Staff Pick

When was the last time you listened to someone, or someone really listened to you?

If you're like most people, you don't listen as often or as well as you'd like. There's no one better qualified than a talented journalist to introduce you to the right mindset and skillset--and this book does it with science and humor.
-Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take

**Hand picked by Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink for Next Big Ideas Club**

An essential book for our times.
-Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

At work, we're taught to lead the conversation.
On social media, we shape our personal narratives.
At parties, we talk over one another. So do our politicians.
We're not listening.
And no one is listening to us.

Despite living in a world where technology allows constant digital communication and opportunities to connect, it seems no one is really listening or even knows how. And it's making us lonelier, more isolated, and less tolerant than ever before. A listener by trade, New York Times contributor Kate Murphy wanted to know how we got here.

In this always illuminating and often humorous deep dive, Murphy explains why we're not listening, what it's doing to us, and how we can reverse the trend. She makes accessible the psychology, neuroscience, and sociology of listening while also introducing us to some of the best listeners out there (including a CIA agent, focus group moderator, bartender, radio producer, and top furniture salesman). Equal parts cultural observation, scientific exploration, and rousing call to action that's full of practical advice, You're Not Listening is to listening what Susan Cain's Quiet was to introversion. It's time to stop talking and start listening.

Doug says: This is the book for 2020. Feel free to ask me what I'm talking about!

 

Discover the heartwarming true story of a life-changing friendship between a man and his rescue cat, Nala, as they adventure together on a bike journey around the world -- from the Instagram phenomenon @1bike1world.

When 30-year-old Dean Nicholson set off from Scotland to cycle around the world, his aim was to learn as much as he could about our troubled planet. But he hadn't bargained on the lessons he'd learn from his unlikely companion.

Three months after leaving home, on a remote road in the mountains between Montenegro and Bosnia, he came across an abandoned kitten. Something about the piercing eyes and plaintive meowing of the bedraggled little cat proved irresistible. He couldn't leave her to her fate, so he put her on his bike and then, with the help of local vets, nursed her back to health.

Soon on his travels with the cat he named Nala, they forged an unbreakable bond -- both curious, independent, resilient and adventurous. The video of how they met has had 20 million views and their Instagram has grown to almost 750k followers -- and still counting!

Experiencing the kindness of strangers, visiting refugee camps, rescuing animals through Europe and Asia, Dean and Nala have already learned that the unexpected can be pretty amazing. Together with Garry Jenkins, writer with James Bowen of the bestselling A Street Cat Named Bob, Dean shares the extraordinary tale of his and Nala's inspiring and heart-warming adventure together.

Doug says: I love these guys and follow their travels In my  feed. It’s an extraordinary story where we get to observe a man and the animal that rescued him  create a life-story that helps countless others. Go Nala! Go Dean! 

WINNER OF THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A beautiful book ... a world of insight into death, grief, art, and love. --Wall Street Journal

A penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory...Nunez has a wry, withering wit. --NPR

Dry, allusive and charming...the comedy here writes itself." The New York Times

A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog.

When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.

While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.

Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.

Andrea says: An oddly charming novel. The life of a writer, the life of a very large dog, grief and aloneness all play a role. As a meditation on the choices we make in our lives, this was a lovely read.

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making--from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency--a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office.

Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune's Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.

A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective--the story of one man's bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of "hope and change," and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.

This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama's conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.

Elsie says: An elegant writer and an insightful look behind the curtain, you have to believe.

The acclaimed author of Troublesome Young Men reveals the behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its wartime alliance with Britain, told from the perspective of three key American players in London: Edward R. Murrow, the handsome, chain-smoking head of CBS News in Europe; Averell Harriman, the hard-driving millionaire who ran FDR's Lend-Lease program in London; and John Gilbert Winant, the shy, idealistic U.S. ambassador to Britain. Each man formed close ties with Winston Churchill--so much so that all became romantically involved with members of the prime minister's family. Drawing from a variety of primary sources, Lynne Olson skillfully depicts the dramatic personal journeys of these men who, determined to save Britain from Hitler, helped convince a cautious Franklin Roosevelt and reluctant American public to back the British at a critical time. Deeply human, brilliantly researched, and beautifully written, Citizens of London is a new triumph from an author swiftly becoming one of the finest in her field.

Susan Orlean's bestseller and New York Times Notable Book is "a sheer delight...as rich in insight and as varied as the treasures contained on the shelves in any local library" (USA TODAY)--a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution and an investigation into one of its greatest mysteries. "Everybody who loves books should check out The Library Book" (The Washington Post).

On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. The fire was disastrous: it reached two thousand degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library--and if so, who?

Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a "delightful...reflection on the past, present, and future of libraries in America" (New York magazine) that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.

In the "exquisitely written, consistently entertaining" (The New York Times) The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries; brings each department of the library to vivid life; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago.

"A book lover's dream...an ambitiously researched, elegantly written book that serves as a portal into a place of history, drama, culture, and stories" (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), Susan Orlean's thrilling journey through the stacks reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books--and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country.

In the tradition of The Glass Castle, a deeply felt memoir from Whiting Award-winner Nadia Owusu about the push and pull of belonging, the seismic emotional toll of family secrets, and the heart it takes to pull through.

 

Young Nadia Owusu followed her father, a United Nations official, from Europe to Africa and back again. Just as she and her family settled into a new home, her father would tell them it was time to say their goodbyes. The instability wrought by Nadia's nomadic childhood was deepened by family secrets and fractures, both lived and inherited. Her Armenian American mother, who abandoned Nadia when she was two, would periodically reappear, only to vanish again. Her father, a Ghanaian, the great hero of her life, died when she was thirteen. After his passing, Nadia's stepmother weighed her down with a revelation that was either a bombshell secret or a lie, rife with shaming innuendo.

 

With these and other ruptures, Nadia arrived in New York as a young woman feeling stateless, motherless, and uncertain about her future, yet eager to find her own identity. What followed, however, were periods of depression in which she struggled to hold herself and her siblings together.

 

Aftershocks is the way she hauled herself from the wreckage of her life's perpetual quaking, the means by which she has finally come to understand that the only ground firm enough to count on is the one written into existence by her own hand.

 

Heralding a dazzling new writer, Aftershocks joins the likes of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and William Styron's Darkness Visible, and does for race identity what Maggie Nelson does for gender identity in The Argonauts.

Roxanne says: In Nadia’ Owusu’s Aftershocks, she organizes her life story within the metaphorical context of an earthquake. But more than just a memoir, it's a beautifully written history lesson of the countries in her haphazard upbringing: Ghana, Armenia, and Tanzania.

It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal and Sibel, children of two prominent families, are about to become engaged. But when Kemal encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation, he becomes enthralled. And once they violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeoisie. In his pursuit of Füsun over the next eight years, Kemal becomes a compulsive collector of objects that chronicle his lovelorn progress--amassing a museum that is both a map of a society and of his heart. Orhan Pamuk's first novel since winning the Nobel Prize is a stirring exploration of the nature of romance.

Georgia says: My favorite author and my favorite of his books. Fabulous story of obsessive love.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

Finalist for The New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award

One August afternoon, two sisters--Sophia, eight, and Alyona, eleven--go missing from a beach on the far-flung Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Russia. Taking us through the year that follows, Disappearing Earth enters the lives of women and girls in this tightly knit community who are connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty--open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, dense forests, the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska--and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused. In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, Julia Phillips's powerful novel brings us to a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.

Andrea says: Set in remote Northeastern Russia, the disappearance of two young girls sets the story in motion. A wealth of characters weave the story together. Great writing and lots of local color.

A novel about infatuation, class, and obligation, The River Within will take its place as a classic in a tradition of English fiction that takes in Thomas Hardy, Graham Swift, and Helen Dunmore.

It is the summer of 1955. The body of Danny Masters is found by three of his friends in the river that runs through Starome, a village on the Richmond estate in North Yorkshire.

Alexander, one of the three friends that found Danny and the sole heir to Richmond Hall, has always been unpredictable but lately he has grown elusive, his behaviour becoming increasingly erratic. His mother, Lady Venetia Richmond, is newly widowed and too busy trying to keep the sprawling family estate together to worry about Alexander, though she could use his help.

A second friend, Lennie Fairweather, "child of nature" and daughter of the late Sir Angus Richmond's private secretary, has other things on her mind too. In love with Alexander, she longs to escape life with her over-protective father and domineering brother, Tom, who was also there when Danny's body was discovered.

In the weeks that follow the tragic drowning, the river begins to give up its secrets. As the circumstances surrounding Danny's death emerge, other stories surface that threaten to disrupt everybody's plans and to destroy an entire way of life.

Georgia says: The loves and losses of two related women--one does her loving in pre-World War II England, the other in the decade after the war. Lovely and sad. The cover blurb said it's reminiscent of Thomas Hardy (a good thing as far as I'm concerned) and I agree with that assessment.

In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.

**Featuring 107 poets, from A to Z--Julia Alvarez to Matthew Zapruder--with work in between by Jericho Brown, Billy Collins, Fanny Howe, Ada Limón, Sharon Olds, Tommy Orange, Claudia Rankine, Vijay Seshadri, and Jeffrey Yang**

As the novel coronavirus and its devastating effects began to spread in the United States and around the world, Alice Quinn reached out to poets across the country to see if, and what, they were writing under quarantine. Moved and galvanized by the response, the onetime New Yorker poetry editor and recent former director of the Poetry Society of America began collecting the poems arriving in her inbox, assembling this various, intimate, and intricate portrait of our suddenly altered reality.

In these pages, we find poets grieving for relatives they are separated from or recovering from illness themselves, attending to suddenly complicated household tasks or turning to literature for strength, considering the bravery of medical workers or working their own shifts at the hospital, and, as the Black Lives Matter movement has swept the globe, reflecting on the inequities in our society that amplify sorrow and demand our engagement.

From fierce and resilient to wistful, darkly humorous, and emblematically reverent about the earth and the vulnerability of human beings in frightening times, the poems in this collection find the words to describe what can feel unspeakably difficult and strange, providing wisdom, companionship, and depths of feeling that enliven our spirits.

A portion of the advance for this book was generously donated by Alice Quinn and the poets to Chefs for America, an organization helping feed communities in need across the country during the pandemic.

Doug says: Here is my cup of tea. Sure, a few won’t ring your bells, but over-all a  profound text of our shared experience. 

Winner of the 2020 Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature

Mesmerizing...He's one of the best living American writers.--Janet Maslin, New York Times Book Review

From bestselling and award-winning writer Ron Rash (One of the great American authors at work today.--The New York Times) comes a collection of ten searing stories and the return of the villainess who propelled Serena to national acclaim, in a long-awaited novella.

Ron Rash has long been a revered presence in the landscape of American letters. A virtuosic novelist, poet, and story writer, he evokes the beauty and brutality of the land, the relentless tension between past and present, and the unquenchable human desire to be a little bit better than circumstances would seem to allow (to paraphrase Faulkner).

In these ten stories, Rash spins a haunting allegory of the times we live in--rampant capitalism, the severing of ties to the natural world in the relentless hunt for profit, the destruction of body and soul with pills meant to mute our pain--and yet within this world he illuminates acts of extraordinary decency and heroism. Two of the stories have already been singled out for accolades: Baptism was chosen by Roxane Gay for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2018, and Neighbors was selected by Jonathan Lethem for The Best American Mystery Stories 2019. And in revisiting Serena Pemberton, Rash updates his bestselling parable of greed run amok as his deliciously vindictive heroine returns to the North Carolina wilderness she left scarred and desecrated to make one final effort to kill the child that threatens all she has accomplished.

A gorgeous, brutal writer (Richard Price) working at the height of his powers, Ron Rash has created another mesmerizing look at the imperfect world around us.

Doug says: You love his poems, but have you ever read his fiction? You are going to. I was wary. I often say, had enough of the south. All those twenty years spent getting to Florida from New York! But his stories are gems. He’s got a strength and sensitivity that rings something of beauty without going on about it. “His heart was settled. No ups, no downs. Be grateful for that, he told himself.” –from “Last Bridge Burned”

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER!

The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything--everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter.

Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble. If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the hill folks, she's going to have to confront prejudice as old as the Appalachias and suspicion as deep as the holler.

Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman's belief that books can carry us anywhere--even back home.

Fans of historical fiction will fall in love with this bestselling novel's:

Strong research and vivid depictions of Appalachia

Inspiration from the real blue-skinned people of Kentucky

Characters who are both relatable and fascinating

Emphasis on the importance of books (perfect for books clubs or as a gift for the librarian in your life)

Melanie says: A fascinating story of the blue-skinned people and the pack horse librarians of Kentucky.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"One of the most important books I've ever read--an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world." - Bill Gates

"Hans Rosling tells the story of 'the secret silent miracle of human progress' as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly." --Melinda Gates

Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases. - Former U.S. President Barack Obama

Factfulnes

s: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.

When asked simple questions about global trends--what percentage of the world's population live in poverty; why the world's population is increasing; how many girls finish school--we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective--from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).

Our problem is that we don't know what we don't know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn't mean there aren't real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future.

---

"This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn't enough. But I hope this book will be." Hans Rosling, February 2017.

James says: A fun book of facts to lighten the mood.

A wickedly smart, funny, and irresistibly off-kilter account of an improbable thousand-mile journey on foot into the heart of modern Florida, the state that Russell calls "America Concentrate."

In the summer of 2016, Kent Russell--broke, at loose ends, hungry for adventure--set off to walk across Florida. Mythic, superficial, soaked in contradictions, maligned by cultural elites, segregated from the South, and literally vanishing into the sea, Florida (or, as he calls it: "America Concentrate") seemed to Russell to embody America's divided soul. The journey, with two friends intent on filming the ensuing mayhem, quickly reduces the trio to filthy drifters pushing a shopping cart of camera equipment. They get waylaid by a concerned citizen bearing a rifle; buy cocaine from an ex-wrestler; visit a spiritual medium; attend a cuckold party. The narrative overflows with historical detail about how modern Florida came into being after World War II, and how it came to be a petri dish for life in a suddenly, increasingly diverse new land of minority-majority cities and of unrivaled ethnic and religious variety. Russell has taken it all in with his incomparably focused lens and delivered a book that is both an inspired travelogue and a profound rumination on the nation's soul--and his own. It is a book that is wildly vivid, encyclopedic, erudite, and ferociously irreverent--a deeply ambivalent love letter to his sprawling, brazenly varied home state.

Andrea says: I enjoyed Kent Russell's trek through his native state shooting video with his buddies. They are quite the motley crew reliving Walkin' Lawon's journey through Florida on foot. As someone who has lived in the Sunshine State for over 40 years, I didn't learn much new, but it's still was fun reading about the land of the weird.

Essential...A novel that resounds with relevance for our own time. --New York Times Book ReviewFirst published in 1980, the City of Lisbon Prize-winning Raised from the Ground follows the changing fortunes of the Mau Tempo family--poor landless peasants not unlike Saramago's own grandparents. Set in Alentejo, a southern province of Portugal known for its vast agricultural estates, the novel charts the lives of the Mau Tempos as national and international events rumble on in the background--the coming of the republic in Portugual, the two world wars, and an attempt on the dictator Salazar's life. Yet nothing really impinges on the grim reality of the farm laborers' lives until the first communist stirrings.

Raised from the Ground is Saramago's most deeply personal novel, the book in which he found the signature style and voice that distinguishes all of his brilliant works.

Elsie says: Brilliant! So well written! So well translated! The story of Portugal's peasants -- reveals their soul -- speaks to saudade.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE

The "devastatingly moving" (People) first novel from the author of Tenth of December a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented

Named One of Paste's Best Novels of the Decade - Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Maureen Corrigan, NPR - One of Time's Ten Best Novels of the Year - A New York Times Notable Book - One of O: The Oprah Magazine's Best Books of the Year

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. "God has called him home." Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state--called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo--a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction's ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?

"A luminous feat of generosity and humanism."--Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review

"A masterpiece."--Zadie Smith

"Merlin Sheldrake's marvelous tour of these diverse and extraordinary life forms is eye-opening on why humans should consider fungi among the greatest of earth's marvels. . . . Wondrous."--Time

A mind-bending journey into the hidden universe of fungi, "one of those rare books that can truly change the way you see the world around you" (Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk).

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND NEW STATESMAN

When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave.

In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Sheldrake's vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the "Wood Wide Web," to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.

Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life's processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms--and our relationships with them--are changing our understanding of how life works.

Praise for Entangled Life

"Entangled Life is a gorgeous book of literary nature writing in the tradition of [Robert] Macfarlane and John Fowles, ripe with insight and erudition. . . . food for the soul."--Eugenia Bone, Wall Street Journal

"[An] ebullient and ambitious exploration . . . This book may not be a psychedelic--and unlike Sheldrake, I haven't dared to consume my copy (yet)--but reading it left me not just moved but altered, eager to disseminate its message of what fungi can do."--Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

Doug says: I first heard about Dr. Sheldrake, as I did Dr. Simard and other botanical scientists, from Robert MacFarlane via his book Underland. You are probably weary of my going on about it—but there is something to the idea that from one book many even more astonishing emerge. They possess an organic network much like trees and the mycelium beneath them. You will not be able to turn away from this brilliant work—because I will go on about it until you listen. The last lines of Sheldrake’s Prologue are worth quoting here: From these roots, a fungal network laced out into the soil and around the roots of nearby trees. Without this fungal web my tree would not exist. Without similar fungal webs no plant would exist anywhere. All life on land, including my own, depended on these networks. I tugged lightly on my root and felt the ground move. Prepare for further wonders ahead!

In a world where people spend more time engaging through screens than in real-life interaction, showing basic human kindness can feel like a lost art. Be Kindoffers children aged 5 and up simple, actionable things they can do in their daily lives that help them cultivate kindness toward others and grow into people with the capacity to make the world a kinder place.

 

In Be Kind, kids learn that kindness is a quality that can be expressed in ways other than merely being "nice," including standing up for someone or something, engaging in a community, showing compassion toward other beings, and expressing gratitude. With joyful illustrations and kid-friendly writing, this idea book serves as a delightful, easy-to-read collection of 125 concrete activities kids and their families can pick and choose from and act out in their daily lives, whether it's being the first person to say good morning, offering compliments, shoveling an elderly neighbor's driveway, learning to say hello in different languages, or sending a card to someone -- no special occasion required. On every page, Be Kindempowers kids to make the world a better, kinder place, one action at a time.

 

2019 Mom's Choice Award Gold Winner
2020 NAPPA Award Winner

Heather says: What a wonderful book for children! Simple ways to show kindness.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva's celebrated debut novel, The Unlikely Spy, is "A ROLLER-COASTER WORLD WAR II ADVENTURE that conjures up memories of the best of Ken Follett and Frederick Forsyth" (The Orlando Sentinel).

"In wartime," Winston Churchill wrote, "truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." For Britain's counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable--a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor. The Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent. Catherine Blake is the beautiful widow of a war hero, a hospital volunteer--and a Nazi spy under direct orders from Hitler: uncover the Allied plans for D-Day...

New York Times bestselling author Jen Sincero gets to the core of transformation: habits--breaking, making, understanding, and sticking with them like you've never stuck before.

 

Badass Habits is a eureka-sparking, easy-to-digest look at how our habits make us who we are, from the measly moments that happen in private to the resolutions we loudly broadcast (and, erm, often don't keep) on social media. Habit busting and building goes way beyond becoming a dedicated flosser or never showing up late again--our habits reveal our unmet desires, the gaps in our boundaries, our level of self-awareness, and our unconscious beliefs and fears. Badass Habits features Jen's trademark hilarious voice and offers a much-needed fresh take on the conventional wisdom and science that shape the optimism (or pessimism?) around the age-old topic of habits. The book includes enlightening interviews with people who've successfully strengthened their discipline backbones, new perspective on how to train our brains to become our best selves, and offers a simple, 21 day, step-by-step guide for ditching habits that don't serve us and developing the habits we deem most important. Habits shouldn't be impossible to reset--and with healthy boundaries, knowledge of--and permission to go after--our desires, and an easy to implement plan of action, we can make any new goal a joyful habit.

Roxanne says: A follow-up to her wildly successful You Are A Bad Ass, Sincero digs deeper in the self-help vault to unlock our problems with too often saying yes or no, or by just being our own worst control freaks.  Her informal writing style, to borrow a Julie Andrews lyric, is 'the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine (advice) go down so well.

National Bestseller
Featuring a new postscript including five new photos from Patti Smith

From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as "a roadmap to my life."

M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, we travel to Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico; to the fertile moon terrain of Iceland; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; to the West 4th Street subway station, filled with the sounds of the Velvet Underground after the death of Lou Reed; and to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima.

Woven throughout are reflections on the writer's craft and on artistic creation. Here, too, are singular memories of Smith's life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith.

Braiding despair with hope and consolation, illustrated with her signature Polaroids, M Train is a meditation on travel, detective shows, literature, and coffee. It is a powerful, deeply moving book by one of the most remarkable multiplatform artists at work today.

Andrea says: Poignant, unforgettable memoir by stellar punk-rock-poet Patti Smith. Memories of the passage of time. A wonderful read.

Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal!

A dazzling collection of short fiction

Zadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically respected, and popular writers of her generation. In her first short story collection, she combines her power of observation and her inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. Interleaving eleven completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from The New Yorker and elsewhere, Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.

Nothing is off limits, and everything--when captured by Smith's brilliant gaze--feels fresh and relevant. Perfectly paced and utterly original, Grand Union highlights the wonders Zadie Smith can do.

Roxanne says: Several magical universes all in one book of gorgeous short stories!

Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth

Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle, this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars--on both sides of the Atlantic--serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.