New Nonfiction for January

We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door. Many writers have chronicled the habits of superstars who accomplish great things.

In the midst of the impeachment crisis of 2019, Heather Cox Richardson launched a daily Facebook essay providing the historical background of the daily torrent of news. It soon turned into a newsletter and its readership ballooned to more than 2 million dedicated readers who rely on her plainspoken and informed take on the present and past in America. Many books tell us what has happened over the last five years. Democracy Awakening explains how we got to this perilous point and what our history really tells us about ourselves.

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen…but do you recall the most petrifying Christmas figures of all? Not all children fear just a lump of coal in their stockings. Discover the terrifying Yuletide fables that have horrified kids for generations. He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake. This lighthearted song is a bit more ominous in the context of other Christmas traditions.

When Title IX was enacted in 1972, the University of Nebraska volleyball program, like many across the country, received a fraction of the funding and attention given to the school’s mighty football program. The players had to organize a run from Lincoln to Omaha to raise money for uniforms. The women were asked to wait their turn to use the weight room. Today the Nebraska women’s volleyball team is one of the sport’s most decorated programs—with more career wins than any other program and five NCAA National Championships.

What’s it like to be the first to enter an Egyptian burial chamber that’s been sealed for thousands of years? What horrifying secret was found among the prehistoric ruins of the American Southwest? Who really was the infamous the Monster of Florence? Douglas Preston’s journalistic explorations have taken him from the haunted country of Italy to the jungles of Honduras. The Lost Tomb brings together an astonishing and compelling collection of true stories about buried treasure, enigmatic murders, lost tombs, bizarre crimes, and other fascinating tales of the past and present.

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and many around him, including certain other elected Republican officials, intentionally breached their oath, ignored the rulings of dozens of courts, plotted to overturn a lawful election, and provoked a violent attack on our Capitol. Liz Cheney, witnessed the attack first-hand, and then helped lead the Congressional Select Committee investigation into how it happened. In Oath and Honor, she tells the story of this perilous moment in our history.

Ever since a childhood visit to Washington, DC, Cassidy Hutchinson aspired to serve her country in government. Raised in a working-class family with a military background, she was the first in her immediate family to graduate from college. Despite having no ties to Washington, Hutchinson landed a vital position at the center of the Trump White House. Enough reaches far beyond the typical insider political account. It’s the saga of a woman whose fierce determination helped her overcome childhood challenges to get her dream job.

The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story—of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention. From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society. In this unconventional, page-turning historical biography, authors Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the lives of the Astors and explore what the Astor name has come to mean in America.

Re-create recipes with The Official Dutton Ranch Family Cookbook, featuring delicious dishes from the hit series as prepared by real-life chef and character “Gator.” Whether it’s a hearty breakfast of Rip’s Fry Bread with Scrambled Eggs and Bacon, a quick week-night dinner with Beth’s Cheesy Hamburger Mac Casserole, or a pick-me-up with Beth’s “Two Scoops of Ice Cream, Three Shots of Vodka” Smoothie, The Official Dutton Ranch Family Cookbook compiles over 55 recipes inspired by and featured in Yellowstone.

New Fiction for January

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come. In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her.

Detectives Cross and Sampson are tracking a serial killer who’s fatally ambushing young men in the “Dead Hours” murders. They don’t hear the machine gun fire. At first. “Drop whatever you’re doing, Dr. Cross, and head to Reagan Airport,” DC Metro Police dispatch says. “A plane just crashed and exploded on the runway. The chief and the FBI want you and John Sampson there pronto.” As Cross and Sampson race to prevent another mass murder, their fearsomely armed opponent once again looks skyward.

In Ashkenazi Jewish folklore, a golem is a humanoid being created out of mud or clay and animated through secret prayers. Its sole purpose is to defend the Jewish people against the immediate threat of violence. It is always a rabbi who makes a golem, and always in a time of crisis. The Golem of Brooklyn is an epic romp through Jewish history and the American present that wrestles with the deepest questions of our humanity—the conflicts between faith and skepticism, tribalism and interdependence, and vengeance and healing.

In 1941, beautiful Irvel Ellis is too focused on her secret to take much notice in the war raging overseas. She’s dating Sam but in love with his brother, Hank, and Irvel has no idea how to break the news when the unthinkable happens—Pearl Harbor is attacked. With their lives turned upside down overnight, Sam is drafted, and Hank wants to enlist. But Sam insists Hank stay home, where he and Irvel take up the battle on the home front. While Sam fights in Europe, an undeniable chemistry builds between Irvel and Hank but neither would dare cross that line.

 My husband made a terrible mistake. Now our children are missing…This should be the trip of a lifetime – a week in New York with my family. As we stroll along the Hudson River, drinking coffee in the sunshine, anyone would think we’re the perfect family. But the truth is far more complicated. I’ve been on edge the whole time because fifteen years ago when we were living in this city my husband Jack did something that ripped our lives apart. I swore I would never come back here, but Jack insisted.

She crossed continents to chase her London dream; he works the same job in the same restaurant, night after night. Then fate steps in. When Gia’s takeout is delivered, her embarrassing list of New Year’s resolutions accidentally makes its way to Ben’s restaurant, stuck to the bottom of a delivery backpack. With each delivery Gia orders, Ben slips in a note of his own and eagerly awaits her reply. One by one, these notes transform their lives in unexpected ways, and an unlikely love story is written.

In May 1940, as the German army blitzes Europe and Parisians flee their city, the chief curator of the Musee de l’Armee is ordered to get a mysterious piece of cargo out of the country. When he arrives at the port of Le Havre and learns that his intended ship has been sunk, he places the object on a decrepit steamer that sails out under German fire. From the shadow of the Eiffel Tower to the depths of the Irish Sea to the islands of the Caribbean, only Dirk Pitt and his children, Summer and Dirk Jr., can locate the treasure that will preserve the soul of a nation.

In this thrilling new installment of Patricia Cornwell’s #1 bestselling Scarpetta series, chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta finds herself in a Northern Virginia wilderness examining the remains of two campers wanted by federal law enforcement. The victims have been mauled beyond recognition, and other evidence is terrifying and baffling including a larger-than-life footprint. After the most frightening body retrievals of her career, Scarpetta must discover who would commit murders this savage, and why.

When CIA operative Jenny Sikwell is murdered in rural Maine, government officials have immediate concerns over national security. Her laptop and phone were full of state secrets that, in the wrong hands, endanger the lives of countless operatives. In need of someone who can solve the murder quickly and retrieve the missing information, the U.S. government knows just the chameleon they can call on. Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine spent his time in the military preparing to take on any scenario, followed by his short-lived business career chasing shadows in the deepest halls of power.

Ring in the New Year with These New Audiobooks Available on the Libby App

When a young nanny is found dead in mysterious circumstances, new mom, Tash, is intrigued. She has been searching for a story to launch her career as a freelance journalist. But she has also been searching for something else—new friends to help her navigate motherhood. The other mothers. A group of sleek, sophisticated women who live in a neighborhood of tree-lined avenues and stunning houses. But when another young woman is found dead, it’s clear there’s much more to the community than meets the eye.

In The End of the World is a Cul de Sac the political is intertwined with the personal, as Louise Kennedy reveals how ordinary lives can get caught up in a wider, national drama. Sarah, abandoned by her partner, sits alone in their brand new house. Orla, facing the strange revenge of her husband, is forced to judge a contest in the local fête. Peter raises his daughter in rural seclusion, at what might as well be the end of the world.

When I Was Your Age  is a hilarious, heartwarming and surprising ode to growing up, getting older and wiser, and luck, life, and learning from the school of hard knocks, from SNL’s longest-serving actor, Kenan Thompson Kenan Thompson is  Saturday Night Live’s  longest-ever-serving cast member and a star of such pioneering sketches as “Black Jeopardy” and is hugely beloved thanks to a tidal wave of nostalgic fans who grew up on early 2000s classics  All That, Good Burger , and  Kenan & Kel  on Nickelodeon.

After Dr. Jack Stapleton’s near-death confrontation with a medical serial killer, his wife, NYC Chief Medical Examiner Laurie Montgomery, is carrying the load both at work and at home. When Laurie insists that Dr. Ryan Sullivan—an underperforming senior pathology resident who is spending his required month at the medical examiner’s office but who truly detests doing forensic autopsies—assist her on a suicide autopsy in hopes of stimulating his interest in the field, the last thing she expects is to be unwittingly drawn into a major conspiracy that puts her own life in jeopardy.

Everyone’s favorite lethal SecUnit is back. Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza Corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

Only Murders in Gotham, the smash-hit streaming program, is famous for filming in authentic New York locations and using real New Yorkers as extras. For its second season, they’ve chosen to spotlight the century-old Village Blend and its quirky crew of baristas. Shop manager and master roaster Clare Cosi is beyond thrilled, especially when her superb bulletproof coffee lands her a craft services contract for the production. Madame, the eccentric octogenarian owner of the landmark shop, reveals an old kinship with the star of the show, comedian Jerry Sullivan.

From the creator of The Holistic Psychologist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller How to Do the Work comes this paradigm-shifting guide to strengthen your relationships, beginning with the one you have with yourself. Relationships have long been essential to human survival. Our bodies and brains are programmed to seek out connection, both romantic and platonic. And yet, these vital bonds are often at the root of some of our deepest suffering.  For decades, experts have posited that maintaining successful relationships requires a certain kind of compromise.

When a young woman from the Ojibwa tribe asks McKnight for shelter from her violent boyfriend, McKnight agrees. But after letting her stay in one of his cabins, he finds her gone the next morning. His search for her brings on a host of suspects, bruising encounters, and a thickening web of crime, all obscured by the relentless whiplash of brutal snowstorms. From the secret world of the Ojibwa reservation to the Canadian border and deep into the silent woods, someone is out to kill—and McKnight is heading right into the line of fire.

Teacher, mother, wife, and all-around good citizen Ellen is juggling nonstop commitments, from raising a teen and two toddlers to job-hunting to finally renovating her dream home, the Meadowhouse. Amidst the chaos, an ominous note arrives in the mail, People have to learn there are consequences, Ellen. And I’m going to teach you that lesson. Right under your nose. Why would someone send her this? Ellen has no clue. She’s no angel—a white lie here, an occasional sharp tongue there—but nothing to incur the wrath of an anonymous enemy.

New Fiction to Read During Your Winter Holiday

On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found…For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives. But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder… where nothing is as it seems.

On an ordinary night in an ordinary year, Tommy Llewellyn’s doting parents wake in a home without toys and diapers, without photos of their baby scattered about, and without any idea that the small child asleep in his cot is theirs. That’s because Tommy is a boy destined to never be remembered. On the same day every year, everyone around him forgets he exists, and he grows up enduring his own universal Reset. That is until something extraordinary happens: Tommy Llewellyn falls in love.

Katie’s divorce was, in a word, humiliating. So when her friend Bess offers a fresh start—a residential caretaking job at a nature preserve—Katie accepts. No matter that she’s not exactly a “nature person.” How hard can it be? But from day one, something feels off. Katie’s new farmhouse looks as if the last caretaker barely moved out at all. When a frantic, terrified woman arrives late at night, expecting a safe place to hide, it’s clear caretaking involves way more than Katie bargained for.

It’s the summer of 1959 and the Palace of Versailles is hosting an event that will make history. It is an exclusive dusk to dawn ball in which a select group of American and French debutantes will be presented to international society and royalty. Four young women, all with something to prove, receive what some see as the invitation of a lifetime. For all these young women, Paris and one transcendent night will change their lives forever. Bestselling author Danielle Steel extends an invitation to all, in The Ball at Versailles.

I pick up the photograph from their mantelpiece and carefully wipe away the dust. The beautiful wife. Supposedly happily married and enjoying a family vacation. I know her husband killed her. And I’m going to make him pay… This is my first job as a housekeeper, but Evan Warner doesn’t need to know that. It’s the first of many lies I’ll tell him. He just lost his wife, Lola, and now he and his young daughter Jessica are adrift. But no amount of cleaning will rid this house of the secrets that have seeped into the cracks.

There was only one woman who could set me free. But I would rather set myself on fire than ask Sloane Walton for anything. Lucian Rollins is a lean, mean vengeance-seeking mogul. On a quest to erase his father’s mark on the family name, he spends every waking minute pulling strings and building an indestructible empire. The more money and power he amasses, the safer he is from threats. Except when it comes to the feisty small-town librarian that keeps him up at night…

Bast knows how to bargain. The give-and-take of a negotiation is as familiar to him as the in-and-out of breathing; to watch him trade is to watch an artist at work. But even a master’s brush can slip. When he accepts a gift, taking something for nothing, Bast’s whole world is knocked askew, for he knows how to bargain—but not how to owe. From dawn to midnight over the course of a single day, follow the Kingkiller Chronicle’s most charming fae as he schemes and sneaks, dancing into trouble and back out again with uncanny grace.

Graphic designer Sonya MacTavish is stunned to learn that her late father had a twin he never knew about―and that her newly discovered uncle, Collin Poole, has left her almost everything he owned, including a majestic Victorian house on the Maine coast, which the will stipulates she must live in it for at least three years. Her engagement recently broken, she sets off to find out why the boys were separated at birth―and why it was all kept secret until a genealogy website brought it to light.

Molly Gray is not like anyone else. With her flair for cleaning and proper etiquette, she has risen through the ranks of the glorious five-star Regency Grand Hotel to become the esteemed Head Maid. But just as her life reaches a pinnacle state of perfection, her world is turned upside down when J.D. Grimthorpe, the world-renowned mystery author, drops dead—very dead—on the hotel’s tea room floor. When Detective Stark, Molly’s old foe, investigates the author’s unexpected demise, it becomes clear that this death was murder most foul.

More Holiday Titles Available in the Library and on the Libby App

It’s the beginning of December in Rudolph, New York, America’s Christmas Town, and business is brisk at Mrs. Claus’s Treasures, a gift and décor shop owned by Merry Wilkinson. The local amateur dramatic society is intensely preparing a special musical production of A Christmas Carol. But it’s not a happy set, as rivalries between cast and crew threaten the production. Tensions come to a head when a member of the group is found dead shortly after a shopping excursion to Mrs. Claus’s Treasures. Was someone looking to cut out the competition?

Sophie Potter’s job is helping people deal with the worst, because Sophie Potter knows what the worst feels like. An expert at keeping moving, with her trusty motorhome and faithful dog Muffin, Sophie has built her life around keeping her loves and loyalties as few as possible. Fabulous fifty-something Hattie Langford has kept her heart and past safely stored away too. But for reasons she’s only willing to share with a stranger, Hattie needs to tell the story her family has been hiding at Riverbend, their home in Sherwood Forest.

Mariah Ellison, Charlotte Pitt’s grandmother, accepts her longtime friend Sadie’s gracious invitation to spend Christmas with her and her husband, Barton, in their picturesque village. But upon arrival, Mariah discovers that Sadie has vanished without a trace, and Barton rudely rescinds the invitation. Once Mariah finds another acquaintance to stay with during the holiday season, she begins investigating Sadie’s disappearance. Mariah’s uncanny knack for solving mysteries serves her well during her search, which is driven by gossip as icy as the December weather.

All year long, Zoey Andrews lives and breathes Christmas–not just because she loves everything about the festive season, but because, as the director of countless Christmas movies, she’s perpetually (and happily) surrounded by 24/7 holiday cheer. And this year Christmas has come early: After years of making other people’s movies, Zoey finally has the chance to make her own. There’s just one thing standing in her way of that: Benoît Deschamps, the mayor who refuses to grant Zoey the permit to film in the cozy and snowy Quebec hamlet at the center of her screenplay.

Once the hottest mergers and acquisitions executive in the company, Henrietta Wegner can see the ambitious and impossibly young up-and-comers gunning for her job. When Henri’s boss makes it clear she’ll be starting the New Year unemployed unless she can close a big deal before the holidays, Henri impulsively tells him that she can convince her aging parents to sell Wegner’s—their iconic Frankenmuth, Michigan, Christmas store—to a massive, soulless corporation. It’s the kind of deal cool, corporate Henri has built her career on.

On Christmas Eve, Jack Reacher stumbles into a no-name bar in the California desert, desperate to take refuge from an unexpected snowstorm. Reacher came to Barstow for a little R&R. Instead, he’s sequestered in a dark little roadhouse with a bartender, a bewildered elderly couple—and two members of Britain’s Royal Military Police. They tell Reacher they were escorting a VIP to a top-secret meeting at a U.S. military base when they became separated from their charge. That’s when the threat came in from a notorious assassin: the Christmas Scorpion. (note: only available in ebook format)

Kate Potter used to love Christmas. A few years ago, she would have been wrapping her presents in September and baking mince pies on Halloween, counting down the days and hours to Christmas. But that was before Kate’s husband left for the army and never came home. Now she can hardly stand December at all. Kate can’t deny she’s lonely, yet she doesn’t think she’s ready for romance. She knows that her son, Jack, needs a Christmas to remember—just like Kate needs a miracle to help her finally move forward with her life.

Sherlock Holmes’s discovery of a mysterious musical score initiates a devious Christmas challenge set by Irene Adler, with clues that are all variations on the theme of ‘theft without theft’, such as a statue missing from a museum found hidden in the room it was taken from. In the snowy London lead-up to Christmas, Holmes’s preoccupation with the “Adler Variations” risks him neglecting the case of his new client, Norwegian arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who has received a series of threats.

After reading Christmas Carol, the notoriously reclusive Thomas Carlyle was “seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality” and threw not one but two Christmas dinner parties. The impact of the story may not always have been so dramatic but, along with Dickens other Christmas writings, it has had a lasting and significant influence upon our ideas about the Christmas spirit, and about the season as a time for celebration, charity, and memory. Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol has had significant influence on our ideas about the Christmas spirit.

New Nonfiction for December

When President Theodore Roosevelt welcomed the country’s most visible Black man, Booker T. Washington, into his circle of counselors in 1901, the two confronted a shocking and violent wave of racist outrage. In the previous decade, Jim Crow laws had legalized discrimination in the South, eroding social and economic gains for former slaves. Slavery had been abolished, but if newly freed citizens were condemned to lives as share croppers, how much improvement would their lives really see?

In Strategic, New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Rich Horwath delivers an incisive roadmap to help leaders at all levels think, plan, and act strategically to navigate every business challenge they face. The book offers business leaders a proven framework―the Strategic Fitness System―containing dozens of tools, techniques, and checklists to confidently master every area of the business, from designing market-winning strategies to shaping the organization’s culture.

Shaich is a business visionary who has been part of building three iconic restaurant brands: Au Bon Pain, Panera Bread, and now Cava. Along the way, he developed “fast casual,” a $100 billion–plus segment of the industry. Now he reveals what he learned about entrepreneurship, and life itself. He illustrates these lessons with his experiences turning a 400-square-foot cookie store into 2,400 restaurants with $5 billion in revenue, delivering annual investor returns of 25 percent over two decades, and outperforming both Starbucks and Chipotle.

As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.” And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of If you want to know a person.

When his mother, Barbara, turns seventy, Jedidiah Jenkins is reminded of a sobering fact: our parents won’t live forever. For years, he and Barbara have talked about taking a trip together, just the two of them. They disagree about politics, about God, about the project of society—disagreements that hurt. But they love thrift stores, they love eating at diners, they love true crime, and they love each other. Jedidiah wants to step into Barbara’s world and get to know her in a way that occasional visits haven’t allowed.

Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no Twitter—beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of research, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea. Space technologies and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations

We think we know John Stamos. The beloved actor of television (Full House, ER, General Hospital), film, and Broadway grew up in front of the cameras and drummed his way into our hearts as an honorary Beach Boy. In a candid memoir slated for released by Henry Holt & Co. on October 24, 2023, readers can peek into the heart of this familiar face. It’s a rollicking insider look at Hollywood, fame, fortune, and failure. It’s a tender treaty on love, friendship, and fatherhood.

In another time and place, E. Gab Blackman and William Sousa “Sou” Bridgeforth might have been as close as brothers, but in 1950s Nashville they remained separated by the color of their skin. Gab, a visionary yet opportunistic radio executive, saw something no one else a vast and untapped market with the R&B scene exploding in Black clubs across the city. Night Train to Nashville explores how one city, divided into two completely different and unequal communities, demonstrated the power of music to change the world.

This collection brings together more than 100 Christmas-inspired recipes, each beautifully photographed with easy-to-follow instructions, from holiday classics like Dark Chocolate Crinkles and Decorated Sugar Cookies to international treats like Krakelingen, Linzer Cookies, and Alfajores. Many favorites will spark fond baking memories, and new flavors will create fresh family traditions. Christmas Baking contains perfect recipes for holiday gatherings, gift-giving, cookie swaps, and Christmas morning.

New Fiction for December

Defense attorney Mickey Haller is back, taking the long shot cases, where the chances of winning are one in a million. After getting a wrongfully convicted man out of prison, he is inundated with pleas from incarcerated people claiming innocence. He enlists his half-brother, retired LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, to weed through the letters, knowing most claims will be false. Bosch pulls a needle from the haystack: a woman in prison for killing her husband, a sheriff’s deputy, but who still maintains her innocence.

Army Criminal Investigation Agents Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor have been separated for five months following their last assignment, a dangerous mission in Venezuela to locate and detain an infamous Army deserter. Now, in Berlin, they are reunited and tasked with investigating the murder of one of their own: CID Special Agent Harry Vance of the 5th MP Battalion, an accomplished counterterrorism agent who had been stationed in western Germany, and whose body was discovered in a city park in the heart of Berlin’s Arab refugee community.

 Stephanie Plum, Trenton’s hardest working bounty hunter, is offered a freelance assignment that seems simple enough. Local jeweler Martin Rabner wants her to locate his former security guard, Andy Manley (a.k.a. Nutsy), who he is convinced stole a fortune in diamonds out of his safe. Stephanie is also looking for another troubled man, Duncan Dugan, a fugitive from justice arrested for robbing the same jewelry store on the same day. As the body count rises and witnesses start to disappear, it won’t be easy for Stephanie to keep herself clean when everyone else is playing dirty.

What became of Mitch and Abby McDeere after they exposed the crimes of Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke and fled the country? The answer is in The Exchange, the riveting sequel to The Firm, the blockbuster thriller that launched the career of America’s favorite storyteller. It is now fifteen years later, and Mitch and Abby are living in Manhattan, where Mitch is a partner at the largest law firm in the world. Mitch has become a master at staying one step ahead of his adversaries, but this time there’s nowhere to hide.

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland–and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot. Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.

The regulars at Café Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with the whimsical ability it grants them to take a trip into the past—as well as the strict rules involved, including that each traveler must return to the present in the time it takes for their coffee to get cold. In Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s previous novels, patrons have been reunited with old flames, made amends with estranged family and visited loved ones. Now readers will once again be introduced to a new set of visitors.

Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.

1992. Eight respectable, upstanding people have been found dead across the US. These deaths look like accidents and don’t appear to be connected. Until one body – the victim of a fatal fall from a hospital window – generates some unexpected attention. That attention comes from the Secretary of Defense, who promptly calls for an inter-agency task force to investigate. Jack Reacher is assigned as the Army’s representative. Reacher may be an exceptional soldier, but sweeping other people’s secrets under the carpet isn’t part of his skill set.

On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found…For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives. But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder… where nothing is as it seems.

New Holiday Novels to Enjoy This Season

Christmas comes early—far too early—to McCredie’s little Old Town bookshop in Edinburgh. It’s summer, but an American production company has decided that McCredie’s is the perfect location to film a very cheesy Christmas movie. After all, who can resist the charmingly narrow historic street with its Victorian grey stone buildings and warmly lit shop windows? Carmen Hogan, the bookshop’s manager, is amused and a bit horrified by the goings-on, but the money the studio is paying is too good to pass up.

Reluctant lawyer Andy Carpenter is at the Tara Foundation’s annual Christmas party. The dog rescue organization has always been his true calling, and this is one holiday tradition he can get behind because every dog that’s come through the rescue—and their families—are invited to celebrate. This year’s party is no exception. But before the stockings can be hung by the chimney with care, homicide detectives ruin the evening. Derek Moore, one of the foundation’s best foster volunteers, is arrested for murder.

 Tessa Stafford will do anything for her daughter, Isabel…even stay on the run to protect Isabel from her narcissistic grandmother. But when her car breaks down in Painted Pony Creek, Tessa gets caught up in the warm embrace of the town and feels safe enough to build a home—and a life—for them both. Love is the last thing on her mind until rugged cowboy and lawyer Jesse McKettrick’s sexy smile and easy way tempt her into imagining more. But can she trust this handsome stranger with her heart?

‘Tis the season for sleuthing in Donna Andrews’ cheery new addition to the New York Times bestselling Meg Langslow series. Meg has been roped into participating in a weaponsmithing competition, a Forged in Fire wannabe organized by a blacksmith friend. Meg originally turned down an invitation to participate, but the night before the filming starts, someone attacks Faulk, her blacksmithing mentor, breaking his arm and eliminating him from the contest before it begins.

Growing up at the Shelter Inn hotel, Natalie Shepherd envied guests who could come and go as they pleased. So when it was time to finally leave for college and put the lush green mountains around Shelter Springs—along with the cloud of loss that seemed to follow her family—behind her, she swore she’d never come back. But now her sister McKenna needs a favor. On pregnancy bed rest at doctor’s orders, McKenna needs a helping hand with her two young daughters and someone to take over the inn during the hectic holiday season, and Nat can’t refuse.

Sunny, Arianna and Molly are three women having three very different but equally terrible Christmases. Sunny is a newlywed with two new stepkids who want nothing to do with her; Arianna is newly divorced, living with her mom again and hates sending her daughter off to spend the holiday with her dad; for Molly, nothing is new, but her job at the post office is getting very, very old. As these three determined women chase the perfect holiday through twelve months of cooking disasters and lots of laughter and tears, they’ll discover perfection is way overrated.

Adelaide Smith is too busy for fairy tales. She’s been working hard to put herself through law school and now that the end is in sight, she’s determined to stay focused on her goals. Then she receives a letter notifying her that she has been found through a DNA registry to be a direct descendant of King Maximillian V, the ruler of a small Eastern European principality called Montovia. She’s understandably skeptical. This is the stuff of cheesy made-for-TV movies, not real life.

Melody Gallard may be the daughter of music royalty, but her world is far from glamorous. She spends her days restoring old books and avoiding the limelight (one awkward tabloid photo was enough, thanks). But when a producer offers her a lot of money to reunite her mother’s band on live TV, Mel begins to wonder if it’s time to rattle the cage, shake up her quiet life… and see him again. The only other person who could wrangle the rock and roll divas.

Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of the grand and mysterious mansion, a local delivery man makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia. An epic novel that spans generations, Homecoming asks what we would do for those we love, and how we protect the lies we tell.

New Audiobooks Available on the Libby App

Imogen Finch has just been through her seventeenth breakup. She saw it coming, so she’s not as crushed as she might be, but with all seventeen of her exes leaving her for other partners, she’s come to believe a prediction her well-intentioned and possibly clairvoyant mother made over twenty years ago: that Imogen would never come first at anything or to anyone. But when Eliot Swift, her secret high school crush, returns to their small coastal town after a decade of nomadic travels, Imogen has new motivation to try again.

Mere words can’t end their families’ feud, but the Campbell heir and the Bradshaw heiress plan to write a future together. Buffalo, NY, 1924 Laura Bradshaw adores stories with happily ever afters. But since her mother died seven years ago, the Bradshaw Shoe Company heiress has been as good as locked away in a tower. Her overbearing father cares little for her dreams, throwing himself instead into his tireless takedown of his competitor, the Campbell Shoe Company. However, Laura has been gifted with a mysterious friend with whom she’s been exchanging letters.

Madeline Martin has built a life for herself as the young owner of a thriving business, The Next Chapter Bookshop, despite her tragic childhood and now needing to care for her infirm father. When Harley Granger, a failed novelist turned true crime podcaster, drifts into her shop in the days before Christmas, he seems intent on digging up events that Madeline would much rather forget. She’s the only surviving victim of Evan Handy, the man who was convicted of murdering her best friend Steph, and is suspected in the disappearance of two sisters.

Curator of paleontology Dr. Simon Nealy never expected to return to his Pennsylvania hometown, let alone the Hawthorne Museum of Natural History. He was just a boy when his six-year-old sister, Morgan, was abducted from the museum under his watch, and the guilt has haunted Simon ever since. After a recent break-up and the death of the aunt who raised him, Simon feels drawn back to the place where Morgan vanished, in search of the bones they never found. But from the moment he arrives, things aren’t what he expected.

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.

So begins the adventure of Boyd Halverson—star journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JC Penny manager—and his irrepressible hostage, Angie Bing. Haunted by his past and weary of his present, Boyd has one goal before the authorities catch up with him: settle a score with the man who destroyed his life. By Monday Boyd and Angie reach Mexico; by winter, they are in a lakefront mansion in Minnesota. On their trail are hitmen, jealous lovers, ex-cons, an heiress, a billionaire shipping tycoon, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, and the ghosts of Boyd’s past.

Dara, a workaholic lawyer from the UK, is on the brink of partnership at her firm. Estranged from her mother, and perpetually uncomfortable around her hypercompetitive colleagues, her insecurities intensify exponentially when Lani, a new hire from Geneva (and a fellow British Nigerian), is assigned to work on what should have been her career-making case. Pitted against each other by their boss, Dara can’t help but see Lani as a threat: a privileged man poised to take her place.

In the midst of World War II, an English musician, Norah Chambers, places her eight-year-old daughter Sally on a ship leaving Singapore, desperate to keep her safe from the Japanese army as they move down through the Pacific. Norah remains to care for her husband and elderly parents, knowing she may never see her child again. Sisters under the Rising Sun is a story of women in war: a novel of sisterhood, bravery and friendship in the darkest of circumstances.

When Promise Glen is struck by a vandalism spree around the Thanksgiving holiday, a community’s values—and two weathered hearts—are put to the test. As a widow with two-year-old twins and a struggling orchard, Rebecca King’s dreams of expanding her business seem near impossible. To make matters worse, a troublesome string of destructive acts around Promise Glen threatens her roadside fruit and vegetable stand, forcing Rebecca to accept the help of her condescending new neighbor, Nathan Mueller.

New Nonfiction for November

In Build the Life You Want, Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey invite you to begin a journey toward greater happiness no matter how challenging your circumstances. Drawing on cutting-edge science and their years of helping people translate ideas into action, they show you how to improve your life right now instead of waiting for the outside world to change. With insight, compassion, and hope, Brooks and Winfrey reveal how the tools of emotional self-management can change your life―immediately.

September 29, 1913: the steamship Dresden is halfway between Belgium and England. On board is one of the most famous men in the world, Rudolf Diesel, whose new internal combustion engine is on the verge of revolutionizing global industry forever. But Diesel never arrives at his destination. He vanishes during the night and headlines around the world wonder if it was an accident, suicide, or murder.  The hidden history of one of the world’s greatest inventors, this book answers the hundred-year-old mystery of what really became of Rudolf Diesel.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author and Food Network favorite The Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond returns with an exciting new cookbook filled with no-fuss family recipes for dinners, desserts, and more. Cook smarter, not harder! In The Pioneer Woman Cooks—Dinner’s Ready!  you’ll find lots of new dishes to fit your schedule, whether you’re in a hurry to get supper made or simply want to get out of the kitchen quicker to spend time doing other things you enjoy (even if that’s curling up in front of the TV for the night)!

This is the memoir music fans have been waiting for. Half of one of the greatest creative partnerships in popular music, Bernie Taupin is the man who wrote the lyrics for Elton John, who conceived the ideas that spawned countless hits, and sold millions and millions of records. Together, they were a duo, a unit, an immovable object. Unique and utterly compelling,  Scattershot  will transport the reader across the decades and around the globe, along the way meeting some of the greatest creative minds of the 20th century, and into the vivid imaginings of one of music’s most legendary lyricists.

Global superstar Dolly Parton shares, for the first time, the full story behind her lifelong passion for fashion, including how she developed her own, distinctly Dolly style, which has defied convention and endeared her to fans around the world. Featuring behind-the-scenes stories from Dolly Parton’s life and career, and the largest reveal of her private costume archive, this gorgeously photographed book spotlights her most unforgettable looks from the 1960s to now. The sky-high heels, famous wigs, bold makeup, eye-catching stage clothes—she shares them all.

Bret Baier’s To Rescue the Constitution dramatically illuminates the life of George Washington, the Founder who did more than perhaps any other individual to secure the future of the United States. George Washington rescued the nation three first by leading the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War, second by presiding over the Constitutional Convention that set the blueprint for the United States and ushering the Constitution through a fractious ratification process, and third by leading the nation as its first president. There is no doubt that the struggling new nation needed to be rescued.

Killing the Witches revisits one of the most frightening and inexplicable episodes in American history: the events of 1692 and 1693 in Salem Village, Massachusetts. What began as a mysterious affliction of two young girls who suffered violent fits and exhibited strange behavior soon spread to other young women. What really happened in Salem? Killing the Witches tells the horrifying story of a colonial town’s madness, offering the historical context of similar episodes of community mania during that time, and exploring the evidence that emerged in the Salem trials.

Gina Homolka knows how tough it can be to put a meal together when she’s tight for time and energy. Skinnytaste Simple is the recipes with minimum ingredients but maximum flavor and nutrition. These game-changing, no-fuss dinners use no more than seven ingredients each, allowing you to put easy, healthy meals on the table with little-to-no effort. With Skinnytaste Simple, cooking delicious, nutritious meals for your family is easier than ever!

Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis. Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century.