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The Heart of the Homestead

RuthAnn Zimmerman

Through simple stories, recipes, and reflections, RuthAnn Zimmerman shares timeless wisdom, celebrates traditional values, and gives readers a peek behind the fence at what homestead life is really like. 

Drawing from their Mennonite upbringings, RuthAnn Zimmerman and her husband, Elvin, chose early on in their marriage to build a life focused on family, hard work, and serving others. RuthAnn invites you to slow down, focus quietly, and listen closely to the heartbeat of the homestead as she offers insights on. . .

•    working together as a family
•    enjoying good food and fellowship
•    growing and preserving food                    
•    appreciating what you have
•    finding contentment by doing more with less

Along the way, you’ll enjoy some great recipes and heartwarming glimpses into RuthAnn’s everyday life as a homesteading mother of seven children. Spend some time on the farm with the Zimmermans.

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Mischief, Murder and Merlot

J. C. Eaton

Norrie Ellington gears up for Halloween at Two Witches Winery, where the phrase “wine and spirits” takes on spooky—and deadly—overtones . . .

Back at Two Witches Winery for a short stay, Norrie Ellington is warming to the holiday spirit and the upcoming Hallow Wine Weekend, and she’s happy to steer clear of the writer from Wine Enthusiast magazine who’s come to do interviews about this year’s spectacular Merlot. But then the critic’s dead body is found slumped over a Halloween cauldron display, and despite a stern warning from the local deputy to keep her nose out of it, Norrie instantly switches into sleuth mode.

Intent on discovering why someone wanted to silence the victim, Norrie quickly learns that he was an unbearable snob and known womanizer who had no shortage of enemies. But as one suspect after another leads to a dead end, Norrie’s stumped—until the one mysterious clue that’s been haunting her turns the case around. Now, as all the ghouls, goblins, and trick-or-treaters come out on Halloween, Norrie’s ready to unleash her spirit of justice—she just has to close in on the killer before the Grim Reaper closes in on her . . .

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Do They Hear You When They Cry

Fauziya Kassindja

For Fauziya Kassindja, an idyllic childhood in Togo, West Africa, sheltered from the tribal practices of polygamy and genital mutilation, ended with her beloved father's sudden death.  Forced into an arranged marriage at age seventeen, Fauziya was told to prepare for kakia, the ritual also known as female genital mutilation.  It is a ritual no woman can refuse.  But Fauziya dared to try.  

This is her story--told in her own words--of fleeing Africa just hours before the ritual kakia was to take place, of seeking asylum in America only to be locked up in U.S.  prisons, and of meeting Layli Miller Bashir, a law student who became Fauziya's friend and advocate during her horrifying sixteen months behind bars.  Layli enlisted help from Karen Musalo, an expert in refugee law and acting director of the American University International Human Rights Clinic.  In addition to devoting her own considerable efforts to the case, Musalo assembled a team to fight with her on Fauziya's behalf.  Ultimately, in a landmark decision in immigration history, Fauziya Kassindja was granted asylum on June 13, 1996.  Do They Hear You When You Cry is her unforgettable chronicle of triumph.

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Barn 8

Deb Olin Unferth

An unforgettably exuberant and potent novel by a writer at the height of her powers

Two auditors for the U.S. egg industry go rogue and conceive a plot to steal a million chickens in the middle of the night―an entire egg farm’s worth of animals. Janey and Cleveland―a spirited former runaway and the officious head of audits―assemble a precarious, quarrelsome team and descend on the farm on a dark spring evening. A series of catastrophes ensues.

Deb Olin Unferth’s wildly inventive novel is a heist story of a very unusual sort. Swirling with a rich array of voices, Barn 8 takes readers into the minds of these renegades: a farmer’s daughter, a former director of undercover investigations, hundreds of activists, a forest ranger who suddenly comes upon forty thousand hens, and a security guard who is left on an empty farm for years. There are glimpses twenty thousand years into the future to see what chickens might evolve into on our contaminated planet. We hear what hens think happens when they die. In the end the cracked hearts of these indelible characters, their earnest efforts to heal themselves, and their radical actions will lead them to ruin or revelation.

Funny, whimsical, philosophical, and heartbreaking, Barn 8 ultimately asks: What constitutes meaningful action in a world so in need of change? Unferth comes at this question with striking ingenuity, razor-sharp wit, and ferocious passion. Barn 8 is a rare comic-political drama, a tour de force for our time.

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Beyond Weird

Emma Lord

A journey into the mysteries and meaning of quantum theory: "Gorgeously lucid text . . . easily the best book I've read on the subject." —The Washington Post


"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it's not really telling us that "weird" things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don't seem obvious or right at all—or even possible.
An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn't. Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it's become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we can know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn't a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called "weird," it's us.


"Weighs up the competing interpretations, and the misconceptions, that have attached themselves to quantum theory in its 100-year history. . . . [A] laudable achievement."—Sunday Times


"Ball is one of the finest contemporary writers about science. . . . His prose is a pleasure to read."—Wall Street Journal

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The Color of Hope

Danielle Steel

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A beautiful American widow finds new life in France in this tender portrait from #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel.

Following the unexpected death of her beloved husband, art gallery owner Sabrina Thompson finds herself adrift in their Malibu beach house. Her three adult children—scattered from New York to London to Milan—are concerned for her well-being and encourage her to take a trip to Paris.

Once abroad, an impulsive day trip from Paris to Biarritz leads Sabrina to discover the charming medieval village of Arcangues in the Basque countryside, with its unique and iconic blue shutters and historic château. The château is the ancestral home of Xavier de Bonport, who is trapped in a loveless marriage and trying to dig himself out financially after a business failed due to the pandemic. He needs rental income as urgently as Sabrina needs a refuge. With Xavier living in a smaller house on the property, Sabrina begins to transform the château into a temporary home.

As they each sense compassion and resilience in the other, as well as kindness, a friendship blossoms. Inspired by the stories of Xavier’s grandmother, who saved hundreds of Jewish children during World War II, Sabrina considers fostering some children at the request of the local Dominican nuns, whose orphanage is filled to capacity. As a newfound family begins to fill the château, Sabrina and Xavier wonder if their friendship is becoming something more.

A poignant story of healing and new beginnings, The Color of Hope is an uplifting and unforgettable novel from the master, Danielle Steel.

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The Correspondent

Virginia Evans

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Discover the word-of-mouth hit hailed by Ann Patchett as “A cause for celebration”—an intimate novel about the transformative power of the written word and the beauty of slowing down to reconnect with the people we love.

“The Correspondent is this year’s breakout novel no one saw coming.”—The Wall Street Journal

“I cried more than once as I witnessed this brilliant woman come to understand herself more deeply.”—Florence Knapp, author of The Names

LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE AND THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Elle, Christian Science Monitor, She Reads

“Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. . . . Isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.

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Dear Debbie

Freida McFadden

A brand new twisted thriller that will have you cheering "good for her!" from the #1 New York Times bestselling and global sensation Freida McFadden, author of The Housemaid!

Sometimes, enough is enough…

Debbie Mullen is losing it. For years, she has compiled all of her best advice into her column, Dear Debbie, where the wives of New England come for sympathy and neighborly advice. Through her work, Debbie has heard from countless women who are ignored, belittled, or even abused by their husbands. And Debbie does her best to guide them in the right direction. 

Or at least, she did. 

These days, Debbie's life seems to be spiraling out of control. She just lost her job. Something strange is happening with her teenage daughters. And her husband is keeping secrets, according to the tracking app she installed on his phone. Now, Debbie's done being the bigger person. She's done being reasonable and practical. It's time to take her own advice. 

And now it's time for payback against all the people in her life who deserve it the most.

From #1 New York Times and international bestselling author Freida McFadden comes a biting, subversive thriller about what happens when women finally choose to take justice into their own hands – with killer results.

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The Enchanted April

Elizabeth von Arnim

“Elizabeth von Arnim’s most charming novel in every sense: it casts a spell.”
—The Guardian

Beguiling, witty, and gently comedic, The Enchanted April tells the tale of four very different women who escape dreary London for an Italian castle in Portofino, shortly after World War I. Elizabeth von Arnim’s ageless novel compellingly responds to the eternal question of how to achieve happiness in life. An immediate best seller upon its first publication, the story of unlikely female friendship, newfound empowerment, rekindled love, and unexpected romance has been adapted for stage and screen, including a 1991 Oscar-nominated film, and a Tony-nominated play in 2003. This much-beloved book appeals to anyone who appreciates the sly charm of Downton Abbey and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941) was an Australian-born writer who spent her life in Great Britain and Europe, where she married a German count, raised five children, had an affair with H. G. Wells, and published more than twenty enormously successful books. The cousin of Katherine Mansfield, von Arnim was a member of a literary circle that included Hugh Walpole, E. M. Forster, George Bernard Shaw, and others. She died in 1941 in Charleston, South Carolina.

Ulrich Baer is University Professor at New York University, a graduate of Harvard and Yale, and the recipient of Guggenheim, Getty, and Humboldt fellowships. He has published widely on poetry, fiction, photography, and written new introductions to many classic books.

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Manatee Summer

Evan Griffith

In this poignant middle grade contemporary debut that New York Times bestselling author Katherine Applegate calls “by turns heartbreaking and heart-healing,” Evan Griffith beautifully captures all the tenderness and uncertainty that come with caring for family, friends, and the natural world.

Peter and his best friend, Tommy, have a goal for their last summer before middle school: finish their Discovery Journal, a catalog of the wildlife around their Florida town. When they spot a manatee in a canal, Peter knows they’ve found something special—and when the manatee is injured by a boat, something to protect!

As Peter joins the fight to save Florida manatees, he also finds himself taking care of his ailing grandfather and facing an unwelcome surprise that jeopardizes his friendship with Tommy. Soon Peter is adrift, navigating shifting tides and realizing that he has as much to discover about himself as he does about the world around him.

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Mona's Eyes

Thomas Schlesser

New York Times Bestseller • Barnes & Noble 2025 Book of the Year • Boston Globe Best Book of the Year • National Indie Bestseller • Top Ten Indie Next Pick • Indigo Heather’s Pick

Indigo Heather’s Pick

THE SENSATIONAL #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER THAT HAS TAKEN THE WORLD BY STORM, IN A LARGE PRINT EDITION

"Vibrant debut ... Schlesser seamlessly interweaves the art lessons with Mona's story ... Readers of Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World will love this." —Publishers Weekly

Ten-year-old Mona and her beloved grandfather have only fifty-two Wednesdays to visit fifty-two works of art and commit to memory "all that is beautiful in the world" before Mona loses her sight forever.

While the doctors can find no explanation for Mona's brief episode of blindness, they agree that the threat of permanent vision loss cannot be ruled out. The girl's grandfather, Henry, may not be able to stop his granddaughter from losing her sight, but he can fill the encroaching darkness with beauty.

Every Wednesday for a year, the pair abscond together and visit a single masterpiece in one of Paris's renowned museums. From Botticelli to Basquiat, Mona learns how each artist's work shaped the world around them. In turn, the young girl's world is changed forever by the power of their art. Under the kind and careful tutelage of her grandfather, Mona learns the true meaning of generosity, melancholy, love, loss, and revolution. Her perspective will never be the same — nor will the reader's.

Mona's Eyes is a heartfelt, enlightening journey across five centuries of Western art history. With the emotional impact of The Elegance of the Hedgehog and the readability of The Little Paris Bookshop, Thomas Schlesser's sensational debut novel is at once a moving book about the beauty of life and a deeply touching story about the special bond between a girl and her grandfather.

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The Personal Librarian

Marie Benedict

Over one million copies sold!

The Instant New York Times Bestseller! A Good Morning America* Book Club Pick!

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR! Named a Notable Book of the Year by the Washington Post!

“Historical fiction at its best!”*

A remarkable novel about J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps create a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle’s complexion isn’t dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white—her complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths she must go to—for the protection of her family and her legacy—to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.

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Three Wild Dogs

Markus Zusak

In this poignant, funny, and disarmingly honest memoir, one of the world’s most beloved storytellers, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book Thief, tells of his family’s adoption of three troublesome rescue dogs—a charming and courageous love story about making even the most incorrigible of animals family.

There’s a madman dog beside me, and the hounds of memory ahead of us . . . It’s love and beasts and wild mistakes, and regret, but never to change things.

What happens when the Zusak family opens their home to three big, wild, street-hardened dogs—Reuben, more wolf than hound; Archer, blond, beautiful, destructive; and the rancorously smiling Frosty, who walks like a rolling thunderstorm?

The answer can only be chaos: There are street fights, park fights, public shamings, property damages, injuries, hospital visits, wellness checks, pure comedy, shocking tragedy, and carnage that must be read to be believed.

There is a reckoning of shortcomings and failure, a strengthening of will, but most important of all, an explosion of love—and the joy and recognition of family.

Three Wild Dogs (and the Truth) is a tender, motley, and exquisitely written memoir about the human need for both connection and disorder, a love letter to the animals who bring hilarity and beauty—but also the visceral truth of the natural world—straight to our doors and into our lives and change us forever.

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Vampire Academy

Richelle Mead

Richelle Mead celebrates 10 years of Vampire Academy with an exclusive, never-before-seen collection of stories that sheds new light on the world and its players: 

The Turn and the Flame takes a deeper look into the dark stain on the Ozera dynasty...

From the Journal of Vasilisa Dragomir unearths the princess’s private thoughts from a transformative period of her life…

The Meeting gives us a glimpse of Rose Hathaway through Dimitri’s eyes...

Hello My Name Is Rose Hathaway tracks the shenanigans that ensue when Rose and Dimitri become unlikely teammates in a high-stakes scavenger hunt...

Lissa Dragomir is a Moroi princess: a mortal vampire with a rare gift for harnessing the earth's magic. She must be protected at all times from Strigoi; the fiercest vampires--the ones who never die. The powerful blend of human and vampire blood that flows through Rose Hathaway, Lissa's best friend, makes her a Dhampir. Rose is dedicated to a dangerous life of protecting Lissa from Strigoi, who are hell-bent on making Lissa one of them.

After two years of freedom, Rose and Lissa are caught and dragged back to St. Vladimir’s Academy, where vampire royalty and their guardians-to-be prepare for a life fraught with danger. Rose and Lissa must navigate their treacherous world and never once let their guard down, lest the evil undead make Lissa one of them forever. But soon Rose finds herself gripped by temptation of forbidden love, leaving Lissa exposed to Strigoi attack. Now she must choose between the best friend she lives for, and the man she can't live without….

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Wings

Paul McCartney

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Financial Times: Best Books of 2025

“We made what seemed like an impossible dream come true.” ―Paul McCartney
 

An engrossing oral history of a band that came to define a generation, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run tells the madcap story of Paul McCartney and his newly formed band, from their humble beginnings in the early 1970s to their dissolution barely a decade later. Drawn from over 500,000 words of interviews with McCartney, family and band members, and other key participants, Wings recounts―now with a half-century’s wisdom―the musical odyssey taken by a man searching for his identity in the aftermath of The Beatles’ breakup. Soon joined by his wife - American photographer Linda McCartney - on keyboard and vocals; drummer Denny Seiwell; and guitarist Denny Laine, McCartney sowed the seeds for a new band that would later provide the soundtrack of the decade.

Organized chronologically around McCartney, RAM, and nine Wings albums, the narrative begins when a twenty-seven-year-old superstar, rumored to be dead, fled with his new wife to a remote sheep farm in Scotland amid a sea of legal and personal rows. Despite the harsh conditions, the Scottish setting gave McCartney time to create, and it was here where this new band emerged. Wings then follows the group as they play unannounced shows at university halls, tour in a sheared-off double-decker bus with their children, survive a robbery on the streets of Nigeria, and eventually perform blockbuster stadium shows on their world tour, all while producing some of the most enduring music of the time.

With extraordinary recollections collected by Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville and edited into a genre-defining oral history by Ted Widmer, Wings transports the reader, as if on a magic carpet, to the grit and glamour of the 1970s. Pushing creative forms to produce a new history, even a Wings bible, the book refracts a bygone era in a totally new light. Introduced with a personal, heartfelt foreword by McCartney, the volume contains 150 black-and-white and color photographs, many previously unseen, as well as timelines, a gigography, and a full discography. Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run emerges as a work of soaring originality that presents a new art form all its own.

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World War Z

Max Brooks

We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by that terrible time? We have (temporarily?) defeated the living dead, but at what cost? Told in the haunting and riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z is the only record of the pandemic. The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

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