From his early career serving theater stars like Tennessee Williams and Dustin Hoffman at La Rousse right through to the last pre-pandemic-shutdown full houses at Le Coucou, Michel Cecchi-Azzolina has seen it all. In YOUR TABLE IS READY, he breaks down how restaurants really run (and don’t), and how the economics work for owners and overworked staff alike. The professionals who gravitate to the business are a special, tougher breed, practiced in dealing with the demanding patrons and with each other, in a very distinctive ecosystem that’s somewhere between a George Orwell “down and out in…” dungeon and a sleek showman’s smoke-and-mirrors palace.

Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby has lived in the same well-to-do mansion block in London for decades. She doesn’t talk about her escape from Nazi Germany at age 12. She doesn’t talk about the grim post-war years in France with her mother. Most of all, she doesn’t talk about her father, who was the commandant of one of the Reich’s most notorious extermination camps. Then, a new family moves into the apartment below her. In spite of herself, Gretel can’t help but begin a friendship with the little boy, Henry, though his presence brings back memories she would rather forget. One night, she witnesses a disturbing, violent argument between Henry’s beautiful mother and his arrogant father, one that threatens Gretel’s hard-won, self-contained existence.

William Tecumseh Sherman and Geronimo were keen strategists and bold soldiers, ruthless with their enemies. Over the course of the 1870s and 1880s, these two war chiefs would confront each other in the final battle for what the American West would be: a sparsely settled, wild home where Indian tribes could thrive, or a more densely populated extension of the America to the east of the Mississippi. When Sherman rose to commanding general of the Army, he was tasked with bringing Geronimo and his followers onto a reservation where they would live as farmers and ranchers and roam no more. But Geronimo preferred to fight.

From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. His strength was legendary, and his power was unmatched. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, and turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat. He became the first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports and overtook Michael Jordan as America’s most recognizable pitchman. Then, almost overnight, he was gone. He was Bo Jackson. Drawing on an astonishing 720 original interviews, Jeff Pearlman captures as never before the elusive truth about Jackson, Auburn University’s transcendent Heisman Trophy winner, superstar of both the NFL and Major League Baseball, and ubiquitous “Bo Knows” Nike pitchman.

For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by a small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia. Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the ’60s and were childhood friends, as well as Little League all-stars. But as teenagers, their lives took them in different directions. Keith’s father became a legendary prosecutor, determined to “clean up the Coast.” Hugh’s father became the “Boss” of Biloxi’s criminal underground. The two families were headed for a showdown, one that would happen in a courtroom.

Nearly a hundred years ago, two wealthy and privileged teenagers --- Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb --- were convicted of murdering 14-year-old Bobby Franks. The trial was made even more sensational by the revelation of a love affair between the defendants and by defense attorney Clarence Darrow, who delivered one of the most famous defense summations of all time to save the boys from the death penalty. The story of their mad folie à deux, with Loeb portrayed as the psychopathic mastermind and Leopold as his infatuated disciple, has been accepted by history as fact. But none of it is true. Using 21st-century investigative tools, forensics and a modern understanding of the psychology of these infamous killers, NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT turns history on its head.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war, their ranks included one of the greatest pools of football talent ever assembled. The two regiments would play each other in a football game as close to the real thing as you could get in the dirt and coral of Guadalcanal. The bruising and bloody game that followed became known as “The Mosquito Bowl.”

In KOSHERSOUL, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them. The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. The book also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty’s own passage to and within Judaism.

In the late 1970s, The Outfit has the entire city of Chicago in its hands. Tony Accardo is its fearless leader. Nicky Passero is his loyal soldier, though no one knows he has a direct line in to the boss of bosses. When the Christmas gift Accardo got for his wife, an inscribed bracelet with gold and diamond inlay, is stolen along with other items in a jewelry heist, Nicky is charged with tracking down and returning all of the items --- by whatever means necessary. Forced into an impossible situation, Nicky must find a way to carry out Accardo's increasingly unhinged instructions and survive the battle for control of Chicago. What Accardo doesn't know: Nicky has a secret that has made his life impossible and has put him in the pocket of the FBI.

After leaving behind the comforts and the shackles of a prestigious law firm, a restless attorney makes ends meet in mid-2000s Brooklyn by picking up odd jobs from a colorful assortment of clients. When a mysterious woman named Anna Reddick turns up at his apartment with $10,000 in cash and asks him to track down her missing husband Newton, an antiquarian bookseller who she believes has been pilfering rare true-crime volumes from her collection, he trusts it will be a quick and easy case. But when the real Anna Reddick --- a magnetic but unpredictable literary prodigy --- lands on his doorstep with a few bones to pick, he finds himself out of his depth, drawn into a series of deceptions.