanied by gorgeous, full-color, step-by-step photography. You'll also find recipes for natural pest deterrents and traps, garden teas, and growth-boosting foliar sprays to help your garden grow strong all season long.

Garden Alchemy starts with home experiments to help you get to know your soil and customize recipes for your individual needs. The rest of the chapters share how to decipher and combine natural ingredients to make the best quality amendments and elixirs. Detailed descriptions of earth-based materials demystify common ingredients, such as mycorrhizae, biochar, and greensand, and help you learn how to fix common garden problems with minimal effort. The simple method of making use of what you have available supports plants better than brand-name products.

Dozens of recipes and projects include:

  • Homemade seed bombs, disks, and tapes
  • Granular and liquid natural fertilizer recipes 
  • DIY rooting hormone
  • Herbal anti-fungal spray
  • Plant propagation instructions
  • Soil care recipes to adjust the pH and manage fertility
  • 13 specialty potting mixes
  • 7 clever traps for common garden pests

Written by Stephanie Rose, the creative gardener, permaculturist, and herbalist behind the popular website Garden Therapy, this fun and beautifully illustrated book is packed with great ideas and inspiration for DIY gardeners who want to embrace their creativity and have more control of the garden's care.

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The New Gardener's Handbook

Daryl Beyers

“Gardeners just starting out will earn a sense of accomplishment and a good dose of knowledge.” —Booklist 

Every new gardener has to start somewhere—and the process can be intimidating. Knowing when and what to plant, how to care for the plants once they’re in the ground, and how to keep pests and diseases away is a lot to take on. Luckily, Daryl Beyers—an expert from the New York Botanical Garden—has written what will be a  go-to resource for decades to come. The New Gardener’s Handbook is a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of gardening, based on the introductory gardening class that Beyers teaches at NYBG. Readers will learn about soil, plant selection, propagation, planting and mulching, watering and feeding, pruning, and weeds, pests, and diseases. The information applies to both ornamental and edible plants. Featuring inspiring photography and helpful illustrations, The New Gardener’s Handbook gives home gardeners a foundation upon which they can grow, and encourages them to apply the lessons they’ve learned in an intuitive, natural way.
 

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Grow Food at Home: Simple Methods for Small Spaces

John Tullock

Everything you need to know to grow good food without a yard

Grow food for freshness. Grow food organically. Grow food to connect with nature. Whatever the goal, you don’t need a lot of space to enjoy the benefits of homegrown veggies, herbs, and fruits.

In Grow Food at Home, gardening expert John Tullock shows readers just how easy it is to enjoy “farm”-fresh produce grown right on the windowsill, the porch, or in a tiny backyard. Covering artificial lighting, hydroponics, vertical gardening, straw-bale planters, and more, the book offers even the most confined apartment dwellers plenty of options to get growing. Tullock shares all the tips and tricks readers need to make small-space gardening a success, with information on starting seeds, transplanting, succession planting, “crop” rotation, and other procedures—all tailored to the small-space garden—plus recipes to make the most of the harvest.

Readers will be energized to grow a mouth-watering selection of micro-crops, from lettuces and herbs to tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, and even small fruits—no matter how little room they have available.

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Gardening for Geeks

Christy Wilhelmi

The ultimate organic gardening resource, Gardening for Geeks provides readers with everything they need to know about designing, building, and sustaining their own garden. Filled with step-by-step processes, helpful diagrams, and expert tips on the best practices, this book covers it all for anyone who dreams of gardening, even the city dweller. Starting off with the basics and progressing into more advanced concepts for a wide scope of gardening strategies and techniques, this is a comprehensive and geeky look at your favorite hobby. Founder of Gardenerd and author, Christy Wilhelmi shares her expertise to break down the biology and ecology of gardening in an easy, breezy writing style that will make you appreciate and understand gardening even more than you did before!

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Regrow Your Veggies

Melissa Raupach

No need to keep buying the same vegetables you eat all the time over and over again. Regrow Your Veggies is an insightful guide that provides effective propagation techniques to recycle and regrow more than 20 popular vegetables right at home! Learn how to have a source of fresh and healthy vegetables close by, from onions and sweet potatoes to pineapples and mangoes, reduce waste, and know how to prevent and solve issues with pesky pests and pathogens. Get the most out of your favorite foods and produce your own produce!

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The New Heirloom Garden

Ellen Ecker Ogden

Design a beautiful and self-sufficient garden; learn the secrets of heirloom vegetables, herbs, and flowers; and enjoy 55 seasonal recipes featuring the fruits of your labor--all with one book!

Heirlooms are more than just delicious ingredients or beautiful flowers--their seeds offer us a connection with the earth, and each one tells a story. Author and garden lecturer Ellen Ecker Ogden was inspired to preserve the diversity of plants that are slipping away after learning that we have lost over 85% of the plant world in the last century to extinction.

In The New Heirloom Garden, Ogden inspires us with a history of seed saving in this country, then guides gardeners of all levels to create their own heirloom gardens with tangible gardening tips, twelve themed garden designs, and detailed resources. The first half of the book shares specific garden plans, plant keys with descriptions, plant and seed wish lists, interviews with gardening experts, and even tips and tricks to handle your own local weather. The second half of the book contains 55 recipes for delicious entrees, sides, drinks, and desserts that can be made from each vegetable, fruit, and flower grown in your garden. Readers will delight in making Fennel and Watermelon Salad, Cucumber Summer Soup, Fire Cider, and Winter Squash Pie. It's a book designed for readers to bring to their local supply store, take outside into the garden, and then enjoy in the kitchen.

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Rodale's Basic Organic Gardening

Deborah L. Martin

When the inspiration hits to start an organic garden, many novices could benefit from a guidebook that speaks directly to their enthusiasm, their goals, and, of course, their need for solid information that speaks a newbie’s language—from the most trusted source for organic gardening methods. 

 

In Rodale’s Basic Organic Gardening, general garden-building skills (from "Do I need to dig?" to "Where do I dig?") and specific techniques (from "How do I plant a seed?" to "How much should I water?") are presented in growing-season order—from garden planning and planting to growing and harvesting. Many other need-to-know topics like soil, compost, seeds, pest control, and weeds are explained in simple language to ensure success, even on a small scale, on the first try. More than 100 common garden terms are defined, and Smart Starts sidebars offer doable projects to build confidence and enthusiasm for expanding a garden when a gardener is ready. A flower, vegetable, and herb finder highlights easycare plants with good track records. Plus, there are no-dig garden methods, simple garden layouts, and tips and hints inspired by the most popular page views on OrganicGardening.com. 

 

With a "no question is unwelcome" approach, a troubleshooting section lessens frustrations and encourages experimentation. Rodale’s Basic Organic Gardening is everything a beginning gardener (or one who’s new to gardening organically) needs to get growing and keep a garden going strong all season.

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Gaia's Garden

Toby Hemenway

Gaia's Garden will be recorded in history as a milestone for gardeners and landscapers. . . An amazing achievement.--Paul Stamets

The classic book about ecological gardening--whatever size your garden--with over 250,000 copies sold!

A great book!--Men's Journal

Gaia's Garden has sparked the imagination of home gardeners the world over by introducing a simple message: working with nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens.

Many people mistakenly think that ecological gardening--which involves growing a wide range of edible and other useful plants--can take place only on a large, multiacre scale. As Hemenway demonstrates, it's fun and easy--even for the beginner--to create a "backyard ecosystem" by assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform a variety of functions, including:

  • Building and maintaining soil fertility and structure
  • Catching and conserving water in the landscape
  • Providing a rewilded and biodiverse habitat for beneficial insects, birds, and animals
  • Growing an edible "forest" that yields seasonal fruits, nuts, and other foods

This revised and updated edition also features a chapter on urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful. Best of all, once it's established, an ecological garden will reduce or eliminate most of the backbreaking work that's needed to maintain the typical lawn and garden.

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The Old Farmer's Almanac Vegetable Gardener's Handbook

Old Farmer's Almanac

This book is the perfect companion for every vegetable gardener--even those who have never touched a trowel and wouldn't know mulch from mud! The practical advice presented in the Vegetable Gardener's Handbook demystifies gardening by providing the best, most proven methods for sowing, growing, and harvesting.

Highlights include ...

  • Step-by-step advice for success with more than 30 vegetables in any zone
  • The dirt on soil: why testing is so important--and how to do it
  • Easy techniques for growing in-ground, plus alternatives to traditional raised beds
  • Seed-starting and -saving methods simplified
  • Gardeners' friends and foes: which plants help (or hinder) vegetables
  • Enlightening (and humorous!) anecdotes from fellow gardeners
  • Space for noting observations and experiences
  • More than 150 full-color photos
  • Essential reference tables and charts
  • Much, much more!


Created for new gardeners, green thumbs, and old hands alike, The Old Farmer's Almanac Vegetable Gardener's Handbook is loaded with advice and inspiration to help plants--and growers--thrive.

Only The Old Farmer's Almanac has the experience and longevity to offer the very best tried-and-true information, tips, and advice about all things gardening and growing. With the Vegetable Gardener's Handbook, we are a patient master gardener passing down the secrets of growing great food to every gardener.

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100 Plants to Feed the Bees

The Xerces Society

The international bee crisis is threatening our global food supply, but this user-friendly field guide shows what you can do to help protect our pollinators. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation offers browsable profiles of 100 common flowers, herbs, shrubs, and trees that support bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds. The recommendations are simple: pick the right plants for pollinators, protect them from pesticides, and provide abundant blooms throughout the growing season by mixing perennials with herbs and annuals! 100 Plants to Feed the Bees will empower homeowners, landscapers, apartment dwellers — anyone with a scrap of yard or a window box — to protect our pollinators.

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The Water-Saving Garden

Pam Penick

A guide to growing beautiful gardens in drought-prone areas utilizing minimal water for maximum results. With climate change, water rationing, and drought on the rise, water conservation is more important than ever—but that doesn’t mean your gardening options are limited to cacti and rocks. The Water-Saving Garden provides gardeners and homeowners with a diverse array of techniques and plentiful inspiration for creating sustainable gardens that are so beautiful and inviting, it’s hard to believe they are water-thrifty. Including a directory of 100 plants appropriate for a variety of drought-prone regions of the country, this accessible and contemporary xeriscaping guide is full of must-know information on popular gardening topics like native and drought-tolerant plants (including succulents), rainwater harvesting, greywater systems, permeable paving, and more.

 

 

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The Well-Tended Perennial Garden

Tracy DiSabato-Aust

“This practical guide is lush with clear, step-by-step advice.” —Real Simple

Since its original publication twenty years ago, The Well-Tended Perennial Garden has helped home gardeners successfully plan, plant, and tend their gardens. Now Tracy Di-Sabato-Aust’s trusty advice and reassuring tone are back and better than ever in this completely revised new edition. Novice and experienced gardeners alike will benefit from Tracy’s thorough details on the essential practices of perennial care—included deadheading, pinching, and thinning—along with growing information for new species and cultivars, on-trend garden design advice, a monthly planting and maintenance schedule, and details on native plants and gardening for wildlife. The Well-Tended Perennial Garden is a must-have ally in the quest for a beautiful, well-maintained garden. 

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Niki Jabbour's Veggie Garden Remix

Niki Jabbour

Best-selling author Niki Jabbour invites you to shake up your vegetable garden with an intriguing array of 224 plants from around the world. With her lively “Like this? Then try this!” approach, Jabbour encourages you to start with what you know and expand your repertoire to try related plants, many of which are delicacies in other cultures. Jabbour presents detailed growing information for each plant, along with fun facts and plant history. Be prepared to have your mind expanded and catch Jabbour’s contagious enthusiasm for experimentation and fun in the garden.

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RHS Complete Gardener's Manual

Simon Akeroyd

Full of essential gardening tips, RHS Complete Gardener's Manual covers everything from how to plant a garden from scratch and creating your own vegetable garden, to how to plant in containers and how to prune. It combines practical advice with design inspiration and features step-by-step techniques with beautiful photography, as well as a planting guide to help you get the best out of your garden. Take a step towards self-sufficiency with a major section on growing your own fruit and vegetables or use the eye-catching catalogue of plants to see what you should be growing for every season and site. Plus, dedicated chapters focus on key gardening topics such as improving the soil, propogation, and problem-solving. RHS Complete Gardener's Manual is a great reference guide and a one-stop manual for both new and experienced gardeners alike.

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Turn a Blind Eye

Jeffrey Archer

Turn a Blind Eye is the third installment in the gripping story of Detective Inspector William Warwick, by the master storyteller and #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Clifton Chronicles.

Newly promoted to Detective Inspector, William Warwick is tasked with a dangerous new line of work, to go undercover and expose crime of another kind: corruption at the heart of the Metropolitan Police Force. Along with detectives Rebecca Pankhurst and Nicky Bailey, his team is focused on following Detective Jerry Summers, a young officer whose lifestyle exceeds his income. But the investigation risks being compromised when Nicky falls for Summers.

Meanwhile, notorious drug baron Assem Rashidi goes on trial, defended by Booth Watson QC, while William’s father Sir Julian and sister Grace lead the prosecution case. And William’s wife Beth, now a new mother to twins, makes a surprising new friend in Christina Faulkner—the ex-wife of William’s former rival, criminal financier Miles - who has not only turned over a new leaf, but also has a new-found source of income when Faulkner dies suddenly of a heart attack and she stands to be sole inheritor of his estate.

As the undercover officers start to draw the threads together, William realizes that the corruption may go deeper still, and more of his colleagues than he first thought might be willing to turn a blind eye.

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Sooley

John Grisham

 

New York Times bestselling author John Grisham takes you to a different kind of court in his first basketball novel. Samuel "Sooley" Sooleymon is a raw, young talent with big hoop dreams...and even bigger challenges off the court.
In the summer of his seventeenth year, Sam­uel Sooleymon gets the chance of a lifetime: a trip to the United States with his South Sudanese teammates to play in a showcase basket­ball tournament. He has never been away from home, nor has he ever been on an airplane. The opportunity to be scouted by dozens of college coaches is a dream come true.
Samuel is an amazing athlete, with speed, quick­ness, and an astonishing vertical leap. The rest of his game, though, needs work, and the American coaches are less than impressed.
During the tournament, Samuel receives dev­astating news from home: A civil war is raging across South Sudan, and rebel troops have ran­sacked his village. His father is dead, his sister is missing, and his mother and two younger brothers are in a refugee camp.
Samuel desperately wants to go home, but it's just not possible. Partly out of sympathy, the coach of North Carolina Central offers him a scholar­ship. Samuel moves to Durham, enrolls in classes, joins the team, and prepares to sit out his freshman season. There is plenty of more mature talent and he isn't immediately needed.
But Samuel has something no other player has: a fierce determination to succeed so he can bring his family to America. He works tirelessly on his game, shooting baskets every morning at dawn by himself in the gym, and soon he's dominating everyone in practice. With the Central team los­ing and suffering injury after injury, Sooley, as he is nicknamed, is called off the bench. And the legend begins.
But how far can Sooley take his team? And will success allow him to save his family?
Gripping and moving, Sooley showcases John Grisham's unparalleled storytelling powers in a whole new light. This is Grisham at the top of his game.

 

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The Noise

James Patterson

A mysterious explosion kills thousands in the Pacific Northwest--and only two young girls survive. The newest in psychological suspense from the mind of James Patterson.

Two sisters have always stood together. Now, they're the only ones left.

In the shadow of Mount Hood, sixteen-year-old Tennant is checking rabbit traps with her eight-year-old sister Sophie when the girls are suddenly overcome by a strange vibration rising out of the forest, building in intensity until it sounds like a deafening crescendo of screams. From out of nowhere, their father sweeps them up and drops them through a trapdoor into a storm cellar. But the sound only gets worse...

James Patterson's astounding imagination has made him "a legendary novelist" (CNN). Now from its darkest corners comes The Noise, a thriller that takes hold of the emotions, defies the senses, and is like nothing you've ever read before.

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The Woman Who Smashed Codes

Jason Fagone

Joining the ranks of Hidden Figures and In the Garden of Beasts, the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II.

In 1916, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the "Adam and Eve" of the NSA, Elizebeth’s story, incredibly, has never been told.

In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman, who played an integral role in our nation’s history for forty years. After World War I, Smith used her talents to catch gangsters and smugglers during Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were spreading like wildfire across South America, advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizebeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler’s Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. Meanwhile, inside an Army vault in Washington, William worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma—and eventually succeeded, at a terrible cost to his personal life.

Fagone unveils America’s code-breaking history through the prism of Smith’s life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence. Blending the lively pace and compelling detail that are the hallmarks of Erik Larson’s bestsellers with the atmosphere and intensity of The Imitation Game, The Woman Who Smashed Codes is page-turning popular history at its finest.

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Ida: A Sword Among Lions

Paula J. Giddings

Pulitzer Prize Board citation to Ida B. Wells, as an early pioneer of investigative journalism and civil rights icon

From a thinker who Maya Angelou has praised for shining “a brilliant light on the lives of women left in the shadow of history,” comes the definitive biography of Ida B. Wells—crusading journalist and pioneer in the fight for women’s suffrage and against segregation and lynchings

Ida B. Wells was born into slavery and raised in the Victorian age yet emerged—through her fierce political battles and progressive thinking—as the first “modern” black women in the nation’s history.

Wells began her activist career when she tried to segregate a first-class railway car in Memphis. After being thrown bodily off the car, she wrote about the incident for black Baptist newspapers, thus beginning her career as a journalist. But her most abiding fight would be the one against lynching, a crime in which she saw all the themes she held most dear coalesce: sexuality, race, and the law.

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Wild Swans

Jung Chang

The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author.

An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.

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