In 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson first walked onto the diamond at Ebbets Field, the all-white, upper-crust US Lawn Tennis Association opened its door just a crack to receive a powerhouse player who would integrate "the game of royalty." The player was a street-savvy young Black woman from Harlem named Althea Gibson, who was about as out-of-place in that rarefied and intolerant world as any aspiring tennis champion could be. But her astonishing performance on the court soon eclipsed the negative feelings being cast her way as she eventually became one of the greatest American tennis champions. In ALTHEA, Sally H. Jacobs tells the heart-rending story of this pioneer --- a trailblazer, a champion, and one of the most remarkable Americans of the 20th century.

Mary "Mae" Foley was a force to be reckoned with. On one hip, she held her makeup compact; on the other, her NYPD badge. When women were fighting for the vote, Mae was fighting crime in the heart of New York City --- taking down rapists, bootleggers, Nazis and serial killers. One of the first women to be sworn into the police force, Mae not only fought crime in the city that never sleeps, but also did something much bigger --- challenged the patriarchal systems that continually tried to shut her and other women down. The result of her efforts? A long career that helped over 2,000 women join her auxiliary police force, the “Masher Squad.” Mae Foley is proof that women can do anything men can do, all while wearing corsets and the perfect shade of rouge.

A founding member of the Grand Ole Opry and the program’s first Black star, DeFord Bailey (1899-1982) was among the Opry’s most popular early performers. Known as the “Harmonica Wizard” for his virtuosity on the instrument, he was also a singer, guitarist, banjoist and composer. For decades following his departure from the Opry, Bailey’s story was shrouded in mystery. This meticulously researched biography, long out of print, tells the story of a pioneering Black star in early country music in rich and fascinating detail. The book’s original publication in 1991 helped pave the way for Bailey’s election to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005.

1310, Berwick-upon-Tweed, England. Edward II knights Frederick Kohl for his bravery fighting the Scots. But Sir Frederick is not the man the king believes him to be; instead, it is his sister, Christina, who assumes her dead brother's identity. Still posing as Frederick, Christina escorts Lady Cecily, a young noblewoman joining Queen Isabella's court at Westminster Palace, to London. Unexpectedly, Christina and Cecily fall in love. But the wife of one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the city is Christina's bitter enemy. Katharine Volker, whose lascivious advances Christina rejects, goads her into voyaging from her London home to the Baltic waters of her birthplace. Christina journeys not to engage in trade. She sails for a far deadlier purpose --- to exact revenge on the pirates who killed her father and brother.

In BOGIE & BACALL, William J. Mann offers a deep and comprehensive look at Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and the unlikely love they shared. Mann details their early years --- Bogart’s effete upbringing in New York City; Bacall’s rise as a model and actress. He paints a vivid portrait of their courtship and 12-year marriage: the fights, the reconciliations, the children, the affairs, Bogie’s illness and Bacall’s steadfastness until his death. He offers a sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of Bacall’s life after Bogie, exploring her relationships with Frank Sinatra and Jason Robards, who would become her second husband, and the identity crisis she faced. Surpassing previous biographies, Mann digs deep into the celebrities’ personal lives and considers their relationship from surprising angles.

When Frieda Hughes moved to the depths of the Welsh countryside, she was expecting to take on a few projects: planting a garden, painting, writing her poetry column for The Times (London), and possibly even breathing new life into her ailing marriage. But instead, she found herself rescuing a baby magpie, the sole survivor of a nest destroyed in a storm --- and embarking on an obsession that would change the course of her life. As the magpie, George, grows from a shrieking scrap of feathers and bones into an intelligent, unruly companion, Frieda finds herself captivated --- and apprehensive of what will happen when the time comes to finally set him free.

The summer of 1876 was a key time period in the development of the mythology of the Old West. Many individuals who are considered legends by modern readers were involved in events that began their notoriety or turned out to be the most famous --- or infamous --- moments of their lives. Those individuals were Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok and Jesse James. THE SUMMER OF 1876 weaves together the timelines of the events that made these men legends to demonstrate the overlapping context of their stories and to illustrate the historical importance of that summer, all layered with highlights of significant milestones in 1876.

Abraham Lincoln, unlike most of his political brethren, kept organized Christianity at arm’s length. He never joined a church and only sometimes attended Sunday services with his wife. But as he came to appreciate the growing political and military importance of the Christian community, and when death touched the Lincoln household in an awful, intimate way, the erstwhile skeptic effectively evolved into a believer and harnessed the power of evangelical Protestantism to rally the nation to arms. The war, he told Americans, was divine retribution for the sin of slavery. This is the story of that transformation and the ways in which religion helped millions of Northerners interpret the carnage and political upheaval of the 1850s and 1860s.

Jonathan Eig’s KING: A LIFE is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. --- and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. The bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins, as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father and fellow activists. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma and Memphis, Eig dramatically recreates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father --- as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.

Nicole Chung couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in. When her father dies at only 67, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of precarity and lack of access to health care contributed to his early death. And then the unthinkable happens. Less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as COVID-19 descends upon the world.