Elizabeth Jarrod is driven to despair by the disgusting rumors spreading online and bullying texts. When Heath finds her teenage daughter in the midst of an unsuccessful suicide attempt, she reaches out to her aunt Gwen and her friend, Anna Pigeon. Since Anna is about to start her new post as Acting Chief Ranger at Acadia National Park in Maine, the three will join her and stay at a house on the cliff of a small island near the park, Boar Island. But the stalker has followed them east. And Heath (a paraplegic) and Elizabeth aren't alone on the otherwise deserted island. At the same time, Anna has barely arrived at Acadia before a brutal murder is committed by a killer uncomfortably close to her.

Elizabeth Jarrod is driven to despair by the disgusting rumors spreading online and bullying texts. When Heath finds her teenage daughter in the midst of an unsuccessful suicide attempt, she reaches out to her aunt Gwen and her friend, Anna Pigeon. Since Anna is about to start her new post as Acting Chief Ranger at Acadia National Park in Maine, the three will join her and stay at a house on the cliff of a small island near the park, Boar Island. But the stalker has followed them east. And Heath (a paraplegic) and Elizabeth aren't alone on the otherwise deserted island. At the same time, Anna has barely arrived at Acadia before a brutal murder is committed by a killer uncomfortably close to her.

When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband and has to fend for herself, she is more than a little unprepared. Employed as the caretaker of a soon-to-be demolished recreation center, she finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, which includes a handsome local policeman whose romantic attentions to Britt-Marie are as unmistakable as they are unwanted. Most alarming of all, she’s given the impossible task of leading the supremely untalented children’s soccer team to victory. In this small town of big-hearted misfits, can Britt-Marie find a place where she truly belongs?

When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband and has to fend for herself, she is more than a little unprepared. Employed as the caretaker of a soon-to-be demolished recreation center, she finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, which includes a handsome local policeman whose romantic attentions to Britt-Marie are as unmistakable as they are unwanted. Most alarming of all, she’s given the impossible task of leading the supremely untalented children’s soccer team to victory. In this small town of big-hearted misfits, can Britt-Marie find a place where she truly belongs?

The bestselling author of A MAN CALLED OVE and MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE’S SORRY returns with an irresistible novel about finding love and second chances in the most unlikely of places.

Britt-Marie can’t stand mess. A disorganized cutlery drawer ranks high on her list of unforgivable sins. She begins her day at 6 a.m., because only lunatics wake up later than that. And she is not passive-aggressive. Not in the least. It's just that sometimes people interpret her helpful suggestions as criticisms, which is certainly not her intention. She is not one to judge others --- no matter how ill-mannered, unkempt or morally suspect they might be.

But hidden inside the socially awkward, fussy busybody is a woman who has more imagination, bigger dreams and a warmer heart that anyone around her realizes. 

When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband and has to fend for herself in the miserable backwater town of Borg --- of which the kindest thing one can say is that it has a road going through it --- she is more than a little unprepared. Employed as the caretaker of a soon-to-be demolished recreation center, the fastidious Britt-Marie has to cope with muddy floors, unruly children and a (literal) rat for a roommate. She finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, an odd assortment of miscreants, drunkards, layabouts --- and a handsome local policeman whose romantic attentions to Britt-Marie are as unmistakable as they are unwanted. Most alarming of all, she’s given the impossible task of leading the supremely untalented children’s soccer team to victory. In this small town of big-hearted misfits, can Britt-Marie find a place where she truly belongs?

Funny and moving, observant and humane, BRITT-MARIE WAS HERE celebrates the unexpected friendships that change us forever, and the power of even the gentlest of spirits to make the world a better place.

Forty years ago, Bakerton coal fueled the country. Then the mines closed, and the town wore away like a bar of soap. Now Bakerton has been granted a surprise third act: it sits squarely atop the Marcellus Shale, a massive deposit of natural gas. To drill or not to drill? Prison guard Rich Devlin leases his mineral rights to finance his dream of farming. He doesn’t count on the truck traffic and nonstop noise, his brother’s skepticism, or the paranoia of his wife, Shelby, who insists the water smells strange and is poisoning their frail daughter. Meanwhile, his neighbors, organic dairy farmers Mack and Rena, hold out against the drilling --- until a passionate environmental activist disrupts their lives.

Forty years ago, Bakerton coal fueled the country. Then the mines closed, and the town wore away like a bar of soap. Now Bakerton has been granted a surprise third act: it sits squarely atop the Marcellus Shale, a massive deposit of natural gas. To drill or not to drill? Prison guard Rich Devlin leases his mineral rights to finance his dream of farming. He doesn’t count on the truck traffic and nonstop noise, his brother’s skepticism, or the paranoia of his wife, Shelby, who insists the water smells strange and is poisoning their frail daughter. Meanwhile, his neighbors, organic dairy farmers Mack and Rena, hold out against the drilling --- until a passionate environmental activist disrupts their lives.

Ever since she was a young girl, Meridian Wallace had been obsessed with birds, and she was determined to get her PhD, become an ornithologist, and make her mother’s sacrifices to send her to college pay off. But she didn’t expect to fall in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone. When he’s recruited to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to take part in a mysterious wartime project, she reluctantly defers her own plans and joins him. While the life of a housewife quickly proves stifling, it’s not until years later, when Meridian meets a Vietnam veteran who opens her eyes to how the world is changing, that she realizes just how much she has given up.

In her sweeping debut novel, Elizabeth J. Church takes us from the World War II years in Chicago to the vast sun-parched canyons of New Mexico in the 1970s as we follow the journey of a driven, spirited young woman, Meridian Wallace, whose scientific ambitions are subverted by the expectations of her era.

In 1941, at 17 years old, Meridian begins her ornithology studies at the University of Chicago. She is soon drawn to Alden Whetstone, a brilliant, complicated physics professor who opens her eyes to the fundamentals and poetry of his field, the beauty of motion, space and time, the delicate balance of force and energy that allows a bird to fly.

Entranced and in love, Meridian defers her own career path and follows Alden west to Los Alamos, where he is engaged in a secret government project (later known to be the atomic bomb). In married life, though, she feels lost and left behind. She channels her academic ambitions into studying a particular family of crows, whose free life and companionship are the very things that seem beyond her reach. There in her canyons, years later at the dawn of the 1970s, with counterculture youth filling the streets and protests against the war rupturing college campuses across the country, Meridian meets Clay, a young geologist and veteran of the Vietnam War, and together they seek ways to mend what the world has broken.

Exquisitely capturing the claustrophobic eras of 1940s and 1950s America, THE ATOMIC WEIGHT OF LOVE also examines the changing roles of women during the decades that followed. And in Meridian Wallace we find an unforgettable heroine whose metamorphosis shows how the women’s movement opened up the world for a whole generation.

Audiobook available, read by Jennifer Van Dyck

Due to worries that an unknown enemy will strike again, paramilitary operative and team leader Morgan Yancy is sent to a remote location and told to lay low and stay vigilant. He ends up in a small West Virginian mountain town where Isabeau “Bo” Maran is part-time police chief. Bo doesn’t need a mysterious man in her life. The harder they fight the intense heat between them, the closer Morgan and Bo become, even though she knows he’s hiding from something. But discovering the truth could cost Bo more than she’s willing to give. And when Morgan’s cover is blown, it might just cost her life.

Due to worries that an unknown enemy will strike again, paramilitary operative and team leader Morgan Yancy is sent to a remote location and told to lay low and stay vigilant. He ends up in a small West Virginian mountain town where Isabeau “Bo” Maran is part-time police chief. Bo doesn’t need a mysterious man in her life. The harder they fight the intense heat between them, the closer Morgan and Bo become, even though she knows he’s hiding from something. But discovering the truth could cost Bo more than she’s willing to give. And when Morgan’s cover is blown, it might just cost her life.

The tales in THE PIER FALLS take many forms: Victorian adventure story, science fiction, morality tale, contemporary realism. The characters are often isolated physically or estranged from their families, yet they yearn for connection. In aggregate, the stories become a meditation on the essential aloneness of the human condition but also on the connections, however tenuous and imperfect, that link people to one another. In the title story, an unnamed narrator describes with cool precision a catastrophe that strikes a seaside town, both tearing lives apart and bringing them together.

The tales in THE PIER FALLS take many forms: Victorian adventure story, science fiction, morality tale, contemporary realism. The characters are often isolated physically or estranged from their families, yet they yearn for connection. In aggregate, the stories become a meditation on the essential aloneness of the human condition but also on the connections, however tenuous and imperfect, that link people to one another. In the title story, an unnamed narrator describes with cool precision a catastrophe that strikes a seaside town, both tearing lives apart and bringing them together.

The tales in Mark Haddon’s lyrical and uncompromising new collection take many forms --- Victorian adventure story, science fiction, morality tale, contemporary realism --- but they all showcase his virtuoso gifts as a stylist and the deep well of empathy that made his three bestselling novels so compelling.

The characters here are often isolated physically or estranged from their families, yet they yearn for connection. In aggregate the stories become a meditation on the essential aloneness of the human condition but also on the connections, however tenuous and imperfect, that link people to one another. In the title story, an unnamed narrator describes with cool precision a catastrophe that strikes a seaside town, both tearing lives apart and bringing them together.

In the prize-winning story “The Gun,” a boy’s life is marked by the afternoon he encounters a semiautomatic pistol belonging to his friend’s older brother; in “The Island,” a Greek princess is abandoned on an island by her abductor; in “The Boys Who Left Home to Learn Fear,” a group of adventurers travel deep into the Amazonian jungle but discover the gravest danger lurking among their own number; and in “The Woodpecker and the Wolf,” a woman wonders whether she has chosen to travel to Mars only to escape the entanglement of human relationships back here on Earth.

Drawing inventively from history, myth, folktales and modern life, THE PIER FALLS showcases Haddon’s immense gifts of invention and penetrating insight.

Audiobook available, read by Clare Corbett and Daniel Weyman

Dr. Julie Devereux is an outspoken advocate for the right to die --- until a motorcycle accident leaves her fiancé, Sam Talbot, a quadriplegic. Sam begs to end his life, but Julie sees hope in a life together. When he passes away from an unexpected heart attack, an autopsy reveals that Sam died of an unusual heart defect, one seen only in those under extreme stress. As Julie investigates similar cases, she finds a frightening pattern…and finds herself the target of disturbing threats. The more cases Julie discovers, the more the threats escalate, until she is accused of a mercy killing of her own. To clear her name and save her career, she must track down whoever is behind these mysterious deaths.

Dr. Julie Devereux is an outspoken advocate for the right to die --- until a motorcycle accident leaves her fiancé, Sam Talbot, a quadriplegic. Sam begs to end his life, but Julie sees hope in a life together. When he passes away from an unexpected heart attack, an autopsy reveals that Sam died of an unusual heart defect, one seen only in those under extreme stress. As Julie investigates similar cases, she finds a frightening pattern…and finds herself the target of disturbing threats. The more cases Julie discovers, the more the threats escalate, until she is accused of a mercy killing of her own. To clear her name and save her career, she must track down whoever is behind these mysterious deaths.

Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States. He served one term, from 1929 to 1933. Often considered placid, passive, unsympathetic and even paralyzed by national events, Hoover faced an uphill battle in the face of the Great Depression. Many historians dismiss him as merely ineffective. But in HERBERT HOOVER IN THE WHITE HOUSE, Charles Rappleye draws on rare and intimate sources --- memoirs and diaries and thousands of documents kept by members of his cabinet and close advisors --- to reveal a very different figure than the one often portrayed.

Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States. He served one term, from 1929 to 1933. Often considered placid, passive, unsympathetic and even paralyzed by national events, Hoover faced an uphill battle in the face of the Great Depression. Many historians dismiss him as merely ineffective. But in HERBERT HOOVER IN THE WHITE HOUSE, Charles Rappleye draws on rare and intimate sources --- memoirs and diaries and thousands of documents kept by members of his cabinet and close advisors --- to reveal a very different figure than the one often portrayed.

Charles Rappleye’s surprising portrait of a Depression-era president Herbert Hoover reveals a very different figure than the usual Hoover, engaged and active but loathe to experiment and conscious of his inability to convey hope to the country.

Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States. He served one term, from 1929 to 1933. Often considered placid, passive, unsympathetic and even paralyzed by national events, Hoover faced an uphill battle in the face of the Great Depression. Many historians dismiss him as merely ineffective. But in HERBERT HOOVER IN THE WHITE HOUSE, Charles Rappleye draws on rare and intimate sources --- memoirs and diaries and thousands of documents kept by members of his cabinet and close advisors --- to reveal a very different figure than the one often portrayed. The real Hoover, argues Rappleye, just lacked the tools of leadership.

The Hoover presented here will come as a surprise to both his longtime defenders and his many critics. In public Hoover was shy and retiring, but in private he is revealed as a man of passion and sometimes of fury, a man who intrigued against his enemies while fulminating over plots against him. Rappleye describes him as more sophisticated and more active in economic policy than is often acknowledged. We see Hoover watching a sunny (and he thought ignorant) FDR on the horizon. FDR did not “cure” the depression, but he experimented with steps that relieved it. Most importantly he broke the mood of doom almost immediately. The Hoover we see here --- bright, well meaning, energetic --- lacked the single critical element to succeed as president. He had a first-class mind and a second-class temperament.

HERBERT HOOVER IN THE WHITE HOUSE is an object lesson in the most, perhaps only, talent needed to be a successful president --- the temperament of leadership.

Maia and her family raise dragons for the political war machine. But her peaceful life is shattered when the Summer Dragon --- one of the rare and mythical High Dragons --- makes an appearance in her quiet valley. The Summer Dragon is an omen of change, but no one knows for certain what kind of change he augurs. Political factions vie to control the implied message, each to further their own agendas. And so Maia is swept into an adventure that pits her against the deathless Horrors and a faceless creature drawn from her fears. In her fight to preserve everything she knows and loves, she uncovers secrets that challenge her understanding of her world and of herself.

Maia and her family raise dragons for the political war machine. But her peaceful life is shattered when the Summer Dragon --- one of the rare and mythical High Dragons --- makes an appearance in her quiet valley. The Summer Dragon is an omen of change, but no one knows for certain what kind of change he augurs. Political factions vie to control the implied message, each to further their own agendas. And so Maia is swept into an adventure that pits her against the deathless Horrors and a faceless creature drawn from her fears. In her fight to preserve everything she knows and loves, she uncovers secrets that challenge her understanding of her world and of herself.

The debut novel from the acclaimed illustrator --- a high fantasy adventure featuring dragons and deadly politics.

Maia and her family raise dragons for the political war machine. As she comes of age, she hopes for a dragon of her own to add to the stable of breeding parents. But the war goes badly, and the needs of the Dragonry dash her hopes. Her peaceful life is shattered when the Summer Dragon --- one of the rare and mythical High Dragons --- makes an appearance in her quiet valley. The Summer Dragon is an omen of change, but no one knows for certain what kind of change he augurs. Political factions vie to control the implied message, each to further their own agendas.

And so Maia is swept into an adventure that pits her against the deathless Horrors --- thralls of the enemy --- and a faceless creature drawn from her fears. In her fight to preserve everything she knows and loves, she uncovers secrets that challenge her understanding of her world and of herself.

J.D. Scrbacek has just won the biggest trial of his career, but even as he crows to the press, his entire life blows sky-high. Was the bomb meant for him, or for his mobster client? In this seaside casino town where the tables run hot and the tensions run high, the odds say the attorney is a marked man. Alone and on the run, Scrbacek flees into the city’s forgotten underbelly, a ruined corridor called Crapstown, where he is forced to confront the ghosts of his past, his present and his future. Somewhere in the sordid stream of his own existence lie the answers he needs. But in order to emerge from the depths of Crapstown, Scrbacek must argue for his life before a jury of the forgotten and the damned.

J.D. Scrbacek has just won the biggest trial of his career, but even as he crows to the press, his entire life blows sky-high. Was the bomb meant for him, or for his mobster client? In this seaside casino town where the tables run hot and the tensions run high, the odds say the attorney is a marked man. Alone and on the run, Scrbacek flees into the city’s forgotten underbelly, a ruined corridor called Crapstown, where he is forced to confront the ghosts of his past, his present and his future. Somewhere in the sordid stream of his own existence lie the answers he needs. But in order to emerge from the depths of Crapstown, Scrbacek must argue for his life before a jury of the forgotten and the damned.