A backstage audition led Mark Hembree into a five-year stint (1979–1984) as the bassist for Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. Hembree’s journey included playing at the White House and on the acclaimed album Master of Bluegrass. But it also put him on a collision course with the rigors of touring, the mysteries of Southern culture, and the complex personality of bandleader legend Bill Monroe. Whether it’s figuring out the best time for breakfast (early) or for beating the boss at poker (never), Hembree gives readers an up-close look at the occasionally exalting, often unglamorous life of a touring musician in the sometimes baffling, always colorful company of a bluegrass icon.

For 20 years Miriam Leslie ran the country’s largest publishing company, Frank Leslie Publishing, which chronicled postbellum America in dozens of weeklies and monthlies. A pioneer in an all-male industry, she made a fortune and became a national celebrity and tastemaker in the process. But she also flouted feminine convention, took lovers, married four times, and harbored unsavory secrets that she concealed through a skein of lies and multiple personas. DIAMONDS AND DEADLINES reveals the unknown, sensational life of the brilliant and brazen “empress of journalism,” who dropped a bombshell at her death: She left her entire multimillion-dollar estate to women’s suffrage --- a never-equaled amount that guaranteed passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Kate Swenson's oldest son, Cooper, was diagnosed with nonverbal autism when he was three years old. Kate had always dreamed of having the perfect family and wasn't prepared for raising a child with a disability. Over the years, she felt the frustration and exhaustion from having to fight for your child in a world stacked against them. But through hard work, resilience and personal growth, she learned that Cooper wasn't the one who needed to change. She was. It was this transformation that led Kate to acceptance --- and, ultimately, joy. Because of Cooper, Kate became the person and the mother she was truly meant to be. Now she offers support and connection to others on this path. In FOREVER BOY, she shares her inspiring journey with honesty and compassion, illuminating the strength and perseverance of mothers.

As a young teenager, Ruth Rymer decided she wanted to be a lawyer because "lawyers get to walk around the courtroom and ask the questions." On her 40th birthday as a newly minted attorney, Rymer made a decision to root out misogyny in her professional life. Her law career included establishing family law as a certified specialty in California, leading the way to making family law a more respectable practice for attorneys. In 1996, Rymer was awarded a PhD for her study of divorce and the fight of women for their "lives, safety, sanity, and status." From the "child in residence" she once was to the women's rights champion she is today, Rymer has come a long way. RAISING THE BAR uplifts with the courage and persistence it took to be a pioneer advocate for women in the second half of the 20th century.

Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who has just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina --- the tobacco capital of the South --- where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives. But she soon learns that a trail of misfortune follows many of the women, including substantial health problems. Although Maddie is quick to believe that this is a coincidence, she inadvertently uncovers evidence that suggests otherwise.

Based on years of investigative reporting and unprecedented fieldwork, WALKING THE BOWL immerses readers in the daily lives of four unforgettable characters: Lusabilo, a determined waste picker; Kapula, a burned-out brothel worker; Moonga, a former rock crusher turned beggar; and Timo, an ambitious gang leader. These children navigate the violent and poverty-stricken underworld of Lusaka, one of Africa’s fastest growing cities. When the dead body of a 10-year-old boy is discovered under a heap of garbage in Lusaka’s largest landfill, a murder investigation quickly heats up. The children’s lives become more closely intertwined as each child engages in a desperate bid for survival against forces they never could have imagined.

One spring morning, Kathryn Schulz went to lunch with a stranger and fell in love. Having spent years looking for the right relationship, she was dazzled by how swiftly everything changed when she finally met her future wife. But as the two of them began building a life together, Schulz’s beloved father --- a charming, brilliant, absentminded Jewish refugee --- went into the hospital with a minor heart condition and never came out. Newly in love yet also newly bereft, Schulz was left contending simultaneously with wild joy and terrible grief. Those twin experiences form the heart of LOST & FOUND, a profound meditation on the families that make us and the families we make. But Schulz’s book also explores how disappearance and discovery shape us all.

Written when she was just 28, Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark "A Raisin in the Sun" is listed by the National Theatre as one of the hundred most significant works of the 20th century. Hansberry was the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway, and the first Black and youngest American playwright to win a New York Critics’ Circle Award. Charles J. Shields’ authoritative biography of one of the 20th century’s most admired playwrights examines the parts of Hansberry’s life that have escaped public knowledge: the influence of her upper-class background, her fight for peace and nuclear disarmament, the reason why she embraced Communism during the Cold War, and her dependence on her white husband --- her best friend, critic and promoter.

YOU DON'T KNOW US NEGROES is the quintessential gathering of provocative essays from one of the world’s most celebrated writers, Zora Neale Hurston. Spanning more than three decades and penned during the backdrop of the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, Montgomery bus boycott, desegregation of the military and school integration, Hurston’s writing articulates the beauty and authenticity of Black life as only she could. Collectively, these essays showcase the roles that enslavement and Jim Crow have played in intensifying Black people’s inner lives and culture rather than destroying it.

Bright, attractive and well-connected, in any other family the Churchill girls --- Diana, Sarah, Marigold and Mary --- would have shone. But they were not in another family, they were Churchills, and neither they nor anyone else could ever forget it. From their father --- “the greatest Englishman” --- to their brother, golden boy Randolph, to their eccentric and exciting cousins, the Mitford Girls, they were surrounded by a clan of larger-than-life characters that often saw them overlooked. While Marigold died too young to achieve her potential, the other daughters lived lives full of passion, drama and tragedy. This intimate saga sheds light on the complex dynamics of family set against the backdrop of a tumultuous century.