Raised in Jamaica, Mary Seacole first came to England in the 1850s after working in Panama. She wanted to volunteer as a nurse and aide during the Crimean War. When her services were rejected, she financed her own expedition to Balaclava, where her reputation for her nursing --- and for her compassion --- became almost legendary. Popularly known as “Mother Seacole,” she was the most famous Black celebrity of her generation --- an extraordinary achievement in Victorian Britain. However, after her death in 1881, she was largely forgotten. IN SEARCH OF MARY SEACOLE is the fruit of almost 20 years of research and reveals the truth about Seacole's personal life, her "rivalry" with Florence Nightingale and other misconceptions.

Our buildings are making us sick. Our homes, offices, factories and dormitories are, in some sense, fresh parasites on the sacred Earth, Nahasdzáán. In search of a better way, Jim Kristofic journeys across the Southwest to apprentice with architects and builders who know how to make buildings that will take care of us. This is where he meets the House Gods, who are building to the sun so that we can live on Earth. Forever. In HOUSE GODS, Kristofic pursues the techniques of sustainable building and the philosophies of its practitioners. What emerges is a strange and haunting quest through adobe mud and mayhem, encounters with shamans and stray dogs, solar panels, tragedy and true believers. It is a story about doing something meaningful, and about the kinds of things that grow out of deep pain.

In March 1938, German soldiers crossed the border into Austria, and Hitler absorbed the country into the Third Reich. Anticipating these events, many Jews had fled Austria, but the most famous Austrian Jew remained in Vienna, where he had lived since early childhood. Sigmund Freud was 81 years old, ill with cancer, and still unconvinced that his life was in danger. But several prominent people close to Freud thought otherwise, and they began a coordinated effort to persuade Freud to leave his beloved Vienna and emigrate to England. The group included a Welsh physician, Napoleon’s great-grandniece, an American ambassador, Freud’s devoted youngest daughter, Anna, and his personal doctor.

Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all “negroes and Jews.” Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. In AGENT JOSEPHINE, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer’s life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers --- a cover for her spying work --- Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served --- the US, France and Britain.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras' maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called “the secrets”: the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit “the secrets,” Rojas Contreras’ mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water. While living in the U.S. in her 20s, Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before. Decades ago, Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia, too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to “the secrets.”

Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling writers of the 20th century. Memories of her Caribbean girlhood haunt the four short and piercingly brilliant novels that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, a body of fiction --- above all, the extraordinary Wide Sargasso Sea --- that has a passionate following today. And yet her own colorful life, including her early years on the Caribbean island of Dominica, remains too little explored, until now. In I USED TO LIVE HERE ONCE, Miranda Seymour sheds new light on the artist whose proud and fiercely solitary life profoundly informed her writing.

In 1982, young tax attorney John Green receives word that a client's plane has just crashed. The client's wife asks John to fly to Mississippi, find her husband's plane and see if he is still alive. Arriving at the crash site, he discovers that his client has died while smuggling drugs from Columbia. Soon John finds himself caught between a vengeful IRS agent with a personal grudge and a drug cartel that wants him dead. With his life in danger, he flees from Oklahoma to Texas where he is indicted and arrested. Without bail, he is shuffled from jail to jail and denied medical treatment while agents try to coerce a confession. John declines a misdemeanor plea, believing that justice will prevail if he goes to trial.

In her luminous new memoir in essays, Mary Pipher --- as she did in her New York Times bestseller WOMEN ROWING NORTH --- taps into a cultural moment, to offer wisdom, hope and insight into loss and change. Drawing from her own experiences and expertise as a psychologist specializing in women, trauma and the effect of our culture on our mental health, she looks inward in A LIFE IN LIGHT to what shaped her as a woman, one who has experienced darkness throughout her life but was always drawn to the light. Her plainspoken depictions of her hard childhood and life's difficulties are dappled with moments of joy and revelation, tragedies and ordinary miseries, glimmers and shadow.

In 1978, in the tailwind of the golden age of air travel, flight attendants were the epitome of glamour and sophistication. Fresh out of college and hungry to experience the world, Ann Hood joined their ranks. After a grueling job search, Hood survived TWA’s rigorous Breech Training Academy and learned to evacuate seven kinds of aircraft, deliver a baby, mix proper cocktails, administer oxygen, and stay calm no matter what the situation. In the air, Hood found both the adventure she’d dreamt of and the unexpected realities of life on the job. As the airline industry changed around her, she began to write --- even drafting snatches of her first novel from the jump-seat. She reveals how the job empowered her, despite its roots in sexist standards.

During the throes of the Great Depression, Polly marries for money. After her husband, Sam, dies in a freak farm accident, new bride Polly assumes she is financially set to pursue her dream of opening a hat-making business. Instead, she becomes the prime suspect in Sam's murder. Secrets abound, and even Polly's family can't figure out the truth. Narrated by Polly; her self-righteous older sister, Sarah; and Sarah's well-meaning but flawed husband, Wesley, a Methodist minister, the story follows several twists through the landscape of the rural Midwest. Each narrator has a strong compelling voice. Polly's early letters to her mother both reveal and hide her naivete, her fears and her dreams. Sarah is both caring and critical. Wesley is dedicated to his calling and his parishioners, but his weaknesses are prominent.