On August 13, 1944, Joe Moser set off on his 44th combat mission over occupied France. Soon, he would join almost 170 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly of Nazi concentration camps. Tom Clavin's LIGHTNING DOWN tells this largely untold and riveting true story. Moser was just 22 years old, a farm boy from Washington State who fell in love with flying. During the War he realized his dream of piloting a P-38 Lightning, one of the most effective weapons the Army Air Corps had against the powerful German Luftwaffe. But on that hot August morning, he had to bail out of his damaged, burning plane. Captured immediately, Moser’s journey into hell began.

On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle: Martha Gellhorn, who got the scoop on Ernest Hemingway on D-Day by traveling to Normandy as a stowaway on a Red Cross ship; Lee Miller, who went from being a Vogue cover model to the magazine’s official war correspondent; Sigrid Schultz, who hid her Jewish identity and risked her life by reporting on the Nazi regime; Virginia Cowles, a “society girl columnist” turned combat reporter; Clare Hollingworth, the first English journalist to break the news of World War II; and Helen Kirkpatrick, the first woman to report from an Allied war zone with equal privileges to men. In Judith Mackrell's THE CORRESPONDENTS, these six women are captured in all their complexity.

It sounds audacious, but it's true: the Amish have much to teach us. It may seem surreal to turn to one of America's most traditional groups for lessons about living in a hyper-tech world --- especially a horse-driving people who resist "progress" by snubbing cars, public grid power and high school education. Still, their wisdom confirms that even when they seem so far behind, they're out ahead of the rest of us. Having spent four decades researching Amish communities, Donald B. Kraybill is in a unique position to share important lessons from these fascinating Plain people. In this inspiring book, we learn intriguing truths about community, family, education, faith, forgiveness, aging and death from real Amish men and women.

Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, the first African American woman to sit on the Superior Court of Northern California, knows firsthand how prejudice has permeated our legal system. And yet, she believes in the system. From ending school segregation to legalizing same-sex marriage, its progress relies on legal professionals and jurors who strive to make the imperfect system as fair as possible. HER HONOR is an entertaining and provocative look into the hearts and minds of judges. Cordell takes you into her chambers where she haggles with prosecutors and defense attorneys, and into the courtroom during jury selection and sentencing hearings. She uses real cases to highlight how judges make difficult decisions, all the while facing outside pressures.

“What was it like to grow up on TV?” Ron Howard has been asked this question throughout his adult life. In THE BOYS, he and his younger brother, Clint, examine their childhoods in detail for the first time. For Ron, playing Opie on "The Andy Griffith Show" and Richie Cunningham on "Happy Days" offered fame, joy and opportunity --- but also invited stress and bullying. For Clint, a fast start on such programs as "Gentle Ben" and "Star Trek" petered out in adolescence, with some tough consequences and lessons. With the perspective of time and success --- Ron as a filmmaker, producer and Hollywood A-lister, Clint as a busy character actor --- the Howard brothers delve deep into an upbringing that seemed normal to them yet was anything but.

Robert E. Lee is one of the most confounding figures in American history. Lee betrayed his nation in order to defend his home state and uphold the slave system he claimed to oppose. He was a traitor to the country he swore to serve as an Army officer, and yet he was admired even by his enemies for his composure and leadership. He considered slavery immoral, but benefited from inherited slaves and fought to defend the institution. And behind his genteel demeanor and perfectionism lurked the insecurities of a man haunted by the legacy of a father who stained the family name by declaring bankruptcy and who disappeared when Lee was just six years old. Award-winning historian Allen Guelzo captures Robert E. Lee in all his complexity.

As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family's garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life. Nearly 20 years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, Qu looks once more at her life's truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work.

THE GIRLS WHO STEPPED OUT OF LINE are the heroes of the Greatest Generation that you hardly ever hear about. These women who did extraordinary things didn't expect thanks and shied away from medals and recognition. Despite their amazing accomplishments, they've gone mostly unheralded and unrewarded. No longer. These are the women of World War II who served, fought, struggled and made things happen --- in and out of uniform. Retired U.S. Army Major General Mari K. Eder wrote this book because she knew their stories needed to be told --- and the sooner the better. For theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come.

With a claim on artists from Jimmie Rodgers to Jason Isbell, Americana can be hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. John Milward’s AMERICANALAND is filled with the enduring performers and vivid stories that are at the heart of Americana. At base a hybrid of rock and country, Americana is also infused with folk, blues, R&B, bluegrass and other types of roots music. Performers like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles and Gram Parsons used these ingredients to create influential music that took well-established genres down exciting new roads. The name Americana was coined in the 1990s to describe similarly inclined artists like Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle and Wilco. Today, Brandi Carlile and I’m With Her are among the musicians carrying the genre into the 21st century.

It’s the late 1960s, and two lovers converge on an arid patch of earth in South India. John Walker is the handsome scion of a powerful East Coast American family. Diane Maes is a beautiful hippie from Belgium. They have come to build a new world --- Auroville, an international utopian community for thousands of people. Their faith is strong, and the future is bright. So how do John and Diane end up dying two decades later, on the same day, on a cracked concrete floor in a thatch hut by a remote canyon? This is the mystery Akash Kapur sets out to solve in BETTER TO HAVE GONE, and it carries deep personal resonance: Diane and John were the parents of Akash’s wife, Auralice.