Widely regarded as the greatest all-around player in baseball history because of his unparalleled hitting, defense and baserunning, the beloved Willie Mays offers people of all ages his lifetime of experience meeting challenges with positivity, integrity and triumph in 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid. Presented in 24 chapters to correspond with his universally recognized uniform number, Willie’s memoir provides more than the story of his role in America’s pastime. This is the story of a man who values family and community, engages in charitable causes, especially involving children, and follows a philosophy that encourages hope, hard work and the fulfillment of dreams.

Adrianne Geffel was a one-of-a-kind artist, a pianist and composer with a rare neurological condition that enabled her to make music that was nothing less than pure, unmediated emotional expression. She and her sensibility are now fully integrated into the cultural lexicon; her music has been portrayed, represented and appropriated endlessly in popular culture. But what do we really know about her? Despite her renown, Geffel vanished from public life, and her whereabouts remain a mystery to this day. David Hajdu cuts through the noise to tell the full story of Geffel’s life and work, piecing it together through the memories of those who knew her, inspired her and exploited her --- her parents, teachers, best friend, manager, critics and lovers.

After burning out in her corporate marketing career, Michelle Amato has built a thriving freelance business as a graphic designer. She’s perfectly fine being the black sheep of her marriage-obsessed Puerto Rican-Italian family. The only guy who ever made her want happily-ever-after disappeared 13 years ago. Gabriel Aguilar left the Bronx at 18 to escape his parents’ demanding expectations, but it also meant saying goodbye to Michelle. He’s now the successful co-owner of LA’s hottest celebrity gym, with an investor who insists on opening a New York City location. It’s the last place Gabe wants to go, but when Michelle is unexpectedly brought on board to spearhead the new marketing campaign, everything Gabe has been running from catches up with him.

Remarkably, no carefully researched popular history of the Great Chicago Fire has been written until now, despite it being one of the most cataclysmic disasters in U.S. history. Building the story around memorable characters, both known to history and unknown, including the likes of General Philip Sheridan and Robert Todd Lincoln, eminent Chicago historian Carl Smith chronicles the city’s rapid growth and place in America’s post-Civil War expansion. The dramatic story of the fire --- revealing human nature in all its guises --- became one of equally remarkable renewal, as Chicago quickly rose back up from the ashes thanks to local determination and the world’s generosity and faith in Chicago’s future.

Kay Willingham led a life as glamorous as it was public --- she was a gorgeous Georgetown socialite, philanthropist and the ex-wife of the vice president. So why was she parked in a Bentley convertible idling behind a DC private school, in the middle of the night, with the man who was the head of that school? Who shot them both, point blank, and why? The shocking double homicide is blazed across the internet, TV, newspapers --- and across Alex Cross' mind. Kay had been his patient once. And maybe more. She had many enemies, but all of them seemed to need her alive. The harder the investigators push, the more resistance they find when they leave behind the polite law offices and doctors' quarters of the state capital.

Set in an unnamed slum in contemporary Argentina, EARTHEATER is the story of a young woman who finds herself drawn to eating the earth --- a compulsion that gives her visions of broken and lost lives. With her first taste of dirt, she learns the horrifying truth of her mother’s death. Disturbed by what she witnesses, the woman keeps her visions to herself. But when Eartheater begins an unlikely relationship with a withdrawn police officer, word of her ability begins to spread, and soon desperate members of her community beg for her help, anxious to uncover the truth about their own loved ones.

Lady Adelaide Compton had prepared herself to say goodbye forever to Detective Inspector Devenand Hunter. It would be a welcome relief not to get mixed up in any more murders, even if it meant never working alongside the handsome detective again. Wouldn't it? But then Addie's prim and proper mother, Constance, the Dowager Marchioness of Broughton, is accused of murdering her secret lover, and there can't be enough gentlemen detectives on hand to find the truth. The dead Duke of Rufford appeared to lead a blameless life, but appearances can be deceiving. And unless Addie and Dev work together, Constance will hang --- which is no one's idea of a happy ending.

In the summer of 1939, Hitler was at the zenith of his power. Having consolidated political control in Germany, he was at the helm of a newly restored major world power and now perfectly positioned to realize his lifelong ambition: to help the German people flourish and to exterminate those who stood in the way. Beginning a war allowed Hitler to take his ideological obsessions to unthinkable extremes, including the mass genocide of millions, which was conducted not only with the aid of the SS, but with the full knowledge of German leadership. Yet despite a series of stunning initial triumphs, Hitler’s fateful decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941 turned the tide of the war in favor of the Allies. Now, Volker Ullrich offers fascinating new insight into Hitler’s character and personality.

Hercule Poirot is traveling by luxury passenger coach to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate. Richard Devonport has summoned the renowned detective to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. Poirot will have only days to investigate before Helen is hanged, but he must conceal his true reason for being there from the rest of the Devonport family. The coach is forced to stop when a distressed woman demands to get off, insisting that if she stays in her seat, she will be murdered. Although the rest of the journey passes without anyone being harmed, Poirot’s curiosity is aroused, and his fears are later confirmed when a body is discovered with a macabre note attached.

Present day: Emma Lovett has been tasked to restore the gardens of the famed Highbury House estate, designed in 1907 by her hero, Venetia Smith. 1907: When Venetia Smith is hired to design the gardens of Highbury House, she is determined to make them a triumph. 1944: When land girl Beth Pedley arrives at a farm on the outskirts of the village of Highbury, all she wants is to find a place she can call home. Cook Stella Adderton is desperate to leave Highbury House to pursue her own dreams. And widow Diana Symonds is anxiously trying to cling to her pre-war life. When war threatens Highbury House’s treasured gardens, these three very different women are drawn together by a secret that will last for decades.

As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships. But her best friend does. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor --- and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs.

When NYPD detectives Paul Rossi and Hamilton P. Turner begin investigating the Sutton Place murder of an Italian air force pilot, they find themselves sucked into the potential cover-up of the Ustica massacre, the most horrific aviation crime in Italian history. But as they begin investigating, Rossi and Turner come up against NYPD bureaucratic obstacles and stonewalling by the Italian Consulate in New York City. Lieutenant Laura Muro, the policewoman sister of the victim, comes to New York to aid the investigation, but soon the trio find themselves in the crosshairs of the Gladio, Italy’s powerful, shadowy political cabal whose reach extends to the highest reaches of New York political and ruling class.

Reeling from the death of her mother and President Kennedy’s assassination, Catherine Gray shows up on Elizabeth Bentley’s doorstep demanding answers to the shocking mystery she just uncovered about her family. What she doesn’t expect is for Bentley to ensnare her in her own story of becoming a controversial World War II spy and Cold War informer. Recruited by the American Communist Party to spy on fascists at the outbreak of World War II, a young Bentley --- code name Clever Girl --- finds she has an unexpected gift for espionage. But after falling desperately in love with her handler, Elizabeth learns he is actually a Russian spy. As Catherine listens to Elizabeth's harrowing tale, she discovers that the women's lives are linked in shocking ways.

Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller Lee Child has selected the 20 most suspenseful, most confounding and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

Twenty-seven years ago, Sheriff Bree Taggert’s father killed her mother, then himself. Now Bree and her younger brother, Adam, find human bones on the grounds of their abandoned family farm. The remains are those of a man and a woman, both murdered in the same horrible way. When the investigation determines the murders occurred 30 years ago, Bree’s dead father becomes a suspect, forcing Bree to revisit the brutal night she has spent most of her life trying to forget. The only other suspect is an unlikely squatter on the Taggert farm who claims to know secrets about Bree’s past. When he mysteriously disappears and Bree’s niece is kidnapped, the cold case heats up. Bree has stoked the rage of a murderer who will do anything to keep his identity --- and motives --- a secret.

The year was 1947. The Soviet Union had moved from being America’s uneasy ally in the Second World War to its most feared enemy. With Joseph Stalin’s ambitions pushing westward, Turkey was pressured from the east while communist revolutionaries overran Greece. The British Empire was battered from its war with Hitler and suddenly teetering on the brink of financial ruin. Only America could afford to defend freedom in the West, and the effort was spearheaded by a president who hadn’t even been elected to that office. But Truman would wage a domestic political battle that carried with it the highest of stakes, inspiring friends and foes alike to join in his crusade to defend democracy across the globe.

While Americans have a reputation for being strait-laced, many of the nation’s leaders have been anything but puritanical. In this entertaining and eye-opening book, Eleanor Herman revisits some of the sex scandals that have rocked the nation's capital and shocked the public, while asking the provocative questions: Does rampant adultery show a lack of character or the stamina needed to run the country? Or perhaps both? While Americans have judged their leaders' affairs harshly compared to other nations, did they mostly just hate being lied to? And do they now clearly care more about issues other than a politician’s sex life?

Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family. The year is 1957, and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in the tight-knit community he begins to investigate. As he delves further, he learns that the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community’s secrets threaten to obliterate everything.

When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it’s with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. When he meets the worldly Julian in his freshman ethics class, he is immediately drawn to his classmate’s effortless charm. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, because with Julian life is more invigorating than he ever could have imagined. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel. As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence.

In TO HOLD UP THE SKY, Cixin Liu takes us across time and space --- from a rural mountain community where elementary students must use physics to prevent an alien invasion; to coal mines in northern China where new technology will either save lives of unleash a fire that will burn for centuries; to a time very much like our own, when superstring computers predict our every move; to 10,000 years in the future, when humanity is finally able to begin anew; to the very collapse of the universe itself. Written between 1999 and 2017 and never before published in English, these stories came into being during decades of major change in China.

1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious 23-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death. Forty years later, a curious undergrad named Becky Cooper will hear the first whispers of the story --- a tale of gender inequality in academia, a “cowboy culture” among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims.

Following her brother's death and her mother's emotional breakdown, Laura now lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her grandparents. The quiet, awkward teenager has been getting into trouble at home and has been expelled from her high school. When Christmas is over and the new year begins, Laura may find herself at boarding school in Montreal. Nearly unmoored from reality through her panic and submerged grief, Laura is startled when a handsome swan boy with only one wing lands on her roof. She tries to build him a wing so he can fly home. Little does she know that her struggle to find help for her new friend parallels that of her grandparents, who are desperate for a distant relative’s financial aid to save the family store.