The future Queen Elizabeth was not yet three when her mother, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded on May 19, 1536, on Henry’s order, incensed that she had not given him a son and tired of her contentious nature. Elizabeth had been raised away from court, rarely even seeing Anne. After her death, Henry tried in every way to erase Anne’s presence and memory. At that moment in history, few could have predicted that mother and daughter would each leave enduring, and interlocked, legacies. Yet as Tracy Borman reveals in this first-ever joint portrait, both women broke the mold for British queens and for women in general at the time.

It’s 1961, and Margo Hightower has just been hired as assistant to photographer Slim Aarons, who is famous for his vibrant pictures of high society, royalty and Hollywood stars. From the bright beaches of Acapulco to glitzy parties in New York, Margo is thrown headfirst into the glamorous jet-set world she so covets, observing its ways from behind the camera as Slim’s sidekick. But when they land in Palm Beach, a scene with few rules and many riches, the lines between work and play begin to blur. As Margo becomes swept up in the city’s social circle --- and into a friendship with heiress and rising fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer --- the golden life seems increasingly in reach. Until she finds herself entangled in a complicated web of loyalties and secrets that could bring it all crashing down.

When Julia Lee was 15, her hometown went up in smoke during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The daughter of Korean immigrant store owners in a predominantly Black neighborhood, Julia was taught to be grateful for the privilege afforded to her. However, the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, following the murder of Latasha Harlins by a Korean shopkeeper, forced Julia to question her racial identity and complicity. She was neither Black nor white. So who was she? This question would follow Julia for years to come. It was only when she began a PhD in English that she found answers --- not in the Brontës or Austen, as Julia had planned, but rather in the brilliant prose of writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison.

Tinged with melancholy but rooted in resiliency, the exquisite stories in Bernard MacLaverty’s BLANK PAGES display the perseverance of the human spirit. In “A Love Picture,” a middle-aged woman, already no stranger to loss, consults a World War II newsreel to determine the fate of her son. “Blackthorns” tells of a poor, out-of-work Catholic man who falls gravely ill in the sectarian Northern Ireland of 1942 but is brought back from the brink by an unlikely savior. The harrowing but transcendent “The End of Days” imagines life in another pandemic as artist Egon Schiele and his wife, both stricken with the Spanish flu, spend their final days together. And in the poignant title story, an elderly writer takes stock of what remains after losing his life partner.

In 2018, without any plan or agenda for what might happen next, Patti Smith posted her first Instagram photo: her hand with the simple message “Hello Everybody!” Known for shooting with her beloved Land Camera 250, Smith started posting images from her phone, including portraits of her kids, her radiator, her boots and her Abyssinian cat, Cairo. Followers felt an immediate affinity with these miniature windows into Smith’s world. Over time, a coherent story of a life devoted to art took shape, and more than a million followers responded to Smith’s unique aesthetic in images that chart her passions, devotions, obsessions and whims. In wide-ranging yet intimate daily notations, Smith shares dispatches from her travels around the world.

In a tough neighborhood on the outskirts of Toronto, Omer Aziz struggles to find his place as a first-generation Pakistani Muslim boy. He fears the violence and despair of the world around him, and sees a dangerous path ahead. In his senior year of high school, Omer quickly begins to realize that education can open up the wider world. He searches for community and identity, asking questions of himself and those he encounters, and soon finds himself in difficult situations. Yet the more books Omer reads and the more he moves through elite worlds, his feelings of shame and powerlessness only grow stronger, and clear answers recede further away. In BROWN BOY, Aziz wrestles with the contradiction of feeling like an Other and his desire to belong to a Western world that never quite accepts him.

After a tumultuous childhood, Christa Liddle has hidden away, both figuratively and literally. Happily studying sea snails in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Christa finds her tranquil existence thrown into chaos when her once-famous father --- long thought dead after a plane crash --- turns out to be alive, well and ready to make amends. The world goes wild, fascinated by this real-life saga, pinning Christa and her family under the spotlight. As if that weren’t enough, her reunion with an old childhood friend reveals an intense physical attraction neither was expecting and both want to act on…if they can just keep a lid on it. When her father’s story starts to develop cracks, Christa fears she will lose herself, her potential relationship, and any chance of making it back to her snails before they forget her completely.

To stop the coming apocalypse, a fellowship was formed. A soldier, a thief, a lost prince and a young girl bonded by fate and looming disaster. Each step along this path has changed the party, forging deep alliances and greater enmities. All the while, hostile forces have hunted them, fearing what they might unleash. Armies wage war around them. For each step has come with a cost --- in blood, in loss, in heartbreak. Now they must split, traveling into a vast region of ice and to a sprawling capital of the world they’ve only known in stories. Time is running out, and only the truth will save us all.

When Rick Shepherd, a physician, approaches his office on a busy Manhattan street, he finds police cars, an ambulance and crime scene technicians. He soon learns that a passerby was shot three times in the back, murdered at the front door to Rick’s office. Later that evening, while watching the local news, Rick and his fiancee, Jackie, see a photo of the victim --- to their horror, the deceased looks identical to Rick. Two nights later, Rick’s father is shot and killed in the exact same way. Detectives Art Nager and Liz Callaghan launch an investigation. There are no clues leading to the perpetrator. Even more ominously, someone has been calling Rick and Jackie’s apartment and hanging up. Whoever is targeting Rick must have murdered his father, and they now have Rick in their crosshairs.

A gardener blessed with a green thumb, Savannah Collins heads to Bloom, North Carolina, to spend the summer with her beloved Aunt Eleanor, a retired librarian. Her aunt shares her love of literature with the Finders Keepers Library, located in her beautiful garden, where anyone can stop by to pick a book or leave a book. When a sudden summer storm destroys the library and many of the roses, it will take a village to get everything ready for the garden wedding that is planned there in just three weeks. As the entire town joins in to make the necessary repairs, Savannah bonds with their neighbor, Evan Sanders, over the books that Eleanor has handpicked for each of them, helping them both find healing and self-discovery.

Yamaye goes raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground dub reggae club. Raised by her distant father after her mother’s disappearance when she was a girl, Yamaye craves the oblivion of sound --- a chance to escape into the rhythms of those smoke-filled nights, to discover who she really is in the dance-hall darkness. When Yamaye meets Moose, a soulful carpenter who shares her Jamaican heritage, a path toward a different kind of future seems to open. But then Babylon rushes in. In a devastating cascade of violence that pits state power against her loved ones and her community, Yamaye loses everything. Friendless and adrift, she embarks on a dramatic journey of transformation that ultimately takes her to Jamaica, where past and present collide with explosive consequences.

Andi Eberhart is riding her bicycle home on an icy winter night when she is killed in a hit-and-run. Her devastated partner, Nisha, is convinced the death was no accident. Andi had been receiving homophobic hate mail for several years, and the letters grew uglier after the couple’s baby was born. Bern homicide detective Giuliana Linder is assigned to investigate what happened to Andi. As she pieces together the details of Andi and Nisha’s lives, her assistant Renzo Donatelli looks into Andi’s job advising young men drafted into Switzerland’s civilian service. Giuliana and Renzo are again tempted to become more than just friendly colleagues. As both detectives dig into Andi’s life, one thing becomes clear: Andi’s friends and family may have loved her for her honesty, but her outspokenness threatened others --- perhaps enough to get rid of her.

Working his way up at the London law firm fford Croft and Gibson, Daniel Pitt is named junior counsel on a fraud case with the potential to make or break his --- and the firm’s --- reputation. The trouble is that Malcolm Vayne, the man on trial, has deep pockets and even deeper connections. Vayne’s philanthropic efforts paint him a hero in the eyes of the public, but Daniel’s friend Ian, a police officer, has evidence to suggest otherwise. Nervously working alongside Gideon Hunter, the new head of his firm, Daniel must find a way to prove that Vayne is guilty. Vayne’s trial reveals his deep political ambitions, and it heats up further when a crucial witness is found dead. When another witness is kidnapped, Daniel must set out on a rescue mission that puts his life --- and the case against Vayne --- in peril.

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.

A teenage girl from a poor family is dazzled by her rich, vivacious friend. But as the friend’s behavior grows unstable and dangerous, she must decide whether to cover for her or risk telling the truth to get her the help she needs. A young woman and her mother bask in the envy of their neighbors when the woman receives an offer of marriage from the family of a doctor living in Belgium --- though when the offer fails to materialize, that envy threatens to turn vicious. And a lonely daughter finds herself wandering a village in eastern Nigeria in an ill-fated quest, struggling to come to terms with her mother’s mental illness. Set in contemporary Nigeria, the 10 stories in A KIND OF MADNESS unravel the tensions between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, best friends, siblings and more.

As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on Florida’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker; his pregnant wife, Frida; and their two sons prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of them. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before. As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. She loses family, gains community, and seeks adventure, love and purpose in a place remade by nature.

There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In THE LIGHT WE CARRY, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with readers, considering the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much? Obama believes that when we light up for others, we can illuminate the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deeper truths and new pathways for progress.

It’s 1941, and the Mitford household is splintered by the vicissitudes of war. To bring the clan together, Deborah invites them to Chatsworth for Christmas, along with a selection of society’s most impressive and glamorous guests, as well as old family friend Louisa Cannon, a private detective. A psychic arrives one night, and to liven things up Deborah agrees she may host a séance. But entertainment turns to dark mystery as the psychic reveals that a maid was murdered in this very same house --- and she can prove it. Louisa steps forward to try to solve the cold case. But with a house full of people who want nothing more than to bury their secrets, will she be able to unmask the murderer? And how deep does the truth lie?

When ex-cop Bill Robinson takes over The Inn by the Sea, all he wants is a quiet escape from the city. But when a crime boss moves into town and begins terrorizing Bill's friends, he can't just sit back and watch. It's not long before local criminals are turning up dead and The Inn comes under attack. With the help of The Inn's fearless residents, Bill must do everything he can to defend his town, his chosen family and his home.

In NORMAL RULES DON’T APPLY, nothing is quite as it seems. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a lost man who bets on a horse that may --- or may not --- have spoken to him. Everything that readers love about the novels of Kate Atkinson is here: the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations of human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.

Years after a breakdown and a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder derailed her historical preservationist career, Kenetria Nash and her alters have been given a second chance: a position as resident caretaker of a historic home. Having been dormant for years, Ken has no idea what led them to this isolated Hudson River island. Then a surprise visit from the home’s conservation trust just as a Nor’easter bears down on the island disrupts her newfound life, leaving Ken trapped with a group of possibly dangerous strangers --- including the man who brought her life tumbling down years earlier. When he turns up dead, Ken is the prime suspect. Caught in a web of secrets and in a race against time, Ken and her alters must band together to prove their innocence and discover the truth of Kavanaugh Island --- and their own past.

Mariel Prager’s husband, Ned, is having an identity crisis; her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day; and her mother, Florence, is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she’s been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel’s grandmother embraced the business, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed. Ned is also an heir --- to a chain of home-style diners --- and knows his family's chain could provide a better future than his wife's fading restaurant. In the aftermath of a devastating tragedy, Ned and Mariel lose almost everything they hold dear, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance.

Herb’s charmed life with his dear wife, Susan, in their Key West house is coming undone. Susan now needs constant care, and Herb is in denial about his own ailing health. The one bright spot is the arrival of an endlessly optimistic manicurist calling herself Renee. But then Herb and Susan’s adult children arrive to stage an intervention with their stubborn, independent father. As a consequence, Renee’s gig with Susan --- and her grand plans for her own life --- start to unravel as well. Herb isn't ready to let go of all that he has ever had, and it turns out that Renee is not the happy, uncomplicated girl she pretends to be. She is not even Renee; she is really Dee Dee, and she, too, has reasons of her own to hit the road. So when Herb suggests one last joy ride in his Porsche with Dee Dee riding shotgun, they take off for parts north, setting off a Silver Alert.

In November 1980, Nick Hartley returns home from a university lecture to find his house crawling with police. His ex-girlfriend, Alice Poole, has been found murdered, and her new boyfriend is missing. Nick is the prime suspect. The case quickly goes cold, but Nick cannot let it go. He embarks on a career in investigative journalism, determined to find Alice’s murderer --- but his obsession leads him down a dangerous path. Decades later, in November 2019, an archaeologist unearths a skeleton that turns out to be far more contemporary than the Roman remains she is seeking. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team are called in to investigate, but there is little to be gleaned from the remains themselves. As the two cases unfurl, the investigations twist and turn to an explosive conclusion.

1968: Actress Gemma Turner is on the cusp of obscurity. When she’s offered the lead in a radical new horror film, she believes her luck has changed. But her dream is about to turn into a nightmare. One night, Gemma disappears on set and is never seen again. She’s been pulled into the film. And the script --- and the monsters within it --- are coming to life. 2007: Gemma Turner’s disappearance is one of Hollywood’s greatest mysteries --- one that’s captivated film student Christopher Kent ever since he saw L’Étrange Lune for the first time. The screenings only happen once a decade, and each time there is new, impossible footage of Gemma that shouldn’t exist. Curiosity drives Christopher to unravel the truth. But answers to the film’s mystery may leave him trapped by it forever.

In over 100 years, there have been literally thousands of books written on the catastrophic maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic. Yet questions still persist about that fateful night. Thirty years ago, in this book’s first edition, Diana Bristow unraveled the myths and lies to give the original, no-stone-unturned account of the events that led up to --- and followed --- the sinking of the Titanic. Bristow goes right to the heart and source of the campaign of deception that served only one purpose: to protect J.P. Morgan, the White Star Line and all their investors from astronomical liability and financial ruin if the captain, crew or management were found negligent in the events that led to the sinking of the Titanic. Bristow’s long-sought-after book, out of print for 30 years, is now presented here in an updated edition.

Jeff Guinn has penned the definitive account of the disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. For the first time in 30 years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. Revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies’ mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America. Notorious conspiracist Alex Jones is a part of the Waco story. So much is new, and stunning.

A Mississippi woman pushes through the ruin of the Roman Colosseum, searching for plants. Crawling along the stones, she wonders how she has landed here, a reluctant botanist amid a snarl of tourists. In 1854, a woman pushes through the jungle of the Roman Colosseum, searching for plants. As punishment for her misbehavior, she has been indentured to the English botanist Richard Deakin, for whom she will compile a flora. If only the woman she loves weren’t on a boat, with a husband. Through a list of seemingly minor plants and their uses, these women calculate intangible threats: a changing climate, the cost of knowledge, and the ways repeated violence can upend women’s lives. They must forge their own small acts of defiance and slip through whatever cracks they find.

Detective Elise Sutton is a forensics expert with a knack for solving cold cases and a deep knowledge of the criminal mind. She prides herself on being rational and in control, until a crisis at a department store leaves her steeped in guilt and self-doubt about whether or not she did the right thing to save a man's life. Elise is hailed as a hero, but she doesn't feel like one. She soon grows numb, even to her husband and daughters, as she sets out to find the one man who might know the truth. When she finds him --- or did he find her? --- their connection sets off a terrifying game of cat and mouse, threatening Elise and the people she loves most.